Twenty-two people have died from measles in Samoa.
All the deaths, except one, were of children younger than five years old, according to Reuters.
The South Pacific island has declared a state of emergency, with nearly 2,000 cases of measles reported.
The government has initiated a mass mandatory vaccination program.
Samoa said Saturday that 153 cases had been reported in the last 24 hours.
One mother who lost her two-year-old son to the disease told an Australian Broadcasting Company crew that her three oldest sons had been inoculated against the disease, but she was too poor to afford to have her two year old inoculated.
As climate change ramps up weather extremes, good forecasts are increasingly important. A new system makes weather predictions anywhere in the world with the same high resolution that previously was only available in wealthy countries. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
“What do you want government to do for your life?” That’s the question Peggy Huang asks prospective voters at a Starbucks in Yorba Linda, California. Huang is a Republican running against first-term U.S. Representative Katie Porter, who last year became the first Democrat ever elected in California’s conservative 45th district.
Since then, Porter has gained national recognition through her sharp questioning of CEOs and government officials during congressional hearings in Washington.
“She’s more national,” admits Huang, but says in California, “we know politics and in all things, politics is local.”
Republican Challenger Greg Raths meets with his Campaign Manager Blake Allen to plan door-to-door canvassing in California’s 45th District.
Greg Raths, a retired United States Marine Corps fighter pilot, is another Republican candidate running against Porter. He says Porter doesn’t “fit the mold” of the area. Raths, the mayor of the largest city in the district, Mission Viejo City, contends it’s a “very conservative” district where “all 10 cities are run by Republican mayors and councils.”
Reelection realities
For a freshman member of the House of Representatives, it can be a shock having to concentrate on reelection before the first year ends. Already six Republicans and one Democrat have filed election papers to run against her, but one of those Republicans has already dropped out because of lack of funding.
According to third-quarter reports from the Federal Election Commission, Porter leads the pack with $2,461,688 raised for her campaign, three times that of her closest competitor.
California Rep. Katie Porter is facing a number of challengers. According to third-quarter reports from the Federal Election Commission, Porter leads the pack with $2,461,688 raised for her campaign.
Impeachment vs conservative area
During her first year, Porter has proved to be a formidable force. In her first interview with VOA at the beginning of this year, she said she wanted to champion “issues of economic opportunity for working families, and for working parents, including thinking about how people can afford homes, build wealth, save for college, and save for retirement.”
As she arrived in Congress and was named to the House Financial Services Committee, she carved a niche for herself through tough, blunt questioning, often playing the role of a low- to middle-income American to highlight the witnesses’ inattention to regular citizens. This earned her kudos from the House Democratic leadership and an aspect of fame through regular appearances on cable TV news programs.
Porter connected to her constituents by regularly conducting town halls during the first half of the year, but has held them less frequently since then. She told VOA it is a challenge to find “venues that are large enough to accommodate everybody who would like to attend.”
WATCH: Rep. Porter Reflects on Successes, Failures of First Year
Rep. Porter Reflects on Successes, Failures of First Year video player.
In June, Porter became the first freshman House member from California to announce her support of an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. Her competitors accused her of sowing seeds of divisiveness with her Twitter announcement. They predict it will cost her the election.
Ted Denney owns Synergistic Research, a niche research and technology company that employs 30 and has annual sales of $10 million. He says if Porter wins the district again in 2020, he will move his audio business elsewhere, part because of her support of impeachment.
“I don’t want this wall of resistance against the president,” Denney says. “I support his policies. Is he a perfect guy? No, but I don’t care. He’s effective.”
In a videotaped message to constituents, Porter acknowledged that launching an impeachment inquiry would be divisive but said she believes it is necessary.
“I know deeply what this means for our democracy,” she said. “But when faced with a crisis of this magnitude, I cannot with a clean conscience ignore my duty to defend the [U.S.] Constitution.”
Rep. Katie Porter with her guest for the State of the Union speech, constituent Helen Nguyen. Nguyen’s husband Michael — a small businessman in Porter’s district — has been held by the Vietnamese government since June 2018. (Carolyn Presutti / VOA)
Courting the young vote
Heidi Hu is asking about a clipboard. She’s sitting at an iron table outside a coffee shop in Santa Ana, California, learning about voter registration. She is being trained by Field Team 6, a nationwide group of volunteers, registering new voters for Democrats in 2020.
Hu drove an hour south from Los Angeles to sign up college students at the University of California at Irvine. Young voters helped propel Porter to victory in 2018. State figures show voters ages 18 to 24 rose by nearly 20% more than the previous midterm election in 2014.
Hu says the key to Porter’s reelection will be again turning out large numbers of college students.
“Their values are more aligned with the Orange County of the future,” Hu said.
Porter prevailed in Orange County, an historically conservative portion of the 45th Congressional District, but Hu knows that Porter is vulnerable in that area and must build up her Democratic support among college students to offset Republican voters.
One of those students is Bryan Pham who will be voting for the first time in 2020. He says even though his family is conservative, “I have certain beliefs of my own and I identify with the Democratic party.”
Bills sponsored
In less than a year, Porter, a former law professor, has sponsored 23 bills in the House. In last year’s congressional session, the average for a first-year representative was 14 and the most introduced was 31, so Porter is well ahead of the curve.
One of Porter’s bills has passed the House but has yet to be introduced in the Senate. The “Help America Run Act” would give candidates more freedom to use campaign funds for child care, health care premiums and elder care. Porter, a single mother of three children younger than 12, said the bill would have helped her when she was a candidate.
“The goal here is to make our Congress more diverse and to make it possible for any American who’s qualified and wants to serve in the U.S. Congress to have the opportunity to do that,” she said.
Porter report card
A number of special interest groups — conservative and liberal — have sharply criticized Katie Porter’s voting record.
For first-year representatives, these are the first grades published during their two-year tenure. For Porter, the first two grades run along party lines. The conservative Heritage Action for America, typically aligned with Republicans, rates members’ votes on key conservative legislation. It gives Porter a zero.
Freedom Works, another conservative group, gives her a score of 8 out of 100, based on her votes on issues dealing with economic freedom.
The surprise was an “F” given by the group Progressive Punch, based on a formula that compares the voting record of a control group of 33 dominant progressive members of Congress with the representative’s voting record.
