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Andalucíans to vote in election seen as gauge of Spain’s wider political change

Voters in the southern Spanish region of Andalucía will cast their ballots in an election this weekend that is likely to deliver an absolute majority to the conservative People’s party (PP) and inflict another debilitating defeat on Pedro Sánchez’s embattled socialists in what was previously one of their proudest strongholds. Sunday’s election in Spain’s most populous region – the last big poll before next year’s general election – will serve as a barometer of wider electoral opinion and could also reveal whether the popularity of the far-right Vox party is beginning to peak. The PP, which has governed the former socialist bastion for the past seven years, is seeking to frame the election as a referendum on Sánchez, the country’s prime minister, whose inner circle, party and administration are facing an array of corruption allegations. According to the polls, the incumbent PP regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, is on course to almost replicate his result at the last election in 2022, when the conservatives won 58 of the seats in the 109-seat regional parliament. Meanwhile, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), which ruled Andalucía from 1982 to 2019, looks set for its worst-ever results, dropping from 30 seats to 28. Vox, which entered mainstream Spanish politics in the 2018 Andalucían regional election, is forecast to pick up another seat or two to add to the 14 it won four years ago. Moreno is hoping another absolute majority will mean he does not need to depend on Vox, which has been seeking to drag the PP further to the right in regional coalitions by insisting Spaniards receive priority over foreign-born people for housing and public services. The regional president appears so confident of his majority that he has rubbished Vox’s so-called “national priority” policy as “an empty slogan”. Both Moreno and the PP’s national leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, are keen to use Sunday’s vote to advance the party across the country by making the most of the scandals engulfing the national government. Moreno has referred to his PSOE opponent, the former national minister and deputy prime minister María Jesús Montero, as “the lady from the past” and has spoken of the need to “bury bad politics and leave the past in the past to build the future”. Feijóo has been blunter still, saying Andalucían voters need to “choose between the conspiracy that Sánchez led and Montero watched over, and [Moreno’s] crack team”. Recent events have put the socialists under even greater pressure. Montero was fiercely criticised earlier this week for referring to the deaths of two Guardia Civil officers who lost their lives while pursuing drug-traffickers off the Andalucían coast as a “workplace accident”. She later corrected herself and said the deaths had occurred “in the line of duty”. Moreno has also found himself under fire. With 42.2% of Andalucían voters identifying healthcare as their region’s biggest problem, his handling of a cancer-screening scandal has returned to the fore during the campaign. Towards the end of last year, the regional government admitted that more than 2,300 women had not been informed of their inconclusive mammogram results, meaning follow-up tests and treatments were missed. The delay in diagnosis triggered huge anger and prompted protests that culminated in the resignation of the regional health minister. Moreno insisted this week that no one had died as a result of the administrative failure – a claim that has been challenged by campaigners. Ángela Claverol, the president of the breast cancer support association Amama Sevilla, said at least six women had died because of the failure to communicate screening results. She said the cancer scandal was indicative of a wider crisis in Andalucían health services that she and many others blame on Moreno’s privatisation of the public health system. Under Spain’s decentralised system, Spain’s self-governing regions are responsible for healthcare. “It’s awful; there are delays of up to three months for cancer surgery,” she said. “There are delays for CT scans, MRIs, appointments with oncologists, radiotherapy, etc. The delays are horrendous for oncology, but at the normal level for ordinary people, if I request an appointment with the GP at my health centre, they won’t give me one for 21 days.” Claverol said the public healthcare system had collapsed because of the regional government’s growing use of private providers. “Instead of reinvesting that money in the public sector, in hiring people, in hiring doctors, in hiring specialists, in hiring administrative staff, what they’ve done is siphon it off to the private sector,” she said. Moreno, however, says his government has modernised and upgraded hospitals and equipment and increased capacity “so that more patients can be seen and waiting times can be reduced so that we can move towards a closer, more agile and decisive health system”. Housing is another significant concern for voters in Andalucía, as elsewhere in Spain. As cities such as Seville, Málaga and Córdoba suffer the effects of overtourism – including soaring rents and a shortage of places to live – local groups are urging the regional government to focus on residents rather than