World

One of Brussels’ top two leaders has defended the European Union’s efforts to reach an investment agreement with China, ahead of summit meetings with US President Joe Biden.

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, will meet Biden at this weekend’s G7 summit in Cornwall, before hosting him in Brussels next week for EU-US talks.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the series of summits, Michel stressed that Biden’s efforts to mend ties mark a return to a “strong partnership” after tension under the Trump administration.

And he insisted Europe would not “paper over our fundamental values, our fundamental freedoms and human rights” in its dealings with an increasingly assertive China.

But he defended Brussels’ troubled effort to negotiate a “Comprehensive Agreement on Investment” (CAI) with Beijing, which has been delayed by recent rows about human rights sanctions.

“We want to rebalance our economic relationship with China,” he said in an interview with a group of reporters late Monday, including AFP.

“In the last years we have decided to facilitate access to our single market,” he said, addressing China’s recent economic inroads into Europe.

“But there is a lack of reciprocity and there is a lack of fairness and that’s why we tried last year to accelerate the negotiations in relationship with this investment agreement.  

“I know that there’s a democratic debate in Europe on the question of this investment agreement, but I’m convinced personally that what’s on the table is a huge step in the right direction,” Michel said. 

“For the first time we are making a step to facilitate investment by European companies and also, based on this proposed agreement, there are commitments expressed by the Chinese authorities on social rights.”

– Tit for tat sanctions –

The European Union executive and China gave political approval for a major investment pact late last year, after seven years of painstaking negotiations, thanks to a final push by leading export economy Germany.

But the European Commission has suspended efforts to secure ratification of the deal after Beijing slapped sanctions and visa bans on European lawmakers and academics.

The CAI has also raised eyebrows in Washington, where Biden’s team hopes to rally America’s traditional allies to help contain China’s rise.

Last week, far from seeking closer ties with the Chinese economy, Biden expanded a blacklist of Chinese firms that are off-limits to US investors.

Michel insisted Europe is not being naive in dealings with China and that it wants to work with Washington in an alliance of liberal democracies.

“In a nutshell, what’s the position of the United States?” he asked, rhetorically. 

“It’s very similar to the European one. Explaining China is a competitor, but it’s also important to cooperate with China when it’s necessary.” 

A Salvadorian woman sentenced to three decades in prison for undergoing an abortion was released Monday after almost nine years behind bars, AFP confirmed.

Dressed in white, Sara Rogel, 28, left the women’s prison near Zacatecoluca, where she was joined by members of her family and her lawyer Karla Vaquerano of the abortion rights group ACDATEE.

As a 20-year-old student and eight months pregnant, Rogel slipped and fell while washing clothes.

Her family found her lying unconscious and took her to hospital, where authorities detained her on suspicion of having had an abortion.

A court then found her guilty of aggravated homicide and sentenced her to 30 years in prison, but her lawyers later helped her reduce the sentence to a decade — which would have seen her released in October 2022.

Rogel hugged her relatives as she left the prison. Released on parole, she is banned from leaving the country and must undergo therapy with a psychologist. 

“She was deprived of freedom for almost nine years, in a sentence we believed was unfairly given,” Vaquerano said.

Socially conservative and devoutly Catholic El Salvador bans abortion in all cases, and sentences can range from eight to 50 years in cases of “aggravated homicide.”

Pakistani engineers Tuesday combed the mangled wreckage of two trains that collided in a remote farming region, an accident that killed dozens and highlighted huge safety problems on the nation’s dilapidated rail network.

At least 63 people were killed early Monday when a high-speed passenger train knifed through carriages of another express that had derailed minutes earlier near Daharki in Sindh province.

Army and civil engineers have cleared much of the wreckage of carriages crushed like tin cans in the collision, and welders were finalising repairs to the damaged rails.

A heavy stench of diesel, sweat and blood hung over the scene, with workers saying bodies were still being pulled overnight from mangled carriages. 

“This is the most colossal accident I have seen in about 10 years of service,” railway engineer Jahan Zeb told AFP, his eyes puffy from sleeplessness.

