Raphael Stevens

Ted Hui recalls the moment he announced he would flee Hong Kong for the UK. “I burst into tears when I told my loved ones I was going into exile,” he says. In the closing months of 2020, the Democratic Party politician was issued with nine charges based on “totally fake stories” for his involvement in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. One charge was for “perverting the course of justice” and carried a maximum life sentence; another offence was ludicrously labelled “administering drugs and harmful substances” for dropping a stink bomb during a meeting of the city’s Legislative Council, and carried a four-year term. He also faced the prospect of a private trial with no jury. The Kafkaesque manner of the judiciary made him realise “there was no way to rely on this legal system for justice”. After months of sleepless nights, fearing dawn raids by armed police officers and being “stalked by intelligence agents”, he decided to leave Hong Kong, sparking the exodus of many others to the pandemic-stricken shores of Britain. Hui tells me: “There will definitely be a massive number of people arriving, and cities like London and Manchester could end up with the largest Hong Kong diasporas in the world.”On 30 June 2020 Beijing imposed its “national security law” on embattled Hong Kong to silence the pro-democracy demonstrations. State media outlet China Daily heralded it as the only way to stop “the overreactions of those rioters and their foreign backers”. The ranks of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement have varied aims, from those who want more autonomy to those who espouse full independence from China. The national security law prohibits freedom of expression and can be crookedly manipulated to silence dissent. What exactly infringes the new law is purposely vague so that it can be widely applied. Secession from China, subverting state authority and collusion with foreign powers are its main elements, all aimed at crushing democratic sentiment in the financial hub. More

“The period of the previous administration’s work is the period of disappointment,” Mr Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council,  said according to Tass, a Russian news agency.”Donald Trump, already a former president of the United States, was indeed a friendly person and demonstrated in every possible way his intention to, as he put it, get along with the Russians – but failed,” Mr Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council,  said according to Tass, a Russian news agency.”The period of the previous administration’s work is the period of disappointment.”The official said that certain members of the US political establishment on both ends of the spectrum were “throwing a spanner in Mr Trump’s works” during that period.The official said that the former president was “drove into a corner” by political adversaries, who he said saw him as an “agent” of the country.
Mr Medvedev, who served as Prime Minister to Vladimir Putin from 2012 to 2020, said that Mr Trump’s efforts with Russia “failed to produce any result,” and that this was the outcome that Mr Trump intended.“Naturally, they drove him to a corner, and it was very hard for him to find a way out. That is why it all ended up with a continuous series of additional sanctions,” Mr Medvedev said.Mr Medvedev reportedly told Russian media that a stalemate occurred between the two countries because the former president simultaneously insisted he had a good relationship with Russia while also boasting of his tough attitude towards the country.
Last week, a former KGB spy claimed that Russia cultivated former President Donald Trump as an asset for over 40 years.KGB agents flattered Mr Trump, fed him talking points, and told him he should go into politics when he visited Moscow for the first time in 1987, Yuri Shvets, who worked in Washington DC for the Soviet Union in the 80s, told The Guardian.During his presidency, Mr Trump was subjected to a special counsel probe into Russian election meddling.Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report failed to state clearly if he committed any crimes and explicitly stated it would have exonerated him if Mr Mueller had concluded no crimes were committed. More

Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, the World Health Organisation and climate campaigner Greta Thunberg have joined Donald Trump among a list of expected nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, according to a survey of Norwegian MPs who are eligible to propose candidates and who have a track record of successfully guessing the winner.Ms Thunberg, Mr Navalny, and the WHO – for its Covax programme to secure fair access to Covid vaccines for poor countries – are likely frontrunners, research carried out by Reuters found. Nominations for the prestigious award close on Sunday.The climate activist, Russian opposition leader and global health body are backed by Norwegian lawmakers, who have nominated the eventual laureate every year since 2014, with the exception of 2019.Thousands of people, from members of parliaments worldwide to former winners, are eligible to propose candidates. A host of other figures including university professors and members of select international organisations can also put names forward.The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which decides who wins the award, does not comment on nominations, keeping secret for 50 years the names of nominators and unsuccessful nominees, while nominations do not imply an endorsement from the committee.But nominators can choose to reveal their picks. He said the now former president had “done more trying to create peace between nations than most other peace prize nominees”, citing Mr Trump’s role in brokering a peace deal between Israel and Middle Eastern nations. More