Most other groups will wait to publish grades at the end of the year.
Competitors will typically use the voting record and bills sponsored in their challenge to the incumbent. The incumbent uses the voting record to show how they are supporting the constituent needs in the district.
Reflecting on a hectic first year in Congress, Porter said, “I feel like I’m getting my sea legs under me … there is a learning curve to this job. And there should be. This is a big task [legislating] that the American people have trusted us with.”
The California primary to determine Katie Porter’s Republican challenger is in early March with the general election in November 2020.
An advocacy group says internet connectivity is rapidly being restored in Iran after a weeklong government-imposed shutdown in response to widespread protests.
The group NetBlocks said Saturday that connectivity had suddenly reached 60% Saturday afternoon.
It said on Twitter: “Internet access is being restored in (hash)Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests.”
Confirmed: Internet access is being restored in #Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests; real-time network data show national connectivity now up to 64% of normal levels as of shutdown hour 163 ??#IranProtests#Internet4Iran
There were reports that internet service remained spotty in the capital, Tehran, though others around the country began reporting they could again access it.
The order comes a week after the Nov. 15 gasoline price hike, which sparked demonstrations that rapidly turned violent, seeing gas stations, banks and stores burned to the ground.
Amnesty International said it believes the unrest and the crackdown killed at least 106 people. Iran disputes that figure without offering its own. A U.N. office earlier said it feared the unrest may have killed “a significant number of people.”
When he left the house last week, Joseph, a 19-year-old Hong Kong college student, told his parents he was going to hang out with friends. That was only partly true.
In reality, Joseph was headed for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he and a group of hundreds of other young people barricaded themselves on campus, blocked a major highway, and stockpiled homemade weapons in preparation to battle police.
Night after night last week, the urban campus become a battlefield, as police rained tear gas and rubber bullets on students, who responded with Molotov cocktails, bricks, and whatever else they could find.
Though Hong Kong has seen five months of protests, this kind of violence is new. The pro-democracy movement that had been marked by massive street rallies now risks being overtaken by a smaller group of hardcore students who have shown they are willing to go beyond peaceful demonstrations and engage in prolonged battles with police in their push for democratic reforms.
“I would definitely admit that we’re using a certain level of violence,” says Joseph, who spoke via an encrypted messaging app. “But in order to protect the innocent protesters and create pressure on the government, a certain level of violence and power to fight back is necessary.”
In the minds of frontline protesters like Joseph, the violence is a last-ditch effort to preserve what is left of Hong Kong’s freedoms before the semi-autonomous territory is fully taken over by China in 2047. Hong Kong authorities accuse the protesters of engaging in violence that is incompatible with democracy.
Protesters walk inside Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in Hong Kong, Nov. 23, 2019.
VOA spoke with about 10 young protesters, all of whom were at Polytechnic University over the past week. Though the standoff is largely over, a couple dozen holdouts remain on campus. Most have either surrendered to police or escaped. Some of the protesters face possible riot-related charges that could land them in jail for 10 years. VOA has used pseudonyms to protect their identity.
‘We tried peaceful demonstrations’
“We tried peaceful demonstrations, but the government didn’t listen,” says Crystal, a Polytechnic student protester who has been on the run since leaving campus. She says she hasn’t been able to sleep a full night in more than a week.
“I’m scared, really scared,” she says.
Crystal wants to someday be an elementary school teacher, but for now she considers herself a revolutionary.
“Radical, I think, is a positive word for me, for us,” she says. “And most revolutions have violence.”
At this point, she’s unsure of whether to stay in Hong Kong and fight, or seek political asylum in another country.
“This is my place. This is my home. I need to protect it,” she says. “And I know that in 2047, I will become an old woman. But what about the next generation? And the next generation? What they will become? Brainwashed? Everything fake, like China?”
Debris and graffiti are seen inside the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus, in Hong Kong, Nov. 22, 2019.
Outmatched
Most of the frontline students that fought at Polytechnic are in their teens or twenties. Some are new protesters. Others are veterans of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, a student-led protest that unsuccessfully pushed for universal suffrage.
When it comes to brute strength, the students are outmatched, not only by the weapons of the Hong Kong police, but even more so by those of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest military. The PLA has thousands of troops in Hong Kong and many more just across the border, though they have not yet left their barracks to confront the protesters.
“We deeply understand we are not able to win in hand to hand fighting,” says Joseph. “But still, we shouldn’t be silent in the face of injustices.”
That is a common sentiment among frontline protesters, many of whom resent local and mainland Chinese media that accuse them of being naive children who are being pushed to the frontline by irresponsible adults. In reality, many of the more extreme protesters seem frequently self-aware, expressing a potentially dangerous mix of fatalism and determination.
In other words: they know they’ll likely lose, but they’re willing to fight anyway.
“We both know that it’s impossible to win, but only persistence can bring hope. If we never try, we know how this ends. We can’t just say no no, impossible. Why not just try?” says Crystal.
Another student on campus, who carried a bow and arrow, and donned a military-style camouflage helmet, acknowledged that his weapons are no match for the forces he is up against.
A Lennon wall is seen on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in Hong Kong, Nov. 23, 2019.
“All the protesters are scared—because maybe we will die,” he said, speaking in front of a pile of mangled classroom desks that had been stacked up to form a barricade against police. “But we think if we don’t stand up this day, [then] all the freedom in Hong Kong will lose. There is no way for us to go back now.”
“All of us here know what we are doing,” said another frontline protester at Polytechnic, who spoke through a black gas mask that distorted his voice. “Because our demands are not being addressed, that’s why we are having to escalate and upgrade our actions so as to get the results from the government,” he said.
Five demands
The latest round of protests erupted in June in opposition to an extradition bill. The proposal could have seen Hong Kongers tried in mainland China, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party and reports of torture and forced confessions are common.
Though authorities eventually abandoned the extradition bill, by then the protests had morphed into wider calls for democracy and opposition to the expanding influence of Beijing.
The protesters have adopted a list of five demands, including an investigation into police brutality, amnesty for arrested protesters, and direct elections for both the legislature and top executive.
But besides scrapping the extradition bill, Hong Kong authorities have refused to make concessions. Instead, as they have from the beginning, authorities dismiss the protests as riots.