The Millat Express was heading from Karachi to Sargodha when it derailed, its carriages strewn over the tracks as the Sir Syed Express from Rawalpindi arrived minutes later in the opposite direction, smashing into it.

The accident has reignited debate about the parlous state of Pakistan’s public transport system — particularly a rail network that has seen little investment in decades.

It is not known what caused the Millat Express to jump its tracks, but Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid — a former railways minister — described that section of the line as “a shambles”, while current minister Azam Swati called it “really dangerous”.

Pakistan Railways said Tuesday that 63 people had died in the accident, issuing two lists that named 51 victims and marked 12 others as unidentified.

Usman Abdullah, the deputy provincial commissioner, confirmed the toll.

They ranged from a months-old infant to a woman who was 81.

Khan Mohammad, station master at nearby Reti junction, said more lives could have been saved if they had just a few more minutes after the derailment.

“I saw a six- or seven-year-old girl trapped underneath the locomotive, her knee stuck in the track,” he said.

“We somehow rescued her, and she was miraculously alive.”

But then the oncoming train hit.

“If there had been a delay of about 10 minutes, this accident could have been averted,” he said.

The double accident happened around 3:30 am (2230 GMT) when most of the 1,200 passengers aboard the two trains would have been dozing.

A man driving a pick-up truck slammed into and killed four members of a Muslim family in Canada’s Ontario province, in what police and officials said Monday was a premeditated attack motivated by “hatred”.

A 20-year-old suspect wearing a vest “like body armor” fled the scene on Sunday evening, and was arrested at a mall seven kilometers (four miles) from the intersection in London, Ontario where the attack happened, said Detective Superintendent Paul Waight.

“There is evidence that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate. It is believed that these victims were targeted because they were Muslim,” he told a news conference.

Canada’s Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair described it as a “horrific act of Islamophobia.”

“They believe the family was targeted because of their faith, and that the attacker was motivated by his hatred of Muslims,” he said.   

The names of the victims were not released, but they include a 74-year-old woman, a 46-year-old man, a 44-year-old woman and a 15-year-old girl — together representing three generations of the same family, according to London mayor Ed Holder.

A nine-year-old boy was also hospitalized following the attack and is recovering.

“Let me be clear, this was an act of mass murder perpetrated against Muslims, against Londoners, rooted in unspeakable hatred,” said Holder.

Bouquets of flowers were seen at the scene of the attack. A vigil in memory of the victims is set to take place Tuesday at a local mosque.

The suspect, identified as Nathaniel Veltman, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. 

Waight said local authorities are also liaising with federal police and the attorney general about adding “possible terrorism charges.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that he was “horrified” by the attack.

“To the loved ones of those who were terrorized by yesterday’s act of hatred, we are here for you,” he said, singling out the nine-year-old in hospital.

“To the Muslim community in London and to Muslims across the country, know that we stand with you. Islamophobia has no place in any of our communities. This hate is insidious and despicable – and it must stop,” he added.

– ‘Out for a walk’ –

At about 8:40 pm on Sunday (0040 GMT Monday), according to police, the five family members were walking together along a sidewalk when a black pick-up truck “mounted the curb and struck” them as they waited to cross the intersection.

Waight offered few details of the investigation, but noted that the suspect’s social media postings were reviewed by police.

The attack, which brought back painful memories of a Quebec City mosque mass shooting in January 2017 and a driving rampage in Toronto that killed 10 people in April 2018, drew swift condemnation.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims said in a statement it was “beyond horrified and demands justice” for the family who was just “out for a walk” on a warm spring evening.

“This is a terrorist attack on Canadian soil and must be treated as such,” Mustafa Farooq, the council’s president, told Radio Canada. 

The Muslim Association of Canada also called on authorities to “prosecute this horrific attack as an act of hate and terrorism.”

“Hate and Islamophobia have NO place in Ontario,” tweeted Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “These heinous acts of violence must stop.”

