Breaking International News And Headlines

PlatinumPearl · 01-17-2021, 01:06 PM

Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine on Sunday urged the international community to demand he be"house arrest"
released from after a disputed election returned President Yoweri Museveni to office for a sixth term.

Security forces outside the house of Presidential candidate Bobi Wine on Saturday.

The former ragga singer turned lawmaker, who came second in the presidential election, has not left his home since he went out to vote on Thursday, and has said his home is surrounded by hundreds of police and soldiers.

"We are here, we have run out of food, and nobody is allowed to come in or go out," said Wine, speaking on a crackling "clandestine" line on a Zoom call with journalists as Uganda remains under an internet blackout.

"We have not been charged of any crime."

Wine, 38, has said he has video footage of ballot box stuffing, soldiers forcing people to vote in a certain way or pre-ticking ballots, but that the internet shutdown is preventing his local lawyers from putting together a legal case.

He called for international sanctions against Museveni, the release of political prisoners, the restoration of internet, an international audit of the election and for "all the nations to kindly re-audit their relationship with Uganda".

He said he has been unable to meet his party officials to decide on a way forward but "we are putting all non-violent, all legal and all constitutional options on the table and that includes peaceful and legal protests".

Museveni has said it was the cleanest election in the country's history.

Wine's National Unity Platform earlier said that prominent MP, Francis Zaake, who had been arrested as he tried to visit his house on Friday, had been admitted to hospital "badly beaten and brutalised" by security forces.

Ugandan officials have said the soldiers and police were there for Wine's own security.

Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said the internet would begin to come back online on Monday.

"We anticipate that by Monday the opposition, who have been misusing the internet, would have come to terms with the loss they suffered in the presidential election".

- 'Deeply troubled' -

Museveni, 76, has ruled Uganda without pause since seizing control in 1986, when he helped to end years of tyranny under Idi Amin and Milton Obote.

Once hailed for his commitment to good governance, the former rebel leader has crushed any opposition and tweaked the constitution to allow himself to run again and again.

His re-election with 58.6 percent of the vote, to Wine's 34.8 percent, came after the most violent election campaign in recent years, with the harassment of the opposition, media and deaths of scores of Wine's supporters.

US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus praised Ugandans on Saturday for voting "despite an environment of intimidation and fear".

She added that the US was "deeply troubled by the many credible reports of security force violence during the pre-election period and election irregularities during the polls".

Source: msn.com
Website: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...st/ar-BB1cPX9W
Date: January 17, 2021

PlatinumPearl · 01-17-2021, 01:55 PM

Russia's leading opposition figure and chief Kremlin critic, Alexey Navalny, was
detained by local police on Sunday, moments after his return to the country.

A group of people around each other: Passengers and journalists take photos of Alexey
Navalny as he takes his seat on the flight Sunday. © Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images.

He was taken away "by police officers at the border" without explanation, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh tweeted. "The lawyer was not allowed to go with him, because just seconds ago 'he passed the border.'"

Navalny and his wife Yulia were returning from a five-month stay in Germany, where he recovered from poisoning with military-grade nerve agent Novichok. They landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport just after 8 p.m. local time (12 p.m. ET), according to flight data information.

Alexei Navalny et al. posing for the camera: Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia march in memory of murdered
Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in Moscow in 2019. Yulia became ill during a vacation in Kaliningrad.©

Standing in the airport after landing, Navalny told journalists, "This is the best day in the past five months."

"Everyone is asking me if I'm scared. I am not afraid," he added. "I feel completely fine walking towards the border control. I know that I will leave and go home because I'm right and all the criminal cases against me are fabricated."

Alexei Navalny et al. standing in a room: © FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/AFP via Getty Images Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
looks on ahead of a hearing at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg on November 15, 2018. - Top Kremlin critic
Alexei Navalny heads on November 15 to the European Court of Human Rights which will rule on whether his repeated arrests were
politically motivated. The court in Strasbourg must decide whether Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and President
Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, was arbitrarily arrested and detained by Russian authorities. Between 2012 and 2014 he was
arrested seven times at public gatherings and prosecuted for either breaching procedures for holding public events or
disobeying a police order. (Photo by Frederick FLORIN / AFP) (Photo credit should read FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP via Getty Images)

A perennial thorn in Russian President Vladimir Putin's side, Navalny was placed on the country's federal wanted list during his convalescence in Germany, in relation to a years-old fraud case that Navalany dismisses as politically motivated.

