London  — Another overseas, nonpermanent judge at Hong Kong’s top court, 86-year-old Briton Nicholas Phillips, has chosen not to renew his term after it ended on Sept. 30, becoming the fifth foreign judge to step down from the Court of Final Appeal this year.

Phillips told VOA through his chamber, Brick Court Chambers, in an email Monday, “I have declined the invitation to serve for a further 3 year term on the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong for personal and not political reasons.”

According to the chamber, he would not comment further.

The Hong Kong Judiciary thanked him in a statement sent to online media The Witness for his contribution to the work of the Court of Final Appeal and his support for the rule of law in Hong Kong during his tenure over the past 12 years. It added that “the recent changes in court personnel will not affect the operation of the Court of Final Appeal.”

It went on to say despite the departure of the judges this year, the majority of serving and outgoing nonpermanent judges have publicly reaffirmed their continued confidence in Hong Kong’s independent judicial system and the courts’ commitment to upholding the rule of law.

The Court of Final Appeal is formed by the chief justice, three local permanent judges, and 10 nonpermanent judges. The nonpermanent judges include four local judges and six overseas judges.

Anthony Gleeson, an 85-year-old former chief justice from Australia, did not renew his term in March, citing his advanced age. Canadian judge Beverley McLachlin also said she would not renew her term after July because she was 80 and hoped to spend more time with family.

In June, two British judges, Lawrence Collins, 83, and Jonathan Sumption, 75, resigned from the court, saying it was because of the city’s worsening political situation and “profoundly compromised” rule of law.

Rights activists say Hong Kong’s government is using the foreign judges to lend credibility to its crackdown on rights and freedoms since Britain returned the financial hub to China in 1997.

The Washington-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation issued a report in May criticizing overseas judges in Hong Kong for undermining its freedoms and called for them to quit. The foundation said it was shocked that it took Phillips so long to quit despite a series of high-profile cases targeting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy groups, which prompted at least two judges to resign.

Alyssa Fong, public affairs and advocacy manager for CFHK Foundation, said the more foreign judges that resign, the less the Hong Kong government can use them to justify rights abuses.

“I urge Phillips’ fellow common law judges from the U.K. and Australia to immediately follow suit. It is dumbfounding that some judges continue to choose to ruin their reputations and their integrity for the Hong Kong authorities and Chinese Communist Party,” she told VOA.

After Phillips’ departure, six overseas judges remain in the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal — Leonard Hoffmann and David Neuberger from Britain and William Gummow, Robert French, Patrick Keane, and James Allsop from Australia.

Hoffmann, 90, has been a nonpermanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal since 1998, and his term will end in mid-January next year. Gummow’s term will expire next July, while the terms of the other three Australian judges will expire in 2026 or 2027.

At the end of June, Neuberger heard Hong Kong’s case accusing Apple Daily newspaper founder Jimmy Lai of unauthorized assembly and agreed with the controversial verdict. Neuberger came under criticism, then resigned as chairman of an expert panel of the Media Freedom Coalition.

Kevin Yam, a Hong Kong activist-lawyer now based in Australia, pointed out on social media X that Phillips could have left office on the grounds of age, but he chose to use personal reasons, which he notes would invite some speculation.

“When even Phillips does this, the four remaining Australian judges on the HKCFA stick out even more like sore thumbs,” Yam said on X.

The Hong Kong government awarded Phillips the Gold Bauhinia Star in July last year and described him as “a strong supporter of the rule of law in Hong Kong and very much a friend of Hong Kong.”

Beijing agreed to uphold Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” political structure when colonial ruler Britain transferred the city back to China in 1997.

Critics say Beijing has violated that deal by forcing harsh security laws on Hong Kong that have seen independent media shut down or leave the city and dissidents face arrest or flee abroad.

Beijing says Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law was needed to maintain stability after a series of pro-democracy protests in the past decade, but has used it to arrest, jail and try hundreds of activists, stifling Hong Kong’s once vibrant civil society.

In March, Hong Kong lawmakers unanimously and quickly approved their own sweeping national security law known as Basic Law Article 23, strengthening the government’s ability to silence dissent.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Madrid — Among those not present at Tuesday’s inauguration of Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was the Spanish monarch. 

Sheinbaum did not invite King Felipe VI of Spain to the ceremony after the monarch did not respond to a letter demanding that he apologize for Spain’s 16th century defeat of Mexico’s powerful Aztec rulers. 