Four years ago, a 27-year-old white supremacist burst into a Quebec City mosque and unleashed a hail of bullets on worshippers who were chatting after evening prayers, killing six men and seriously wounding five others.

At the time, before the New Zealand mosque shootings in March 2019, it was the worst-ever attack on Muslims in the West.

The Quebec City shooter, Alexandre Bissonette, was sentenced to 40 years in prison, but that was lowered on appeal, and the Supreme Court is now reviewing his punishment.

Meanwhile in Toronto, a 28-year-old man who ploughed a rented van into pedestrians at high speed three years ago was found guilty in March of murdering 10 people and trying to kill 16 others.

Before that attack, Alek Minassian posted on Facebook a reference to an online community of “involuntary celibates” whose sexual frustrations led them to embrace a misogynist ideology. He will be sentenced in January 2022.

UN judges will rule Tuesday on Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic’s appeal against his genocide conviction for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s worst act of bloodshed since World War II.

The Hague tribunal will be delivering its final verdict on the so-called “Butcher of Bosnia”, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1992-5 Bosnia war.

Mladic, now frail and in his late seventies but still prone to courtroom outbursts against NATO and the West, is expected to be in the dock to hear the judgment read out from 1300 GMT.

Mothers of some of the 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran Srebrenica will meanwhile be outside the court in the Netherlands where they have long campaigned for justice.

“We will go to The Hague to look the executioner in the eye once again as he is finally sentenced,” Munira Subasic, president of one of the “Mothers of Srebrenica” associations, told AFP.

Prosecutors have also appealed against Mladic’s acquittal on wider genocide charges.

Tribunal prosecutor Serge Brammertz said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the verdict, with the Belgian jurist telling reporters last week he “can’t imagine another outcome than confirmation” of at least the original verdict.

– ‘Target of NATO’ –

Mladic, who spent a decade on the run before his capture in 2011, was the military face of a brutal trio led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Mladic was found guilty of genocide for personally overseeing the massacre at the supposedly UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica as part of a campaign to drive out Muslims.

Footage from the time showed him handing out sweets to children before they and the women of Srebrenica were taken away by bus, while the men of the town were marched into a forest and executed.

He was also found guilty of orchestrating a wider campaign of “ethnic cleansing” to drive Muslims and Bosnians out of key areas to create a Greater Serbia as Yugoslavia tore itself apart after the fall of communism.

The war left around 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.

But Mladic, who gives his age as 78 but it is 79 according to the court, insisted during an appeal hearing last year that “fate put me in a position to defend my country.”

During a long tirade, Mladic also said he was a “target of the NATO alliance” and derided the court as a “child of western powers”.

The appeal hearing was delayed repeatedly after Mladic needed surgery to remove a polyp, and then because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Access to the court on Tuesday is also limited because of coronavirus measures.

– ‘Important for the victims’ –

Mladic is the last of the Serb trio to face justice, with Milosevic dying of a heart attack in his cell in The Hague in 2006 before his trial had finished, while Karadzic is serving a life sentence for genocide in Srebrenica.

Relatives of the victims hoped that the court would also overturn Mladic’s acquittal on wider genocide convictions, saying it was necessary for reconciliation between still-divided communities.

“This verdict is not only important for the victims and survivors. It is very important for the future of our children, of all of us,” said Subasic, who planned to be at the court with around a dozen supporters.

But for many Bosnian Serbs, Mladic and Karadzic remain heroes. 

“Everyone is proud that he is from here,” said Radosav Zmukic, head of a local veterans’ group in Mladic’s hometown of Kalinovik.

Prosecutor Brammertz warned the Mladic judgment would not bring an end to the divisions in the Balkans, saying it was just “the end of one chapter”. 

“Denial of genocide is the last phase of the genocide,” Brammertz said.

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US Vice President Kamala Harris said Monday the United States hopes to work with Guatemala to address the root causes of illegal migration by creating “a sense of hope” in the poverty- and violence-plagued country, on her first trip abroad since taking office.

