World

In Tripoli’s Old City, young Libyans weave delicate patterns with threads of silver and gold to create traditional filigree jewellery — reviving an art almost lost through decades of dictatorship and war.

Abdelmajid Zeglam is just 12 years old, but his minutely detailed creations are already selling fast in the streets around a Roman-era archway dedicated to emperor Marcus Aurelius. 

“I hesitated at first for fear of failing because I’m young, but my mum encouraged me,” Zeglam said.

He is the youngest of 20 or so students, around half of them female, studying at the Libyan Academy for Traditional Gold and Silver Crafts, in a building that once served as a French consulate to the Ottoman Empire.

Trainees learn about precious metal alloys before studying the art of filigree, in which beads and threads of the precious materials are woven into intricate designs then soldered together to create jewellery.

“I love it,” Zeglam said. “I want to become a petroleum engineer in the mornings and a jeweller in the afternoons.”

Mohamed al-Miloudi, a 22-year-old civil engineering student in a baseball cap, said he had not missed a class since signing up in September.

“It’s a hobby, but I’d like to make it into my trade,” he said.

The institute’s founder, Abdelnasser Aboughress, said filigree jewellery was an ancient tradition in the North African country.

“Craftsmen in the medina of Tripoli were trained by Jewish masters and later by Arabs, at the prestigious School of Arts and Trades” founded in the late 19th century, he said.

– Secret jewellers –

But generations of tradition were abruptly halted after Moamer Kadhafi took power in a 1969 coup.

The capricious ruler scrapped the constitution and established his “jamahiriya” — a medley of socialism, Arab nationalism and tribal patronage.

He also scrapped the private sector, seizing companies and confiscating their assets.

Overnight, self-employed artisans lost everything: their workshops, their livelihoods and their students. 

“The state reduced Libyan crafts to nothing and forced a generation of young apprentices, who should have taken up the baton, to instead leave the traditional crafts and join the army” or become civil servants, said Aboughress.

The 55-year-old was born just a few streets away in the medina, and despite Kadhafi’s ban, he took up the craft at the age of 15.

Along with his father, for decades he worked in secret on jewellery for trusted clients.

Now, he hopes to pass the craft on to younger generations, as well as fighting back against a tide of “lower-quality jewellery imported from Egypt and China (which) has flooded the market”.

Aboughress is working on a project to document and preserve as much of this cultural heritage as possible.

– ‘People with passion’ –

Student Fatima Boussoua hit out at the practice of selling old Libyan silver jewellery at cheap prices to be exported then melted down.

“It’s part of Libya’s artisanal heritage that’s disappearing!” she said. 

A dentist in her 40s who also teaches at the University of Tripoli, Boussoua has been training at the centre for the past year, hoping to master the craft.

“We should be training artists to preserve our heritage,” she said. “All it needs is people with passion.”

While becoming a true expert takes years of training, Aboughress’s students are already producing works for sale online or at the centre itself.

That said, he admits the project needs financial help to buy the expensive raw materials — as well as “moral support”.

He hopes that with enough resources, he will one day be able to set up a string of other workshops across Libya.

“It’s time to bring this craft back to life,” he said.

A woman’s portrait painted in blue and yellow — the colours of the Ukrainian flag — and streaked with blood-red paint is among 300 pictures by Ukrainian children displayed in a Kyiv bomb shelter Friday.

“It’s worth reminding adults — the whole world — that children see all this, experience it, feel it. And unlike us, they can’t make decisions,” said Olena Sotnyk, a Ukrainian politician and advisor to the prime minister, as well as one of the exhibition’s organisers.

“They expect adults and the world to act to stop the war.”

The exhibition, titled “Children. War. Future”, opened to journalists Friday in a central Kyiv metro station that has been closed since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on February 24.

The Maidan Independence stop has instead functioned as a bomb shelter beneath the site of massive pro-democracy protests in 2014 that toppled Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader.

The paintings by Ukrainian children from across the country depict horrors from places like Mariupol — a city brutally besieged and bombed by Russian forces — and Bucha, one of the first towns where civilians were found killed en masse.

Others are optimistic: a smiling soldier straps on a helmet, a woman wears a blue and yellow wreath of flowers with a dove surrounded by multicoloured flowers.

But the captions are unambiguous: “No to war,” “I don’t want to die.”

