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      Gary Hart: The “New Church Committee” Is an Outrage

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      To legitimize otherwise questionable investigations, Congress occasionally labels them after a previous successful effort. Thus, the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives’ proposed select committee, which plans to investigate the “weaponization of government,” is being described as “the new Church committee,” after the group of senators who investigated the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other groups from 1975-76.As the last surviving member of the original Church committee, named after its chairman, the late Senator Frank Church of Idaho, I have a particular interest in distinguishing what we accomplished then and what authoritarian Republicans seem to have in mind now.The outlines of the committee, which Rep. Jim Jordan will assemble, remain vague. Reading between the rhetorical lines, proponents appear to believe agencies of the national government have targeted, and perhaps are still targeting, right-of-center individuals and groups, possibly including individuals and right-wing militia groups that participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.That is almost completely at odds with the purpose of the original Church committee, which was founded in response to widespread abuses by government intelligence agencies. While we sought to protect the constitutional rights and freedoms of American citizens, we were also bound to protect the integrity of the intelligence and security agencies, which were founded to protect those freedoms, too.Our committee brought U.S. intelligence agencies under congressional scrutiny to prevent the violation of the privacy rights of American citizens, and to halt covert operations abroad that violated our constitutional principles. Rather than strengthening the oversight of federal agencies, the new committee seems designed to prevent law enforcement and intelligence agencies from enforcing the law — specifically, laws against insurrectionist activity in our own democracy.It is one thing to intercept phone calls from people organizing a peaceful civil rights march and quite another to intercept phone calls from people organizing an assault on the Capitol to impede the certification of a national election.Rather than weaken our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the Church committee sought to restore their original mandates and increase their focus away from partisan or political manipulation. Our committee was bipartisan, leaning neither right nor left, and the conservative senators, including the vice chair, John Tower, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and others, took pains to prevent liberal or progressive members, including chairman Church, Philip Hart, Walter Mondale and me, from weakening our national security.They needn’t have bothered. We all understood, including me, the youngest member, that attacks on federal law enforcement and national security would not go down well among our constituents. Unlike in the 1970s, today’s threat to domestic security is less from foreign sources and more from homeland groups seeking to replace the constitutional order with authoritarian practices that challenge historic institutions and democratic practices.Among a rather large number of reforms proposed by the Church committee were permanent congressional oversight committees for the intelligence community, an endorsement of the 1974 requirement that significant clandestine projects be approved by the president in a written “finding,” the notification of the chairs of the oversight committees of certain clandestine projects at the time they are undertaken and the elimination of assassination attempts against foreign leaders.Despite the concern of conservatives at the time, to my knowledge, no significant clandestine activity was compromised and no classified information leaked as a result of these reforms in the almost half-century since they were adopted. In fact, the oversight and notification requirements, by providing political cover, have operated as protection for the C.I.A.Evidence was provided of the effectiveness of these reforms in the so-called Iran-contra controversy in 1985-87. The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to finance covert operations in Nicaragua against its socialist government. Assigning accountability for this scheme proved difficult until a document authorizing it was located in the White House. President Reagan did not remember signing it; however, it bore his signature. This kind of accountability would not have been possible before our reforms were adopted.The rules of the Senate and the House establish what standing committees and what special committees each house may create. The House is clearly at liberty within those rules to create a committee to protect what it perceives to be an important element of its base. And if its purposes are ultimately to protect authoritarian interests, it is presumably free to do so and accept criticisms from the press and the public. It is outrageous to call it a new Church committee. Trying to disguise a highly partisan effort to legitimize undemocratic activities by cloaking it in the mantle of a successful bipartisan committee from decades ago is a mockery.Gary Hart is a former United States senator from Colorado and the author of, most recently, “The Republic of Conscience.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Aung San Suu Kyi Gets 33 Years in Prison in Myanmar

