Tens of thousands of Czech people protested October 28, demanding the current government resign and sanctions against Russia end / credit: Screenshot from video
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Antiwar.com.
Amid ever escalating tensions over the West’s proxy war in Ukraine and the devastating inflation ripping Europe apart, Czech protesters gathered October 28 in Prague demanding the coalition government’s resignation, the Associated Press reports.
The rally saw tens of thousands of citizens condemning their government’s support for Kiev, including the provision of heavy weapons, as well as sanctions on Russia. A smaller, similar rally was held in Brno, the country’s second-largest city.
The demonstrators’ slogan was “Czech Republic First.” As with other recent protests throughout the continent, the left and right are uniting in their opposition to the West’s economic and proxy warfare against Russia.
One speaker said “Russia’s not our enemy, the government of warmongers is the enemy,” according to the AP.
Protesters “repeatedly condemned the government for its support of Ukraine and the European Union sanctions against Russia, opposed Czech membership in the EU, NATO and other international organizations,” the report said.
Leaders in Prague dismissed the protests. Interior Minister Vit Rakusan tweeted “[w]e know who’s our friend and who’s bleeding for our freedom,” adding “we also know who’s our enemy.”
The Washington-led sanctions blitz has cut Europe off from cheap Russian gas upon which it has long relied. In the Czech Republic, energy, housing, and food prices soaring. The inflation rate is 17.8 percent.
Similar protests are occurring in Italy, Germany, and France. “Strikes and protests over the rising cost of living proliferate, ushering in a period of social and labor unrest not seen since at least the 1970s,” the New York Times reported earlier this month.
In September, Prague saw massive demonstrations of 70,000 people, again from the left and right, protesting against NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and rising energy prices caused by the sanctions campaign. Those protesters also called for the resignation of Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s center-right coalition government. “We intensively support the justified fight of the Ukrainian people,” Fiala has declared.
Wow. Absolutely massive protest in Prague, Czech Republic today demanding an end to anti-Russia sanctions. pic.twitter.com/GtjHWdEhl4
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on the “Conflicts of Interest” podcast. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com, Counterpunch, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also appeared on “Liberty Weekly,” “Around the Empire” and “Parallax Views.” You can follow him on Twitter at @FreemansMind96.
Permanent Representative of Cuba to the UN Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta / credit: Twitter/CubaONU
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Kawsachun News.
Several countries have taken to the General Assembly to warn against the suspension mechanism, which was used to oust Russia from the Human Rights Council on April 7, when a resolution was adopted in the General Assembly despite only being supported by a minority of United Nations member states.
93 of 193 members voted for the resolution titled, Suspension of the rights of membership of the Russian Federation in the Human Rights Council.
Of the remaining 100 members: 24 voted against the resolution; 58 abstained; and 18 countries, among them Venezuela, did not vote.
The Russian Federation was elected as a member of the Human Rights Council in 2020 with 158 votes—but it took only 93 votes to remove its membership from the Council.
Cuba was among the vocal critics of the suspension mechanism utilized for April 7’s vote, saying its use sets a precedent whereby a country can be removed with no minimum number of votes required for the approval of a suspension, without the majority of the Assembly, and in a vote where abstentions are treated differently than in other votes.
The following is an excerpt of the statement by the Permanent Representative of Cuba to the UN, Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, in explanation of vote on the draft resolution on the suspension of the rights of the Russian Federation as a member of the Human Rights Council:
“This clause can be activated with the support of only two-thirds of those present and voting; therefore, abstentions do not count and there is not even a minimum number of votes required for the suspension to be approved.To be elected as a member of the Human Rights Council, a country needs to obtain at least the support of a majority of the UN members, i.e. at least 97 votes, in a secret ballot.Thus, the rights of a member of the Council can be suspended by the will of an even smaller number of States than those that decided to elect it and grant it those rights.
The Russian Federation, which was elected as a member of the Human Rights Council in 2020 with 158 votes, could today be suspended with a lower number. This suspension mechanism, which has no parallel in any other UN body, can easily be used selectively. Today it is Russia, but tomorrow it could be any of our countries, particularly nations of the South that do not bow to the interests of domination and firmly defend their independence.”
The representative went on to say:
“Cuba will be consistent with the reservations it made regarding the mechanism of suspension of membership, upon the adoption in 2006 of resolution 60/251 that established the Human Rights Council and resolution 65/265, of 2011, on the suspension of Libya’s rights.
The adoption of the draft resolution we are considering today will set an additional dangerous precedent, particularly for the South. It is not enough for them to impose country-specific resolutions and targeted mandates. Now they intend to take a new step towards the legitimization of selectivity and the creation of a Human Rights Council increasingly at the service of certain countries, as was once the extinct and discredited Human Rights Commission.For the reasons stated above, the Cuban delegation will vote against draft resolution A/ES-11/L.4.”