“The rioters’ actions have far exceeded the call for democracy. They are now the enemy of the people,” Hong Kong’s Beijing-friendly Chief Executive Carrie Lam said earlier this month.
A place where Molotov cocktails were made is seen on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in Hong Kong, Nov. 23, 2019.
‘Off the rails’
Though the protesters appear to still have the support of a large segment of the Hong Kong public, some are worried about the direction of the protests.
“This movement has come off the rails and is really out of control,” says Steve Vickers, the former head of the Royal Hong Kong Police Criminal Intelligence Bureau. “The violent element, the sharp end of it, is really destroying the message that the rest of them had established through large demonstrations, which were peaceful.”
Vickers points to instances where protesters have vandalized public infrastructure, such as subway stations and highway toll booths. In other cases, pro-Beijing individuals or businesses have been attacked or set on fire.
“Demanding five things or we will burn down your railway stations on a regular basis is not going to end happily anywhere in the world,” says Vickers, who heads the SVA Risk Consultancy.
In recent weeks, there have also been several attacks on pro-democracy figures, including one politician who had his ear partially bitten off by a knife-wielding man outside a shopping mall.
Election a referendum?
Sunday’s local elections could serve as a de facto referendum on the protest movement. Authorities had considered postponing the vote because of the violence, but they decided to move ahead, with a large police presence expected at polling stations.
“If the democrats really score a landslide victory, that will show very clearly that the public is in support of the movement, despite recent violence,” says Ma Ngok, a political scientist with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “This will, I think … [create] much more pressure for the Hong Kong government to respond to the demands of the protesters.”
Polls suggest a generational divide between younger Hong Kongers, who are resentful of increasing Chinese influence, and older Hong Kongers, who prefer stability even if it means a lesser degree of freedom.
For frontline protester Joseph, whose father is pro-Beijing, that means sneaking out of the house to attend violent protests.
“We’ve had a few strong arguments, but I’m pretty sure there are many families struggling with that,” he says.
Although Joseph says he has no plans to stop protesting, he doesn’t expect the violence to get much worse, for now.
“Keeping pressure on the government,” he says. “That is our first priority at the moment.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, dubbed by critics “Putin on the Nile,” is set to boost his burgeoning relationship with Russia by dispatching his son, Mahmoud, to Moscow as a military attache, independent regional media outlets are reporting.
Russian officials say they welcome the prospect of Mahmoud el-Sissi being based in Moscow.
The reassignment would coincide with an open rupture between Cairo and Washington over Egyptian plans to buy advanced Russian warplanes.
In Washington, a senior U.S. State Department official Thursday threatened the Cairo government with sanctions if Egypt goes ahead with a $2 billion agreement to purchase more than 20 Su-35 fighter jets, a deal the relocated Mahmoud el-Sissi would likely oversee as military attache.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the Trump administration was still discussing how to address its defense needs with Egypt adding that U.S. officials “have also been very transparent with them in that if they are to acquire a significant Russian platform like the Sukhoi-35 or the Su-35, that puts them at risk towards sanctions.”
The United States has provided billions of dollars in economic and military aid to Egypt, a longtime ally, whose military has been operating the U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter. Moving his son to Moscow is seen by Western diplomats here as a signal to Washington by el-Sissi of his intent to go ahead with buying the Su-35s.
“He’s playing hardball with Washington,” said a Western diplomat based here, who asked not to identified for this article.
According to independent media, Mahmoud el-Sissi’s reassignment, planned for next year, has the added benefit for Egypt’s president of moving his son out of the spotlight in Cairo. His role as a top official in the country’s domestic and foreign intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Service, has prompted turmoil within that agency, as well as growing public criticism of his father for not curbing his son, who has also been drawing allegations of corruption.
General Intelligence Service sources told Mada Masr, an Egyptian online newspaper, the reassignment to Moscow is “based on the perception within the president’s inner circle that Mahmoud el-Sissi has failed to properly handle a number of his responsibilities and that his increasingly visible influence in the upper decision-making levels of government is having a negative impact on his father’s image.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been intensifying his engagement with Middle Eastern and North African leaders, and seeking to rebuild Russian influence in the region, clout that was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to analysts. Some analysts see the re-engagement as an effort to safeguard established strategic interests. They cite as an example Russian intervention in Syria, where Moscow has its only Mediterranean naval base and needed to prop up the government of President Bashar al-Assad if it wanted to ensure its continuance.
FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi pose for a photo prior to talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Oct. 23, 2019.
Others say Russia’s renewed assertiveness is being overblown.
“Putin’s apparent victories in spreading Russian influence are mirages, some of which have come at a great cost,” according to Rajan Menon, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. “Putin’s gambit in Syria had more to do with safeguarding a long-standing strategic investment that appeared imperiled than with outmaneuvering the United States,” he said in a Foreign Policy magazine commentary.
Nonetheless the dispatch of Mahmoud el-Sissi to Moscow is coming at a time of heightened disagreement between Washington and Cairo. Washington has told Cairo that buying the Russian warplanes would place U.S. and NATO military cooperation at risk. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote jointly to the Egyptian leader urging him to reverse the decision to buy Russian jets.
Ties between el-Sissi and Putin began warming in 2014, when the Obama administration curtailed military aid to Egypt after the Egyptian army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Cairo’s generals, smarting at Washington’s criticism of the coup that brought el-Sissi to power, talked openly of forging a “strategic realignment” with the Kremlin, evoking Egypt’s Nasser-era alliance with the Soviets.
Putin was quick to endorse el-Sissi as Egypt’s president, telling him during a 2014 visit to Moscow, “I wish you luck both from myself personally and from the Russian people.”
Putin also gave el-Sissi a black jacket with a red star on it, which el-Sissi wore during the Russian trip. Both men have much in common, coming from modest backgrounds and having gravitated toward the most powerful institutions in their closed societies, the KGB and the Egyptian army. They each rose cautiously up the bureaucratic ladder.
Last month, el-Sissi and Putin co-hosted the first Russia-Africa Summit, held at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. It was the third meeting between the two presidents this year. In October the Egyptian air force’s tactical training center near Cairo hosted joint Russian-Egyptian military exercises dubbed Arrow of Friendship-1. The two countries have held several joint naval and airborne counterterrorism exercises since 2015.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a visit to Cairo this month, “When we are in Egypt we always feel like at home.” The Russian military, he said, “is ready to assist in strengthening Egyptian military forces and defense capabilities.”