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      Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a series of charges since being detained in a coup in early 2021. Her trials came to an end on Friday, capping months of legal proceedings.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader, was found guilty of corruption on Friday and sentenced to seven years in prison, almost two years after she was first detained by the military in a coup.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, a Nobel laureate, had already begun serving a 26-year prison sentence in connection with more than a dozen charges she has faced since being detained. The additional sentence she received on Friday makes it likely that she will remain behind bars for the rest of her life, unless the junta reduces her sentence to house arrest, overturns its own ruling, or falls from power. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers plan to appeal, according to a source familiar with the proceedings.Friday’s verdict, delivered in a courtroom that sits inside a prison in the capital, Naypyidaw, was expected to draw international condemnation.“The verdicts were unsurprising — this was purely a show trial,” said Richard Horsey, a senior adviser on Myanmar for the International Crisis Group. “As with the coup itself, the regime’s objective has been to silence Aung San Suu Kyi and remove her from the political landscape.”There is widespread speculation in Myanmar that the junta wanted to finish Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s trials by the end of the year so that it could focus on another goal: installing Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the military leader behind last year’s coup, as president when the country holds its next general election in mid-2023. A shadow government established by ousted civilian leaders after the February 2021 coup is immensely popular but has been unable to compete politically against the military or to gain international recognition. General Min Aung Hlaing’s military-backed party is almost certain to win the next election.Myanmar has been racked by violence since the coup. Protests erupted across the country as the junta’s opponents mounted a civil disobedience movement and national strike. The military responded with brutal force, shooting and killing protesters in the streets. Thousands of armed resistance fighters have continued to battle the Tatmadaw, as the army in Myanmar is known, using guerrilla tactics and training in the jungle.A protester with an image of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon, Myanmar, weeks after the military coup in February 2021.The New York TimesLast week, the United Nations’ Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the junta’s rights abuses in the aftermath of the coup and demanding the release of political prisoners. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is one of more than 16,000 people who have been arrested since the coup for opposing military rule, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. The group says more than 13,000 of them are still detained.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged with a series of crimes by the junta, including corruption, election fraud, inciting public unrest and breaching Covid-19 protocols. A number of other government leaders have also stood trial in recent months, and the regime has executed some pro-democracy activists as it continues to crack down on opponents.The military-controlled Election Commission first brought election fraud charges against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in November 2021, about a year after her political party won in a landslide. During that trial, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior government officials were accused of manipulating voter lists to secure their victory over the military-backed party. She has denied all of the charges against her.Friday’s sentencing pertained to a set of charges separate from the election-fraud case. She was found guilty of five counts of corruption that caused a loss of state funds. Prosecutors had argued that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi did not follow the proper protocols when she rented one helicopter and bought a second, sometime between 2019 and 2021.While the junta has insisted that the charges against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi are not politically motivated, the military has long considered her a threat and sought to minimize her influence in Myanmar, said U Kyee Myint, a human rights lawyer in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.A United Nations Security Council meeting this month in New York during a vote on a draft resolution calling for an immediate end to violence in Myanmar and the release of political prisoners.Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“As long as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in politics, the military will never win,” Mr. Kyee Myint said. “That’s why long-term prison terms are imposed — to remove Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s influence in politics.”Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Gen. Aung San, the country’s independence hero, who was assassinated when she was 2 years old. As an adult, she was one of many people who spent years in jail for their political opposition to the military junta that seized power in 1962 and ruled the country for decades.In 1991, she won a Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent resistance to the generals who had locked her up, turning her into an icon for global democracy. She eventually began a power-sharing arrangement with the military when her party, the National League for Democracy, won its first landslide election victory in 2015. Because the country’s military-drafted Constitution bars her from the presidency, she named herself foreign minister and state counselor, positions that gave her broad executive authority.By the time she was detained in 2021, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had lost some of her luster, in large part because she had downplayed the army’s murderous campaign against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, who have been forced to flee the country by the hundreds of thousands. But Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi still has legions of devoted followers in a country now ruled by General Min Aung Hlaing.