Last week, Russian's prison authority (FSIN) warned it would "to take all action to detain" Navalny.

After Navalny's poisoning in August, a joint investigation by CNN and the group Bellingcat implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning, piecing together how an elite unit at the agency followed Navalny's team throughout a trip to Siberia in August, where Navalny was poisoned and fell ill on a flight to Moscow.

The investigation also found that this unit, which included chemical weapons experts, had followed Navalny on more than 30 trips to and from Moscow since 2017. Russia denies involvement in Navalny's poisoning. But several Western officials and Navalny himself have openly blamed Russia.

Alexei Navalny et al. sitting in a room: Alexey Navalny in hospital in
Berlin, Germany, on September 15, 2020.© Alexey Navalny/Instagram.

Flight diverted to Sheremetyevo
Navalny had originally been scheduled to land at Vnukovo airport, where a crowd of hundreds of supporters and journalists waited. CNN has been unable to establish why the flight was diverted.

Their 2.5-hour flight by Russian carrier Pobeda took off from Berlin Brandenburg Airport on Sunday afternoon.

Russian media broadcasts showed police arresting several allies waiting for him at Vnukovo, despite temperatures of around -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees F), including politician and lawyer Lyubov Sobol and Ruslan Shaveddinov, who works for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Before departing Berlin, Navalny had thanked all the other passengers on his flight, according to a live feed from TV Rain. "Thanks to you all, I hope we will get there fine," he said. "And I'm sure everything will be absolutely great."

A group of people looking at a cell phone: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is seen in a Pobeda plane
after it landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on January 17, 2021.© Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images

In an Instagram post on Saturday, Navalny also wrote a post to thank Germany, adding that Germans were "nice, sympathetic, friendly people."

Alexey Navalny, sitting in front of a crowd: Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, right, and his wife,
Yulia Navalnya, on a Pobeda airlines plane heading to Moscow before take-off from Berlin on Sunday.

"Doctors and nurses. Physical therapists and police officers. A lot of cops. The neighbors who invited us to drink, and those who allowed us to rent. Politicians and lawyers. Shopkeepers. Journalists. The prosecutors who interrogated me on requests from Russia. Coaches. Teachers. And even, once, the Chancellor. I had quite a wide circle of friends here. And I can only say a huge thank you to everyone."

What's next for Navalny?
Navalny, who has been detained by Russian authorities many times, was placed on the country's federal wanted list during his time in Germany at the request of the FSIN, which in December accused him of violating probation terms in a years-old fraud case that Navalany dismisses as politically motivated.

Now the FSIN alleges that Navalny has been in violation of the terms of his suspended sentence by failing to show up for scheduled inspections.

The FSIN has requested that the court replace his suspended sentence with a real prison term. A hearing has been scheduled for January 29, and if the request is satisfied, Navalny will likely be jailed for 3.5 years.

In 2014, Navalny was found guilty of fraud after he and his brother Oleg were accused of embezzling 30 million rubles ($540,000) from a Russian subsidiary of French cosmetics company Yves Rocher. While Navalny was given a suspended sentence, his brother was jailed.

If Navalny is not convicted later in January, he will still face an investigation for a newer fraud case, in which he and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have been accused of misusing donations from supporters.

Putin, who refuses to acknowledge Navalny as a legitimate opponent, has described the extensive media coverage and investigations into the poisoning as a fabrication by Western intelligence, and said in December that if Russian security services had wanted to kill Navalny, they "would have finished" the job.

"The situation with Navalny looks like two trains running towards each other at full speed, bound to collide," said Tatyana Stanovaya, a visiting fellow, also at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "There will be many victims."

Attacks on Navalny's allies have indeed continued. Pavel Zelensky, a cameraman with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, was arrested Friday and will be detained until the end of February.

According to Agora, a Russian human rights organization, Zelensky was accused of extremism for tweets from September, in which he blamed the government for journalist Irina Slavina's self-immolation. Before taking her own life, Slavina blamed pressure from Russian law enforcement for her decision to self-immolate.

