WARSAW, Poland — U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken sent a message Wednesday marking the anniversary in Poland of the 1943 Bialystok ghetto uprising, saying it was an act of “bravery” that reaffirmed the dignity of Jews during the Holocaust.
Blinken’s mother, Judith Pisar, the widow of one of the ghetto survivors, Samuel Pisar, the state secretary’s late stepfather, took part in the observances in Poland’s eastern city of Bialystok. U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski also attended.
“I see it as one of countless acts of resistance by Jews in ghettos and Nazi German concentration camps across Europe to reject their dehumanization, to reaffirm their dignity,” Blinken said in a prerecorded message.
It was an act “not of futility but of bravery,” he said, even though “survival was not on the cards” when the uprising began on the night of Aug. 16, 1943.
For its leaders, the revolt was to “determine how, not whether they would die,” Blinken said.
The participants, who included city authorities and residents, honored the fighters and victims of the revolt, which was the second biggest single act of Jewish resistance against the Nazi Germans, after the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Both revolts were brutally crushed and the survivors were sent to death camps.
Before the war, Jews constituted some 43% of Bialystok’s population of 100,000. An estimated 60,000 Jews had gone through the ghetto that occupying Nazi Germany had built in the city, until the uprising.
Historians estimate that no more than 200 Jews fled the ghetto, among them Samuel Pisar, who was 13 at the time. His entire family perished in the Holocaust. Pisar died in 2015 in New York.
“As we lose more and more survivors, the responsibility to relay and grapple with the history passes to all of us,” Blinken said, stressing that for Pisar, the words “never again” were not enough of a protection against war and violence.
KORNIDZOR, Armenia — Maria Musayelyan gave birth to twin girls on Sunday — now she’s worried about being able to keep them alive.
With Azerbaijan accused of blocking all supplies to the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, fears are growing over the fate of the 100,000 people living there.
“There were days during my pregnancy when I know I didn’t get enough food. And now it’s not just about food,” the 25-year-old lawyer said in a telephone interview from the region’s capital, Stepanakert. “There’s no toilet paper, no toothpaste, no baby formula, no clothes for the children.”
Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians fought a war against Azerbaijan in the early 1990s; hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were killed or forced to flee their homes as the Armenians took control and declared the independence of their unrecognized breakaway state — inside Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized borders but cut off from the rest of the country by trenches and fortifications.
Azerbaijan turned the tables in 2020 with a lightning offensive that reconquered key parts of the enclave. The war was halted by a Russian-brokered ceasefire, but in recent months Azerbaijan has tightened the noose on the Lachin Corridor, a mountainous road that is the only link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
Blockade
In Kornidzor, an Armenian village on the border with Azerbaijan, a line of white aid trucks — laden with hundreds of tons of flour, cooking oil and other supplies from the Armenian government — has been stuck at an army checkpoint for the last month. Azerbaijan is refusing to let it pass. Nearby, half a dozen boys chase a football up and down a dusty field, every now and then letting out a cheer as it bounces off the burned-out armored vehicle rusting behind the goal.
Aid organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, are also warning that they are unable to get food and fuel into the breakaway region and that a humanitarian crisis looms.
“The situation is close to catastrophe,” said Sergey Ghazaryan, the foreign minister of Nagorno-Karabakh’s unrecognized government. “There’s no sphere of life that isn’t suffering.”
Azerbaijan insists there is a solution — it’s just not one that’s palatable for Karabakh Armenians hoping to preserve some semblance of independence.
Hikmet Hajiyev, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s foreign policy adviser, insisted to POLITICO that “the Lachin road is open” — while refusing to explain why the Red Cross and other international organizations are unable to use it.
He said his government wants aid to be delivered, just not via the Lachin Corridor from Armenia but from the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam, because it “historically links Karabakh to mainland Azerbaijan” and is “less costly and more convenient.” Russia tentatively backs the idea, while the EU and the U.S. say it’s not an alternative to Lachin.
Baku’s motive for the shift is clear. While the Lachin Corridor offers Nagorno-Karabakh a contiguous lifeline to Armenia, deliveries through Aghdam — which lies to the east of the enclave — would require long, looping transit through Azerbaijan.
Karen Minasyan/AFP via Getty Images
“Why are the Armenians refusing to use the Aghdam road?” Hajiyev asked. “Because they don’t seek reintegration — they simply seek separatism and they seek irredentism and would like to preserve their illegal puppet regime on the territory of Azerbaijan.”
Ghazaryan warned that Azerbaijan’s offer to bring in aid via Aghdam is an effort to force the Karabakh Armenians to give up their independence and accept being part of Azerbaijan. ““If we accept the opening of the Aghdam road and supply from the Azerbaijani side, we legitimize the crime they are committing,” he said.
“In case of the reopening of the Lachin Corridor we will reestablish our self-sufficiency and there will be no need to receive cargo from Aghdam,” he added.
For now, the Armenians are hanging on, but the humanitarian cost is rising.
In July, one Karabakh Armenian doctor said miscarriages had tripled as a result of malnutrition and a lack of medical care, while local media reported a woman lost her baby after she was unable to get to hospital due to a shortage of fuel for the ambulance.
Agricultural work has all but ground to a halt without fuel to power farm machinery or get food from the countryside to the Karabakh Armenian capital, local officials said. They also claim Azerbaijani forces have fired on farmers in their fields, making it almost impossible to sow crops and harvest hay for their animals.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership is calling on the EU, U.S. and others to impose sanctions on Azerbaijan and to push for a return to the status quo ante to prevent a catastrophe.
At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council last week, nations including the U.S., U.K., France and Russia acknowledged the ongoing blockade and called for aid to be allowed in.
But the debate underlined how far apart the two sides are.
Yashar Aliyev, the country’s permanent representative to the U.N., responded to Armenian allegations by holding up printouts of Instagram posts purportedly showing Karabakh Armenians eating food and living life as normal. “People are happy,” he said. “They are dancing at their wedding party. This is a celebration. Very tasty cookies!”
Looking for help
Pressure is growing on Azerbaijan to relent.
Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, published a report earlier this month calling the situation “an ongoing genocide.”
Luis Moreno-Ocampo | Roel Rozenburg/AFP via Getty Images
Russia’s failure to guarantee safe passage in and out of the region, which it vowed to do under the terms of the 2020 ceasefire, means the Karabakh Armenians are looking West for security assurances.
“We’ve been seeing two major trends since the start of the war in Ukraine,” said Tigran Grigoryan, head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security think tank in the Armenian capital of Yerevan. “Russia’s interest in the region is decreasing and its priorities are shifting. Militarily, diplomatically, politically, they don’t have the leverage they used to have.”
Azerbaijan is seeking to reassure the international community that warnings of an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign are overblown. It has hired London lawyer Rodney Dixon to write a rejection of the Moreno Ocampo report.
“If you’re going to make an allegation as serious as genocide, you have to look at all the factors,” Dixon said. “There might be many other issues between the parties, but there’s no evidence that’s been identified a genocide is underway.”