“I think Min Aung Hlaing wanted Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to suffer and die in prison, so he sentenced her to a long prison term,” said Daw Nge Nge Lwin, the owner of a gas station in Yangon and the aunt of a student activist who has been detained at the city’s notorious Insein prison. “But Daw Aung San Suu Kyi ruled the country with love and is loved by the people. I don’t think she’s someone who will die, depressed, in prison.”Renaud Egreteau, an expert on civil-military relations in Myanmar and a professor at the City University of Hong Kong, said that he expected her reputation to endure for years among her followers.Just as protesters carried banners featuring images of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s father decades after his assassination, he said, “We can assume that her own portrait will continue to be used as a call to collective action and protest against those holding illegitimate power, regardless of her own action.”“She is still the matriarchal figure that invokes resistance against the army,” Professor Egreteau added. “I doubt a farcical trial can change that.”People protesting as security forces blocked off the parimeter around NLD headquarters, in Yangon, Myanmar, in February.The New York TimesSince being detained in 2021, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been allowed to speak only with her lawyers. They have been banned from speaking to the news media during the trials. Earlier this year, the country’s military-backed Supreme Court announced that it would auction off the residence where she spent nearly 15 years under house arrest during the previous military regime.“A time may come when the military sees advantages in allowing Suu Kyi to move to some form of house arrest, or even grant access to her for international envoys,” Mr. Horsey said. “But that time is not now, and the decision may fall to a postelection, military administration.” More

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      Aung San Suu Kyi Trial in Myanmar Nears End

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      The prosecution of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has drawn international condemnation. The latest set of corruption charges could put her in prison for the rest of her life.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader, is expected to appear in court on Friday to receive the last of several verdicts handed down to her by the military regime, capping off a secretive 13 months of trial proceedings during which the 77-year-old Nobel laureate has already been sentenced to decades in prison.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was detained in a coup in February 2021. Since that time, the junta has charged her with a series of crimes, including corruption, election fraud, inciting public unrest and breaching Covid-19 protocols. Friday’s verdict stemmed from a set of corruption charges related to what prosecutors argue was Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s improper purchase of one helicopter and rental of another.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and her political party won the November 2020 election in a landslide. Independent international observers declared the results free and fair. But less than three months after her election victory, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was detained by the military, a move that has drawn international condemnation.Since the military seized power on Feb. 1, 2021, Myanmar has been racked by violence. Protests erupted across the country as the junta’s opponents mounted a civil disobedience movement and national strike. The military responded with brutal force, shooting and killing protesters in the streets. Thousands of armed resistance fighters have continued to battle the Tatmadaw, as the army in Myanmar is known, using guerrilla tactics and training in the jungle.Last week, the United Nation’s Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the junta’s rights abuses in the aftermath of the coup.The military-controlled Election Commission first brought election fraud charges against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in November 2021. During that trial, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior government officials were accused of manipulating voter lists to secure their victory over the military-backed party.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has denied all of the charges against her. The United Nations and other international organizations have demanded her freedom, though the junta has insisted that the charges are not politically motivated and has refused to let Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi speak with global leaders who have visited Myanmar in recent months.By Friday, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had already begun serving a 26-year prison sentence in connection with more than a dozen charges she has faced since the coup. In the most recent case, prosecutors argued that an investigation found Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi did not follow the proper protocols when she rented one helicopter and bought a second, some time between 2019 and 2021.The latest verdicts come as the military seeks to minimize Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s influence in Myanmar, said U Kyee Myint, a human rights lawyer based in Yangon, Myanmar. Despite the regime’s efforts, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is still revered by many in the country.“As long as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in politics, the military will never win,” Mr. Kyee Myint said. “That’s why long-term prison terms are imposed — to remove Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s influence in politics.”Earlier this year, the country’s military-backed Supreme Court announced that it would auction off Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s residence, where she spent nearly 15 years under house arrest during a previous military regime. Since being detained in 2021, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been allowed to speak only with her lawyers. They have been banned from speaking to the news media during the trials. More