Today, a diplomatic dispute between Mexico and Spain over the event half a millennium ago is motivated more by domestic political tensions in both countries, analysts said. 

The issue of Spain’s colonial past has also revealed political splits within Spain’s own left-wing coalition government, observers noted. 

In 2019, Mexican President Andres Lopez Obrador, who is known as AMLO and is an ally of Sheinbaum, wrote to King Felipe and Pope Francis to ask them to apologize for the abuses during and after the 1519-1521 conquest. 

Sheinbaum said that when King Felipe failed to respond, he was not invited to the ceremony, Reuters reported. 

The snub to King Felipe prompted the Spanish government to say it would not participate “at any level.” 

During a visit to New York last week for the United Nations General Assembly, Reuters reported that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez ruled out participating in Tuesday’s ceremony in Mexico City. 

“Spain and Mexico are brotherly peoples. We cannot therefore accept being excluded like this,” he said. 

“That’s why we have made it known to the Mexican government that there will be no diplomatic representative from the Spanish government, as a sign of protest.” 

Historic wounds 

Historians agree that Spain’s conquest of Mexico was marked by violence. 

However, accounts from that time, including The True History of the Conquest of Mexico by Captain Bernal Diaz del Castillo, counter claims of cruelty while also being critical of the campaign by Hernan Cortes. 

Spain’s government has rejected Mexico’s demand for an apology for the conquest, saying the events of the past cannot be judged by the standards of today. 

Observers suggest that Sheinbaum’s decision not to invite the Spanish king was motivated by a current of anti-Spanish thought she shares with AMLO. 

Commentators said both Mexican leaders have sought to appropriate a version of history which blames the Spanish conquest for ills which afflict modern Mexico.  

Jos Maria Ortega, a Mexico-based analyst who has co-written The Dispute of the Past: Spain, Mexico, and the Black Legend, said: “AMLO and Sheinbaum share the idyllic view that Mexico had existed for thousands of years when this was not the case. 

Mexico as it exists today won independence from Spain in 1821 after a war that spanned 11 years. 

“AMLO will blame corruption, which is a problem for Mexico, on the time of conquest. This plays well with some Mexicans who are anti-Spanish but not those who are pro-Spanish,” Ortega told VOA. 

Analysts suggest Mexico’s first female president was interested in provoking a diplomatic row with Spain for domestic political gain. 

Tomas Perez Vejo, a professor at the National School for Anthropology and History in Mexico, said Sheinbaum sought to exploit anti-Spanish feelings among supporters. 

“Sheinbaum is a supporter of what is known in America as woke, or the politically correct, and defends the Indigenous people. There is also a populist element in which Spain is seen as the enemy by [Mexican] nationalists,” he told VOA. 

“Relations between Mexico and Spain have been complicated since AMLO came to power in 2018. But this relationship is too important in terms of trade, tourism, which have carried on as if nothing happened despite the political ill feelings,” he said. “This latest row is not going to cause lasting damage.” 

European roots 

Both Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum are descendants of more recent immigrants from Europe. AMLO’s maternal grandfather was born in Spain and Sheinbaum’s grandparents were Jews from Lithuania and Bulgaria. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, the dispute has revealed divisions within Spain’s minority coalition government. 

The Socialist-led government will not attend the inauguration but representatives of Sumar, the far-left Spanish party, which is the junior partner in Spain’s coalition, have accepted an invitation to travel to Mexico. 

“Sumar is more about examining the context of history. But the Socialists do not want to do that. The polarization between parties is seen over the colonization of America,” Oriol Bartomeus, a professor of politics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, told VOA. 

Some historians argue that Mexico, for three centuries known as New Spain, was not formally a colony, but an overseas territory of Spain and that its inhabitants held full rights as subjects of the Spanish crown.  

That argument has not dampened the drive by some Spanish politicians to call for atonement for the nation’s imperial past. 

Ernest Urtasun, the minister of culture who is a member of Sumar, this year announced museums would review their collections to “overcome a colonial framework,” El Pais reported. Mexico and other nations formerly dominated by Spain have demanded the return of pre-Hispanic artifacts currently owned by museums in Europe. 

Ana Maria Carmona, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Seville, noted that divisions over the conquest of Mexico between the Socialists and Sumar were the latest in a series of tensions in the government. 