He said Azerbaijan’s offer to redirect aid via Aghdam shows it is not intent on driving out Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population.
But there are doubts as to the Azerbaijani government’s long-term intentions.
“No plan, white paper or document setting out a positive vision for the future of Karabakh Armenians has ever been made public by the Azerbaijani authorities,” said Laurence Broers, an expert on the conflict and associate fellow at Chatham House.
According to him, assurances that locals will receive equal treatment under the constitution of Azerbaijan fail to acknowledge that they “are not just any population but one that has been in protracted conflict with the Azerbaijani state for decades.”
“The Aghdam offer would be more credible if it was linked to deescalation — rhetorically and militarily — and to a vision for an ongoing transformation of the troubled relationship between Azerbaijani state and Karabakh Armenian population,” Broers said.
Meanwhile, in Stepanakert, Musayelyan and her neighbors struggle to survive.
“We are eating whatever can be grown here, mostly vegetables — there’s some potatoes, some pears, some plums,” she said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the hardline approach to dealing with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang to continue, despite international criticisms.
Delivering a major speech on Saturday in Urumqi, the region’s capital city, Xi stressed that “social stability” remained the top priority there, as he highlighted the need for counterterrorism measures and further “Sinocizing” of Islam, the predominant religion for the Uyghurs who make up the majority of the indigenous population in the area.
China’s Xinjiang policies have come under international scrutiny in recent years, culminating in a U.N. human rights report that found Beijing to have potentially committed crimes against humanity. The U.S., which along with Europe has sanctioned some Xinjiang officials, has labeled the situation a genocide.
Xi, though, said he “recognizes” the Xinjiang policy in his Saturday speech.
“[We] have to combine the anti-terrorism and anti-secessionist struggle with the legalized and regularized efforts for stability maintenance,” Xi said during a surprise stopover on his way back from the BRICS summit in South Africa. “The Sinofication of Islam should be deepened in order to effectively handle all sorts of illegal religious activities.”
China will continue to teach Uyghurs the standard Chinese language, and to reallocate them for work outside the region, Xi said.
Activists have long said these policies are designed to dilute the ethnic identity, while Beijing says economic development is key to social stability.
“Xi stressed the need for more positive propaganda to show an open, confident Xinjiang,” according to state media CCTV. “Targeted efforts should be made to rebut any inaccurate and negative press.”
BERLIN — Makkabi Berlin’s first game ever ended in a 15-1 loss in the city’s humblest soccer league. The result of that 1971 match was secondary, though, as merely playing was an achievement for the team founded by Holocaust survivors.
“We wanted to show that we’re still here — that we’re accepted, that we weren’t ended in 1933,” co-founder Marian Wajselfisz told The Associated Press. He still laughs about the result.
On Sunday, Makkabi will be the first Jewish club to play in the German Cup, a season-long tournament for 64 of the country’s best professional and amateur sides.
When the annual competition was started under the Nazis in 1935, Jews weren’t allowed to take part. So when fifth-tier Makkabi squares off against top-tier Wolfsburg, it will be carrying the weight of history onto the field.
“I’ve been there from the first day. I never imagined that we — as a Jewish team — would ever be playing a cup game against a Bundesliga team. So for us, and for me personally, it’s a huge joy,” said Wajselfisz, whose family survived the Nazis with the help of a Polish couple who hid them in their cellar for nearly two years.
Makkabi is the successor to Bar Kochba Berlin, a club founded in 1898 to promote Jewish participation in sports. It had more than 40,000 members at its peak. But when the Nazis came to power, they forced Jewish athletes to take part in separate competitions and then banned Jewish organizations outright in 1938.
Formed in 1970, Makkabi Berlin is one of many Jewish sports and social clubs around the world — there are also Makkabi clubs in Munich, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf. With 550 members, the Berlin club fields teams in a variety of sports, including basketball and volleyball.
Although Makkabi Berlin’s Jewish identity and mission are still central to its identity — the amateur team’s crest features the Star of David — membership in the club is open to all. That’s especially evident with its soccer team, which features players from 15 countries and various religions, including Jews, Muslims and Christians.
“This is something we’re extremely proud of,” board member Michael Koblenz said. “We’re here, and whoever is ready to play for us, and is also open to playing for a club with Jewish origins and some sort of Jewish culture, we’re absolutely happy to integrate people into our teams.”
Among the non-Jewish players on the club is 36-year-old Senegalese defender Papa Alpha Diop, who joined Makkabi Berlin in 2017 and is Muslim. In addition to his first-team duties, Diop oversees the club’s youth setup and coaches its under-10 team. Kids as young as 5 can join.
“Sometimes I feel tired, but when I see the kids, I forget about the tiredness, I’m happy,” Diop said. “It doesn’t matter about religion, or what you are. It’s not important. The only important thing is that you like to come and play football.”
Knocking off Wolfsburg would be a tall order: The team won the German Cup in 2015 and competes in the Bundesliga against the likes of Bayern Munich.
Makkabi, which earned promotion to the fifth tier by winning the Berlin league last season, qualified for this year’s German Cup by winning the Berlin Cup in June for the first time.
Wolfburg’s visit means Sunday’s game will be played in a bigger venue in Berlin. Makkabi’s usual sportsground is named for former national team player Julius Hirsch, whose grandson has been invited to the match. Hirsch fought for Germany in World War I, won club championships with Karlsruher FV and Fürth, and played for Germany at the 1912 Olympics. But he was murdered at Auschwitz for being Jewish.
Unlike Makkabi’s typical matches, Sunday’s match will be televised. It has stoked interest far beyond Berlin, with the World Jewish Congress saying it was “delighted and proud” to see how Makkabi’s sporting achievements were being celebrated by the Jewish community abroad.
“The popularity, visibility and success of Jewish sports clubs symbolizes the growth of established Jewish life in Germany and the world,” the congress said.
Adding to the historical intrigue of the match is that Wolfsburg is owned by Volkswagen, which made use of forced labor during the war. But Wajselfisz said such matters belong in the past.
“I have many German friends, Christian friends. I never speak about it. Perhaps his father or grandfather was in the SS, for me everything is open,” he said. “It was 80 years ago. It’s past. Now, we try to be accepted as Jews.”
Antisemitism remains a problem in Germany, where there is increasing support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Makkabi captain Doron Bruck, who is Jewish, said the team’s success is changing how the club is perceived — less as the victim of antisemitism and more like other clubs that are judged only on their sporting merit.
“If anyone has any problem with us or has any antisemitic background, we’re open to discuss, we’re open to inform,” Bruck said. “But we don’t want to hide and just be in the victim’s role. We want to be active. And I think that’s also a huge part of the success.”
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Felicien Kabuga, who is nearly 90 and has dementia, is accused of encouraging and bankrolling the Rwanda genocide.
Survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda have criticised a call by appeals judges at a United Nations court to indefinitely halt the trial of an alleged financer and supporter of the massacre due to the suspect’s ill health.
The ruling on Monday sends the matter back to the court’s trial chamber with instructions to impose a stay on proceedings, which likely means that Felicien Kabuga, who is nearly 90 and has dementia, will not be prosecuted.