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      In New Law, Indonesia Criminalizes Sex Outside of Marriage

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      Parliament also approved a law that criminalizes criticism of the government, delivering a blow to the country’s progressive reputation.Indonesia has long been known as a widely tolerant nation at the forefront of establishing democratic reforms throughout Southeast Asia. That progressive reputation took a hit on Tuesday when Parliament cleared a sweeping overhaul of the country’s criminal code.According to the new rules, sex outside of marriage is now illegal in Indonesia, as is defamation of the president. The overhaul also sharply expanded laws against blasphemy in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. Opponents said the rules posed significant risks to religious minorities by outlawing extramarital sex and tacitly targeting critics of Islam. Extramarital sex criminalization also targets the L.G.B.T. community, as gay marriage is illegal in Indonesia. The new laws could also curtail freedom of expression and assembly.The new laws are almost certain to revive a debate around democratic backsliding in the nation of 276 million. After the fall of the Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1998, the country had prided itself as a thriving democracy. Most Indonesians held fairly relaxed views about homosexuality, which was never officially banned.But in recent years, conservative Islam has gained ground in the country, and now some fear its influence is growing, even as its ranks remain a minority in Parliament. In the lead-up to the next presidential election in 2024, few officials appear willing to upset the religious right, which helped paved the way for Tuesday’s overhaul of the criminal code.“It is a very significant encroachment on rights and liberties in Indonesia,” said Tim Lindsey, director of the Center for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the University of Melbourne. Critics warned that the new rules, which also apply to foreigners, will make Indonesia less appealing to investors, tourists and students.Muhamad Isnur, chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, said the laws run “contrary to international human rights norms. We are in a new paradigm,” he said.The bill was approved unanimously in Parliament on Tuesday. The government has tried for decades to overhaul the law but has never succeeded. In 2019, it tried to pass a similar draft law, but President Joko Widodo shelved it after tens of thousands of young people protested in the streets, arguing that the law threatened their civil liberties. This time, activists said they were blindsided when lawmakers suddenly announced on Nov. 30 that they were handing a draft to Parliament to ratify, giving the activists very little time to organize demonstrations.Indonesia officials said they had engaged in monthslong conversations with several human rights groups before submitting the new draft. The lawmakers said they added revisions based on feedback, such as stating that blasphemy does not only apply to religion but all belief systems. Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej, Indonesia’s deputy minister of law and human rights, said that the government tried to accommodate as many parties as possible, but acknowledged that the overhaul “won’t satisfy everyone.”“If there are citizens who feel that their constitutional rights have been violated, the door of the constitutional court is wide open for that,” Mr. Edward told reporters last month. The laws, which are set to take effect after three years, will likely be challenged in the country’s Constitutional Court. On Tuesday, there were calls for protests outside Parliament. (The new rules state that people who demonstrate without a permit can also be penalized.)Officials say upgrading the existing criminal code, which dates back to 1918 when Indonesia was a Dutch colony, was long overdue. Among the raft of new laws, penalties around consensual sex outside marriage have drawn the most criticism. According to the revisions, unmarried couples who live together could be jailed for six months or face a maximum fine of 10 million rupiah ($710)..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Though the penalties apply to foreigners, the new law states that the police can only make an arrest after a report is filed by a close family member, such as a parent, spouse or child, making it extremely unlikely that foreigners would be prosecuted, Mr. Lindsey said. “But gay and lesbian Indonesians, who, of course, are couples and they can’t be married, they are completely exposed.”Police have previously arrested dozens of gay men for violating an anti-pornography law, but now, all gay couples who live together are subject to possible arrest.The push for the overhaul was backed by Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, an Islamic cleric and the former chair of the Indonesian Ulema Council, the country’s top body for Islamic scholars, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the details of private conversations. Mr. Ma’ruf had previously called for “stern regulations” on the sexual activities of homosexuals.In a reversal, lawmakers on Tuesday reinstated a provision making it illegal to attack “the honor or dignity” of both Indonesia’s president and vice president, a rule that was struck down by the Constitutional Court in 2006. In recent years, however, tolerance for such criticism has waned. Last year, the authorities arrested an artist who created a mural criticizing Mr. Joko, and activists say they have been harassed and charged with defamation for speaking up on rights abuses.Mr. Joko — known as a moderate, secular leader — has spoken out repeatedly against intolerant views in his country. In an interview with The New York Times last month, he said Indonesia has a vibrant democracy with frequent peaceful protests outside the presidential palace. “Even today, everyone can criticize the president and the government,” Mr. Joko said, speaking before the Group of 20 summit in Bali last month. “I believe that Indonesia’s democracy is moving on the right