Meeting President Alejandro Giammattei in Guatemala City, Harris said reducing undocumented migration from Central to North America was a priority for US President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Most people do not want to leave the place where they grew up,” loved ones, and people with whom they share a language and culture, Harris said.

But they often do so “either because they are fleeing some harm or because they simply cannot satisfy their basic needs by staying at home,” she added.

Regardless of their reasons for leaving, Harris urged would-be migrants not to make the journey: “Do not come” to the United States, she told them.

“The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders… If you come to our border, you will be turned back,” she said.

Instead, she proposed that the United States and Guatemala “work together” to find solutions to “long-standing problems.”

Critically, people must be given “a sense of hope that help is on the way,” said Harris.

“It must be coupled with relationships of trust. It must be coupled with tangible outcomes, in terms of what we do as leaders to convince people that there is a reason to be hopeful about their future and the future of their children.”

– Create conditions –

Giammattei said Guatemala wanted to cooperate “to create conditions in Guatemala so that they (young people) can find here the hope they do not have today.”

Harris announced a joint task force on smuggling and human trafficking, a women’s empowerment program, and an anti-corruption task force to help Central American law enforcement prosecute cases.

She rejected Republican criticism of the fact that neither she nor Biden had visited the US southern border, saying she had come to Central America to discuss matters in a “way that is significant and has real results” rather than making “grand gestures.”

Harris, who later flew to Mexico to meet President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday, said she had told Giammattei the United States would send 500,000 coronavirus vaccines to Guatemala.

Her trip is part of the Biden administration’s promise to implement a more humane immigration policy after the hardline approach taken by his predecessor Donald Trump.

But the Republican opposition has accused Biden of creating a “crisis” on the country’s southern border by failing to rein in migration.

Congress must still decide whether to approve the $861 million Biden has asked for next year as part of a $4 billion plan to tackle the issue.

American officials have in recent days called on Central American countries to defend democracy and fight corruption in a bid to improve conditions at home and thus eliminate a driving factor for migration.

Asked Monday about Guatemala’s anti-corruption stance, Giammattei said: “How many cases of corruption have I been accused of? I can give you the answer: Zero.”

Far-left trade unionist Pedro Castillo took a narrow lead on Monday in Peru’s presidential run-off election against right-wing populist Keiko Fujimori, who alleged fraud in the vote count.

With 94.8 percent of ballots counted after Sunday’s vote, Castillo was ahead of Fujimori with 50.2 percent compared with her 49.7 percent, though there could be a prolonged wait for the final outcome.

Fujimori raised allegations of “irregularities” and “signs of fraud” at a press conference on Monday evening, claiming she had evidence of “a clear intention to boycott the popular will” in the election.

Fujimori, 46, had led in early counting, but school teacher Castillo, 51, gained ground as votes from Peru’s rural areas — his stronghold — came in from across a country battered by years of political turmoil.

Castillo’s Free Peru party called on election authorities to “protect the vote” as ballots are counted and published, which may take days with more than a million expat votes being processed.

“Only the people are going to save the people,” Castillo said, as he asked his followers to show restraint.

Election observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) said the candidates’ “conduct in these crucial hours is decisive to maintain calm.”

Amid the uncertainty, the Lima stock market plunged 7.22 percent and the sol dropped to a record low 3.94 against the US dollar.

Whoever wins the ideological battle between left and right will take leadership of a nation battered by recession and the world’s worst coronavirus fatality rate with more than 186,000 deaths among its 33 million population.

Peruvians will also be looking for stability after going through four presidents in three years. Seven of their last 10 leaders have either been convicted or are under investigation for corruption.

– Polar opposites –

Castillo caused an upset by topping the first round of voting in April, with Fujimori in second place.

The relatively unknown teacher was consistently ahead of his rival, though narrowly so, in the latest opinion polls before Sunday’s vote that comes at a crucial time for the country.

Two million Peruvians have lost their jobs during the pandemic and nearly a third now live in poverty, according to official figures.