Shoigu’s delegation included top officials from Russia’s trade ministry, Rosoboronexport, Russia’s arms exporter, and the deputy director of the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation, prompting speculation among military analysts that Moscow and Cairo may be discussing arms deals other than the Su-35s and weapons systems co-production arrangements.
A week of back-to-back impeachment hearings in Washington may have been marred by bickering between Democrats and Republicans and thus unpleasant to watch, but at least in one aspect, they inspired confidence in the American experiment.
As Americans watched the House of Representatives conduct contentious public hearings — steps toward the possible impeachment of President Donald Trump — viewers got a reminder of the important role that immigrants have played in the nation’s development and the opportunities the country has afforded them.
Four key figures in the impeachment hearings are naturalized citizens, two of them children of refugees. Of the four, two earned positions in the White House itself, working on the ultra-sensitive National Security Council. A third worked her way up to the top of the country’s diplomatic corps. A fourth was seated on the dais, as an elected congressman and a member of the House Committee on Intelligence.
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is the child of immigrants who fled first from the Soviet Union, and then from the Nazi occupation of Europe. Born in Canada, she grew up in Connecticut and became a naturalized U.S. citizen when she turned 18. She went on to graduate from Princeton University and the National Defense University, and to serve out a distinguished career in the State Department including three ambassadorships.
National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is sworn in to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 19, 2019.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was born in Ukraine, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. His family fled to the U.S. when he was a small child. Like both of his brothers, Vindman joined the U.S. Army, earning numerous commendations including a Purple Heart for wounds suffered in combat in Iraq. He is now Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council.
Fiona Hill, who until recently served in a senior position on the NSC, where she was Vindman’s functional superior, opened her testimony by describing herself as “American by choice.” Born in a hardscrabble coal mining town in Northern England, she came to the U.S. as an adult, attended Harvard University, and became a citizen in 2002.
Each of the three, at some point, found themselves being questioned by a fellow immigrant. Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democratic member of the intelligence committee, was born in New Delhi, India, and came to the U.S. as an infant. He went on to earn degrees from Princeton and Harvard universities, and was elected to Congress in 2017.
Former White House national security aide Fiona Hill arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 21, 2019.
Lieutenant Colonel Vindman’s family came to the U.S. in 1973, with the help of HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees.
Melanie Nezer, the senior vice president for public affairs at HIAS, said that watching immigrants and refugees who have assumed high-ranking positions in the federal government “just shows you the benefits that refugees bring to this country.”
“It shows the talent, the dedication, the patriotism — all of those things that are contributions that refugees make,” she said. “It’s not just in later generations, but even in the first generation, when they arrive. You see how grateful they are for the opportunity to start new lives in this country and how dedicated they are to giving back.”
To be sure, participating in the public sphere also comes with its own dangers.
Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, questions a witness during a House Intelligence Committee impeachment inquiry hearing on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Nov. 20, 2019.
Yovanovitch was personally singled out by President Trump for attacks on Twitter, and was the focus of a concerted effort by supporters of the president to force her from her post as ambassador to Ukraine. Vindman found himself the target of online abuse so severe that the Army reportedly considered moving him and his family to safe housing on a military base.
Nevertheless, both appeared before Congress eager to express their dedication and gratitude to the country that took their families in.
“My service is an expression of gratitude for all that this country has given my family and me,” Yovanovitch testified. “My late parents did not have the good fortune to come of age in a free society. My father fled the Soviets before ultimately finding refuge in the United States. My mother’s family escaped the USSR after the Bolshevik revolution, and she grew up stateless in Nazi Germany, before eventually making her way to the United States. Their personal histories—my personal history—gave me both deep gratitude towards the United States and great empathy for others.”
Vindman, wearing his dress military uniform, used his testimony to hit many of the same notes. “Next month will mark 40 years since my family arrived in the United States as refugees,” he said. “When my father was 47 years old he left behind his entire life and the only home he had ever known to start over in the United States so that his three sons could have better, safer lives.”
“His courageous decision inspired a deep sense of gratitude in my brothers and myself and instilled in us a sense of duty and service,” he added. “All three of us have served or are currently serving in the military. Our collective military service is a special part of our family’s story in America.”
A U.S. federal judge has awarded a Washington Post journalist and his family nearly $180 million in their lawsuit against Iran over his 544 days in captivity and torture while being held on internationally criticized espionage charges.
The order in the case filed by Jason Rezaian came as Iranian officials appeared to begin restoring the internet after a weeklong shutdown amid a security crackdown on protesters angered by government-set gasoline prices sharply rising. The U.S. government has sanctioned Iran’s telecommunications minister in response to the internet shutdown.
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington entered the judgment late Friday in Rezaian’s case, describing how authorities in Iran denied the journalist sleep, medical care and abused him during his imprisonment.
“Iran seized Jason, threatened to kill Jason, and did so with the goal of compelling the United States to free Iranian prisoners as a condition of Jason’s release,” Leon said in his ruling.
The judge later added: “Holding a man hostage and torturing him to gain leverage in negotiations with the United States is outrageous, deserving of punishment and surely in need of deterrence.”
Iran never responded to the lawsuit despite it being handed over to the government by the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which oversees U.S. interests in the country. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Rezaian and his lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. Martin Baron, the executive editor of the Post, said in a statement that Rezaian’s treatment by Iran was “horrifying.”
“We’ve seen our role as helping the Rezaians through their recovery,” Baron said. “Our satisfaction comes from seeing them enjoy their freedom and a peaceful life.”
Rezaian’s case, which began with his 2014 gunpoint arrest alongside his wife Yeganeh Salehi, showed how the Islamic Republic can grab those with Western ties to use in negotiations. It’s a practice recounted by human rights groups, U.N. investigators and the families of those detained.
Despite being an accredited journalist for the Post with permission to live and work in Iran, Rezaian was taken to Tehran’s Evin prison and later convicted in a closed trial before a Revolutionary Court on still-unexplained espionage charges.
Iran still focuses on the case even today, as a recent television series sought to glorify the hard-liners behind the arrest.
It remains unclear how and if the money will be paid. It could come from the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, which has distributed funds to those held and affected by Iran’s 1979 student takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and subsequent hostage crisis. Rezaian named Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, this year designated as a terrorist organization by the Trump administration, as a defendant in the case.