tourists. Juan Carlos Benítez, a member of Albayzín Habitable, a residents’ association formed two years ago in response to dramatic changes in the picturesque Albaicín neighbourhood of Granada, said the Moreno government appeared to have opted for “a strategy of quantitative tourism over qualitative tourism”. Benítez said Granada was the latest Andalucían city to fall victim to short-term thinking that favoured rapid economic growth through tourism over sustainable development. He said recent months had been “catastrophic” for the neighbourhood, with a local health centre closing and many important local buildings being sold off for redevelopment. “It’ll become a Disneyland-type centre where no real people live and which only generates money for restaurant and shop owners, but doesn’t really benefit society as a whole,” Benítez added. Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said the results of Sunday’s election would be felt far beyond Andalucía as Spain gears up for the general election. Polls suggest that the PP will once again finish first next year, but will need Vox’s support to govern. “If Moreno Bonilla maintains his absolute majority and Vox fails to gain influence in forming a government, that will confirm the notion that Vox is now somewhat stagnant and the PP is gaining more ground,” said Simón. He said that despite performing relatively well in recent regional elections in Aragón, Extremadura and Castilla y León, there was a feeling that Vox was stalling amid internal bickering and that its chances of taking a coveted 20% of the vote might be fading. “It’s a party that’s well anchored around 13-14%,” added Simón. “That means that nationally it’s around 17%. That’s a very good result. But since they already had the idea of being at 20%, that’s backfired on them.” However, he added that any scandals involving PP-led regions – such as the conservatives’ botched handling of the deadly floods in Valencia in 2024 – could yet reverse Vox’s fortunes. Simón also said the socialists would be bracing for a “terrible” result on Sunday. “The latest poll I’ve been given shows 27 seats, so three fewer,” he said. “We’re talking about a gap of more than 20 points between the first and second party – it’s just awful.”

Palestinians forced to demolish own homes to make way for Israeli theme park

At the bottom of a steep and densely populated valley just below Jerusalem’s old city walls, the earth has been shaken in recent weeks by jackhammers and bulldozers. These have been the sounds of Jerusalem for decades as the Israeli state has relentlessly sought to stamp a uniformly Jewish identity on to the occupied east of the city, while erasing its Palestinian character. Typically it is workers for the state and municipality at the wheel of the bulldozers, but in the al-Bustan neighbourhood, in the shadow of the 11th-century al-Aqsa mosque, the clamour is from a more recent development. It is the sound of Palestinians demolishing their own family homes. “This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” Jalal al-Tawil said as he watched a tractor he had hired, with a front loader at the front and jackhammer at the back, rip apart the last remnants of the house his father had built, which in turn had been on the site of his grandparents’ home. By Wednesday morning, most of the walls had been brought down to their foundations and the rubble pushed into a single pile. Al-Tawil left the thick knotty root of a 35-year-old grapevine until last. “It used to provide grapes for all of al-Bustan,” he said. The spring vine leaves had already sprouted along the trellis above him, but he was resigned to the fact they would never again bear fruit. The experience of demolishing his own family’s home and history had drained al-Tawil, but it came down to brutal economics. The Jerusalem municipality had told him it would cost him 280,000 shekels (£72,000) if its workers demolished the house. Hiring his own equipment and labour would cost al-Tawil less than a tenth of that. “Also, if they do it, they will uproot the land and make a complete mess,” he said. For him it was like being given the choice between suicide or being murdered, he said. More than 57 homes in al-Bustan, part of the larger Silwan district of East Jerusalem, have been demolished in the past two years with at least eight designated for demolition in the next few weeks. On the site a biblical theme park called the Kings Garden is to be built, supposedly where King Solomon took his leisure three millennia ago. The park is designed to be part of a spreading, largely settler-driven, archaeological project focusing exclusively on Jerusalem’s Jewish past and centred on what has been called the City of David – despite the view of many Israeli archaeologists that the visible remains date to other eras, before and after King David’s iron-age reign. Aviv Tatarsky, a senior researcher at Ir Amim, a group advocating for an equitably shared Jerusalem, says al-Bustan encapsulates the erasure of Palestinians from both geography and history. “Israel is not willing to recognise the bi-national, multi-ethnic, multicultural reality of Jerusalem and it is wiping out first and foremost Palestinians – but really anything that is not Jewish, and then glossing it over with this Disneyfied nonsense,” he said. “If this happens to the end, Israelis will go there and they will see the story of the