Appeals judges at the court also rejected a proposal to set up an alternative procedure that would have allowed evidence to be heard but without the possibility of a verdict.
The UN court’s chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said the ruling “must be respected, even if the outcome is dissatisfying”.
Kabuga, who was arrested in France in 2020 after years as a fugitive from justice, is accused of encouraging and bankrolling the mass killing of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority. His trial came nearly three decades after the 100-day massacre left 800,000 dead.
‘Extremely disturbing’
Kabuga has pleaded not guilty to charges including genocide and persecution. He remains in custody at a UN detention unit in The Hague, but could be released as a result of Monday’s ruling.
“I think the world does not mean good for us. What mattered to us survivors following Kabuga’s arrest was at least justice,” said Francine Uwamariya, a genocide survivor, who told the Associated Press news agency that she lost her entire family at the hands of Kabuga’s henchmen.
“The trial should have continued even without Kabuga. He was the planner and financer of the genocide. The court appears to be on the side of the killer, when it should be neutral,” Uwamariya said.
Uwamariya’s sentiment was echoed by Naphtal Ahishakiye, another genocide survivor and executive secretary of Ibuka, a Rwanda survivors’ organisation, who said there was enough evidence to convict Kabuga.
“It’s extremely disturbing on the side of survivors, who will see Kabuga walking free. Justice should be felt by those wronged,” Ahishakiye said.
Ibuka has filed a case against Kabuga in Kigali, seeking court permission to sell off all of his properties to fund reparations and help survivors.
Brammertz expressed solidarity with victims and survivors of the genocide.
“They have maintained their faith in the justice process over the last three decades. I know that this outcome will be distressing and disheartening to them,” he said. “Having visited Rwanda recently, I heard very clearly how important it was that this trial be concluded.”
Brammertz said that his team of prosecutors would continue to help Rwanda and other countries seek accountability for genocide crimes and pointed to the arrest in May of another fugitive, Fulgence Kayishema, as an example that suspects can still face justice.
Kayishema was indicted by a UN court for allegedly organising the slaughter of more than 2,000 ethnic Tutsi refugees – men, women and children – at a Catholic church on April 15, 1994, during the first days of the genocide. He is expected to be tried in Rwanda.
Brammertz said his office will significantly boost assistance to Rwanda’s prosecutor general, “including through the provision of our evidence and developed expertise, to ensure more genocide fugitives stand trial for their alleged crimes”.
NEW YORK — A Democratic watchdog group has called for a U.S. House committee to rescind an invitation to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after the Democratic presidential candidate was filmed falsely suggesting COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, sent a letter to Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, asking him to disinvite Kennedy from a hearing scheduled for Thursday after the candidate’s comments at a New York City dinner last week prompted widespread accusations of antisemitism and racism.
In the filmed remarks first published by The New York Post, Kennedy said “there is an argument” that COVID-19 “is ethnically targeted” and that it “attacks certain races disproportionately.”
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he added. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted at that or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential of impact for that.”
After the video was made public, Kennedy posted on Twitter that his words were twisted and denied ever suggesting that COVID-19 was deliberately engineered to spare Jewish people. He asserted without evidence that there are bioweapons being developed to target certain ethnicities, and called for the Post’s article to be retracted.
Researchers and doctors pushed back on the assertion, including Michael Mina, a medical doctor and immunologist.
“Beyond the absurdity, biological know-how simply isn’t there to make a virus that targets only certain ethnicities,” Mina wrote on Twitter.
Democrats and anti-hate groups quickly condemned Kennedy’s comments in the video.
“These are deeply troubling comments and I want to make clear that they do not represent the views of the Democratic Party,” read a Saturday tweet from Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee.
“Last week, RFK Jr. made reprehensible anti-semitic and anti-Asian comments aimed at perpetuating harmful and debunked racist tropes,” US Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement on Sunday. “Such dangerous racism and hate have no place in America, demonstrate him to be unfit for public office, and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
The Anti-Defamation League also responded to the comments with a statement saying Kennedy’s claim is “deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.”
And another anti-hate watchdog, Stop Antisemitism, tweeted, “We have no words for this man’s lunacy.”
On Monday, Kerry Kennedy issued a statement saying, “I strongly condemn my brother’s deplorable and untruthful remarks last week about Covid being engineered for ethnic targeting,” adding that the remarks don’t represent “what I believe or what Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights stands for.” She is president of the human rights organization.
Kennedy is set to address the GOP-led House subcommittee during a hearing Thursday to examine “the federal government’s role in censoring Americans.”
He has long railed against social media companies and the government, accusing them of colluding to censor his speech during the COVID-19 pandemic when he was suspended from multiple platforms for spreading vaccine misinformation.
Herrig’s letter to Jordan called Kennedy “a total whack job whose views and conspiracy theories would be completely ignored but for his last name.”
It asked the chairman to disinvite the candidate from Thursday’s hearing because of “video evidence of his horrific antisemitic and xenophobic views which are simply beyond the pale.”
The subcommittee didn’t immediately answer an inquiry about how it would respond, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy threw cold water Monday on the idea of disinviting the presidential candidate from testifying before Congress.
“I disagree with everything he said,” McCarthy said. “The hearing that we have this week is about censorship. I don’t think censoring somebody is actually the answer here. I think if you’re going to look at censorship in America, your first action to censor probably plays into some of the problems we have.”
Kennedy has a history of comparing vaccines – widely credited with saving millions of lives – with the genocide of the Holocaust during Nazi Germany, comments for which he has sometimes apologized.
His first apology for such a comparison came in 2015, after he used the word “holocaust” to describe children whom he believes were hurt by vaccines.
But he continued to make such remarks, ramping up during the COVID-19 pandemic. An AP investigation detailed how Kennedy has frequently invoked the specter of Nazis and the Holocaust in his work to sow doubts about vaccines and agitate against public health efforts to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control, such as requiring masks or vaccine mandates.
In December 2021, he put out a video that showed infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci with a mustache reminiscent of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. In an October 2021 speech to the Ron Paul Institute, he obliquely compared public health measures put in place by governments around the world to Nazi propaganda meant to scare people into abandoning critical thinking.
In January 2022, at a Washington rally organized by his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy complained that people’s rights were being violated by public health measures that had been taken to reduce the number of people sickened and killed by COVID-19.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he said.
The comment was condemned by the head of the Anti-Defamation League as “deeply inaccurate, deeply offensive and deeply troubling.” Yad Vashem of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem said it “denigrates the memory of its victims and survivors,” as well as others.
After initially sticking by his remarks, Kennedy ultimately apologized, tweeting, “I apologize for my reference to Anne Frank, especially to families that suffered the Holocaust horrors.”
Then, days after he launched his presidential campaign this April, he wrote on Twitter that “the onslaught of relentless media indignation finally compelled me to apologize for a statement I never made in order to protect my family.”
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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri in Washington and Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
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The ghosts of colonial history returned to haunt European and Latin American leaders at their summit in Brussels.