Iran has extended a major shutdown of internet access into a seventh day to suppress domestic opposition to the government, prompting the United States to sanction the Iranian official overseeing the outage.
The #Iran internet shutdown is now in its 144th hour, keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians⏱
Subscribe to our network monitor channel to track national connectivity in real-time #IranProtests#Internet4Iran
In a tweet late Friday, London-based internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the shutdown had lasted a full six days and was “keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians.” A livestream of Iran’s internet connectivity rate on the group’s YouTube channel showed a slight improvement to 20%, after having risen to 15% from 5% on Thursday.
Some Iranian officials have said they expect internet access to be gradually restored in the coming days. But there was no government announcement of a date for an end to the shutdown, which began in the evening of November 16 as authorities tried to stop Iranians from sharing images of nationwide anti-government protests that had erupted the previous day.
A news agency of Iran’s Islamic Azad University, a private national university network, said in a Thursday article that seven other major universities in the country had their internet access restored. But it cited a public relations director for one of them, Sharif University, as saying the renewed access was “very slow.”
Iranian officials sparked the protests when they raised the subsidized price of gasoline by 50% on Nov. 15. The hike further strains the finances of many Iranians facing hardship in an economy already weakened by U.S. sanctions and government corruption and mismanagement.
In its first punitive response to the internet shutdown, the Trump administration sanctioned Iranian Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi on Friday.
The Treasury Department said Azari Jahromi’s ministry has been responsible for restricting the Iranian people’s access to the internet, including popular messaging apps used by tens of millions of Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world. It added Azari Jahromi to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, freezing his assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting Americans from any dealings involving those assets.
British rights group Amnesty International has said it documented the killings of 106 protesters in the crackdown by security forces during the period Nov. 15-19.
Tehran has rejected Amnesty’s death toll as speculative but has declined to issue its own tally of protester fatalities. Authorities said several security personnel also were killed in violence by “thugs” who attacked stores and burned buildings in cities around the country.
Iranian leaders have said they succeeded in crushing the unrest after several days, while blaming the protests on incitement by foreign “enemies” and exiled opposition groups. The internet shutdown made it difficult to verify whether the demonstrations have ended.
FILE – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talks to journalists during a news conference during a NATO Foreign Ministers meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Nov. 20, 2019.
“The United States stands with the people of Iran in their struggle against an oppressive regime that silences them while arresting and murdering protesters,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a Friday statement. “No country or company should enable the regime’s censorship or human rights abuses. The United States will expose these human rights abusers and record their shameful acts for history.”
A day earlier, Pompeo took the unusual step of tweeting an appeal, in Farsi and English, for Iranians to send “videos, photos and information documenting the regime’s crackdown on protesters.” He said people could do so via the @RFJ_Farsi_Bot Telegram channel. It was not clear when the State Department would reveal any content that it has received.
Azari Jahromi, who has 168,000 followers on his verified Twitter account, tweeted late Friday for the first time since the protests began, issuing a defiant response to being sanctioned by Washington.
I’m not the only member of club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB children were there. I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development.#EconomicTerrorism
“I’m not the only member of [the] club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, [there were] Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB [skin disease] children,” Jahromi wrote.
Iran has said U.S. sanctions targeting its oil, banks and other major industries represent a campaign of “economic terrorism” against the Iranian people. Washington has said humanitarian trade with Iran is exempt from its sanctions, whose aim is to deny resources to the Iranian government for malign activity.
“I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development,” Azari Jahromi added.
A U.S. Treasury statement identified the 38-year-old as a former Iranian intelligence officer involved in surveillance operations that enabled the government to arrest protesters involved in peaceful opposition demonstrations in 2009. The Treasury said Azari Jahromi has been accused of personally interrogating multiple activists during that period.
In a VOA Persian interview, analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Azari Jahromi has been a key figure in Iran’s censorship apparatus.
“Targeting him is both symbolic and effective, but should not be the end of the stick. It should be a first step toward the U.S. going after Iran’s entire telecommunications infrastructure, and that could include its satellites,” Taleblu said.
This article originated in VOA’s Persian service. Katherine Ahn contributed to this report.
About 250 Islamic State fighters have surrendered to Afghan security forces in eastern Nangarhar province, a traditional IS stronghold. Dozens of women and children have surrendered as well. Officials told VOA they would work toward deradicalizing those of Afghan origin and eventually would unite them with their families. The Kabul government has yet to determine the fate of the non-Afghan detainees. VOA’s Zabihullah Ghazi reports.
China and Pakistan urged the United States on Friday “to sift fact from fiction” before questioning their bilateral infrastructure development program, which Beijing is funding under its global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The reaction came a day after a senior American diplomat spoke critically of the multibillion-dollar collaboration, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and warned it would eventually worsen Islamabad’s economic troubles and benefit only Beijing.
Alice Wells, acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, testifies during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Sept. 19, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Speaking to an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Thursday, Alice Wells, acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, said the U.S. offered a better model that would improve the fundamentals of Pakistan’s troubled economy. She also raised questions about the transparency and fairness of CPEC projects as well as related Chinese loans Islamabad has received.
Her remarks drew a strong response from Chinese and Pakistani officials on Thursday.
Beijing’s ambassador to Islamabad, Yao Jing, said Wells lacked “accurate” knowledge and relied primarily on Western media “propaganda” to level the accusations.
“I would like to remind my American colleague that if you are really making this kind of allegation, please be careful, show your evidence, give me evidence; we will take action,” Yao said while addressing reporters.
He said China and Pakistan are determined to ensure the infrastructure project is free of corruption.
The Chinese diplomat said CPEC is open to investment from anywhere in the world and China would happily welcome U.S. investment in it. Yao described Wells’ remarks as astonishing, saying he had personally briefed her twice on the program during her recent visits to Islamabad.
In this Nov. 30, 2018 photo, Mushahid Hussain, chairman of Pakistan’s Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, speaks to The Associated Press in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mushahid Hussain described the allegations by Wells as disappointing. He noted that CPEC has ensured energy security for Pakistan and set the stage for an “industrial revolution” in the next stage of the massive project, which is already in progress.