The candidates have polar-opposite recovery plans.

Fujimori, the daughter of corruption-convicted and jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori, backs a neoliberal economic model of tax cuts and boosting private activity to generate jobs.

Castillo has pledged to nationalize vital industries, raise taxes and increase state regulation.

Favored by the business sector and middle classes, Fujimori — her bastion is the capital Lima — sought to portray Castillo as a communist threat, warning Peru risked becoming a new Venezuela or North Korea.

Rural-based Castillo, in turn, pointed to the Fujimori family’s history of corruption scandals.

Keiko Fujimori is under investigation over campaign funding in her 2011 and 2016 presidential bids.

Apart from corruption charges, her jailed father, 82, has been found guilty of ordering two massacres by death squads in 1991 and 1992 while president.

He is being probed over the forced sterilization of hundreds of thousands of poor, mostly indigenous women during his final four years in power.

“If Keiko is eventually elected, you can’t forget that this 50 percent is not her real support but rather a reaction from an electorate that is afraid of what her opponent represents,” political scientist Jessica Smith told AFP.

– Peru’s ‘first poor president’? –

Castillo “would be the first poor president of Peru,” added analyst Hugo Otero. The leftist candidate has vowed to forego a presidential salary and live on his teacher’s wages.

Whoever wins will have a hard time governing as Peru’s Congress is fragmented.

Free Peru is the largest single party, just ahead of Fujimori’s Popular Force, but without a majority.

“It won’t be easy (for Fujimori) given the mistrust her name and that of her family generates in many sectors. She’ll have to quickly calm the markets and generate ways to reactivate them,” said Smith.

But if Castillo triumphs, he will have to “consolidate a parliamentary majority that will allow him to deliver his ambitious program,” she said.

In either case, “it will take time to calm the waters because there is fierce polarization and an atmosphere of social conflict,” added analyst Luis Pasaraindico.

At the height of a political storm in November last year, unleashed by more corruption claims, Peru had three different presidents in just five days.

The new president will take office on July 28, replacing centrist interim leader Francisco Sagasti.

Peru’s right-wing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori on Monday raised allegations of “irregularities” and “signs of fraud” in Sunday’s run-off election as her rival, the far-left trade unionist Pedro Castillo, took a razor-thin lead in the vote count.

Fujimori had led early counting, but school teacher Castillo gained ground as votes from Peru’s rural areas — his stronghold — came in from across a country battered by years of political turmoil.

“There is a clear intention to boycott the popular will,” said Fujimori, the daughter of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori. At a press conference, she showed videos and photographs allegedly showing proof of counting irregularities.

Castillo’s Free Peru party called on election authorities to “protect the vote” as ballots are counted and published.

Election observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) said the candidates’ “conduct in these crucial hours is decisive to maintain calm”.

With 94.8 percent of ballots counted, Castillo was narrowly ahead of Fujimori with 50.2 percent compared to her 49.7 percent, though there could still be a long wait for the final outcome.

Whoever wins the battle between left and right will take leadership of a nation battered by a recession and the world’s highest per capita coronavirus fatality rate with more than 186,000 deaths among its 33 million population.

Ratko Mladic insists he was chosen by “fate” to defend the Serb people from a Western onslaught, but on Tuesday he will find out if his fate is to spend the rest of his life in jail for genocide.

Judges will rule on his appeal against his 2017 conviction for war crimes in Bosnia that judges in The Hague said were “amongst the most heinous known to humankind”. 

Among the most notorious was the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995 — a genocide, the court decided, orchestrated by military leader Mladic and his political comrade Radovan Karadzic.

The slaughter — the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II — led media across the world to dub him “the butcher of Bosnia”.

Former UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein described him as “the epitome of evil” after his conviction.

But most Serbs continue to revere him. 

“He only defended his people,” Serb veteran Ljubo Tomovic told AFP. “To convict him would be a disgrace and a sin.”

Mladic, who is in his late 70s, has repeatedly pushed the image of himself as “a simple man” chosen to protect his people.