For the guests, four hundred years of European colonial rule, economic exploitation and slavery was front of mind. For the hosts, it was Russia’s war on Ukraine in the here and now.
The divergence in views was so profound that the two sides struggled to align their thinking at their first summit in eight years — especially to find words to condemn Russia’s war of aggression in their closing communiqué.
That made the two-day gathering frustrating for all concerned — but especially for leaders of the EU’s newest member states from Eastern Europe, which have their own bitter memories of Soviet imperial rule and Russian aggression.
“It is actually a war of colonization,” Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš said of the 16-month-old Ukraine conflict.
“There is a former colonizer, Russia, and a former colony, Ukraine. And the former overlord is trying to take back their one-time possession. I think that many countries around the world can relate to that.”
Despite the pre-summit rhetoric highlighting the two continents’ shared values, EU leaders struggled to persuade the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — which includes traditional allies of Moscow such as Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela — to clearly condemn Russia’s war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — a regular guest in Brussels — wasn’t invited this time. Wrangling over the wording in their joint declaration delayed the end of the meeting by hours as leaders sought to bridge the gaps. In the end, only Nicaragua dissented.
“No one intends to lecture anyone,” said European Council President Charles Michel, seeking to placate his guests. “This is not how it works, we have a lot of respect for those countries, for the traditions, for the culture, and the idea is always to engage in a spirit of mutual respect.”
Four hundred years
Spain, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, has its eyes on Latin America and likes to emphasize the close cultural and linguistic ties between the two.
But those links hark back to Spain — and Europe’s — colonial past. The Spanish kingdom colonized much of Latin America starting in 1493 and, over the next 400 years, acquired vast wealth by exploiting its lands and people. The European slave trade also forcibly transported millions of Africans into slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While European leaders hoped to ease geopolitical tensions, their Latin American counterparts came to the table with a clear message: Defining relations today means addressing and rectifying past injustices — especially as the EU looks once again to the resource-rich region, this time to power its green transition.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves | Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP via Getty Images
The prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — a small island state that heads up the 33-nation group — called for talks on economic reparations for colonization and enslavement.
“Resources from the slave trade and from slavery helped to fuel the industrial revolution that has laid the basis for a lot of the wealth within Western Europe,” Ralph Gonsalves told a small group of reporters on Tuesday.
This was part of his argument for a plan to “to repair the historical legacies of underdevelopment resulting from native genocide and the enslavement of African bodies,” as he said on Monday ahead of the summit.
Trade tensions
Trade talks between the EU and Mercosur — which groups four of Latin America’s big economies — also reflected the broader tensions over what it really means for Europe to start afresh in a relationship of equals.
Beyond a cursory mention of a Mercosur deal in the final statement, talks with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay were kept on the sidelinesdespite previous hopes that the summit could inject new energy into negotiations on wrapping up a trade deal.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did, however, say after the summit that “our ambition is to … conclude [at] the latest by the end of this year.”
Industry and civil society have fundamentally different interpretations around how much — or how little — the deal would help put the countries on equal footing with their European partners.
For businesses, the deal needs to happen to ensure the region remains on the EU’s political and economic map.
“For us, the [trade] agreements are important. We need stability and don’t want to be at the mercy of political changes,” said Luisa Santos of the industry lobby group BusinessEurope.
But NGOs don’t see it that way. “Any proposal that leaves the region as a mere provider of natural resources for the benefit of the one percent in the region, big corporations and rich countries is business as usual,” said Hernán Saenz from the NGO Oxfam.
Resource craze
Sealing the Mercosur deal has gained importance for the EU, which is banking on the resource-rich region to power the wind turbines and electric vehicles it needs to meet its climate targets.
Brazil is the largest exporter of strategic raw materials to the EU by volume, while the “lithium triangle” spanning Chile, Argentina and Bolivia hosts about half of the world’s lithium reserves. As part of the summit, Brussels and Chile signed a new memorandum of understanding on raw materials.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (right) in Brussels | Dati Bendo/EC
But the EU’s new appetite for those metals and minerals evoques those dark memories of Spanish conquistadors who set out to dominate large parts of South America — in the name of god, glory and, not least, gold, fueling an economic boom back home while stripping Latin America of its riches.
While von der Leyen on Monday announced Brussels will pump over €45 billion into the region through its Global Gateway program — for infrastructure projects that, at least in part, will also benefit the EU’s private sector — Europe is coming late to the party in a region where China has already expanded its influence.
And raw materials partnerships today, the region’s countries emphasized, cannot be based on a model where resource-rich countries mine the valuable resources — often under poor environmental and working conditions — only for them to be shipped abroad for processing and manufacturing, making them reliant on imports for finished products.
“This was the first time that we had the opportunity to discuss in such clear terms a mechanism that would take us away from extractivism in Latin America,” Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández said after the summit.
“It took five centuries, but we managed it — I’m saying that half in jest, but we have at last succeeded.”
Camille Gijs and Barbara Moens contributed reporting.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — One of the last remaining suspects accused of orchestrating the brutal massacres of the Rwandan genocide nearly 30 years ago plans to apply for political asylum in South Africa, his lawyer said Tuesday.
The U.N. tribunal charged Kayishema in 2001 with being a central figure in the slaughter of more than 2,000 people seeking refuge at a church.
Now 62 years old, he was arrested last month in the small town of Paarl near Cape Town, South Africa, having been on the run for half his life.
More than 800,000 people were killed when militias made up mainly of members of Rwanda’s Hutu ethnic group turned on their Tutsi neighbors. The killings, an attempt to wipe out the minority Tutsis, were triggered on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down, killing him.
Kayishema is accused of being one of the leaders of a Hutu mob that killed Tutsi men, women and children who were hiding in the Catholic church to escape the sudden eruption of violence. Kayishema and others tried to burn down the church and, when that failed, they used a bulldozer to smash it down, crushing to death the Tutsis inside, according to the charges against him.
Ultimately, more than 2,000 people were killed in and around the church, the genocide indictment against Kayishema says.
The U.N. tribunal wants Kayishema to be sent to one of the seats of the tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, and then to Rwanda for trial, but it’s unclear how long it would take for South Africa to extradite him.
Following his May 24 arrest, Kayishema also was charged in South Africa with 54 counts of immigration offenses and fraud. He allegedly used fake names and other falsified information to acquire documents to enter and live in South Africa, where he had been for at least 20 years, according to the charges filed by prosecutors.
He appeared in court Tuesday for that case. The proceedings could have delayed his extradition even if Kayishema did not intend to seek asylum, a move that requires further proceedings.
His lawyer, Juan Smuts, told reporters Tuesday that Kayishema left Rwanda in 1994 “out of fear for his life.”
He hid in at least three other African countries — Congo, Mozambique and Tanzania — before arriving in South Africa sometime between 2000 and 2002, Smuts said, adding that Kayishema was 62 years old and not 61, as South African police previously stated.
Smuts said the immigration and fraud case against Kayishema would have to be put on hold while his application for asylum was considered. South African prosecuting authority spokesman Eric Ntabazalila disputed that and said the asylum claim had no bearing on Kayishema’s criminal case.