Much of the Arab world erupted in jubilant revolt 10 years ago against the dictatorial regimes whose corruption, cruelty and mismanagement had mired the Middle East in poverty and backwardness for decades.Now, the hopes awakened by the protests have vanished but the underlying conditions that drove the unrest are as acute as ever.Autocrats rule with an even tighter grip. Wars unleashed by leaders whose control was threatened have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The rise of the Islamic State amid the resulting wreckage ravaged large parts of Syria and Iraq and drew the United States into another costly Middle East war.Millions of people were driven from their homes to become refugees, many converging on the shores of Europe and beyond. The influx fuelled a tide of nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment that brought populist leaders to power in Europe and the US as fears of terrorism eclipsed concerns for human rights as a Western priority.Even in those countries that did not descend into war, more Arabs are now living in poverty, more are unemployed and more are imprisoned for their political beliefs than a decade ago.Only in Tunisia, where the protests began, did anything resembling a democracy emerge from the upheaval. The fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian President,  after a month of street protests in Tunis inspired demonstrations across the Middle East, including the mass protest on 25 January 2011 in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that fixated world attention on what was prematurely labelled the Arab Spring.On its face, the Arab Spring failed, and spectacularly so – not only by failing to deliver political freedom but by further entrenching the rule of corrupt leaders more intent on their own survival than delivering help.“It’s been a lost decade,” said Tarik Yousef, director of the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar, recalling the euphoria he initially felt when the fall of Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi in August 2011 enabled him to return home for the first time in years. “Now we have the return of fear and intimidation. The region has experienced setbacks at every turn.”For many of those who participated in the uprisings, the costs have been immeasurable. Esraa Eltaweel, 28, was partially paralysed after a bullet fired by security forces sliced through her abdomen and chipped her spine during a protest in Cairo in 2014. Some of her friends were killed. Others were imprisoned, including her husband, who is still incarcerated. Ms Eltaweel, who spent seven months in detention, has struggled to find work because of the stigma attached to political prisoners.“We didn’t achieve anything we aimed for. Things got worse,” she said. “We believed we could change the system. But it is so rotten that it can’t be changed.”Yet as long as the conditions that provoked the original uprisings persist, the possibility of more unrest cannot be ruled out, analysts say. More

Almost 400 religious leaders from each of the world’s leading faiths have called for national governments to end laws that discriminate against same sex relationships while also demanding an end to LGBT+ conversion therapies.Signatories — including anti-apartheid campaigner and former Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, and Bishop of Liverpool — call for “an end to violence and criminalisation against LGBT+ people and for a global ban on conversion therapy”.“We recognise that certain religious teachings have, throughout the ages, been misused to cause deep pain and offence to those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex”, the open letter, which was organised by the Ozanne Foundation charity and signed by figures from 35 nations, adds.Despite moves towards LGBT+ equality by governments in the 21st century, 69 of the UN’s 193 member states still outlaw gay sex, according to a report published by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA World) on Tuesday.Meanwhile the only places to have introduced nation-wide bans on conversion therapy are Brazil, Ecuador, Malta and Germany. Boris Johnson has previously pledged to abolish the practice, which can include shock treatments and religious components including prayer and ‘exorcism’ style events – with the PM calling it “absolutely abhorrent”.The statement from faith leaders comes ahead of the Foreign Office sponsored Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives .Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayWendy Morton, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for European Neighbourhood and the Americas, said the declaration was “an important step towards equality”.“We fully support its call to end violence, discrimination and the ongoing criminalisation of same-sex conduct in 69 countries”, adding that conversion therapy was “an abhorrent practice and should be stopped”.Former Irish President Mary McAleese, a prominent member of the Roman Catholic Church, said the statement marked “a small step towards countering (homophobia)”.“But it’s a necessary step to remind the faith systems of the world and people of faith that they have an obligation to their fellow citizens who are also entitled to the full dignity of their humanity and their full equal human rights,” she added.Imam Muhsin Hendricks, who founded one of the world’s few LGBT+ inclusive mosques in Cape Town, South Africa, said he believed the Muslim community “is ready for this conversation”“I’m currently training with six imams from different parts of Africa and the openness to look at this issue is incredible” he added.“I’m really amazed and excited because 10 years ago this kind of training with imams was not possible. So I do think the community is ready.” Meanwhile Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, former senior rabbi to Reform Judaism said the statement served to acknowledge that “our religions … still have a lot that we are culpable for”.“It would be lovely to say it has nothing to do with us, but our religious traditions have driven conversion therapy, particularly,” she added.Additional reporting by the Thomson Reuters Foundation More