track.”Andreas Harsono, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that the laws would give the police greater opportunities to extort bribes, and lead to more corruption. Politicians would also have more excuses to target political opponents, he added. “The danger of oppressive laws is not that they will be broadly applied — no, they won’t be — it is that they provide an avenue for selective enforcement,” Mr. Harsono said.The new penal code expands the country’s blasphemy law from one to six provisions, stating for the first time that apostasy — anyone who “persuades someone to be a nonbeliever” — can be charged as a criminal offense.Religious minorities are most at risk of running afoul of this law. Roughly 87 percent of Indonesians are Muslim, while the rest are Christian, Catholic, Hindu and Buddhist. According to Mr. Harsono, the use of the blasphemy law has been most commonly used against people who have criticized Islam.In 2017, former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian and an ally of Mr. Joko, was sentenced to two years in prison on blasphemy charges after he was accused of insulting Islam by jokingly referring to a verse in the Quran in a campaign speech.Willy Aditya, a lawmaker from the left-leaning NasDem party, rejected claims that Indonesia was “turning into an Islamic country” but said that the new law was written based on emotion, not research. The law shows that the officials have failed to distinguish the difference between public and private affairs, he said, “which is the most elementary thing in democracy.”Muktita Suhartono More

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      The Marcos Family Gets Star Treatment in a New Philippines Film

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      A big-budget production depicts the family as victims of a political vendetta, a popular narrative during the recent presidential election in the Philippines.MANILA — Even before its opening night last week, “Maid in Malacanang” was shaping up to be the most talked-about film of the year in the Philippines.The almost two-hour drama portrays the Marcos family’s last days in the presidential palace before being forced into exile by a pro-democracy revolt in 1986.“We did everything for this country after World War II, only to be destroyed by the people who yearn for power,” a sobbing Imelda R. Marcos tells her son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in one scene. “Remember this, we will never be able to return after we leave. They will do everything so the Filipino people will hate us.”A teary-eyed Mr. Marcos, played by the young actor Diego Loyzaga, consoles his mother as he replies, “I promise, I don’t know how or when, but we will return.”The Marcoses returned to the Philippines in the 1990s, but the family’s biggest comeback happened in May, when Mr. Marcos, the son and namesake of the former dictator, was elected president in the most consequential race in three decades. The release of “Maid in Malacanang,” a big-budget production starring two famous actors, is seen as a sort of victory lap for the new president and his family.Ruffa Gutierrez, who plays former first lady Imelda R. Marcos, shooting a scene on the set of the movie “Maid in Malacanang.”Viva Films“This is a work of truth,” Imee Marcos said at the movie’s premiere. One of Mr. Marcos’s sisters, she was the movie’s creative producer and executive producer. “We waited 36 years for this story to come out.”Despite the corruption and tax evasion cases against the family, many Filipinos consider the Marcoses something like royalty, an idea that the film plays on while furthering the myth that they were victims of a political vendetta.More than 30 million people voted for Mr. Marcos in May, allowing him to clinch the presidency with the largest vote margin in more than 30 years. Nearly half the country believes the family was unjustly forced to flee.But many of Mr. Marcos’s detractors say he won the election because of a yearslong campaign to rewrite Marcos family history and the legacy of the father’s brutal dictatorship. “Maid in Malacanang,” they say, is just the latest attempt to rewrite the narrative.The movie is told through the eyes of three maids who worked for the Marcoses during the years leading up the 1986 People Power revolution, when hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of Manila to protest against a family that they saw as corrupt.Imelda R. Marcos, left, arriving in Hawaii on Feb. 26, 1986, the day after the Marcos family’s departure into exile from the Philippines.Carl Viti/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe film portrays the former dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos, who ruled the Philippines for over two decades, as a soft leader incapable of violence — a popular talking point among Marcos family supporters online. The movie also portrays the Marcoses as ordinary people who love simple food, even as they surround themselves with designer bags and jewelry.What the film does not mention: the widespread public anger over the family’s excesses, such as Imelda Marcos’s 1,060 pairs of shoes. Also missing is any mention of the tens of thousands of people who were tortured during martial law.“I was not alive during the term of president Marcos, but I was surprised to see a different story, different from what I heard from other people,” said Maricar Amores Faypon-Sicat, a moviegoer who saw the film on opening night.“I did not know that he wanted to avoid bloodshed, and until the last minute, he was thinking of the Filipino people,” said Ms. Amores Faypon-Sicat, 29.Darryl Yap, the director, said the decision to make the film came only after the presidential election, though he had done some preliminary work ahead of that time. He said the landslide win for Mr. Marcos was “an overwhelming testament that the Filipino people are ready to hear the side of the Marcoses.”Speaking to a select audience at the July 29 premiere, Mr. Yap said the film was the first time that viewers were given an opportunity to watch a film about the Marcos family that was not based on the opposition’s narrative.Supporters of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at his campaign headquarters during the presidential election in May. Mr. Marcos’s landslide win was “an overwhelming testament that the Filipino people are ready to hear the side of the Marcoses,” according to Darryl Yap, the director of the movie.