Source: msn.com
Website: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...ed/ar-BB1cPwKI
Date: January 17, 2021

01-17-2021, 01:06 PM	#1
PlatinumPearl Member How Do You Identify?: Femme, Human Preferred Pronoun?: She, Her Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Canada Posts: 1,150 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 966 Thanked 2,418 Times in 890 Posts Rep Power: 21474846	Uganda's Bobi Wine Urges Lifting of 'House Arrest' Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine on Sunday urged the international community to demand he be"house arrest" released from after a disputed election returned President Yoweri Museveni to office for a sixth term. Security forces outside the house of Presidential candidate Bobi Wine on Saturday. The former ragga singer turned lawmaker, who came second in the presidential election, has not left his home since he went out to vote on Thursday, and has said his home is surrounded by hundreds of police and soldiers. "We are here, we have run out of food, and nobody is allowed to come in or go out," said Wine, speaking on a crackling "clandestine" line on a Zoom call with journalists as Uganda remains under an internet blackout. "We have not been charged of any crime." Wine, 38, has said he has video footage of ballot box stuffing, soldiers forcing people to vote in a certain way or pre-ticking ballots, but that the internet shutdown is preventing his local lawyers from putting together a legal case. He called for international sanctions against Museveni, the release of political prisoners, the restoration of internet, an international audit of the election and for "all the nations to kindly re-audit their relationship with Uganda". He said he has been unable to meet his party officials to decide on a way forward but "we are putting all non-violent, all legal and all constitutional options on the table and that includes peaceful and legal protests". Museveni has said it was the cleanest election in the country's history. Wine's National Unity Platform earlier said that prominent MP, Francis Zaake, who had been arrested as he tried to visit his house on Friday, had been admitted to hospital "badly beaten and brutalised" by security forces. Ugandan officials have said the soldiers and police were there for Wine's own security. Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said the internet would begin to come back online on Monday. "We anticipate that by Monday the opposition, who have been misusing the internet, would have come to terms with the loss they suffered in the presidential election". - 'Deeply troubled' - Museveni, 76, has ruled Uganda without pause since seizing control in 1986, when he helped to end years of tyranny under Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Once hailed for his commitment to good governance, the former rebel leader has crushed any opposition and tweaked the constitution to allow himself to run again and again. His re-election with 58.6 percent of the vote, to Wine's 34.8 percent, came after the most violent election campaign in recent years, with the harassment of the opposition, media and deaths of scores of Wine's supporters. US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus praised Ugandans on Saturday for voting "despite an environment of intimidation and fear". She added that the US was "deeply troubled by the many credible reports of security force violence during the pre-election period and election irregularities during the polls". Source: msn.com Website: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...st/ar-BB1cPX9W Date: January 17, 2021