However, any extradition will likely be delayed for at least two months after the judge postponed Kayishema’s South African court case until Aug. 18. He has not entered a plea on any of the charges and remains jailed.
The massacre at the Nyange church in western Rwanda was one of many horrific episodes in the 1994 genocide. A memorial to the victims now stands in place of the church.
Aloys Rwamasirabo, who lived in the Nyange area and knew Kayishema, survived the massacre but said nine of his children were killed. Rwamasirabo said Kayishema, who held the rank of police inspector at the time, ordered many of the killings.
“My wish is that he is brought back to Rwanda (to) face justice in the presence of survivors whom he committed crimes against,” Rwamasirabo said. “He carried a lot of power, and his orders were obeyed.”
Kayishema didn’t speak during his latest court hearing and stood and faced the judge through most of it while surrounded by seven armed police officers. But he smiled, waved and gave a thumbs-up to some of his family members sitting in the courtroom.
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Associated Press writer Ignatius Ssuna in Kigali, Rwanda, contributed to this report.
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BERLIN — The organization that handles claims on behalf of Jews who suffered under the Nazis said Thursday that Germany has agreed to extend another $1.4 billion (1.29 billion euros) overall for Holocaust survivors around the globe for the coming year.
The compensation was negotiated with Germany’s finance ministry and includes $888.9 million to provide home care and supportive services for frail and vulnerable Holocaust survivors.
Additionally, increases of $175 million to symbolic payments of the Hardship Fund Supplemental program have been achieved, impacting more than 128,000 Holocaust survivors globally, according to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.
“Every year these negotiations become more and more critical as this last generation of Holocaust survivors age and their needs increase,” said Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference’s executive vice president.
“Being able to ensure direct payments to survivors in addition to the expansions to the social welfare services is essential in making sure every Holocaust survivor is taken care of for as long as it is required, addressing each individual need,” Schneider added.
The Hardship Fund Supplemental payment was originally established to be a one-time payment, negotiated during the COVID-19 lockdowns and eventually resulted in three supplemental payments for eligible Holocaust survivors. This year, Germany again agreed to extend the hardship payment, which was set to end in December 2023, through 2027.
The amount for each of the additional years was set at approximately $1,370 per person for 2024, $1,425 for 2025, $1,480 for 2026 and $1,534 for 2027.
The survivors receiving these payments largely are Russian Jews who weren’t in camps or ghettos, and aren’t eligible for pension programs, the Claims Conference said.
As children they fled the so-called Einsatzgruppen — Nazi mobile killing units charged with murdering entire Jewish communities. More than 1 million Jews were killed by these units, which operated largely by shooting hundreds and thousands of Jews at a time and burying them in mass pits.
“For those who were able to flee and survive — they are some of the poorest in the survivor community; the loss of time, family, property and life cannot be made whole,” the group said.
“By expanding payments to these survivors, the German government is acknowledging that this suffering is still being felt deeply, both emotionally and financially,” the group said in a statement. “While symbolic, these payments provide financial relief for many aging Jewish Holocaust survivors living around the world.”
With the end of World War II now nearly eight decades ago, all living Holocaust survivors are elderly, and many suffer from numerous medical issues because they were deprived of proper nutrition when they were young.
As the number of survivors dwindles, the Claims Conference also negotiated continuing funding for Holocaust education, which has been extended for two more years and increased each year by $3.3 million. The newly negotiated funding amounts are approximately $41.6 million for 2026 and $45 million for 2027.
Since 1952, the German government has paid more than $90 billion to individuals for suffering and losses resulting from persecution by the Nazis.
In 2023, the Claims Conference projects it will distribute hundreds of millions in compensation to more than 200,000 survivors in 83 countries and allocated more than $750 million in grants to more than 300 social service agencies worldwide that provide vital services for Holocaust survivors, such as home care, food and medicine.
“It has been nearly 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, and the need to negotiate for survivor care and compensation is more urgent than ever,” said Stuart Eizenstat, the special negotiator for the Claims Conference negotiations delegation.
“Every negotiation is a near-last opportunity to ensure survivors of the Holocaust are receiving some measure of justice and a chance at the dignity that was taken from them in their youth. It will never be enough until the last survivor has taken their last breath,” he added.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The International Court of Justice has accepted requests from 32 countries to back Ukraine in a genocide case against Russia, the United Nations’ highest court said Friday.
It’s the largest number of countries to join another nation’s complaint at the world court based in The Hague, Netherlands.
Ukraine’s government filed the legally creative case days after Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. The Kremlin snubbed hearings held the next month, while protesters holding Ukrainian flags chanted antiwar slogans outside the court building’s gates.
Latvia was the first country to intervene in the complaint, which alleges Russia violated the 1948 Genocide Convention by falsely accusing Ukraine of committing genocide in its eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and using that as a pretext for the invasion.
A record 33 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and every European Union member nation except Hungary requested to participate on Ukraine’s side in the case. However, the U.N. court’s judges rejected the U.S. request on a technicality.
“The court concludes that the declarations of intervention filed in this case, except for the declaration submitted by the United States, are admissible,” they said.
Any country that has signed the post-World War II treaty criminalizing genocide is allowed to file for intervention in cases brought under the accord. The United States did not accept part of the Genocide Convention when it signed the treaty, so the judges determined the country wasn’t entitled to participate.
Countries and organizations not directly involved in legal proceedings often ask courts if they can submit arguments in a case, particularly if the outcome might impact them in some way.
Experts see the petitions in the pending case as attempts to demonstrate support for Ukraine and to condemn Russia’s war rather than countries seeking opportunities to advocate particular legal positions or arguments.
“The countries are expressing solidarity with Ukraine,” Ori Pomson, a legal scholar at the University of Cambridge whose research focuses on the International Court of Justice, told the Associated Press.
In March 2022, the court ordered Russia to stop hostilities in Ukraine, but Moscow has failed to comply.
The world court is hearing a separate case brought earlier by Ukraine linked to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and Russian funding of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
A similar group of countries also asked the European Court of Human Rights to intervene in a group of cases Ukraine brought against Russia over the war. In March, the Strasbourg-based court granted 31 groups the right to back Ukraine in those proceedings.
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Ukrainians and their allies continue to urge Congress to declare the Russian invasion of their country a genocide, a step lawmakers and the U.S. State Department have been reluctant to formally take so far, despite mounting evidence.
President Joe Biden said in the early weeks of the war that it was a genocide, but his administration has since been much more cautious about the label, which has a legal definition under a 1948 international treaty.
In February, however, the administration got a little closer, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring that Russia had committed crimes against humanity.
“These acts are not random or spontaneous; they are part of the Kremlin’s widespread and systematic attack against Ukraine’s civilian population,” Blinken said.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) listens to the testimony of a victim of Russia’s war on Ukraine during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.
In addition to that declaration and help investigating the alleged war crimes, the U.S. has committed about $71.3 billion in help to Ukraine since the war began, with $43.2 billion of that in military aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
In the letter, the Ukraine supporters said it was time for Congress to label the war a genocide.