The two parties fell out over laws on sexual protection, animal rights and housing, she said.
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London — As the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel approaches, many European countries are strengthening their calls for Israel to end its assault on Hamas targets in Gaza amid growing horror at the civilian death toll.  

The militant attack killed 1,200 people, including Israelis and people of several other nationalities. Around 250 people were taken hostage by Hamas. The assault prompted outrage from Israel’s allies in Europe.

“This Hamas attack is terrible, and it is barbaric. In these dark hours for the Jewish state, we … stand firmly by Israel’s side,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in the hours following the attack.

Then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak echoed those words of support.

“I want to express my absolute solidarity for the people of Israel. Now is not a time for equivocation, and I’m unequivocal,” Sunak said on the day following the attack. Israel’s Western allies, most prominently the United States, said the country had the right to defend itself.

Israel responded with waves of airstrikes on Hamas targets and a ground invasion of Gaza. Israel officials defended targeting schools and hospitals in Gaza, saying Hamas fighters were using them as bases and to store weapons.  

‘Miscalculation’

But soon, Western concern grew over the mounting civilian death toll, which reached 22,000 by the end of 2023, and has since climbed to over 41,000.

“I think there was a miscalculation on behalf of most Western governments — that they went all in in support for Israel early on, making it very, very difficult to find some sort of off-ramp to also tell Israel when it was wrong, when it acted excessively,” said Andreas Krieg, a Middle East analyst at Kings College London.

“As this became clearer in late 2023 and early 2024, most Western governments found it very hard to backtrack from the initial unequivocal support that they gave to Israel.”

There was also global concern over the lack of aid reaching Gaza amid the devastation.

South Africa brought an ongoing case of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, supported, among others, by Spain, Ireland and Belgium. An interim ruling by the court ordered Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Israel insisted it operates according to international law.

Negotiations to secure a truce, brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, have so far failed.  

“Europeans don’t have the leverage that the U.S. has to actually do anything about it apart from, obviously, potentially a diplomatic statement or trying to sponsor diplomatic efforts. But if there was no coercion exercised on the Netanyahu government, nothing was going to change,” Krieg said.

In Britain, a change of government in July brought a change of approach to Israel.  Newly elected Labour leader Keir Starmer dropped the previous government’s plan to challenge an arrest warrant requested by the International Criminal Court against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. In September, Britain announced it was suspending some arms sales to Israel.  

‘No contest’

Bronwen Maddox, director of London-based Chatham House, said the changing British approach was felt in Israel.

“There’s no question that some of these moves, for example, Britain taking more steps to express its disapproval of aspects of what Israel is doing — those are stinging in Israel. I heard a lot — I was there just really just days ago — a lot of people saying, ‘Well, if it’s a competition between security and international support, we’ll take security anytime. There’s no contest,’” Maddox told Agence France-Presse.

Germany, Israel’s second-biggest arms supplier after the United States, has been among the strongest of Israel’s allies in Europe.

“I would say the messages coming out of Germany up till now are probably the most pro-Israel of any major country in the world, even in comparison to the United States,” Krieg told VOA.

However, Berlin has also suspended several arms exports licenses to Israel in recent months.

“That’s likely not because there’s a change of policy,” Krieg said. “I think the German government is still unequivocally standing with Israel. But there is a concern over legal action being taken against the German government in Germany by lawyers who are saying Germany is no longer compliant with international law, by being complicit in this war,” he added.

After facing missile attacks from Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen, Israel has widened its military operations in recent days, launching air strikes against both militant groups and a limited ground invasion across the Lebanese border. The United Nations says over 1 million people in Lebanon have been forced to flee the fighting.

European nations offered Israel unequivocal support in the wake of October 7. After a year of brutal, escalating conflict, most are demanding an end to the fighting.
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Brussels — The new head of NATO vowed on Tuesday to help shore up Western support for war-ravaged Ukraine and expressed confidence that he can work with whoever is elected president of the United States, the alliance’s most powerful member, in November.

“There can be no lasting security in Europe without a strong, independent Ukraine,” new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in his first speech on taking office, and he affirmed a commitment made by the organization’s leaders in 2008 that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces are making advances in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s army has a shaky hold on part of the Kursk region in Russia, which has provided a temporary morale boost, but as casualties mount it remains outmanned and outgunned.