“CPEC is central to Pakistan’s future and it’s a pivot of our strategic relationship with China and for which Pakistan has benefited already. We feel she had got her facts mixed up because of unfounded media reports. So, I think it is important to sift fact from fiction,” Hussain said.
Beijing has invested around $20 billion in Pakistan over the past five years to help upgrade and build ports, roads and power plants, effectively ending nationwide crippling electricity outages.
Most of the money has come as direct foreign investment, while some has been in the form of soft loans and grants. The overall investment of CPEC is estimated to grow to around $60 billion by 2030.
Critics in the U.S. and elsewhere see China’s BRI program as a “debt trap” for countries like Pakistan, which have struggling economies that would make it difficult for them to make Chinese loan repayments. Islamabad’s repayments are due in the next few years and analysts say that process will bring the country’s depleting foreign exchange reserves under pressure.
Ahsan Iqbal, left, Pakistan’s minister of planning and development, and Yao Jing, Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, attend the launching ceremony of a CPEC long-term cooperation plan in Islamabad, Pakistan Dec. 18, 2017.
Ambassador Yao dismissed those concerns, saying unlike Washington and West-governed lenders like the International Monetary Fund, Beijing does not offer or suspend financial loans for “political” reasons.
“China will never ever ask for these loan repayments as long as you are in need of this money. If Pakistan needs it, we keep it here,” he told the audience.
Yao took issue with the U.S. for questioning Chinese aid or loans he said were meant only to help partner nations to improve and stabilize their economies.
“The United States is the biggest loan taker from the world, and even China gave them in credit about $3 trillion,” said the Chinese envoy.
Wells noted, however, that even if loan payments are deferred, they are going to continue to hang over Pakistan’s economic development potential to hamper Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reform agenda.
She said CPEC relies primarily on Chinese workers and supplies, noting that local industry does not benefit from the initiative and that CPEC is not addressing the issue of rising unemployment in Pakistan.
Yao rejected the assertions, saying CPEC has provided more than 75,000 direct jobs to Pakistani workers and is expected to create as many as 2.3 million jobs by 2030.
The Chinese envoy said the project will have built several special economic free zones by then, enabling Pakistan to improve the quantity and quality of its exports to bring home much-needed dollars to boost its foreign exchange reserves.
Yao criticized Wells for using reported estimated costs of certain projects in her speech. He said those projects were still under discussion and their final cost had not been determined.
President Donald Trump on Friday met with athletes and coaches from 22 collegiate national championship teams.
The traditional honorary White House visit for champion college and pro sports teams has become a politically-loaded event in Trump’s presidency.
President Donald Trump talks with members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Women’s Hockey Team during the NCAA Collegiate National Champions Day at the White House, Nov. 22, 2019.
Some athletes, including members of the World Cup winning women’s national soccer team, have declined invitations. Others, like the NBA Golden State Warriors and the NFL Philadelphia Eagles, have been disinvited after players criticized the president. Others have warmly embraced Trump.
Trump, an avid golfer, spent a few moments with each team Friday, but lingered a little bit longer with Stanford University’s men’s golf team. He invited all the champs to come take a peek at the Oval Office.
“So far, nobody’s turned that one down,” Trump joked.
An FBI lawyer is suspected of altering a document related to surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, a person familiar with the situation said Friday.
President Donald Trump, who has long attacked as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign, immediately touted news reports about the allegations to assert that the FBI had tried to “overthrow the presidency.”
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies on Capitol Hill, June 19, 2018, in Washington.
The allegation is part of a Justice Department inspector general investigation into the early days of the FBI’s Russia probe, which was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller and resulted in charges against six Trump associates and more than two dozen Russians accused of interfering in the election. Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his report on Dec. 9. Witnesses in the last two weeks have been invited in to see draft sections of that document.
The release of the inspector general report is likely to revive debate about the investigation that has shadowed Trump’s presidency since the beginning. It is centered in part on the FBI’s use of a secret surveillance warrant to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Fox News Chief National Correspondent Ed Henry, left, is welcomed by co-hosts Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt on the “Fox & Friends” television program in New York, Sept. 6, 2019.
“This was spying on my campaign — something that has never been done in the history of our country,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Friday. “They tried to overthrow the presidency.”
The allegation against the lawyer was first reported by CNN. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the conduct of the FBI employee didn’t alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of Page had a proper legal and factual basis, an official told the Post, which said the lawyer was forced out.
A person familiar with the case who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to AP only on the condition of anonymity confirmed the allegation. Spokespeople for the FBI and the inspector general declined to comment Friday.
The FBI obtained a secret surveillance warrant in 2016 to monitor the communications of Page, who was never charged in the Russia investigation or accused of wrongdoing. The warrant, which was renewed several times and approved by different judges in 2016 and early 2017, has been one of the most contentious elements of the Russia probe and was the subject of dueling memos last year issued by Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.
Republicans have long attacked the credibility of the warrant application since it cited information derived from a dossier of opposition research compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose work was financed by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
“They got my warrant — a fraudulent warrant, I believe — to spy on myself as a way of getting into the Trump campaign,” Page said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox’s “Mornings with Maria” “There has been a continued cover”-up to this day. We still don’t have the truth, but hopefully, we’ll get that soon.”
FBI Director Chris Wray has told Congress that he did not consider the FBI surveillance to be “spying” and that he has no evidence the FBI illegally monitored Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election. Wray said he would not describe the FBI’s surveillance as “spying” if it’s following “investigative policies and procedures.”
Attorney General William Barr has said he believed “spying” did occur, but he also made clear at a Senate hearing earlier this year that he had no specific evidence that any surveillance was illegal or improper. Barr has appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate how intelligence was collected, and that probe has since become criminal in nature, a person familiar with the matter has said.
But Trump insists that members of the Obama administration “at the highest levels” were spying on his 2016 campaign. “Personally, I think it goes all the way. … I think this goes to the highest level,” he said in the Fox interview. “I hate to say it. I think it’s a disgrace. They thought I was going to win and they said, ‘How can we stop him?’”
Pope Francis paid tribute Friday to Catholics in Thailand who suffered or were killed for their faith in the past and urged today’s Thais not to consider Christianity a “foreign” religion.
The pope was on his last full day of a visit to Thailand, where the dominant culture is closely tied to Buddhism, although the Catholic minority of fewer than 1% were generally treated well in modern times.