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesNot everyone has been receptive.Members of the Roman Catholic clergy condemned the depiction of Corazon Aquino, the leader of the opposition, playing mahjong with nuns from the Carmelite monastery in Cebu Province at the height of the protests. One leader of the church has called for a boycott of the movie.Sister Mary Melanie Costillas, the head of the monastery, said the truth was that the nuns were praying and fasting during the demonstrations, fearful that the elder Mr. Marcos would find Mrs. Aquino, who was sheltering at the monastery to avoid being detained. At that time, there were reports that Mr. Marcos had issued a shoot-to-kill order against Mrs. Aquino.“The attempt to distort history is reprehensible,” Sister Costillas said in a statement. She said that the mahjong scene “would trivialize whatever contribution we had to democracy.”The actress playing Irene Marcos, the Marcoses’ youngest child, fueled outrage after she likened the accusations against the family and the details of the father’s human rights abuses to “gossip.”Corazon Aquino, right, a leader of the opposition, during a rally in February 1986. Members of the clergy have condemned how she and the nuns who sheltered her are portrayed in the movie.Romeo Gacad/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHistorians and artists say the movie has opened up a new front in the battle against misinformation in the Philippines, taking something that was once mostly online and bringing it into a new domain.“I now feel that the struggle has shifted to the cultural sphere,” said Bonifacio Ilagan, 71, a renowned playwright. He said that the movie mainly targets the younger generation who never experienced martial law. “They are vulnerable to disinformation. They are the market of the film because they lack historical sense.”Mr. Ilagan, who was tortured during the Marcos years, has teamed up with Joel Lamangan, a well-known movie director, to make a film to counter the narrative of “Maid in Malacanang.” Mr. Lamangan was the first member of the local directors guild to publicly denounce the Marcos-backed film as “pure nonsense,” which he said resulted in death threats.They expect financing their project to be a challenge. “It will be an uphill climb because we have no producer and we have no money,” said Mr. Lamangan, 69, who is also a martial law victim. “But we are trying to do crowdfunding.”The Wall of Remembrance at the martial law museum in Manila. The museum honors those who struggled against the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos.Ezra Acayan for The New York Times“Maid in Malacanang” was bankrolled by a major local film production company known for producing blockbusters in the Philippines.The underlying narrative of the film is centered on the legacy of the elder Mr. Marcos and how people will remember him. In one scene, a wistful Mr. Marcos asks Irene as she begs him to leave the palace: “How will I face my grandchildren? Their grandfather is a soldier, but he retreated from war.”A weeping Irene responds: “I will make sure that the truth will come out and history will tell your grandkids who you really are.”Mr. Marcos tells his daughter that the opposition was “mad at us because we come from the province. They are mad at us because the people love us. But still, I can’t make myself get angry at them.”At the premiere, the audience applauded. More

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      President Biden’s Human Rights Dilemma

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      The complications of keeping campaign promises.It was a fraught fist bump.As you heard on Monday’s episode, President Biden’s chosen greeting for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia became a diplomatic drama.After years of bombastic foreign policy tweets, analyzing the subtleties of Mr. Biden’s behavior feels like a throwback to the tan-suit era — a time when diplomacy was in the details.But this wasn’t the only fist bump Mr. Biden gave on his tour of the Middle East. He also extended one to Prime Minister Yair Lapid while disembarking from Air Force One in Israel.Below, Rachelle Bonja, the lead producer of the episode, looks more closely at Mr. Biden’s Middle East tour and explains the significance of a few diplomatic decisions we didn’t get the chance to discuss on the show.The big idea: Biden’s human rights dilemmaThe Daily strives to reveal a new idea in every episode. Below, we go deeper on our episode with Ben Hubbard, The Times’s Beirut bureau chief, about President Biden’s foreign policy.At the beginning of his campaign, President Biden set out a clear goal: to make human rights the center of American foreign policy. He promised to return to a previous era of international relations, before Donald J. Trump introduced an “America first” doctrine and withdrew from international agreements. However, Mr. Biden’s visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia quickly became a test of one of his boldest campaign promises.In both countries, Mr. Biden was under pressure to keep his commitment to speak out against human rights abuses, specifically by condemning the recent killings of journalists.As a candidate, Mr. Biden was explicit about how he felt the United States should deal with Saudi Arabia after the 2018 killing of​​ Jamal Khashoggi, a former Washington Post columnist. (American intelligence officials have determined that the crown prince approved the operation to assassinate Mr. Khashoggi.)Mr. Biden said that his plan was to make the Saudis “pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.”But when the war in Ukraine drove American gas prices over $5 a gallon, Mr. Biden’s approach to the crown prince, who manages the country’s oil reserves, shifted focus.Although