“The cost of supporting Ukraine is far, far lower than the cost we would face if we allow Putin to get his way,” Rutte told reporters, a few hours after his predecessor Jens Stoltenberg handed the reins to him, along with a Viking gavel with which to chair future meetings.

But Ukraine’s NATO membership remains a distant prospect. Several member countries, led by the U.S. and Germany, believe that Ukraine should not join while it’s fighting a war. Rutte declined to speculate about what must happen before it can stand among NATO’s ranks.

Rutte did single out China, and particularly Beijing’s support for Putin. “China has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war in Ukraine. China cannot continue to fuel the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War without this impacting its interests and reputation,” he said.

NATO’s new top civilian official also underlined the importance of keeping the trans-Atlantic bond between the United States, Canada and Europe strong, with U.S. elections just a month away.

Surveys suggest the election will be a close race. It could see the return of Donald Trump, whose bluster during his last term of office about low defense spending among European allies and Canada undermined the trust of NATO member countries.

It became an existential challenge, as smaller members feared that the U.S. under Trump would renege on NATO’s security pledge that all countries must come to the rescue of any ally in trouble, the foundation stone the alliance is built on.

But Rutte said: “I know both candidates very well.” He praised Trump for pushing NATO allies to spend more and for toughening their approach toward China. He also hailed the “fantastic record” of Vice President Kamala Harris and described her as “a highly respected leader.”

“I will be able to work with both. Whatever is the outcome of the election,” Rutte said. When pressed about Trump’s commitment to the other allies, he deflected, saying only that both candidates “understand that, in the end, the trans-Atlantic relationship is crucial, not just for Europe.”

Asked whether the Netherlands, which has only just reached NATO’s spending of 2% of gross domestic product on its defense budget, has set a good example to other allies, Rutte shook his head and said “No. We should have done this earlier.”

Earlier, Stoltenberg had welcomed Rutte to NATO headquarters in Brussels for the change of leadership.

The two men, who first sat together at NATO’s table 14 years ago as the leaders of Norway and the Netherlands, greeted each other warmly, before laying a wreath to fallen military personnel, surrounded by the flags of the 32 member countries.

“Mark has the perfect background to become a great secretary general,” a visibly emotional Stoltenberg said as he ended a decade in office.

“He has served as prime minister for 14 years and led four different coalition governments, so therefore he knows how to make compromises, create consensus, and these are skills which are very much valued here at NATO,” Stoltenberg said.

Rutte said that he “cannot wait to get to work.” Among his other priorities, he said, are to increase defense spending and strengthen partnerships that the alliance has established with other countries around the world, notably in Asia and the Middle East.

After hundreds of NATO staffers applauded the two men as they moved inside to the great hall where North Atlantic Council meetings are held at the level of ambassadors, ministers or leaders, Stoltenberg helped his successor to get started by presenting him with a Viking gavel to use when chairing meetings.

Stoltenberg, NATO’s 13th secretary-general, took over in 2014, the year that “little green men” from Russia infiltrated Ukraine. Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula, sparking a defense spending buildup at the world’s biggest security alliance that gathered pace over his term.

His tenure was surpassed only by Dutch diplomat Joseph Luns, who spent 12 years in charge of NATO.

NATO secretaries-general run the HQ, drive the alliance’s working agenda and speak on behalf of the 32-nation organization with one unifying voice. Continuity is usually the key word when they take up office.
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Berlin — A Chinese woman has been arrested in the German city of Leipzig on suspicion of foreign agent activities and passing on information regarding arms deliveries, the prosecutor general said in a statement on Tuesday. 

The suspect, named only as Yaqi X, is accused of passing on information obtained while working for a logistics company at Leipzig/Halle airport to a member of the Chinese secret service, who is being prosecuted separately, the statement said. 

The second Chinese national, named as Jian G, was working as an aide to Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament for the far-right Alternative for Germany, when he was arrested this year on suspicion of “especially severe” espionage on behalf of Beijing. 

The information passed along by Yaqi X in 2023 and 2024 included flight, cargo and passenger data as well as details on the transportation of military equipment and people with ties to a German arms company, the prosecutor general said.  

The Chinese Embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. 

Anxiety about alleged Chinese spying has risen across Western Europe recently. Beijing has denied the accusations, saying these stem from a “Cold War mindset” and are designed to poison the atmosphere for cooperation between China and Europe. 

