World

Two key parties in France’s left-wing alliance were facing crises Wednesday after senior figures were accused of violence against women, with a Greens party chief stepping back from his role days after a fellow lawmaker from the hard-left France Unbowed.

The mounting tempest  has shown up their parties’ struggle to respond to allegations of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the #Metoo movement, as outraged activists often demand quicker, more forceful responses than the justice system can provide.

On Tuesday, Julien Bayou was “suspended from his role” as co-president of the Greens’ bloc in the lower-house National Assembly, the party said, after he was accused of psychologically abusing a former partner.

“We are a feminist party, and so we place ourselves at the service of women’s testimony… we acknowledged that the only way to show we weren’t pretending and weren’t hiding was a temporary suspension,” Sandra Regol, vice-president of the Green MPs group, told broadcaster Franceinfo.

On Sunday one of the most prominent MPs of France Unbowed (LFI), Adrien Quatennens, admitted to slapping his wife after her legal complaint was revealed by the investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaine.

He stepped down from a senior role as party coordinator.

“Our political ethics can’t be the same as the criminal law,” said Laurence Rossignol, deputy president of the Senate, Parliament’s upper house, and a member of the Socialist Party, which is allied with the Greens and LFI in a broad coalition against President Emmanuel Macron.

“The facts are there, they’ve been identified, and this is a political representative, in a political group that has committed itself to fighting violence against women… their group must be the first to deal with them,” Rossignol told Europe 1 radio.

– ‘Dignity and courage’ –

Among the older generation of the left, the instinct can still be to close ranks.

LFI leader and three-time presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon leapt to Quatennens’ defence on Twitter, blasting “police ill-will, media voyeurism and the social networks” while hailing his protege’s “dignity” and “courage”.

He had made a similar response earlier this year when another ally, MP Eric Coquerel, was accused of groping a female activist — but who went on to receive the party’s support to lead parliament’s powerful Finance Committee.

“Protection of the party, protecting the leader, often come before consistency” with the movement’s stated values, Rossignol said Wednesday.

It was not until hours later that Melenchon posted another message gesturing towards Quatennens’ wife — too late for many critics.

Macron’s Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said Tuesday that it was “extremely shocking to have someone playing down domestic violence”.

And some 550 feminist activists co-signed an editorial in left-wing daily Liberation on Wednesday calling for Quatennens to resign his seat in parliament.

“When a political group supports a feminist programme, we have a right to expect that it stops protecting assaulters,” the activists wrote, listing a string of other left-wing figures who have been accused of assault and even rape.

“It’s not up to the assaulter’s friends to judge how serious the crime is and call for their private life to be respected. Private life is political,” they added.

– New structures –

The Greens, LFI and Macron’s Renaissance party have all set up internal panels to investigate allegations of sexual harassment and assault, with mixed results.

A report about Bayou had already been submitted to the ecologists’ panel in July, prompting allegations the probe had moved too slowly.

“These are volunteers working on cases that are sensitive by definition. Calm and time are needed to gather testimony and take the necessary decisions,” said Marine Tondelier, expected to stand soon for the Greens’ leadership.

“We acknowledge that we’re feeling our way forward, that this is a difficult question,” LFI lawmaker Daniele Obono said.

Allegations that sexual harassment and even assault are rife in French politics stretch well beyond the left.

In July, Damien Abad, a right-winger who was named minister in Macron’s freshly installed centrist government, was forced to step down over rape allegations.

He denies the claims and has since returned to his seat in parliament.

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Iran’s president on Wednesday accused the West of hypocrisy in its criticism of Tehran as eight people were reported dead in growing protests over the death of a young woman arrested by morality police.

President Ebrahim Raisi struck a defiant tone on a visit to the United Nations, with demonstrators also trailing him on the streets of New York and dissidents filing a human rights lawsuit against the hardline cleric.

Public anger has flared in the Islamic republic since authorities on Friday announced the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been held for allegedly wearing a hijab headscarf in an “improper” way.

Activists said the woman, whose Kurdish first name is Jhina, had suffered a fatal blow to the head, a claim denied by officials, who have announced an investigation.

Some women demonstrators have defiantly taken off their hijabs and burned them in bonfires or symbolically cut their hair before cheering crowds, video footage spread on social media has shown.

“No to the headscarf, no to the turban, yes to freedom and equality!” protesters in Tehran were heard chanting in a rally that has been echoed by solidarity protests abroad.

Iranian state media reported Wednesday that, in a fifth night of street rallies that had spread to 15 cities, police used tear gas and made arrests to disperse crowds of up to 1,000 people.

