Citizens across India have turned out in recent weeks to protest a controversial piece of legislation known as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA became law on Dec. 11, after the upper house of India’s Parliament passed the measure and the country’s president gave it his assent.
India’s government — headed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — holds that the CAA will make it easier for people from “persecuted minorities” in the country illegally to obtain Indian citizenship. It argues that the CAA is an important improvement to the Citizenship Act of 1955, which left people in the country illegally without any avenues to become citizens.… Seguir leyendo »
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that the Middle East’s 2020 will be tumultuous. Libya’s civil war has taken a dangerous turn, with Russian mercenaries and Turkish forces joining the fray as Gen. Khalifa Hifter’s forces push into the capital. Yemen’s still ravaged by economic blockade and war, despite recent efforts on all sides to de-escalate the conflict. Syria’s civil war continues to metastasize, with a massive new wave of refugees fleeing violence in Idlib. Large-scale popular protests are challenging Iraq’s government, which is bracing for fallout from the growing confrontation between the United States and Iran. Israel and the Palestinian territories could dramatically change their relationship, as the prospects of a two-state solution dissolve.… Seguir leyendo »
La emergencia de la ultraderecha en las pasadas elecciones generales, constituida ya en la tercera fuerza política del país, ha dejado a nuestros politólogos y observadores habituales un tanto desconcertados. Hasta ese momento el ascenso mediático (incluso su entrada en el Parlamento) no dejaba de ser un acompasarse al resto de países europeos. Suponía la corrección de una anomalía histórica: la insólita convivencia dentro de unas mismas siglas políticas desde las aspiraciones liberales (una suerte de progresismo de derechas) hasta un nacionalismo casi medieval; fuese cual fuese el motivo histórico de esta prodigiosa elasticidad ideológica era previsible que el tejido se desgarraría por algún lado, y que cada facción, con independencia de eventuales concurrencias y alianzas, pondría sobre la mesa aquellas ideas y políticas que les diferencian ante sus votantes, como sucede desde el arranque de nuestra democracia en el así llamado «espacio de izquierdas».… Seguir leyendo »
We know the sight by heart: corrugated iron on a low pile of ash with a chimney left standing. Another house gone. And the pattern of bushfires is part of our lives too. They burn until a cold wind blows up the coast when it buckets down dousing the flames.
But that’s not the pattern now. The downpour has been postponed officially until late January. Things are looking up: it was April. Either way the experts are saying the weeks ahead are looking dry, tinder dry.
As that news sank in this summer an unfamiliar emotion took hold in Australia: not fear so much as dread.… Seguir leyendo »
Where I live, people are organised in clans. I belong to a clan where even 100 people, gathered together, can’t raise $100 (£75) to organise a funeral.
I come from a family that couldn’t afford to pay tuition of $10 a term when I was a student two decades ago. Many of my young relatives are out of school now, because their parents can’t afford a full academic term of $15.
Others are even worse off. There are families I have spoken with who say they are unable to earn $2 a month as a family.
There is no question that the UN global goals have stalled.… Seguir leyendo »
The message to foreign women thinking of booking a holiday in Cyprus could hardly be more stark: if you are attacked don’t expect the authorities to help you. On the contrary, reporting a rape carries a significant risk that it won’t be properly investigated, as appears to have happened to the 19-year-old British woman who went to the police in Ayia Napa in July saying she had been gang-raped. Moreover, you might end up deprived of your own liberty.
The teenager found herself convicted on Monday with inventing the whole thing, and faces a potential prison sentence when she appears at the Famagusta district court next week.… Seguir leyendo »
« Le peuple veut la chute du régime ! » C’est en scandant ce slogan tonitruant qu’il y a une dizaine d’années des foules de manifestants s’emparaient des rues du monde arabe. Depuis lors, ce monde n’est plus ce qu’il était.
Personne n’aurait pu imaginer que le célèbre vers tunisien – « Lorsqu’un jour le peuple veut vivre, force est pour le destin de répondre » – trouverait un tel écho auprès de populations soudain dressées contre leurs oppresseurs de longue date, et dont beaucoup pensaient qu’elles avaient à jamais été domptées par ces derniers.
La décennie a débuté avec ce que nous allions baptiser le « printemps arabe » et ses soulèvements populaires en Tunisie, en Egypte, au Yémen, en Libye et en Syrie.… Seguir leyendo »
Across India, people are protesting the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act, (CAA) after the bill was passed in both the country's upper and lower houses of Parliament. The CAA grants fast-tracked citizenship to undocumented migrants from the "Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014".
Muslims are left out
The government's informal reasoning here is that the countries listed in the CAA are Muslim-majority countries. Minority religions, who are more likely to face persecution in their home countries, therefore deserve fast-tracked citizenship.… Seguir leyendo »
I spent the past two years with the Guardian Group crisscrossing Europe, from London to Kyiv, assessing security threats to Jewish communities in Europe, which are facing a rise in anti-Semitism. Never did I ever expect my hometown to experience a similar spasm of anti-Semitic attacks, many of them violent. Yet, with 10 reported anti-Semitic incidents over the past week, plus the horrific attack in Jersey City in early December, we must confront this particular hate forcefully. The question is: What can be done to protect the Jews of greater New York?
An effective multipronged response needs to involve the Jewish community, in all of its diversity, and the greater public, as well as city and state governments.… Seguir leyendo »
Aphrodite rose gracefully out of the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and its Nereids guided sailors in distress. How did this sea, cradle of so many civilisations, end up as a military flashpoint? This year its eastern shores could become Europe’s equivalent of the South China Sea, bristling with great power tension, or a model for co-operation. I would like to believe the latter but it is going to require a leap of faith in the ability of hard-nosed autocrats to give ground and in terrorist groups to show restraint. That’s a stretch.
Let’s start with the positive. The discovery of large undersea hydrocarbon reserves is giving shape to a new regional constellation: Egypt and Cyprus, Israel and Greece.… Seguir leyendo »
Un típico propósito de Año Nuevo ha sido el de prometer que, ahora sí, ordenaremos el álbum de fotografías. El futuro sirve para pensar que mejoraremos el pasado.
En la agonía de 2019 esa ilusión ha disminuido. Asistí a fiestas de temporada en las que se reiteró una frase: “El mundo se está acabando”. La década concluye con imágenes de containers en llamas, migrantes ahogados en alta mar y demagogos que imitan al personaje del momento, , cuya risa es una enfermedad.
¿Qué motiva el invierno de nuestro descontento? La década pasará a la historia como la etapa en que la privacidad dejó de existir.… Seguir leyendo »
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