“Although we appreciate that executive-branch processes are also common for such determinations, the Kremlin’s genocidal intent and actions are so clear and so evident that a congressional declaration is not only advisable, but absolutely necessary in the spirit of preventing further atrocities,” the letter said.
Under the 1948 treaty, which was signed by the United States, genocide occurs when there is an attempt to completely or partially destroy a racial, ethnic, national or religious group by at least one of several methods, including killing or causing serious injury to them, creating “conditions of life” meant to destroy the group, imposing measures to prevent births within the group or transferring their children to another group.
“These acts are not random or spontaneous; they are part of the Kremlin’s widespread and systematic attack against Ukraine’s civilian population.”
– Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in announcing Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine
“The Secretary has not designated Russian atrocities as genocide. We will continue monitoring the situation in Ukraine and will make that determination when appropriate,” a State Department spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement.
The scholars’ letter was released Wednesday, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on war crimes in Ukraine. Lawmakers heard from witnesses who described abducted children taken to Russia and a woman who said she had been beaten and tortured while living under Russian occupation in the Kherson region.
Committee chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said he had visited Ukraine and heard similar tales.
“I personally heard an account from a mother who saw her 5-year-old daughter gang-raped to death by 10 Wagner mercenaries, who then threw her dead body on the side of the road,” he said.
“These are more than war crimes. These are more than crimes against humanity. What we are witnessing in Ukraine is genocide,” McCaul said.
“These are more than war crimes. These are more than crimes against humanity. What we are witnessing in Ukraine is genocide.”
– Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
The committee office did not respond to a request for comment about whether McCaul planned to bring up the genocide resolution authored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), which has 21 co-sponsors, including five Republicans.
In the letter asking for action on the resolution, the experts said, “If we do not recognize this invasion for what it is, we not only fail the Ukrainian people, but we neglect our security interests and our foundational values.”
“The United States must recognize and help end genocide, and not just memorialize it after the ruination and devastation of a nation.”
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is leading a delegation that includes rapper Meek Mill on a march in Poland to honor victims and survivors of the Holocaust
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft led a delegation that included rapper Meek Mill on a march in Poland on Tuesday to honor victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
The 3-kilometer “March of the Living” is an annual commemoration that covers the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the largest Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
The event is being attended by Kraft as part of his Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, which he started in 2019 to address hate against Jews. Kraft lit the first torch at the outset of the march, a Patriots team spokesman said.
Kraft was one of several celebrities who helped advocate on behalf of Mill, who was released from prison in 2018 after initially being sentenced to two to four years in jail for probation violations in decade-old gun and drug convictions.
Kraft has since joined Mill, rap mogul Jay Z and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin in the Reform Alliance, a group that lobbies for changes to state probation and parole laws.
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Thousands of people have gathered at the former site of Auschwitz for the March of the Living
WARSAW, Poland — Thousands of people assembled Tuesday at the former site of Auschwitz for the March of the Living, a yearly Holocaust remembrance march that falls this year on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Participants in the solemn event included Holocaust survivors who lived through the agony of Auschwitz or one of the other death camps where Nazi Germany sought to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe, and came close to doing so.
Some attendees, including people from Israel and the United States, came face to face for the first time with something that has long been part of their psyche: the watchtowers, remains of gas chambers and the huge piles of shoes, suitcases and other objects that the victims brought with them on their final journey.
German forces established Auschwitz after they invaded and occupied Poland, and killed more than 1.1 million people there, most of them Jews but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others. In all, about 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust.
Elderly survivors, some draped in Israel’s blue and white flag, assembled under the gate with the cynical words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets One Free) ahead of the march.
The March of the Living, which takes place each year on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins at that gate and leads to Birkenau, the large camp 3 kilometers (2 miles) away where Jews from across Europe were transported by train and murdered in gas chambers.
Some of the participants will travel the next day to Warsaw for observances marking the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 which will be attended by the presidents of Poland, Germany and Israel.
The revolt was the largest single act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, and remains a potent national symbol for Israel.
NEW YORK — Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, a bridal industry pioneer and Holocaust survivor who decided over a half century ago that brides deserved better than cookie-cutter dresses, has died in Manhattan. She was 99.
Word of her March 29 death has spread steadily, drawing her praise and reflecting her decades-long impact on an industry that once offered few options for would-be brides before she expanded the possibilities, attracting women to her Brooklyn business from across the world.
Women’s Wear Daily published quotes from a 1985 interview when she said: “You are creating a heroine on a stage. The bride is on display, she has to be put together beautifully, and we have to edit and guide the customer, and be able to picture her under the chandelier or in a church.”
A posting about the death on the website of the Bridal Council, a non-profit organization of industry powerbrokers, contained comments from Barbara Tober, former editor-in-chief at Brides magazine. She said Schachter “brought new life, new designs, new elegance and certainly prosperity to the world of bridal.”
She added: “We are all better off because Hedda led the charge when we most needed a ‘role model.’”
Born in Vienna, Austria, the woman known more commonly as Miss Hedda and other family members escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Cuba. A year later, they moved to Brooklyn, where her father opened a store that initially specialized in furs but would later become I. Kleinfeld & Son.
And a year after that, she was married to Jacob Schachter, who died in 2008.
By the late 1960s, Schachter began importing wedding dresses from Europe and sales quickly accelerated, leading the business to become primarily wedding gowns within a decade.
By the 1990s, it was selling thousands of dresses a year after Schachter worked to transform the industry by encouraging designers with other specializations to put their creativity to work on wedding dresses and by searching the world for new trends and designs.
Also in the 1990s, the company changed ownership several times while continuing to capitalize on the Kleinfeld name. That reputation helped it to become the setting in 2007 for the reality show “Say Yes to the Dress.” The store had moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan only two years earlier.
The New York Times quoted Schachter’s son, Robert, as saying that her death resulted from an intestinal blockage.
NEW YORK — Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, a bridal industry pioneer and Holocaust survivor who decided over a half century ago that brides deserved better than cookie-cutter dresses, has died in Manhattan. She was 99.
Word of her March 29 death has spread steadily, drawing her praise and reflecting her decades-long impact on an industry that once offered few options for would-be brides before she expanded the possibilities, attracting women to her Brooklyn business from across the world.
Women’s Wear Daily published quotes from a 1985 interview when she said: “You are creating a heroine on a stage. The bride is on display, she has to be put together beautifully, and we have to edit and guide the customer, and be able to picture her under the chandelier or in a church.”
A posting about the death on the website of the Bridal Council, a non-profit organization of industry powerbrokers, contained comments from Barbara Tober, former editor-in-chief at Brides magazine. She said Schachter “brought new life, new designs, new elegance and certainly prosperity to the world of bridal.”
She added: “We are all better off because Hedda led the charge when we most needed a ‘role model.’”
Born in Vienna, Austria, the woman known more commonly as Miss Hedda and other family members escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Cuba. A year later, they moved to Brooklyn, where her father opened a store that initially specialized in furs but would later become I. Kleinfeld & Son.
And a year after that, she was married to Jacob Schachter, who died in 2008.