“What these children feel is the fear of war, anxiety. But on the other hand, there is faith, hope, support, understanding that there will be bright days in the future,” said Danylo Tsvyok, who was also involved in staging the collection. 

Sotnyk said there were plans in place to create a digital exhibition of several thousand images by children reflecting on the conflict.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general says that at least 347 children have been killed and another 646 wounded since the beginning of Russia’s invasion.

Spain’s popular Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz Friday launched a new leftist political movement ahead of general elections expected in late 2023, vowing a new way of doing politics.

Diaz said she would go on a nationwide listening tour to gather ideas about what people want for the country, and then decide whether it would take part in the next polls with her at the helm.

“In this citizens’ movement, I am just one more piece. You are the protagonists and if you want I will step up,” she told a crowd of around 5,000 people gathered at a Madrid cultural centre.

Diaz said the new movement called “Sumar”, which means “to add” in Spanish, would seek “a new social contract” and work to end to the politics of “confrontation”.

Politics should be about “extending a hand, and then being able to reach agreements that change people’s lives,” she added.

Diaz currently represents the far-left Podemos party, the junior partner in Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority coalition government.

Polls consistently indicate she is Spain’s most popular politician.

As labour minister, she was responsible for a recent labour reform which is credited with a sharp fall in the number of temporary job contracts.

She also oversaw a generous job furlough scheme at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which ensured people had an income even when large parts of the economy were closed due to lockdowns.

The launch of the new political movement comes as both the Socialists and Podemos have slumped in the polls, with Spain battered by high inflation as is the case across Europe.

The main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) have overtaken the Socialists as Spain’s most popular party, according to a poll published Monday in daily newspaper El Pais.

The PP, which in April picked a moderate new leader, had 27.4 percent support, ahead of the Socialist at 26.3 percent.

Podemos was in fourth place, behind far-right party Vox.

The PP last month secured a landslide win in a regional election in Andalusia, winning an absolute majority of seats in the former Socialist stronghold.

It will now govern the southern region, Spain’s most populous, on its own for the first time.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on Friday visited the former rebel bastion of Aleppo, including its historic Old City, for the first time since war broke out 11 years ago.

The visit to Syria’s second city and previously the economic capital is highly symbolic as Assad’s 2016 victory there — with crucial military support from Russia — was a turning point in the war.

Assad and his wife “visited Aleppo’s historic Ummayad mosque”, the Syrian presidency said on the Telegram messaging app.

They also “walked through the Old City’s souks, which were open on the occasion of Eid al-Adha”, it added, referring to the Muslim feast set to begin on Saturday.

Both sites had suffered massive damage in the fighting.

Before the war, the northern city — considered to be one of the world’s longest continuously inhabited — boasted markets, mosques, caravanserais, and public baths, but a brutal siege on rebels left it disfigured.

Fighting damaged as much as 60 percent of Aleppo’s Old City, according to estimates by the UN’s cultural agency, UNESCO.

Aleppo province was also the scene of fierce battles between government forces, rebels and Islamic State group jihadists from 2012 until Russian-backed government forces gradually ousted them.

Earlier Friday, Assad visited a major power plant in the province’s eastern countryside to supervise its partial relaunch after war damage.

Assad was also present for the relaunching of a water pumping station, statements from the Syrian presidency said on Telegram.

Electricity networks and other infrastructure across the country were ravaged by the war, which is estimated to have killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions.

The Syrian government does not have authority over all of Aleppo province, with areas on the Turkish border still controlled by Ankara-backed groups and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces.

The recently rehabilitated part of the power station, one of the country’s largest, will generate 200 megawatts of electricity for the province, the presidency said.

In 2021, Aleppo’s state-run electricity company announced the power station would be rehabilitated with support from Iran, another Assad ally.

Tehran signed several agreements with Damascus in 2017 to improve the production and distribution of electricity in war-ravaged Syria.

The deals included the rehabilitation of the Aleppo power plant, building a power station in Latakia, as well as repair and maintenance work in other regions.

When Wilbert Aguilar had to tell his wife that their son was sentenced to 23 years in prison for taking part in anti-government protests in Cuba, the 49-year-old day laborer’s life fell apart.

“I had to wash, scrub, cook, because my wife lost her mind,” he told AFP.

After that, he had to look after his daughter-in-law and his two granddaughters.