01-17-2021, 01:55 PM	#2
PlatinumPearl Member How Do You Identify?: Femme, Human Preferred Pronoun?: She, Her Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Canada Posts: 1,150 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 966 Thanked 2,418 Times in 890 Posts Rep Power: 21474846	Alexey Navalny Finally Returns Home Russia's leading opposition figure and chief Kremlin critic, Alexey Navalny, was detained by local police on Sunday, moments after his return to the country. A group of people around each other: Passengers and journalists take photos of Alexey Navalny as he takes his seat on the flight Sunday. © Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images. He was taken away "by police officers at the border" without explanation, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh tweeted. "The lawyer was not allowed to go with him, because just seconds ago 'he passed the border.'" Navalny and his wife Yulia were returning from a five-month stay in Germany, where he recovered from poisoning with military-grade nerve agent Novichok. They landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport just after 8 p.m. local time (12 p.m. ET), according to flight data information. Alexei Navalny et al. posing for the camera: Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in Moscow in 2019. Yulia became ill during a vacation in Kaliningrad.© Standing in the airport after landing, Navalny told journalists, "This is the best day in the past five months." "Everyone is asking me if I'm scared. I am not afraid," he added. "I feel completely fine walking towards the border control. I know that I will leave and go home because I'm right and all the criminal cases against me are fabricated." Alexei Navalny et al. standing in a room: © FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/AFP via Getty Images Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny looks on ahead of a hearing at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg on November 15, 2018. - Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny heads on November 15 to the European Court of Human Rights which will rule on whether his repeated arrests were politically motivated. The court in Strasbourg must decide whether Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, was arbitrarily arrested and detained by Russian authorities. Between 2012 and 2014 he was arrested seven times at public gatherings and prosecuted for either breaching procedures for holding public events or disobeying a police order. (Photo by Frederick FLORIN / AFP) (Photo credit should read FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP via Getty Images) A perennial thorn in Russian President Vladimir Putin's side, Navalny was placed on the country's federal wanted list during his convalescence in Germany, in relation to a years-old fraud case that Navalany dismisses as politically motivated. Last week, Russian's prison authority (FSIN) warned it would "to take all action to detain" Navalny. After Navalny's poisoning in August, a joint investigation by CNN and the group Bellingcat implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning, piecing together how an elite unit at the agency followed Navalny's team throughout a trip to Siberia in August, where Navalny was poisoned and fell ill on a flight to Moscow. The investigation also found that this unit, which included chemical weapons experts, had followed Navalny on more than 30 trips to and from Moscow since 2017. Russia denies involvement in Navalny's poisoning. But several Western officials and Navalny himself have openly blamed Russia. Alexei Navalny et al. sitting in a room: Alexey Navalny in hospital in Berlin, Germany, on September 15, 2020.© Alexey Navalny/Instagram. Flight diverted to Sheremetyevo Navalny had originally been scheduled to land at Vnukovo airport, where a crowd of hundreds of supporters and journalists waited. CNN has been unable to establish why the flight was diverted. Their 2.5-hour flight by Russian carrier Pobeda took off from Berlin Brandenburg Airport on Sunday afternoon. Russian media broadcasts showed police arresting several allies waiting for him at Vnukovo, despite temperatures of around -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees F), including politician and lawyer Lyubov Sobol and Ruslan Shaveddinov, who works for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. Before departing Berlin, Navalny had thanked all the other passengers on his flight, according to a live feed from TV Rain. "Thanks to you all, I hope we will get there fine," he said. "And I'm sure everything will be absolutely great." A group of people looking at a cell phone: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is seen in a Pobeda plane after it landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on January 17, 2021.© Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images In an Instagram post on Saturday, Navalny also wrote a post to thank Germany, adding that Germans were "nice, sympathetic, friendly people." Alexey Navalny, sitting in front of a crowd: Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, right, and his wife, Yulia Navalnya, on a Pobeda airlines plane heading to Moscow before take-off from Berlin on Sunday. "Doctors and nurses. Physical therapists and police officers. A lot of cops. The neighbors who invited us to drink, and those who allowed us to rent. Politicians and lawyers. Shopkeepers. Journalists. The prosecutors who interrogated me on requests from Russia. Coaches. Teachers. And even, once, the Chancellor. I had quite a wide circle of friends here. And I can only say a huge thank you to everyone." What's next for Navalny? Navalny, who has been detained by Russian authorities many times, was placed on the country's federal wanted list during his time in Germany at the request of the FSIN, which in December accused him of violating probation terms in a years-old fraud case that Navalany dismisses as politically motivated. Now the FSIN alleges that Navalny has been in violation of the terms of his suspended sentence by failing to show up for scheduled inspections. The FSIN has requested that the court replace his suspended sentence with a real prison term. A hearing has been scheduled for January 29, and if the request is satisfied, Navalny will likely be jailed for 3.5 years. In 2014, Navalny was found guilty of fraud after he and his brother Oleg were accused of embezzling 30 million rubles ($540,000) from a Russian subsidiary of French cosmetics company Yves Rocher. While Navalny was given a suspended sentence, his brother was jailed. If Navalny is not convicted later in January, he will still face an investigation for a newer fraud case, in which he and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have been accused of misusing donations from supporters. Putin, who refuses to acknowledge Navalny as a legitimate opponent, has described the extensive media coverage and investigations into the poisoning as a fabrication by Western intelligence, and said in December that if Russian security services had wanted to kill Navalny, they "would have finished" the job. "The situation with Navalny looks like two trains running towards each other at full speed, bound to collide," said Tatyana Stanovaya, a visiting fellow, also at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "There will be many victims." Attacks on Navalny's allies have indeed continued. Pavel Zelensky, a cameraman with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, was arrested Friday and will be detained until the end of February. According to Agora, a Russian human rights organization, Zelensky was accused of extremism for tweets from September, in which he blamed the government for journalist Irina Slavina's self-immolation. Before taking her own life, Slavina blamed pressure from Russian law enforcement for her decision to self-immolate. Source: msn.com Website: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...ed/ar-BB1cPwKI Date: January 17, 2021