Europe

The European Commission is fundamentally overhauling how it makes payments to Tunisia after a Guardian investigation exposed myriad abuses by EU-funded security forces, including widespread sexual violence against migrants.

Officials are drawing up “concrete” conditions to ensure that future European payments to Tunis can go ahead only if human rights have not been violated.

The conditions will affect payments worth tens of millions of pounds over the next three years.

Last year, the Guardian detailed allegations that Tunisia’s national guard had raped hundreds of migrants, beaten children and colluded with people smugglers.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/53195593

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/53195760

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In November, the Dutch political elite overwhelmingly sided with Israeli football fans after they went on a rampage in Amsterdam and provoked violence with local residents. The injustice did not stop at the twisted narrative Dutch politicians chose to adopt.

The clashes gave the ruling Dutch right-wing coalition a convenient excuse to table a host of measures that clearly target the country’s Muslim community. These proposals – which they had likely had up their sleeves for a long time – included stripping dual nationals of their passports and migrants of their temporary residency permit if they are deemed to be “anti-Semitic” – with the caveat that in today’s political climate, almost any statement criticising Israel’s genocide in Gaza is being labelled as anti-Semitic or terrorist.

Other measures include barring so-called anti-Semitic organisations from public funding, labelling them as terrorist entities, and placing them on sanctions lists, banning the Palestinian prisoner support network Samidoun, and criminalising the “glorification of terrorism”.

To anyone who has followed closely what Germany has done over the past 15 months, the rhetoric and actions of the Dutch government may sound familiar. For over a year now, the German government has gone out of its way not only to support Israel, but also to criminalise and scapegoat its Muslim, refugee and immigrant communities. In doing so, it has set a precedent that other European countries are now following.

Climate campaigners have accused Donald Trump of attacking Britain’s energy policies on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, which made record donations to his presidential campaign.

The US president-elect wrote in a social media post on Friday that the British government was gravely mistaken by cracking down on North Sea oil and gas producers – and that the UK should abandon wind generation.

The broadside appeared to be a clear condemnation of the Labour government’s decision to raise taxes for oil and gas producers while granting record subsidies to new wind power projects.

The World Bowls Tour (WBT) had previously justified the exclusion, citing “a significant escalation in related political concerns” following Israeli participation in the Scottish International Open in August. The ban, intended to safeguard the event’s “success and integrity,” drew criticism from Zionist organisations and local MP Rupert Lowe, who slammed it as “mob rule.”

On Tuesday, the WBT issued a revised statement allowing the Israeli players to compete and extended an apology for the earlier decision.

This comes despite pressure from several pro-Palestinian groups, including Palestine Action and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who had urged its supporters to sign a petition calling for the players’ invitations to be rescinded.

In its campaign, the group accused Israel of committing apartheid against Palestinians and called for its players to be banned under the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement – originally signed to exclude South Africa.

Linke (The Left) party expelled with immediate effect Palestinian-German member and activist Ramsis Kilani for his vocal opposition to "Israel’s" ongoing genocide in Gaza. In doing so, it followed in the footsteps of the only other mainstream leftist party in the country, the Greens, in exhibiting the infamous Palestine exception to progressive politics.

Kilani, a self-described Marxist, called his expulsion "a sad commentary on a leftist, internationalist party", left-wing daily junge Welt (jw) reported. The decision made by the Landesschiedskommission, the party’s state-level arbitration body was damaging "to all of us who fight for universal human rights", the activist wrote on Instagram.

Katina Schubert, one of two members from the party’s right-wing who had brought forward the motion to expel Kilani denied that his Palestine solidarity activism had anything to do with the decision, saying that it was based on his "relativisation of Hamas terror, selective criticism of violence against women as a weapon of war and denial of "Israel’s" right to exist", the jw report went on to say.

Slovenia officially requested Israel's exclusion from the Eurovision 2025 song competition, according to Israeli media on Saturday.

Slovenia requested that Israel be excluded because of its ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/50074474

A coalition of prominent human rights organizations has called on the French authorities for a second time to investigate a French-Israeli soldier, who they name only as Yoel O., for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and torture while serving in the Israeli army in its war on Gaza.

The civil complaint was filed today by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Al-Haq, Al Mezan, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and the Ligue des droits de l'Homme (LDH) with the War Crimes Unit of the Paris Tribunal.

The complaint is based on a video shared in March by Yoel O.’s family member, Samuel, a fellow Israeli soldier, showing Palestinian detainees blindfolded, bound, and dressed in white overalls.

The soldier in question, identified by Drop Site News as Yoel Ohnona, can be heard verbally abusing the detainees in French, and boasting about torturing him. He can be heard saying: “Look, he pissed himself. Look, I’ll show you his back, you’re going to laugh. Look, they tortured him to make him talk. Did you see his back? Son of a removed.”

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/49978298

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/49934843

Under the guise of increasing public order, Giorgia Meloni’s Draft Law 1660 is on the verge of criminalizing political dissent in Italy, stripping citizens of their rights and paving the way for unchecked state repression.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/49720047