Mr. Biden said Friday night that he had confronted the crown prince over the murder during their closed-door meeting, the Saudi government disputed the nature of the interaction. Now the president is being criticized for his apparent compromise on human rights.But this wasn’t the only human rights dilemma Mr. Biden faced on his trip.Before he arrived in the Middle East, the president had not publicly addressed the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. Ms. Abu Akleh was a Palestinian American journalist for Al Jazeera who was fatally shot in May while wearing a press vest and covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank for the network. Several investigations, including one by The New York Times, found that the bullets had come from the location of an Israeli Army unit.The United Nations’ human rights office concluded that “the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli security forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the agency, said.Despite pressure from Ms. Abu Akleh’s family and others to address the killing, Mr. Biden did not mention Ms. Abu Akleh’s death while he was in Israel.Instead, in Jerusalem, the president reaffirmed his commitment to Israel as an ally and as an “independent Jewish state.” He called for a “lasting negotiated peace between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people.”Mr. Biden later visited Bethlehem in the Palestinian territories, where he spoke about Ms. Abu Akleh and called for accountability in her killing: “The United States will continue to insist on a full and transparent accounting of her death and will continue to stand up for media freedom everywhere in the world,” he said.Ms. Abu Akleh’s family has called for a joint investigation of her killing. While Israel had previously offered to examine the bullet that killed Ms. Abu Akleh in the presence of Palestinian and American representatives, the Palestinian Authority has refused a joint investigation, citing distrust of the Israelis. Mr. Biden’s decision to call for an investigation only while speaking in the Palestinian territories has stoked accusations that the president is trying to shield Israel from scrutiny.The two visits highlight how Mr. Biden has compromised on his previously stated commitments — a contradiction pointed out in a tweet by Hatice Cengiz, Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancée.If he were alive, she wrote, Mr. Khashoggi might have tweeted at Mr. Biden, asking: “Is this the accountability you promised for my murder? The blood of MBS’s next victim is on your hands.”From the Daily team: Your weekend playlistIn October 2020, a group outside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul commemorated the second anniversary of the death of Jamal Khashoggi.Murad Sezer/ReutersHere is some further listening on the Middle East and its leaders to add to your weekend playlist.Nine Days in Gaza: Last summer, a two-week outbreak of violence occurred between Israelis and Palestinians. We spoke to a resident of Gaza City, Rahf Hallaq, about her life and what the conflict was like for her.Biden’s Saudi Dilemma: More than a year before last week’s meeting with Prince Mohammed, Mr. Biden took the bold step of releasing an intelligence report that implicated the crown prince in the killing of Mr. Khashoggi.The Disappearance of a Saudi Journalist: Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has promoted himself to the West as a reformer determined to create a more free and open society. The killing of Mr. Khashoggi changed that. (From 2018.)On The Daily this weekMonday: What did the meeting between President Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tell us about relations between the countries they lead?Tuesday: Has the era of global cooperation over planet-warming emissions ended?Wednesday: How abortion bans are restricting miscarriage care.Thursday: A prosecutor who worked on the Mueller inquiry discusses the possibility of criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump.Friday: As the Great Salt Lake dries up, Utah is facing an “environmental nuclear bomb.”That’s it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week.Have thoughts about the show? Tell us what you think at thedaily@nytimes.com.Were you forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox.Love podcasts? Join The New York Times Podcast Club on Facebook. More

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      Dispatch From Hungary: Can This Man Oust Viktor Orban?

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      BUDAPEST — On Tuesday, the day that the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv to show solidarity with a besieged Ukraine, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of nearby Hungary, trumpeted his neutrality at a sprawling rally in Budapest.“We cannot get between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer,” he said. He accused the Hungarian opposition of trying to drag Hungary to war and vowed to send neither troops nor weapons to the battleground.State-aligned media — which, in Hungary, is almost all media — had been blasting out Kremlin talking points for weeks, and it was easy to find people in the crowd who echoed them. An older man in a traditional black Bocskai jacket described Russia’s invasion as “just” and Volodymyr Zelensky as “scum” before blaming George Soros and the Freemasons for the war. A middle-aged woman expressed sympathy for Ukrainian refugees but accused Ukraine of provoking Russia by oppressing Russian and Hungarian speakers. “You don’t wake a sleeping lion,” she said.Hungary’s opposition — which appears, for the first time in over a decade, to have a shot at ousting the authoritarian Orban — held a rally in Budapest on the same day, on the opposite side of the Danube.I’d met the opposition candidate for prime minister, Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of the southern Hungarian town of Hodmezovasarhely, the day before, as he worked on his speech. One of his central points, he said, was that Hungary must decide between two worlds: Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the