“Fate put me in a position to defend my country that you Western powers had devastated with the help of the Vatican and the Western mafia,” he told his appeal hearing last year.

Yet he oversaw a siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, for more than three years, his snipers and artillery shells killing thousands of men, women and children in the streets and in their homes.

And video footage from Srebrenica shows him reassuring a 12-year-old Muslim boy shortly before his soldiers massacre thousands of civilians.

Days later, he is seen returning to a deserted Srebrenica, telling the camera: “We give this town to the Serb people as a gift.”

Mladic formed a Serb nationalist triumvirate with Karadzic and ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic that unleashed a wave of ethnic killing in a bid to redraw the map of the region.

While Karadzic was the ideologue and Milosevic the wily politician, Mladic was the soldier and his metier was waging war.

– ‘Narcissistic, conceited’ –

Mladic had barely drawn breath before his life was indelibly marked by conflict.

He was born during World War II in Kalinovik in eastern Bosnia — most accounts say in 1942, but Mladic told the tribunal he was actually born in 1943.

His father was killed at the bitter end of the war, fighting for Marshal Tito, the leader who managed to knit together the multi-ethnic state of Yugoslavia and suppress simmering enmities.

By most accounts, Mladic always wanted to be a soldier.

He left for army training in Belgrade in the early 1960s, becoming an officer by the age of 22 and ascending to be commander of the Bosnian Serb forces in the war.

Although he was revered by his men, former Yugoslav army spokesman Ljubodrag Stojadinovic once described him as “narcissistic, conceited, vain and arrogant”.

During the war, he baffled international negotiators with rambling diatribes on Serbian history.

In the closing days of the war, close allies questioned his mental faculties.

“I respected General Mladic as a soldier and a man,” the late former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic told a 1990s BBC documentary. 

“But after three years of war, he’d lost contact with reality.”

– ‘There was no genocide’ –

Mladic was dismissed from his post after being indicted in 1995, but he evaded capture for another 16 years.

At first, he led a life of luxury, pampered by the Serbian military, but the pressure on him mounted after Milosevic fell from power in 1999.

He was finally arrested in May 2011 at his cousin’s country house in northern Serbia, his mind immediately turning to an incident from during the war.

Not to the thousands of Muslims whose deaths he orchestrated, but rather to his daughter, Ana, who killed herself in 1994 at the age of 23.

Some accounts say she could not bear the shame of the crimes committed by her father, though Mladic’s family dispute this.

His last request before being transferred to the court was to visit her grave.

During all this time, a legend had grown around him, his wartime leadership immortalised in murals around Republika Srpska — the Serbian entity within Bosnia.

Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik is among many who hail him as a hero, telling reporters last month: “There was no genocide in Srebrenica. There is no credible evidence or any other evidence that it was genocide.” 

Many disagree.

“Denial of genocide is the last phase of the genocide,” said Serge Brammertz, prosecutor at The Hague.

Peru’s right-wing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori on Monday raised allegations of “irregularities” and “signs of fraud” in Sunday’s run-off election as her rival, the far-left trade unionist Pedro Castillo, took a razor-thin lead in the vote count.

Fujimori had led early counting, but school teacher Castillo gained ground as votes from Peru’s rural areas — his stronghold — came in from across a country battered by years of political turmoil.

“There is a clear intention to boycott the popular will,” said Fujimori, the daughter of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori. At a press conference, she showed videos and photographs allegedly showing proof of counting irregularities.

Castillo’s Free Peru party called on election authorities to “protect the vote” as ballots are counted and published.

Election observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) said the candidates’ “conduct in these crucial hours is decisive to maintain calm”.

With 94.8 percent of ballots counted, Castillo was narrowly ahead of Fujimori with 50.2 percent compared to her 49.7 percent, though there could still be a long wait for the final outcome.

Whoever wins the battle between left and right will take leadership of a nation battered by a recession and the world’s highest per capita coronavirus fatality rate with more than 186,000 deaths among its 33 million population.