Aguilar’s 22-year-old son Wagniel was one of more than 160 people from La Guinera, a poor Havana neighbrohood, to have been jailed for taking part in the unprecedented protests that broke out all over Cuba in July 2021.

Communist Cuba was, and still is, mired in an economic crisis and demonstrators chanted “We’re hungry!” and demanded “Freedom!”

The government has since tried to make amends in La Guinera, a largely Black neighborhood that is part of Havana’s most populous municipality, Arroyo Naranjo, also one of the capital’s poorest.

Authorities have filled potholes, painted warehouses, reopened and restocked medical centers, and promised new homes to some families.

It is part of a program implemented in 60 Havana neighborhoods to improve people’s lives.

But the demonstrators remain in jail.

Elizabet Leon Martinez, 51, worked as a manicurist before three of her five children were jailed.

“I can’t give any more, my nerves are frayed, I don’t have a life, I have nothing,” she said, never taking her eyes off her telephone in case someone might call from prison.

“I look after my grandchildren because I have no work, nor could I work.”

– ‘Tough sentences’ –

On July 12, 2021, hundreds of protesters converged on the police station at the entrance to La Guinera.

Communist Party (PCC) activists backed by a massive contingent of riot police blocked them.

Rocks, bottles and sticks were thrown and the streets became strewn with broken glass and rocks.

The only person killed during the protests died in this neighborhood. Dozens of people were injured and more than 1,300 arrested across the country, the rights NGO Cubalex said.

Of the 790 people tried, 488 received custodial sentences of up to 25 years, the government said, mostly for sedition.

The United States has said it would work with allies to support those “unjustly” jailed and hit out at the “tough sentences.”

Pensioner Jorge Gil, 72, a PCC representative for La Guinera, says the protests were due to years of abandonment.

He lives with his family in temporary accommodation after his house was demolished — and due to be rebuilt — as part of the neighborhood improvement program.

But the materials to rebuild his house never arrived.

Opposite Gil lives Isabel Hernandez, 44, in a recently repainted house with a corrugated metal roof.

One of her sons was also jailed over the protests.

Despite this, her house was refurbished in just six months thanks to the improvement program.

“I’m very happy,” she said.

– ‘Their weapon was their voice’ –

Some people view the suppression of the July 2021 protests as a triumph for the communist revolution.

“We are more than super thankful, president, for all the changes in our neighborhood,” said Ileana Macias, a local leader and member of the Santeria religious community, during a meeting between women from the community and the country’s leader Miguel Diaz-Canel.

But Wilbert Aguilar is sad. He denies the protesters were “counter-revolutionaries.”

“They weren’t armed, their only weapon was their voice,” he said.

His son Wagniel’s sentence was reduced to 12 years on appeal.

Even Gil, who vehemently defends the island nation’s socialist system, admits he feels pain.

“I hope this is a problem that will be quickly resolved and that the majority of these youngsters will be freed because at the end of the day they’re youngsters and need to learn.”

A fourth person has been arrested as part of the investigation into the killings last month of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, authorities said on Friday.

The man presented himself to police to deny claims in the press that he may have ordered the murders, police chief Eduardo Fontes of the Amazonas state told reporters.

He was arrested for allegedly presenting fake identity documents.

Fontes said the man, known as “Colombia,” told police that he buys merchandise from fishermen in the area where the murders happened.

He said that one of his suppliers was Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, known as “Pelado,” who is under arrest after confessing to his role in the crime.

Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead while returning from an expedition in a remote region of the rainforest that is plagued by drug trafficking, illegal gold mining and fishing.

Phillips, the author of dozens of articles on the Amazon and a long-time contributor to The Guardian newspaper and other major news organizations, was traveling to the Javari Valley as part of research for an upcoming book.

Pereira was serving as his guide, and had previously traveled with him to the area.

An outspoken defender of Indigenous rights, Pereira had received multiple death threats prior to his death.

Police are investigating a possible link to illegal fishing on protected Indigenous lands as a motive for the murder.

“We are investigating whether that person known as ‘Colombia’ … participates in any illegal fishing scheme, whether he finances” that activity, said Fontes, adding the man had denied any involvement.

“We don’t know what his true identity is,” Fontes added.

The man had documents from Brazil, Colombia and Peru, each in a different name, he said.

Three men are under arrest for the murders and five others stand accused of helping to dispose of the bodies, which were found 10 days after the pair disappeared.