Tensions have also been simmering between Berlin and Beijing over the past year after Chancellor Olaf Scholz unveiled a strategy to de-risk Germany’s economic relationship with China, calling Beijing a “partner, competitor and systemic rival.”  

 
…

…

moscow — A Russian court Monday gave a life sentence to a man convicted in a car bombing that seriously wounded nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin.

Prosecutors said the May 2023 bombing in the Nizhny Novogorod region was conducted at the direction of Ukraine’s security services. Prilepin was seriously injured, and his driver died in the bombing.

The convicted defendant, Alexander Permyakov, is from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and once fought with the Russian-backed separatists there, news reports said. 

Prilepin was known for his vehement defense of both the Russia-backed eastern Ukraine rebels who rose up in 2014, and of Russia’s fighting in Ukraine that began in February 2022.

Since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, two prominent nationalist figures have been killed. Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in an August 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a well-known military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statue given to him at a party in St. Petersburg exploded. Russian political activist Darya Trepova was convicted in the case and sentenced to 27 years behind bars. She said she was following orders from a contact in Ukraine. 
…

Washington — On a quiet May morning, two months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the homepage of Kremlin-owned news website Lenta.ru was flooded with anti-war and anti-government articles. The articles disappeared from the webpage within the hour, but because of the effort of internet archivists, they can still be viewed separately today. 

This is one of many examples of the Russian government’s attacks on free media, one that activists and archivists hope to counter. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, almost all independent media has been banned or blocked, and journalists are frequently imprisoned over trumped-up charges, according to Reporters Without Borders.

To preserve over two decades of independent Russian journalism, exiled journalists and activists teamed up with PEN’s Freedom to Write Center to create the Russian Independent Media Archive, or RIMA.

“There is no freedom to write if there is no freedom to read,” Liesl Gerntholtz, director of PEN’s Freedom to Write Center, told VOA.

Currently, the website houses over 6 million documents from 98 outlets, starting from the year 2000 — when Russian President Vladmir Putin first came to power.

Co-founders Anna Nemzer, Ilia Veniavkin and Serob Khachatryan began the project around the time of the Ukraine invasion. The restrictive anti-war censorship laws that followed threatened press freedom and journalist safety in Russia, Nemzer told VOA.

More than 1,500 journalists fled the country after the invasion and 22 were imprisoned at the end of last year, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“I remember thinking: how can we help these people?” Nemzer told VOA. “We couldn’t help them relocate; we couldn’t help them avoid prison if they stayed in Russia, but we thought the least we could do was save archives of their work.”

At the time of the invasion, Nemzer was on a business trip outside of her home in Moscow, and she remains exiled today.

Nemzer hopes the archive will protect work that is or might be “deliberately erased” by the government.

The main audience for the archive is journalists, academics and researchers who may not have access to relevant documents when they write about Russia. Gerntholtz of PEN sees this archive as the “first draft of history,” she told VOA.

But Nemzer also believes she is doing a service for the archived independent journalists, both in and outside Russia, by preserving their work.

PEN’s Freedom to Write Center agreed to help develop the project because of these shared views — the organization sees media archiving as a natural extension of protecting the reporters themselves, Gerntholtz told VOA.

Gerntholtz added that the organization is concerned about Russia’s “crackdown on free expression” that has only intensified after 2022.

“Free expression in Russia has been at risk for a really long time,” Gerntholtz told VOA. “We’ve seen more writers and artists who’ve been jailed for anti-war expression. We’ve seen civilian and professional journalists jailed for their activism journalism.”

She cited the April 2024 arrests of journalists Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin as an example of the Russian government silencing anti-corruption reporting. They were arrested on extremism charges for their work for late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Even before the invasion, a “huge attack” on journalists was already underway, Nemzer told VOA. She saw Russia’s government declare many independent media outlets as undesirable organizations and prosecute her peer journalists under foreign agent charges.

The Kremlin passed the undesirable-organization law in 2015, giving the government the power to shut down foreign and international organizations. However, critics say this law is a way to target government-critical news outlets. More than 175 organizations have been declared undesirable. 

Because of these crackdowns, Nemzer faced many hurdles in archiving decades of material. Mastering the technology to construct the archive to the scale it is today was especially challenging, and it is still a work in progress, she told VOA.