London-based rights group Article 19 said it was “deeply concerned by reports of the unlawful use of force by Iranian police and security forces,” including the use of live ammunition.

Demonstrators hurled stones at security forces, set fire to police vehicles and garbage bins and chanted anti-government slogans, the official IRNA news agency said, adding that rallies were held in cities including Mashhad, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz.

“Death to the dictator” and “Woman, life, freedom,” protesters could be heard shouting in video footage that spread beyond Iran, despite online restrictions reported by internet access monitor Netblocks.

At the United Nations, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told AFP that “the Iranian leadership should notice that the people are unhappy with the direction that they have taken.”

“They could abandon their nuclear weapons aspirations. They could stop the repression of voices within their own country. They could stop their destabilizing activities,” he said.

“A different path is possible. That is the path that we want Iran to take and that is the path that will see them with a stronger economy, a more happy society and a more active part in the international community.”

– ‘Double standards’ –

Raisi, addressing the UN General Assembly, pointed to the deaths of Indigenous women in Canada as well as Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories and the Islamic State group’s “savagery” against women from religious minority groups.

“So long as we have this double standard, where attention is solely focused on one side and not all equally, we will not have true justice and fairness,” Raisi said.

He also pushed back on Western terms to revive a 2015 nuclear accord, insisting that Iran “is not seeking to build or obtain nuclear weapons and such weapons have no place in our doctrine.”

But attention has quickly shifted to the protests, which are among the most serious in Iran since November 2019 unrest over fuel price rises.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he asked Raisi in a meeting Tuesday to show “respect for women’s rights.”

– ‘Significant shock’ –

The wave of protests over Amini’s death “is a very significant shock, it is a societal crisis,” said Iran expert David Rigoulet-Roze of the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

“It is difficult to know the outcome but there is a disconnect between the authorities with their DNA of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and an increasingly secularized society,” he said.

“It is a whole social project that is being called into question. There is a hesitation among the authorities on the way forward with regard to this movement.”

Protests first erupted Friday in Amini’s home province of Kurdistan, where governor Ismail Zarei Koosha said Tuesday three people had been killed in “a plot by the enemy.”

Kurdistan police commander Ali Azadi on Wednesday announced the death of another person, according to Tasnim news agency.

Two more protesters “were killed during the riots” in Kermanshah province, the region’s prosecutor Shahram Karami was quoted as saying by Fars news agency, blaming “counter-revolutionary agents.”

Additionally, Norway-based Kurdish rights group Hengaw said two protesters, aged 16 and 23, had been killed overnight in West Azerbaijan province.

An additional 450 people had been wounded and 500 arrested, the group said — figures that could not be independently verified.

Video spread online showing security forces opening fire on protesters in the southern city of Shiraz.

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President Vladimir Putin called up Russian military reservists on Wednesday, saying his promise to use all military means in Ukraine was “no bluff,” and hinting that Moscow was prepared to use nuclear weapons.

His mobilisation call comes as Moscow-held regions of Ukraine prepare to hold annexation referendums this week, dramatically upping the stakes in the seven-month conflict by allowing Moscow to accuse Ukraine of attacking Russian territory.

A senior US official said Washington was taking Putin’s “irresponsible” veiled threat to use nuclear weapons “seriously” and warned it could alter its “strategic posture” if need be.

Four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine — Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south — said on Tuesday that they would hold the votes over five days beginning Friday.

In a pre-recorded address to the nation early on Wednesday, Putin accused the West of trying to “destroy” his country through its backing of Kyiv. Russia needed to support those in Ukraine who wanted to “determine their own future”, he said.

The Russian leader announced a partial military mobilisation, with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu telling state television that some 300,000 reservists would be called up.

– ‘Act of desperation’ –

“When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff,” Putin said.

“Those who are trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the wind can also turn in their direction,” Putin added.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a interview with Germany’s Bild media group released Wednesday, he did not think Putin would resort to nuclear weapons.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced the call-up as “an act of desperation” in a “criminal war” he said Russia could not win.

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said it would result in a “massive tragedy, in a massive amount of deaths”.

Putin said that through its support for Ukraine, the West was trying to “weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country”. Shoigu said Moscow was “fighting not so much Ukraine as the collective West” in Ukraine.

In the wake of their announcements flights to neighbouring ex-Soviet countries were booked up for days to come, airline data showed, in what appeared to be a rush to quit the country. Prices for remaining seats skyrocketed.

The sudden flurry of moves by Moscow this week came with Russian forces in Ukraine facing their biggest challenge since the start of the conflict.