Rich countries have hoarded enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations against Covid-19 nearly three times over, while nine in 10 people in poorer countries are set to miss jabs next year, campaigners have cautioned.As the UK begins to vaccinate its population against the coronavirus, a group of organisations has highlighted that rich nations representing just 14 per cent of the world’s population have ordered 53 per cent of all of the most promising vaccines.The organisations, including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Global Justice Now and Frontline AIDS, have formed an alliance to call for a People’s Vaccine and to demand governments and pharmaceutical corporations openly share their technology and intellectual property to allow billions more doses to be manufactured and made available to all who need them. More

Sitting in one of the Middle Eastern cafes that have sprung up in Birmingham over the last decade, Maan quietly tells his story. He was a 14-year-old school student, the son of a farmer in Daraa, an agricultural town in southern Syria, when the uprising started. “A group of teenagers were arrested for putting anti-government slogans on a wall. When the kids were not returned, the parents protested and the army shot them.” The uprising rapidly escalated into a full-blown military assault on the citizens of the town and its surrounding villages. Maan lost an uncle and four other relatives. With his mother and younger brother, he eventually fled to Jordan. After two years working illegally in cafes and restaurants, he realised he had no future there. “I dreamed of going to the UK to study business management. They respect humanity in the UK. The language, you can use it anywhere in the world. And the degrees are better.”He went to the UK embassy in Amman. “They treated me in a rough way. They told me there was no asylum here. They don’t accept applications.” It was the same at the French and German embassy. So with family savings he flew to Algeria; paid $1,500 and was trafficked through Tunisia to Libya; spent 11 days in a house with no mattresses and little food; then at four in the morning he was taken with 900 others in a rickety boat across the Mediterranean. He feared for his life on the journey with water coming in. “Fortunately, the Italian military picked us up or we would all have drowned.” It took 20 hours for the Red Cross to check them all in – a mixture of west and east Africans, Afghanis, Syrians. And then he made his way through Europe – Catania, Milan, Nice and Paris to Calais. “I spent 27 days in Calais, climbing the fences, clinging underneath lorries, getting caught and returning to try again. I broke my leg climbing; was taken to hospital; then went back to trying to get onto a lorry.”  More

Donald Trump’s decision to fire Defence Secretary Mark Esper on Tuesday removed one of the final barriers between the president and his ability to launch the US arsenal of nuclear missiles on his own authority without consultation and perhaps even without warning. The US president is required to consult with his defence secretary before making a decision to fire nuclear weapons. But if the defence secretary objects he can be over-ruled. The president retains ultimate and sole control because he can sack the defence secretary in the event of disagreement.The only other person who could prevent the president from ordering a nuclear attack would be Vice President Mike Pence, through the indirect means of declaring Trump to be insane and removing him from office. Section four of the 25th amendment to the US constitution would allow Pence to do this, but he would require the unanimous support of the cabinet. Nobody thinks that Pence would defy Trump in this way. And the Trump cabinet has an overwhelming majority of his supporters, apparently selected more for their personal loyalty to him than their expertise or backbone.The departure of Esper, originally brought into the cabinet as yet another loyalist – he had previously worked as a lobbyist for arms manufacturers – and the relative lack of standing of his replacement, Christopher C Miller, means that the last hurdle between Trump and the doomsday command has been removed. More