The co-founders collaborated with the world’s largest internet archive, the Wayback Machine, to use the technology to create a special archived collection.

The Wayback Machine archives over a billion URLs a day, according to its director, Mark Graham. RIMA has been able to access their collection efforts to preserve not just written articles, but also video and audio journalism.

“Material published on the web is not permanent or persistent,” Graham told VOA. “The reliability of the access to that information going into the future is uncertain.”

Among the millions of stories archived in RIMA, over 50,000 come from exiled independent news source The Moscow Times.

Since the Ukraine invasion, The Moscow Times and its staff have “faced nothing but challenges,” Alexander Gubsky, longtime publisher of the Times, told VOA. The staff had to relocate from Russia to Amsterdam within two weeks because of the Russian government’s hostile policies toward journalists, according to Gubsky.

“They want to shut us up,” Gubsky said. “We tell the truth, and they cannot allow the truth.”

Preserving the work of targeted individuals and outlets is one of the main reasons why Nemzer of RIMA helped create the archive, she told VOA.

However, Gubsky told VOA that the Times has an archive of their own work on their website, and prefers that curious readers turn their attention there.

He said that while RIMA is an “interesting project,” the Times owns the copyright for all their own articles, and their primary source of income is from licensing and syndication.

Graham of the Wayback Machine told VOA that the organization responds to legitimate requests from rights holders regarding the distribution of their material. He added that archiving public articles falls under fair use.

“RIMA is set up to facilitate a kind of exploration in a way that you simply can’t do if all you have is access to a few individual websites,” Graham said.

As RIMA continues to expand, Nemzer already has her sights set on the future. She hopes to take advantage of evolving artificial intelligence to help sort the archive.

Nemzer also aims to create similar projects for other countries with leadership that suppresses media and has already talked to journalists from Belarus, Afghanistan and Iran. 

“Writers play a particular role in challenging autocracy, in exposing human rights abuses and speaking truth to power,” Gerntholtz said. “And journalists are crucial to challenging powerful people and governments.” 
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Budapest — Ukraine’s new foreign minister held a “frank” conversation with his Hungarian counterpart on “difficult issues” on Monday, against a backdrop of a frosty relationship between the neighboring countries.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been the only EU leader to maintain close ties with the Kremlin since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

He has repeatedly stalled efforts to punish Moscow and to aid war-torn Ukraine in its fight against the invading forces.

Budapest refuses to approve the release of more than $7.25 billion to Kyiv, complaining about discriminatory measures against Hungarian companies.

“We had a very frank one-on-one conversation discussing difficult issues, among other things,” Andriy Sybiga told reporters after a meeting with Hungary’s top diplomat, Peter Szijjarto, in Budapest.

The negotiations between the two ministers “lasted about an hour, twice as long as planned,” according to a statement from the Ukrainian ministry.

Speaking at a press conference, Sybiga welcomed Orban’s first visit to Kyiv at the beginning of July and called for “the development of bilateral relations,” saying he could “count on Budapest’s support” in its EU integration process.

“Our meeting today has convinced me that … there is a mutual and common will to develop neighborly relations,” Szijjarto added.

But Hungary’s foreign minister also urged Kyiv to refrain from “unilateral, sudden steps” that could “pose a challenge” to the central European country’s energy supply.

In July, Budapest accused Kyiv of threatening its energy security by barring Russian energy giant Lukoil from using the Ukrainian section of the Druzhba pipeline.

Earlier this month, Hungarian energy company MOL made a deal guaranteeing the supply of Russian oil.

The two ministers also agreed to accelerate efforts by an intergovernmental working group set up to address a long-running feud over minority rights in Transcarpathia, a western Ukrainian region home to an ethnic Hungarian community. 
…

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Paris — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen denied violating any rules as she and her National Rally party and two dozen others went on trial on Monday, accused of embezzling European Parliament funds, in a case that has the potential to derail her political ambitions.

Arriving at the court in Paris, Le Pen said she remained confident as “we have not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament” and vowed to present the judges with “extremely serious and extremely solid arguments.”

Le Pen and other National Rally members casually greeted each other before sitting down in the first three rows of the packed courtroom.

The nine-week trial will be closely watched by Le Pen’s political rivals as she is a strong contender in the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron when the next presidential election takes place in 2027.