A transcription of the statement by the Permanent Representative of Cuba, read in the General Assembly, can be read here in Spanish.
Watch the full statement given by Ambassador Pedro Pedroso on our YouTube and Facebook.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega at the ALBA summit in La Habana province, Cuba, in December 2021 / credit: Cuba’s presidential office
Editor’s Note: This article was first published by Multipolarista.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor has admitted U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine intentionally seek to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The United States imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on February 21, and its subsequent military intervention in Ukraine on February 24.
Juan S. González, Biden’s special assistant for Latin America and the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, made it clear that these coercive measures against Russia are also aimed at damaging the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have socialist governments that Washington has long tried to overthrow. All three currently suffer under unilateral U.S. sanctions, which are illegal according to international law.
Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War, referred to these three Latin American nations as the so-called “Troika of Tyranny.”
Biden’s advisor González did an exclusive interview with Voz de América, the Spanish-language arm of the U.S. government’s propaganda outlet Voice of America, on February 25.
“The sanctions against Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments that have economic affiliations with Russia, and that is by design,” González explained.
“So Venezuela is going to start feeling that pressure. Nicaragua is going to feel that pressure, along with Cuba,” he added.
Biden’s Latin America advisor noted that Washington has imposed sanctions on 13 top financial institutions in Russia, including some of the largest in the country. He proudly said that these coercive measures will, “by design,” harm other countries that do a lot of trade with the Eurasian power.
González also used his interview with the U.S.-funded Voz de América to reiterate Washington’s call for regime change against these three socialist governments in Latin America.
His comments were reported by the independent Bolivia-based news website, Kawsachun News.
Biden advisor: U.S. sanctions against Russia are 'designed' to impact Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. pic.twitter.com/Zbqg3mgB2N
Maduro stressed that Washington and NATO bear responsibility for the conflict, and “have generated strong threats against the Russian Federation.”
Venezuela rechaza el agravamiento de la crisis en Ucrania producto del quebrantamiento de los acuerdos de Minsk por parte de la OTAN. Llamamos a la búsqueda de soluciones pacíficas para dirimir las diferencias entre las partes. El diálogo y la no injerencia, son garantías de Paz. pic.twitter.com/Y7N1lwZfpi
Cuba blamed Washington for the crisis as well. Its Foreign Ministry stated, “The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.”
Denouncing Western governments for sending weapons to Ukraine, Cuba declared, “History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.”
The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided. 1/5
The chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, traveled to Nicaragua to meet with top officials from the Sandinista government, and thanked them for their support against NATO expansion and U.S. threats.
🇳🇮🇷🇺 #Nicaragua recibió a una delegación de alto nivel de #Rusia, encabezada por el Presidente de la Duma Estatal de la Cámara Baja, Vyacheslav Volodín. La visita tiene por objetivo fortalecer la cooperación y la solidaridad bilateral. pic.twitter.com/BMY1AjnviF
Tigray People’s Liberation Front fighters arrive June 29, 2021, in Mekele, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region. On left: TPLF Chairman Debretsion Gebremichael. On right: Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed winning the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2019 / photo illustration: Toward Freedom
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by People’s Dispatch.
Young people from Ethiopia’s northernmost State of Tigray, conscripted under threat by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), continue the attack on the Raya Kobo district of the neighboring Amhara State, six days after TPLF resumed the civil war.
In a bid to avoid mass-civilian casualties in urban fighting, the federal troops have withdrawn from Kobo city and taken defensive positions on its outskirts, the Government Communication Service said on Saturday, August 27. While leaving the door open for negotiations under the African Union (AU), the Ethiopian federal government has however stated that it will be “forced to fulfill its legal, moral and historical duty,” if the TPLF does not stop.
The five-month long humanitarian truce in the civil war, which the TPLF started in November 2020 by attacking a federal army base in Tigray’s capital Mekele, effectively collapsed on August 24 after the TPLF launched this attack on Raya Kobo.
Ethiopia’s Tigray region highlighted in red and Ethiopia in beige / credit: Wikipedia
A2—a critical highway between Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and Mekele—passes through this strategic Amharan district in the northeast of North Wollo Zone, sitting on the border with Tigray to the north and Afar to the east.
Civilians in Amhara and Afar have already suffered mass-killings, rapes, hunger and disease with the looting and destruction of food warehouses and medical facilities, when the TPLF had invaded from Tigray mid-last year.