By the late 1960s, Schachter began importing wedding dresses from Europe and sales quickly accelerated, leading the business to become primarily wedding gowns within a decade.
By the 1990s, it was selling thousands of dresses a year after Schachter worked to transform the industry by encouraging designers with other specializations to put their creativity to work on wedding dresses and by searching the world for new trends and designs.
Also in the 1990s, the company changed ownership several times while continuing to capitalize on the Kleinfeld name. That reputation helped it to become the setting in 2007 for the reality show “Say Yes to the Dress.” The store had moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan only two years earlier.
The New York Times quoted Schachter’s son, Robert, as saying that her death resulted from an intestinal blockage.
ORLANDO, Fla. — A high school along Florida’s Atlantic Coast has removed a graphic novel based on the diary of Anne Frank after a leader of a conservative advocacy group challenged it, claiming it minimized the Holocaust.
“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” was removed from a library at Vero Beach High School after a leader of Moms for Liberty in Indian River County raised an objection. The school’s principal agreed with the objection, and the book was removed last month.
The book at one point shows the protagonist walking in a park, enchanted by female nude statues, and later proposing to a friend that they show each other their breasts.
Under the school district’s policy, if anyone disagrees with the book’s removal, the decision can be appealed to a districtwide committee. But no one has challenged the removal, and there was no record of the book ever being checked out, Cristen Maddux, a spokeswoman for the School District of Indian River County, said Monday.
Vero Beach is located 105 miles (169 kilometers) southeast of Orlando.
Other books about Anne Frank and copies of the published diary she wrote chronicling her time hiding from the Nazis with her family and other Jews in German-occupied Amsterdam remain in the school systems’ libraries. The Jewish teenager’s diary was published in 1947, several years after she died in a concentration camp, and it has become a classic read by tens of millions of people around the world.
By law, Florida schools are required to teach about the Holocaust, and nothing has changed in that respect, Maddux said.
“The feedback that the Holocaust is being removed from the curriculum and students aren’t knowledgeable about what happened, that is not the case at all,” Maddux said. “It’s just a challenged book and the principal removed it.”
Besides the Anne Frank graphic novel, Moms for Liberty in Indian River County objected to three books in the “Assassination Classroom” series, and they also were removed.
Moms for Liberty leader Jennifer Pippin said the Anne Frank graphic novel violated state standards to teach the Holocaust accurately.
“Even her version featured the editing out of the entries about sex,” Pippin said, referring to the original diary. “Even the publisher of the book calls it a ‘biography,’ meaning, it writes its own interpretive spin. It’s not the actual work. It quotes the work, but it’s not the diary in full. It chooses to offer a different view on the subject.”
Published in 2018, the graphic novel was adapted from Anne Frank’s diary by Ari Folman, and David Polonsky provided the illustrations. Folman’s parents are Holocaust survivors.
When contacted by email, the book’s publisher, Pantheon Graphic Library, forwarded the inquiry to Yves Kugelmann, a board member of a foundation set up by Anne Frank’s father, Otto, devoted to distributing Anne Frank’s diary and other matters. Kugelmann didn’t immediately respond to questions.
The American Library Association reported last month that there were more than 1,200 demands to censor library books last year in the U.S., the highest number since the association began tracking more than 20 years ago.
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MUNICH — The United States has determined that Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Saturday, the latest salvo in the West’s effort to hold Moscow accountable for its wartime atrocities.
In a marquee address at the Munich Security Conference, Harris detailed that Russia is responsible for a “widespread and systematic attack” against Ukraine’s civilian population, citing evidence of execution-style killings, rape, torture and forceful deportations — sometimes perpetrated against children. As a result, Russia has not only committed war crimes, as the administration formally concluded in March, but also illegal acts against non-combatants.
“Their actions are an assault on our common values, an attack on our common humanity,” the vice president said, referencing images of bodies lying in the streets of Bucha and the sexual assault of a four-year-old girl by a Russian soldier. “Barbaric and inhumane.”
Harris then declared: “The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity.”
She added: “Let us all agree: on behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown: justice must be served.”
The declaration is among the most forceful yet from a Western power as allies grapple with how to punish Russians responsible for violations. And it escalates the judicial side of America’s support for Ukraine, which has long said Russia was guilty of these crimes and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ultimately responsible.
Harris didn’t cite Putin by name, but the clear implication is that the invasion he launched nearly a year ago is why Ukrainian civilians are now victims of these international law violations.
While “crimes against humanity” are not officially codified in an international treaty, they are still adjudicated in the International Criminal Court and other global bodies. The Biden administration’s determination means the U.S. believes Russian actions have met a broader standard than war crimes but not as specific a violation as genocide.
“In contrast with genocide, crimes against humanity do not need to target a specific group,” according to the United Nations. “Instead, the victim of the attack can be any civilian population, regardless of its affiliation or identity. Another important distinction is that in the case of crimes against humanity, it is not necessary to prove that there is an overall specific intent.”
Some, however, would like the Biden administration to go further. Back in the United States, both of West Virginia’s senators, Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Shelley Moore Capito, introduced a resolution to recognize Russia’s war on Ukraine as a genocide.
Others like Tom Malinowski, a former member of Congress and senior human rights official at the State Department, believe “these debates about what to call Russia’s atrocities are less important than providing Ukraine the means to stop them.”
Andriy Yermak, the chief of Ukraine’s presidential office, said his country wouldn’t feel safe until Russia’s leadership was punished | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
“But yes, there’s no question that Russia is committing crimes against humanity,” he continued, “and we’re right to say so.”
On Friday, shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke via video to the gathering of officials and experts here, Andriy Yermak, the chief of Ukraine’s presidential office, said his country wouldn’t feel safe until Russia’s leadership was punished.
“The fastest and easiest way to build the security of Ukraine and the whole world is to create a special tribunal to try the Russian leadership for the crime of aggression. Europe and the entire civilized world understand why it is necessary,” he said at the opening of the “Ukraine is You” exhibit.
Dutch police said Friday they are investigating a stunt that saw a text alluding to an antisemitic conspiracy theory projected onto the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, causing outrage across the country.
The words “Ann (sic) Frank invented the ballpoint pen,” referring to a debunked claim that the Jewish teenager’s famed diary is a forgery, were displayed for several minutes this week on the side of the building where her family hid during the Holocaust.
The 17th-century canal house is now a museum focusing on Frank’s short life, which receives around 1 million visitors a year.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemned the “reprehensible” incident, and tweeted: “We can never and should never accept this.” Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius cited the incident to urge parliament to approve a pending bill explicitly banning Holocaust denial.
The proposed legislation would make it easier to prosecute over the Amsterdam incident, which currently falls under a law on discriminatory statements against minority groups.
Amsterdam police said they are looking into the incident.
“We were notified about it and our detectives are investigating,” spokesperson Rob van der Veen told the AP.
The text was projected from a vehicle across the canal and was noticed by security guards, who contacted police. A recording of the stunt was posted on an antisemitic Telegram channel.