It comes as a new government dominated by centrists and conservatives just came into office in the wake of June-July legislative elections. Some observers expect the trial could prevent National Rally lawmakers, including Le Pen herself, from fully playing their opposition role in Parliament as they would be busy focusing on the party’s defense.

Since stepping down as party leader three years ago, Le Pen has sought to position herself as a mainstream candidate capable of appealing to a broader electorate. Her efforts have paid off, with the party making significant gains in recent elections at both the European and national levels. But a guilty verdict could seriously undermine her bid to take the Elysee.

The National Rally and 27 of its top officials are accused of having used money destined for EU parliamentary aides to pay staff who instead did political work for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. The National Rally was called National Front at the time.

Le Pen, whose party has softened its anti-EU stance in recent years, denies wrongdoing and claims the case is politically driven.

“Parliamentary assistants do not work for the Parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition,” she previously said. “You ask me if I can define the tasks I assigned to my assistants; it depends on each person’s skills. Some wrote speeches for me, and some handled logistics and coordination.”

If found guilty, Le Pen and her co-defendants could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to 1 million euros ($1.1 million) each. Additional penalties, such as the loss of civil rights or ineligibility to run for office, could also be imposed, a scenario that could hamper, or even destroy, Le Pen’s goal to mount another presidential bid after Macron’s term ends. Le Pen was runner-up to Macron in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections.

She served as party president from 2011 to 2021 and now heads the group of RN lawmakers at the French National Assembly.

Despite her denial, her party has already paid back 1 million to the European Parliament, the Parliament’s lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said. Of that amount, 330,000 euros were directly linked to Marine Le Pen’s alleged misuse of funds.

A longstanding controversy

The legal proceedings stem from a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European Parliament, to French authorities about possible fraudulent use of European funds by members of the National Front.

Schulz also referred the case to the European Anti-Fraud Office, which launched a separate probe into the matter.

The European Parliament’s suspicions were further heightened when a 2015 organizational chart showed that 16 European lawmakers and 20 parliamentary assistants held official positions within the party — roles unrelated to their supposed duties as EU parliamentary staff.

A subsequent investigation found that some assistants were contractually linked to different MEPs than the ones they were actually working for, suggesting a scheme to divert European funds to pay party employees in France.

Misuse of public funds alleged

Investigating judges concluded that Le Pen, as party leader, orchestrated the allocation of parliamentary assistance budgets and instructed MEPs to hire individuals holding party positions. These individuals were presented as EU parliamentary assistants, but in reality, were allegedly working for the National Rally in various capacities.

The European Parliament’s legal team is seeking 2.7 million euros in compensation for financial and reputational damages. This figure corresponds to the 3.7 million euros allegedly defrauded through the scheme, minus the 1 million euros already paid back.

During the 2014 European elections, the National Front won a record 24 MEP seats, finishing first with 24.8% of the vote, ahead of the center-right and the Socialists. This surge resulted in a substantial financial windfall for the party, which faced severe financial problems at the time.

An audit of the party’s accounts between 2013 and 2016 revealed that it was running a deficit of 9.1 million euros by the end of 2016. Yet, the party still had a cash balance of 1.7 million euros and had lent 1 million euros to Le Pen’s 2017 presidential campaign, while also holding 87,000 euros in loans to Cotelec, its funding association.

At the time, the party was also indebted to a Russian bank for 9.4 million euros, a loan taken out in 2014 for 6 million euros.

Suspected systemic practice

The investigation uncovered many irregularities involving prominent party members.

Thierry Légier, the long-time bodyguard of Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, was listed as his parliamentary assistant. But his resume did not reference this role, and he made no mention of it in his 2012 autobiography. Légier admitted during the investigation that he was not interviewed and signed his employment contract without fully understanding his official role.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the National Front from 1972 to 2011, will not appear in court alongside his former colleagues due to health concerns. Now 96, he was deemed unfit to testify by a court in June. He has 11 prior convictions, including for violence against a public official and hate speech.

He has denied wrongdoing during his time as party leader, stating that the “pool” of assistants was common knowledge. “I did not choose which assistants were assigned to me. That was decided by Marine Le Pen and others. I only signed the contracts,” he said.

After hearing a judge read the charges in court on Monday afternoon, Le Pen said she will “answer all the questions the court may ask.”
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