park and they will be completely ignorant of the fact that lives were destroyed, a whole community was destroyed to make space for it.” The shadow of the Kings Garden theme park has hung over al-Bustan for nearly two decades, but the bulldozers have been held back until now by Palestinian resistance, combined with international opposition and some ambivalence within Israeli politics. All three barriers have fallen since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, the ensuing Gaza war and the restoration of Donald Trump as US president. Ambassadors from other countries still visit and pledge support, but with Washington’s support, their combined intervention has proved ineffectual. “There are stray dogs who go around the neighbourhood at night who feel more safe and secure than we do,” said Mohammad Qwaider, 60, a father of six. He recently demolished the part of the house which has been a family home for more than half a century, in the hope of appeasing the planners. This week, however, a man from the municipality came to warn him that the bulldozers would be back to level the rest of it. Qwaider has chronic back problems, a son with special needs, and an infirm elderly mother who is unable to move, and he argues they have no other options. “If they demolish our house, we will put up a tent. We will not leave,” he said. “Maybe they misunderstand our mentality as Palestinians. We are not an easy target. You cannot take our land.” His mother, Yusra, is confined to a bed in a small ground-floor room. Her life story embodies modern Palestinian history. She was born 97 years ago in Jaffa but her family was forced to flee in 1948 in what Palestinians call the Nakba (the Catastrophe), the mass displacement which is the other side of the historical coin of Israel’s independence in that year. Nakba commemoration day fell on Friday, the day after Israeli Jews asserted their control with a nationalist march through the old city to mark Jerusalem Day, chanting “death to Arabs”. From Jaffa, Yusra Qwaider’s family sought shelter in a village called Yalo in Jordanian-controlled territory west of Jerusalem. In 1967 they were driven out again in the six-day Arab-Israeli war, and Israeli forces demolished their house and the rest of the village. From there they went to the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s old city in 1970, but were only able to stay three years before large parts of the district were demolished by the city’s new masters. “After the Jewish quarter, we came here to Silwan. From here, we are not leaving. Not me, and not my children,” she said. Two doors down, Fakhri Abu Diab, the al-Bustan community leader, took the same decision when his family house was demolished in 2024. Now he and his wife, Amina, live in a portable cabin amid the rubble of what was once their family home of four generations. Only part of the kitchen of the old house has been left standing among the ruins. “This is where we used to eat with my children, my grandchildren,” Abu Diab said. “They demolished our past. They demolished our memories. They demolished our dreams. They demolished my childhood, our childhood, and they demolished our future.” He compared the torture of living in the wreckage of his family’s history to a physiological illness. “My heart is burning,” he said. “Maybe you see me sitting with you, talking to you, but from inside, I am burning.” Abu Diab is still paying off the 43,000 shekel (£11,000) fine the municipality imposed to cover the cost of demolishing his home, at the rate of 4,000 shekels (£1,020) a month. He said he also had to pay 9,000 shekels (£2,300) for the sandwiches the police ate while enforcing the days-long operation. The Jerusalem municipality did not respond to a request for comment on its actions in al-Bustan, but told the +972 news site that the planned theme park was “being constructed for the benefit of all city residents” and al-Bustan’s houses were built illegally. “This area was never zoned for residential use, and the Jerusalem municipality is now working to build a park in an area that suffers from a severe shortage of open public spaces,” it said. The municipality also said it had tried “for years to find a solution for the residents that would also include a residential alternative, but they did not express any serious interest in reaching a resolution”. To that, Abu Diab pointed out that the community had long ago presented a master plan for the district with plenty of green space, which he said had been overruled at the political level. On the issue of permits, he said, some homes like his dated back to long before the Israeli occupation. The municipality has routinely denied building permits to Palestinians in East Jerusalem while routinely approving them for Israeli Jews. Furthermore, Abu Diab argued, the same rules were never applied to unauthorised settler outposts which constantly spring up in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Amina Abu Diab, a schoolteacher and social worker, said her main concern now was for the children she cares for, who were facing a future of homelessness and uncertainty. “A house is a child’s dream of the future, and if somebody comes to demolish them, they destroy the dreams and a child’s sense of security,” she said. “And then what do the children think of us? That we cannot protect ourselves and we cannot protect our children.”