Frank kept a diary of life under German occupation in World War II, when, as a Jew, she was in constant danger. Even though she was arrested with her family in 1944 and sent to a Nazi concentration camp, where she died, the diary survived and became one of the world’s most famous books.
According to the Netherlands’ top official for fighting antisemitism, Eddo Verdoner, several pages written with a ballpoint pen were found amongst Frank’s papers in the 1980s. That type of pen was not introduced in the Netherlands until after WWII, and Holocaust deniers have claimed this proves her diary, published by her father after the war, is a fake. However, researchers have concluded that the pages were accidentally left in the diary in the 1960s.
Verdoner told the AP that the Amsterdam stunt was “a despicable act that tries to cast doubts on the experiences of the witnesses of the Holocaust.”
He said there had been a rise in antisemitism since the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that throughout history Jews have faced increased hatred during times of hardship.
JERUSALEM (AP) — A hundred years after taking in scores of children whose parents were killed in the Armenian genocide, a 19th-century orphanage in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter has reopened its doors as a museum documenting the community’s rich, if pained, history.
The Mardigian Museum showcases Armenian culture and tells of the community’s centuries-long connection to the holy city. At the same time, it is a memorial to around 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Turks around World War I, in what many scholars consider the 20th century’s first genocide.
Turkey denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
Director Tzoghig Karakashian said the museum is meant to serve as “a passport for people to know about the Armenians” and to understand their part of Jerusalem’s history.
The museum reopened in late 2022 after a more than five-year renovation project. Before that, the building — originally a pilgrim guesthouse built in the 1850s — served as a monastery, an orphanage for children who survived the genocide, a seminary and ultimately a small museum and library.
Jerusalem is home to a community of around 6,000 Armenians, many of them descendants of people who fled the genocide. Many inhabit one of the historic Old City’s main quarters, a mostly enclosed compound abutting the 12th-century Armenian cathedral of St. James.
But the Armenians’ link to the holy city stretches back centuries, from monks and pilgrims during the late Roman Empire to Armenian queens of Crusader Jerusalem.
The museum’s centerpiece, filling the sunlit courtyard, is an exquisite 5th or 6th century mosaic adorned with exotic birds and vines discovered in 1894 on the grounds of an ancient Armenian monastery complex. It bears an inscription in Armenian dedicated to “the memorial and salvation of all Armenians whose names the Lord knows.”
For decades, the mosaic remained in a small museum near the Old City’s Damascus Gate. In 2019, the Israeli Antiquities Authority and the Armenian Patriarchate undertook the laborious task of removing the mosaic floor and transporting it across town to the newly refurbished museum.
From elaborately carved stone crosses known as “khachkars” to iconic painted tiles and priestly vestments, the museum showcases Armenian material art, while also excelling in telling the Armenian story of survival. While Jerusalem changed hands as empires rose and fell, the Armenians remained.
“Surviving means to not be seen,” said Arek Kahkedjian, a museum tour guide. “We survived without people knowing what or who we are, and today we feel ready to show you and teach about the history and heritage, about the culture, and to show you how we advance and modernize with the times.”
KYIV — On a frosty Saturday morning, several altar boys posed for group selfies next to the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Monastery complex in the Ukrainian capital.
“It is for history! Moskals used to occupy this place, and now we are here,” said one of the boys, using a Ukrainian slur for Russians.
“No time for photos, boys! We have work to do,” a priest admonished the youngsters as the first-ever Christmas service of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was about to start in Lavra — an 11th-century monastery that is the most important religious center for Ukrainian Orthodox believers.
“God has graced us with a great gift during difficult trials: For the first time, the Ukrainian prayer of the local autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine is heard in the main cathedral church of the Assumption of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Christ was born! Let’s praise Him!” Church Metropolitan Epifaniy said during the Christmas service.
Just as Ukraine is fighting against Russia to maintain its sovereignty, Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine is battling against Russian-backed priests for control over the Lavra Monastery complex, which is also known as the Monastery of the Caves. Rising numbers of Ukrainians have been moving away from the Russia-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is also known as the Ukrainian Church of Moscow Patriarchate, and have been switching allegiance to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, especially since February when Russia invaded Ukraine.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian-backed church started to be seen as a weapon of Moscow’s influence in Ukraine as many priests have allegedly collaborated with the Kremlin’s invading forces, according to the Ukrainian government.
‘Moral victory’
“We have already achieved a moral victory because all people of goodwill condemn the acts of genocide, terror, and numerous war crimes committed by the evil Russian empire on our land,” Metropolitan Epifaniy said in the Christmas service.
Hundreds of parishioners came to Lavra for the first Christmas service in the Ukrainian language inside these walls. The Dormition Church was soon full of soldiers, priests and other believers, and people kept coming. Some had to stay outside and watch the service on TV screens even though the temperature was minus 8 degrees Celsius. Many people cried with joy.
“This is a historical event. A turning point. Even though it is still unclear whether the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will get the long-time rent from the state, we saw the government’s position. And it is clear. There will be no Moscow Church here anymore, thank God,” one believer, 19-year-old Hanna from Kyiv, told POLITICO. “Of course, we want them to go peacefully. We want to celebrate the birthday of Christ in peace.”
Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine is battling against Russian-backed priests for control over the Lavra Monastery complex | Ethan Swope/Getty Images
Previously, parishioners and priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine were not allowed to pray here, as the Dormition Cathedral, the main church of the Kyiv Pechersk Monastery, used to be the main headquarters of the Russia-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church, also known as the Moscow Patriarchate Church. So far it is unclear whether the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine will be allowed to stay in churches for more than one Christmas day, because the previous tenants, Moscow-backed priests, won’t agree to go in peace.
Although the Lavra priests deny they still have ties to Moscow, many of them are currently under investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine for alleged collaboration with Russian security forces and invading soldiers after Russian passports and Russian propaganda material were found during searches of monasteries. The priests refute the accusations.
While the entire Lavra complex is state-owned, Russian-affiliated orthodox priests had rented the Dormition Cathedral and nearby Trapezna Church from the state since the 1990s. In December, their lease expired and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, the primary manager of Lavra, refused to prolong it, returning both temples to the state on January 5.
Cathedral clash
Russian-affiliated priests refused to acknowledge the decision, claiming despite the expiration of the lease that they have the right to stay in the Lavra churches until the war ends. Russian-affiliated priests also assert that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has no right to serve in the Dormition Cathedral.
“The events announced on the territory of the Lavra are an attempt to forcibly seize the cathedral by means of blackmail and misleading society,” the Russian-affiliated church said in a statement on Thursday.
The priests claimed the Orthodox Church of Ukraine announced the service before it received official permission and pressured the government in Kyiv to grant it.
The Lavra priests consider themselves the only genuine local Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Many times, Moscow-backed priests have called the Orthodox Church of Ukraine schismatic even though in 2019 Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, officially recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and granted it self-governorship.
“The Ukrainian shrine should serve the entire Ukrainian people, and we will adhere to this principle in the future,” Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said in a statement on Telegram on Thursday.
Some 3,000 police officers were guarding the Lavra premises during the Christmas service Saturday morning.