The southward invasion of the TPLF last year had begun soon after the government declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew the federal troops from Tigray on June 29, 2021, to prevent disruption of the agricultural season with fighting. Food insecurity in the region had already reached emergency levels.
Stealing hundreds of UN World Food Program (WFP) trucks that were carrying food aid to Tigray over the following months, the TPLF, using conscripted forces, made rapid advances into Amhara and Afar. By August that year, Raya Kobo had fallen to TPLF. In and around Kobo city alone, the TPLF is reported to have killed over 600 civilians in September.
Advancing further south along the A2, the TPLF had captured several other Amharan cities and reached within 200 kilometers of capital Addis Ababa by the year’s end. To the east, in Afar, the TPLF had pushed south all the way to Chifra, only 50 kilometer (31 miles) from Mille district where it intended to seize the critical highway connecting land-locked Ethiopia’s capital to the port in neighboring Djibouti. However, the use of human waves to attack, which had enabled its rapid advance, had also depleted its forces, having taken heavy casualties by then.
The reversal began in December, when the combined forces of federal troops and regional militias from Afar and Amhara pushed back the TPLF. The TPLF had by then stretched far south from its base in Tigray. All along the way, it had turned the civilian population against itself by its mass-killings, looting and rapes. By the start of this year, the TPLF had been pushed back into Tigray, and encircled there.
However, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government, under enormous international pressure, ordered the troops to stand guard at Tigray’s border and not enter the state. In March 2022, the government unilaterally declared a humanitarian truce to allow for peaceful flow of much needed aid into Tigray. The TPLF reciprocated. Despite occasional clashes, the truce largely held out on the ground for the last five months. During this period, the African Union (AU) High-Representative for the Horn of Africa, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, shuffled back and forth between Addis Ababa and Mekele in preparations for peace negotiations.
Then, on August 2, the U.S. special envoy to the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Ethiopia Tracey Jacobson and the European Union (EU) envoy Annette Weber, along with other Western diplomats, paid a visit to Mekelle and met TPLF leaders. Soon after this visit, which was criticized by the Ethiopian government, the TPLF began mobilization for war.
‘A Proxy of the U.S. and the EU’
Two days before it resumed the war by launching the attack on Raya Kobo on August 24, the TPLF had dismissed AU’s credibility and essentially called for Western intervention in an article published in the African Report on August 22. Originally published under the by-line of TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael and then changed to spokesperson Getachew Reda, this article first condemned the AU for claiming “that there is hope for an imminent diplomatic breakthrough with respect to peace talks.”
After further condemning it for welcoming “the Abiy regime’s embrace of an AU-led peace process” and for calling on “the ‘TPLF’ to do the same,” the article went on to say that “the Abiy regime has made it clear that it is willing to partake only in an AU-led peace initiative… Abiy regime recoils at the possibility of the democratic West taking direct or indirect part in the mediation process.”
Criticizing the federal government’s “persistent blockage” of the U.S. and EU envoys’ visit to Tigray “until recently,” the article argued that it “reflects [the Ethiopian government’s] fear of being compelled to give peace a chance.” By not allowing the U.S. and its allies to mediate the peace process, the “Abiy regime has taken no practical steps to demonstrate a sincere commitment to peace,” it argued.
“Despite the AU Commission’s… ineffectiveness in moving the peace process forward, the rest of the international community remains reluctant to intervene on account of a well-intentioned but misplaced commitment to the idea of “African solutions for African problems,” TPLF said.
The Ethiopian government “has exploited this understandable sensitivity… by disingenuously dismissing non-African proposals for peace as a form of “neocolonialism,” the article argued. It also cautioned “the international community” against what it deemed as “Pan-African subterfuge.”
By calling for the West’s intervention, the TPLF has “finally declared the truth about itself—that it is a protégé of external forces, mainly the U.S. and the EU,” former Ethiopian diplomat and historian Mohamed Hassan told Peoples Dispatch.
With the backing of the United States, the TPLF had ruled Ethiopia as an authoritarian state for nearly three decades from 1991, when all political parties outside the ruling coalition led by itself were banned. There was no space for free press. Ethiopia during this period was disintegrated into a loose federation of ethnically organized regional states, each with militias of their own.
In 2018, mass pro-democracy protests forced the TPLF out of power at the center and reduced it to a regional force, in power in Tigray alone. Abiy Ahmed came to the fore at this time as a progressive prime minister with a vision of inclusive Ethiopian nationalism that transcends ethnic divisions.
Apart from opening up the political space within the country and allowing free-press, Ahmed’s reforms also extended to foreign policy. Signing a peace deal with Eritrea soon after becoming the prime minister, he ended the decades-long conflict with the northern neighbor the TPLF had declared, and continues to regard, as an enemy nation. Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize for this deal.