liberal West. “Putin and Orban belong to this autocratic, repressive, poor and corrupt world,” Marki-Zay told me. “And we have to choose Europe, West, NATO, democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, a very different world. The free world.”Recently, the political theorist Francis Fukuyama made a number of highly optimistic predictions about how Russia’s war on Ukraine would play out. Russia, he wrote on March 10, faced outright defeat, and Putin wouldn’t survive it. Further, he wrote, “the invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who, prior to the attack, uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin,” including Donald Trump and Orban. The Hungarian elections on April 3 will be an early test of this theory.Just as Israelis from across the political spectrum united to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarians of many different ideological persuasions are working together to defeat Orban, a hero to many American conservatives for his relentless culture-warring.Hoping to neutralize Orban’s demagogy against urban elites, the Hungarian opposition has united behind Marki-Zay, a 49-year-old Catholic father of seven and a relative political outsider.Marki-Zay, who lived in Indiana from 2006 to 2009, often sounds like an old-school Republican. He favors lower taxes and a decentralized government. “We want to give opportunity and not welfare checks to people,” he told me.He believes in Catholic teachings on gay marriage, abortion and divorce but doesn’t think they should be law. “We cannot force our views on the rest of the society,” he said. “One big difference between Western societies and certain Islamist states is that in Western society, church doesn’t rule everyday life.” Some on the left might blanch at the gratuitous invocation of Islam, but part of Marki-Zay’s skill is using conservative language to make case for liberalism.In the coming elections, Marki-Zay is an underdog, but the fact that he’s even in the running is a remarkable development in a country with a system as tilted as Hungary’s. Hungarian electoral districts are highly gerrymandered in favor of Orban’s party, Fidesz. Gergely Karacsony, the left-leaning mayor of Budapest and a political scientist, said the anti-Orban forces would probably need to win the popular vote by three or four percentage points to achieve a parliamentary majority. (By contrast, in the last elections Fidesz was able to win a two-thirds majority with 49 percent of the vote.) The opposition has had to contend with a near blackout in the mainstream media; Marki-Zay said he hasn’t been asked to appear on television since 2019, while Orban has unleashed a barrage of propaganda against him.Fidesz, he said, has convinced its base that the opposition “will take away their pensions, will cancel the minimum wage,” will send their children to fight in Ukraine and will “allow sex change operations without the consent of parents” for kindergartners. These voters, said Marki-Zay, “are just frightened. They hate. I meet such people every day during this campaign. People who are just shouting profanities. You can feel the hatred, and you can see in their eyes how fearful they are of Orban losing the election.”But plenty of voters are still reachable via social media and door-to-door canvassing. Marki-Zay puts his chances at about 50 percent, and while other analysts I spoke to thought his odds were lower, no one wrote him off. A big question is whether the crisis in Ukraine will make voters prioritize stability or turn Orban’s relationship with Putin into a liability. In a recent Euronews poll, 60 percent of respondents said Hungary has gotten too close to Russia and Putin, but that doesn’t mean the issue will determine their vote.Even if Orban wins another term, Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, thinks Orban’s dream of creating a right-wing nationalist bloc in Europe is dead. The war in Ukraine has driven a wedge between him and the nationalist government in Poland, which favors an aggressive response to Russia.And a history of pro-Putin sentiment has suddenly become embarrassing for some of Orban’s European allies. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally — who received a nearly $12 million loan from a Hungarian bank tied to Orban — has been put on the defensive over campaign fliers showing her shaking Putin’s hand. Matteo Salvini, the head of Italy’s right-wing League party, was humiliated during a visit to Przemysl, a Polish town near the Ukrainian border, when the mayor confronted him with a pro-Putin T-shirt like one that Salvini once wore in Moscow’s Red Square.There was supposed to be a Hungarian version of America’s Conservative Political Action Conference this month, but it has been postponed until May. In Budapest, many speculated that American Republicans weren’t as keen as they once were to be seen with Orban. “Right now, I think because Orban has so much aligned himself with Russia, I think it’s detrimental to his international image as well,” said Kreko. “And he might win one more round, but I think he just will not be able to fulfill all his authoritarian dreams.”At the opposition rally, which drew tens of thousands of people, a band played a Hungarian version of Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power,” and Smith, who performed in Budapest last year, sent a video greeting. Ukrainian flags dotted the crowd.Bogdan Klich, the minority leader in Poland’s Senate, watched from backstage. He hoped that a Marki-Zay victory would be a blow to anti-democratic forces in his own country. “There is a chance that illiberal democracy, that was presented and unfortunately implemented by Viktor Orban here, will be replaced by traditional European and Atlantic values,” he said. “I mean the rule of law, the respect for human rights and civil liberties, independence of judiciary, etc. This is what we need here in Hungary, and in Poland.”Orban’s rise to power marked the beginning of the authoritarian populist era. If he somehow falls, it might mark the beginning of the end of it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More