On Friday, Francis traveled to Wat Roman, a mostly Catholic area on the outskirts of the bustling capital of Bangkok.
Pope Francis waves to the crowd following his visit to St. Peter’s Parish church in the Sam Phran district of Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand, Nov. 22, 2019.
World War II era priest
The pope visited a modern sanctuary built in honor of Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung, a Thai priest who died in 1944. The son of Christian converts from Buddhism, he was arrested for ringing a church bell during a period dominated by an anti-Western government suspicious of foreign influences, such as the French colonial powers in neighboring countries.
The priest was sentenced to 15 years in prison and died of tuberculosis in a hospital where he was treated badly and denied proper care because he was Catholic.
In a talk to priests and nuns gathered in the church, Francis expressed his gratitude to those he said had offered the “silent martyrdom of fidelity and daily commitment” in the past.
In 1940, seven Catholics, including three teenage girls, were killed by Thai police in the northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom. Pope John Paul II later declared them martyrs.
The World War II period and other spells of persecution are considered aberrations and today relations between Buddhists and Catholics are generally very good.
During the reign of Thailand’s King Narai 350 years ago, the Vatican formally established its “Mission de Siam.”
Although missionaries failed to achieve mass conversions, they were largely tolerated by the Buddhist majority and particularly the royal court.
Thai face of Catholicism
Since the start of his pontificate in 2013, Francis has preached that the Church should grow by attraction and not by proselytizing, or conversion campaigns.
This has provoked criticism from some conservatives who favor an aggressive approach and largely oppose what is known as “inculturation,” or adapting Church teachings to local culture.
Francis urged priests and nuns to find more ways to talk about their religion in local terms, saying he had learned “with some pain, that for many people, Christianity is a foreign faith, a religion for foreigners.”
He added, “Let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, which involves much more than making translations.”
Meeting Thai bishops in the same shrine complex later, Francis once again talked about issues such as human trafficking and exploitation.
On Thursday he condemned the exploitation of women and children for prostitution in Thailand, which is notorious for its sex tourism, saying the violence, abuse and enslavement they suffer are evils to be uprooted.
Francis was scheduled to meet leaders of other religions and celebrate a Mass in Bangkok’s Assumption Cathedral on Friday afternoon, before leaving on Saturday for Japan.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking on the workhorse heavy pickup truck market with his latest electric vehicle.
The “cybertruck,” an electric pickup truck, will be in production in 2021, Musk said at the Los Angeles Auto Show Thursday.
The pickup, which Musk said will cost $39,900 and up, will have an estimated battery range of more than 500 miles.
With the launch, Tesla is edging into the most profitable corner of the U.S. auto market, where buyers tend to have fierce brand loyalty.
Brand-loyal buyers
Many pickup buyers stick with the same brand for life, choosing a truck based on what their mom or dad drove or what they decided was the toughest model, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
“They’re very much creatures of habit,” Gordon said. Getting a loyal Ford F-150 buyer to consider switching to another brand such as a Chevy Silverado, “it’s like asking him to leave his family,” he said.
Tesla’s pickup is more likely to appeal to weekend warriors who want an electric vehicle that can handle some outdoor adventure. And it could end up cutting into Tesla’s electric vehicle sedan sales instead of winning over traditional pickup truck drivers.
“The needs-based truck buyer, the haulers, the towers at the worksites of the world, that’s going to be a much tougher sell,” said Akshay Anand, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book.
However, it will help Musk fill out his portfolio and offer a broader range of electric vehicles.
“Elon Musk is trying to not be one-dimensional when it comes to automotive,” said Alyssa Altman, transportation lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient. “He doesn’t want to look like he only has a small selection. He wants to build a brand with a diverse offering and in doing that he wants to see where he could enter in the market.”
Electric truck competition
Musk stands to face competition when his truck hits the market. Ford, which has long dominated the pickup landscape, plans to launch an all-electric F-150 pickup. General Motors CEO Mary Barra said that its battery-electric pickup will come out by the fall of 2021.
Rivian, a startup based near Detroit, plans to begin production in the second half of 2020 on an electric pickup that starts at $69,000 and has a battery range of 400-plus miles (643.7-kilometers). The Rivian truck will be able to tow 11,000 pounds (4,989.5 kilograms), go from zero to 60 mph (96.6 kph) in three seconds and wade into 3 feet (0.91 meters) of water, the company said. Ford said in April it would invest $500 million in Rivian.
Tesla has struggled to meet delivery targets for its sedans, and some fear the new vehicle will shift the company’s attention away from the goal of more consistently meeting its targets.
“We have yet to see Tesla really make good on some of the very tight deadlines they imposed on themselves, and this has the added challenge of having architecture that is going to be challenging because we haven’t seen an EV pickup before,” said Jeremy Acevedo, manager of industry analysis at Edmunds.
The U.S. Army is undertaking a security assessment of China-owned social media platform TikTok after a Democratic lawmaker raised national security concerns over the app’s handling of user data, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Thursday.
Speaking to reporters at an event at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, McCarthy said he ordered the assessment after the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, asked him to investigate the possible risks in the military’s use of the popular video app for recruiting American teenagers.
“National security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data, including user content and communications, IP addresses, location-related data, metadata, and other sensitive personal information,” Schumer wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to McCarthy.
Schumer said he was especially concerned about Chinese laws requiring domestic companies “to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Tik Tok logo is displayed on the smartphone while standing on the U.S. flag in this illustration picture taken, Nov. 8, 2019.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co.’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company has previously emphasized its independence from China but has failed to assuage congressional concerns about the security of the personal data of U.S. citizens who use the platform and whether content on the platform is subject to any censorship from Beijing.
In a Nov. 5 blog post, TikTok’s U.S. general manager, Vanessa Pappas, said that the company’s data centers “are located entirely outside of China.” She said U.S. user data is stored in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore.
ByteDance is one of China’s fastest-growing startups. About 60% of TikTok’s 26.5 million monthly active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said this year.
Earlier this year, Schumer also called on the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a national security and privacy investigation into FaceApp, a face-editing photo app developed in Russia.
The potential for the sharing of army information through the use of apps was highlighted after researchers found in 2018 that fitness-tracking app Strava was inadvertently exposing military posts and other sensitive sites.