In a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive in recent weeks, Kyiv’s forces have retaken hundreds of towns and villages that had been controlled by Russia for months.

In a rare admission of military losses from Moscow, Shoigu said on Wednesday 5,937 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine since the launch of the military intervention in February.

– ‘Wake-up, finally’ –

As Putin made his announcement, residents were clearing rubble and broken glass from a nine-storey apartment block hit by an overnight missile strike in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Svetlana, 63, gathered with friends to look on as neighbours and municipal workers moved debris, urged the region’s Russian neighbours to ignore the mobilisation and “to wake up, finally”.

Her neighbour, 50-year-old Galina, expressed bewilderment.

“They want to liberate us from what? From our homes? From our relatives? From friends? What else?” she told AFP. “They want to free us from being alive?”

The referendums follow a pattern established in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine after a similar vote.

Like in 2014, Washington, Berlin and Paris denounced the latest ballots, saying the international community would never recognise the results.

Beijing, which so far has tacitly backed Moscow’s intervention called on Wednesday for a “ceasefire through dialogue” after Putin’s address and in likely reference to the referenda said the “territorial integrity of all countries should be respected”.

“It’s irresponsible rhetoric for a nuclear power to talk that way. But it’s not atypical for how he’s been talking the last seven months and we take it very seriously,” John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, told ABC’s “Good Morning America”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told German media he does not believe Russia will use nuclear weapons warned against giving in to Putin.

“Tomorrow, Putin can say — as well as Ukraine, we want part of Poland, otherwise we will use atomic weapons. We cannot make these compromises,” he said. 

– Strike at nuclear plant –

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meanwhile denounced Putin’s “dangerous and reckless nuclear rhetoric.”

And EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday accused Putin of putting world peace “in jeopardy”.

“Putin’s announcement of sham referenda, partial military mobilisation and nuclear blackmail are a grave escalation,” Borrell wrote on Twitter.

“Threatening with nuclear weapons is unacceptable and a real danger to all,” he said. 

Kyiv said the referendums were meaningless and vowed to “eliminate” threats posed by Russia, saying its forces would keep retaking territory regardless of what Moscow or its proxies announced.

The Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom meanwhile on Wednesday accused Russia of again striking the Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant in southern Ukraine.

Europe’s largest nuclear facility, located in Russian-held territory, has become a hot spot for concerns after tit-for-tat claims of attacks there.

A US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off to the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday on a Russian-operated flight, in a rare instance of cooperation between Moscow and Washington.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA both distributed live footage of the launch from Kazakhstan and commentators speaking over the feed said it was stable and that “the crew is feeling well”.

NASA’s Frank Rubio and Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin make up the crew that launched from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome at 1354 GMT.

Rubio is the first US astronaut to travel to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into pro-Western Ukraine on February 24.

In response, Western capitals including Washington have hit Moscow with unprecedented sanctions and bilateral ties have sunk to new lows. 

Space remained an outlier of cooperation between the two countries.

Russia’s only active female cosmonaut Anna Kikina is expected to travel to the orbital station in early October aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. 

She will become only the fifth professional woman cosmonaut from Russia or the Soviet Union to fly to space, and the first Russian to fly aboard a spacecraft of SpaceX, the company of billionaire Elon Musk.

Russian cosmonauts and Western astronauts have sought to steer clear of the conflict that is raging back on Earth, especially when in orbit together.

A collaboration among the United States, Canada, Japan, the European Space Agency and Russia, the ISS is split into two sections: the US Orbital Segment, and the Russian Orbital Segment.

– Russia leaving ISS –

At present, the ISS depends on a Russian propulsion system to maintain its orbit, about 250 miles (400 kilometres) above sea level, with the US segment responsible for electricity and life support systems.

Tensions in the space field have grown after Washington announced sanctions on Moscow’s aerospace industry — triggering warnings from Russia’s former space chief Dmitry Rogozin, an ardent supporter of the Ukraine war.

Rogozin’s recently appointed successor Yuri Borisov later confirmed Russia’s long-mooted move to leave the ISS after 2024 in favour of creating its own orbital station.

US space agency NASA called the decision an “unfortunate development” that would hinder scientific work on the ISS.

Space analysts say that the construction of a new orbital station could take more than a decade and Russia’s space industry — a point of national pride — would not be able to flourish under heavy sanctions. 

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.

During that era, the Soviet space programme flourished. It boasted a number of accomplishments that included sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier.

Experts say Roscosmos is now a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Russia years-long monopoly on manned flights to the ISS is also gone, to SpaceX, along with millions of dollars in revenue.