He also followed it up with a Tripartite Agreement in which Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia declared that the conflict between the three states had been resolved and their relations had entered a new phase based on cooperation.
Such a “resolution of the antagonism between African states and people is not appreciated by the United States and the European Union. They find this is a very bad example because, in the long term, it might weaken and eventually collapse Africa’s NATO, namely the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM),” Hassan argued in an interview with Peoples Dispatch in November last year.
At the time of these developments, the Donald Trump government in the United States, in an aberration from the norm, was disengaging from Africa, and hence ignored these threats to its imperialistic interests. However, with the Biden administration, the old foreign policy establishment returned. While waiting to take the White House after winning the election, Biden’s incoming establishment instigated the TPLF to start this war in November 2020, Hassan accused.
All diplomatic maneuvers of the Biden administration have since aimed at depicting the Ethiopian federal government, which is fighting a defensive war, as the aggressor. The United States has also announced several sanctions against Ethiopia.
Tigrayan Youth Increasingly Unwilling to Fight the TPLF’s War On Ethiopia
Despite external support, the TPLF is increasingly losing authority in Tigray itself, Hassan claims. “There are protests against TPLF everywhere in Tigray—especially in the northern parts. There are now political parties in Tigray that are opposing TPLF’s hegemony,” he said.
In a speech addressing the residents of Mekele in mid-August, barely two weeks after the visit by Western envoys, TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael reflected neither political nor military confidence when he threatened: “Tigray will only be for those who are armed and fighting. Those who are capable of fighting but do not want to fight will not have a place in Tigray. In the future, they will lack something. They will not have equal rights as those who joined the fighting. We are working on regulation.”
Such a threat, coming when the practice of conscription including of child soldiers has already been in place, reflects an increasing refusal of the Tigrayan youth to fight the TPLF’s war.
After interviewing 15,000 surrendered and captured Tigrayan fighters at a camp in Chifra, Afar, in March and April this year, Ann Fitz-Gerald, the director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, wrote in her research paper:
“The only alternatives to recruitment.. were to be fined, ‘see bad come to their family,’ and have their family members, no matter what age, be imprisoned. One female fighter justified her decision to put herself forward based on her desire to protect her brother, who required medical treatment; another respondent who had young children described how the special forces waited for him at his workplace the next day after having expressed his preference not to join the force due to his young children and his ill wife. When he tried to run from the paramilitary members, he was shot at and had no option but to hand himself over and join the force.”
The surrendered fighters reported receiving medical attention and decent treatment after putting down their arms and “confirmed that the [Ethiopian National Defense Force] ENDF soldiers who staff the Awash Basin center eat the same food as the captured/surrendered fighters and in the same dining area.”
Nevertheless, the TPLF managed to force considerable conscriptions, as evident in the waves of youth attacking Raya Kobo. Kobo’s main police station was the center where most of the TPLF fighters interviewed by Fitz-Gerald had surrendered after its attack last year was beaten back.
“The TPLF is not a rational organization. They are using human waves as cannon fodder, sending tens of thousands of Tigrayan youth to death with nothing to be gained. They have no regard for the right to life of the people in Tigray,” Hassan said.
TPLF Depriving Tigrayans of Food
As much as 83 percent of the population in Tigray is food insecure, according to a report by the WFP in January this year. Over 60 percent of pregnant or lactating women in the state are malnourished and most people are dependent on food aid for survival.
Under these grave circumstances, soon after the TPLF resumed war on August 24, “World Food Program warehouse in Mekelle, capital of the Tigray region, was forcibly entered by Tigray forces, who took 12 full fuel trucks and tankers with 570,000 liters of fuel,” said Stephane Dujarric, chief spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“Millions will starve if we do not have fuel to deliver food. This is OUTRAGEOUS and DISGRACEFUL. We demand return of this fuel NOW,” tweeted WFP’s Executive Director David Beasley.
“These storages of food stuff and fuel are supposed to be used to help humanitarian assistance for the peaceful population of Tigray, which is suffering from different man-made and natural calamities,” said Russian Ambassador to Ethiopia Evgeny Terekhin on August 25.
“I cannot imagine anybody in his senses in the international community supporting such deeds… Of course, I understand that certain sides will try to refrain from condemning, but… everybody will understand… what is happening,” he added.
“The U.S. joins the UN in expressing concern about 12 fuel trucks that have been seized by the TPLF,” the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs said in a tweet. “The fuel is intended for the delivery of essential life-saving humanitarian assistance & we condemn any actions that deprive humanitarian assistance from reaching Ethiopians in need.”