In 2017, the Army ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd because of “cyber vulnerabilities” in the products.
At least eight protesters who had been holding out at a trashed Hong Kong university surrendered to police in the early hours of Friday, while others desperately searched for escape routes as riot officers surrounded the campus.
The siege at the Polytechnic University on the Kowloon peninsula appeared to be nearing an end with the number of protesters dwindling to less than 100, days after some of the worst violence since anti-government demonstrations escalated in June.
The mood on the near-deserted campus was calm as the sun rose after a night where some protesters roamed the grounds in search of undercover officers. Others hid, terrified they would be arrested by infiltrators.
“We are feeling a little tired. All of us feel tired but we will not give up trying to get out,” said a 23-year-old demonstrator who gave his name only as Shiba as he ate noodles with egg and sausage in the protesters’ canteen.
“We spent yesterday trying to find ways to get outside but failed, so we came for some breakfast,” he said.
A Reuters reporter saw six black-clad protesters holding hands walk toward police lines, while a first aid worker said two more surrendered later.
A protester rests against a wall as he searches a building for fellow protesters who might be hiding, at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Nov. 22, 2019.
Demonstrators are angry at what they see as Chinese meddling in freedoms promised to Hong Kong when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and are calling for full democracy, among other demands.
Beijing has said it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong is governed. It denies meddling in Hong Kong affairs and accuses foreign governments, including Britain and the United States, of stirring up trouble.
One older protester, who estimated only around 30 demonstrators remained, said some had given up looking for escape routes and were now making new weapons to protect themselves in case police stormed the campus.
The Chinese-ruled city has enjoyed two days and nights of relative calm ahead of district council elections that are to take place Sunday.
The government has said it is committed to proceeding with the elections and is monitoring the situation to ensure the election can be held safely.
All polling stations will be guarded by armed officers in riot gear for the first time in the history of local elections, the South China Morning Post reported.
Students at Syracuse University, in northern New York state, have been given permission to leave campus early for next week’s Thanksgiving break, because of a spate of racist threats on campus that have left students, staff and faculty spooked about possible violent attacks.
Meanwhile, a group of protesting students known as #NotAgainSU has staked out the student wellness center, calling for a stronger university response to the attacks. They say the school has a history of minimizing racial attacks. A group of 19 faculty members said the same, in a letter to the editor published in the university newspaper The Daily Orange.
The attacks were varied. Racist graffiti attacking African Americans and Asians had been scrawled on two separate floors of a freshman dormitory. A Nazi swastika was found carved into the snow on campus. In all, a dozen instances of racist and anti-Semitic graffiti have been found on or adjacent to the campus serving about 22,500 students.
Students rally against white supremacy at Syracuse University in New York, Nov. 20, 2019.
Saturday night, a group of fraternity members on campus yelled racial epithets at an African American student. The campus newspaper reports at least one other incident in which an Asian student was verbally assaulted with a racist slur.
There were also reports that a white supremacist manifesto was deposited on student devices via AirDrop at Syracuse’s Bird Library earlier this week, although police say they have yet to find a single student who actually received the manifesto.
On Tuesday, Genevieve Garcia de Mueller, a faculty member who is both Jewish and Mexican, reported receiving an email containing an anti-Semitic message. She reported the email to campus security and canceled her classes for the day.
“I consistently see this narrative on campus that’s trying to diminish what’s happening,” she told The New York Times this week. “I don’t see a plan … for any sort of systemic change.”
University responds
Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud spoke to the University Senate — the student decision-making body — Wednesday about the incidents. He said local police believe the graffiti is the work of between one and five people whose identities are still not clear.
The four Syracuse students who were yelling racial slurs have been suspended and all fraternities’ social events have been canceled for the rest of the semester. The manifesto story, Syverud said, seems to have been a rumor that got out of hand.
“It was apparent that this rumor was probably a hoax, but that reality was not communicated clearly and rapidly enough to get ahead of escalating anxiety,” he said. “These incidents have caused students rightly to be afraid.”
The chancellor said he has asked university officials to relax school rules and schedules to allow students to cope with their emotions and still complete the semester’s work. He also said the university has formed response teams that will, in the future, be available around the clock for such incidents as they occur.
He also announced the school will allocate at least $1 million for a new curriculum on diversity issues.
Students rally against white supremacy at Syracuse University in New York, Nov. 20, 2019.
Students want more
For many students, however, that is not enough.
Jewel Jackson, a junior and columnist for The Daily Orange, wrote recently: “These ‘solutions’ are attempts by the university to save face and only convey to the students of color that SU officials don’t care about us.”
She said the university has failed to react strongly enough to similar incidents in the past.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed. On Tuesday, he said the university’s response was not enough and called on its board of trustees to hire an independent monitor.
Alum Lindsey Decker tweeted on Tuesday: “I witnessed racist incidents at Syracuse as a grad student. As an alum who is no longer in the precarious position of being an adjunct or student at the university, I feel I can finally publicly use my voice.” She was apologizing for the number of tweets and retweets she had posted about the situation at Syracuse.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who attended law school at Syracuse, tweeted Wednesday that he was “deeply disturbed” by the news from his alma mater. He added: “We are truly in a battle for the soul of this nation, and it requires all of us to stand up together as a country against racism and bigotry.”
I am deeply disturbed by the news coming out of my law school alma mater, Syracuse University. We are truly in a battle for the soul of this nation, and it requires all of us to stand up together as a country against racism and bigotry. We must give hate no safe harbor. https://t.co/m6BNczblXY
Students have said they are afraid to walk alone on campus. The school’s department of public safety has increased its patrols and added shuttle services and safety escorts to protect students traversing the campus. Some professors have canceled classes or held them online.
New: #NotAgainSU protesters plan to donate their stockpiled food to local food pantries tonight and tommorow. The students still say they haven’t come to a final decision on the future of their sit-in at Syracuse University’s Barnes Center. @CitrusTVNewspic.twitter.com/0DonszzR4L
Reports from campus say it is unusually quiet, as many students have gone home early for the Thanksgiving holiday. The crowd of students occupying the wellness center is reported to have thinned out. Student journalist Ricky “Reports” Sayer tweeted late Thursday that the protesters plan to donate their stockpiled food to local food pantries.
But he noted that doesn’t necessarily mean their protest is over.