Down and then out in Paris and London? Why Starmer isn’t the only one with a popularity problem

“People hate you,” the adviser informed his leader. A think-piece in a daily newspaper noted that “almost everyone agrees on one thing: they don’t like him”. The recent disastrous set of local election results in the UK built on Keir Starmer’s longstanding reputational problem: only 11% of Britons believe he has been a good or great prime minister, and nearly 60% believe he has been poor or terrible, according to polling by YouGov. Little wonder that a large number of his colleagues are seeking to drag him out of Downing Street despite being in power for less than two years. But the startlingly frank adviser quoted above was not talking to Starmer but instead to France’s president, Emmanuel Macron. The no-nonsense newspaper article was not about the British prime minister but the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Starmer is unpopular. According to Statista, just 27% approve of him, and 65% do not, with 8% said to be unsure. But the numbers are even more dire for both Merz (19% approve, 76% disapprove and 5% did not know) and Macron (18% approve, 75% disapprove, 7% don’t know). The three largest economies in Europe are being led by leaders who are regarded by their people with something close to contempt, the polling suggests, but then few incumbents on the continent are bucking this trend. The Austrian chancellor, Christian Stocker, is widely regarded as being an ineffective leader of his coalition. Jonas Gahr Støre, whose Labour party in Norway has been buffeted by all manner of scandals, has a disapproval rating that is only a marginal improvement on that of Starmer. The same is true of Bart de Wever, the prime minister of Belgium who is leading a coalition that is putting through strict budget cuts, pension reforms, and tax increases as it seeks to fix the country’s public debt. All have ratings that are worse than Donald Trump (38% approve, 57% disapprove and 6% don’t know), at a time when the polling shows him to be as unpopular as he has ever been. That includes the period in the immediate aftermath of the storming of Congress by his supporters on 6 January 2021. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni fare only a little better than the US president and, for all their faults, they did not start a war in Iran. So what is happening? In Berlin, where Peter Matuschek, the head of the polling thinktank Forsa, follows the fortunes of the German chancellor, it can sometimes feel that Europe has fallen foul of a spectacularly poor generation of politicians. Merz was unpopular even before he became chancellor, but his error-strewn pronouncements and empty promises have only worsened his polling numbers, said Matuschek. Most recently the loquacious self-confident chancellor opened up a transatlantic rift by telling a class of schoolchildren that the US was being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership. “If you look at the problems that all the other incumbents are confronted with, maybe it’s a lack of politicians able to tackle the problems,” Matuschek said. “In the Covid crisis, at the beginning of 2020, we saw that all the institutions, including the chancellor, the government, parliament, really got up digit points in approval because people saw that although the problem was so overwhelming, they had the impression that something was being done about it. So every crisis contains at least the chance for any leader to grow with the crisis.” Such a conclusion may be a little hard on Macron, who is coming to the end of his 10 years in power. Since 2022, his capacity to make things happen has been hamstrung by his lack of a majority in the national assembly. But then Macron’s approval numbers are significantly worse than those enjoyed by Jacques Chirac in 2006 at the end of his two terms, and Chirac had been described at the time as “the most unpopular occupant of the Élysée Palace” in the history of the Fifth Republic. But Matuschek’s critique of Merz – broken promises, failure to deliver on reforms and an inability to manage his party – will have the ring of familiarity to it for anyone following the British prime minister’s time in power. Poor judgment and a lack of charisma, or arguably the wrong sort in the case of Merz, is surely part of the problem – but is there not a more structural issue facing the major European powers? According to World Bank data, Europe’s share of global economic output, measured in current US dollars, fell from roughly 33% to 23% between 2005 and 2024 – a proportion said by the Maddison Project, a database that tracks economic history at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, to be likely the lowest from the continent since the middle ages. The US economy is expected to expand by 2.4% this year. Compare that to France (0.9%), the UK (0.9%) and Germany (0.6%). The Wall Street Journal recently reported that executive assistants in New York City earn around the same as specialist doctors in London. Strong leadership can make a difference but Fabian Zuleeg, of the European Policy Centre, said that European leaders are facing tough headwinds that any leader would struggle to navigate. They range from Europe’s need to cut itself off from its reliance on cheap Russian fossil fuels after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine to the rise of China as an economic and manufacturing powerhouse. Indeed, Starmer’s poll numbers are not unheard of in British politics. The personal ratings for Margaret Thatcher, when polled 45 years ago this month during another time of major economic strife, bear a resemblance to that of Starmer’s: 33.5% were satisfied with Thatcher in May 1981 and 60.5% were dissatisfied. “I think it is also more structural,” said Zuleeg of Europe’s leadership problem. “In Europe, in a sense, the holiday from history is over, which means we have to tell our populations that there are difficult times ahead, that this will have an impact on their daily lives, that this will entail decisions, which are unpopular, because of the global turmoil in which we find ourselves in. I don’t think our leaders have been able to convince populations that the pain which they are feeling is necessary, which means the this has a direct impact on their own popularity.” Scan across Europe and there are leaders who appear to have bucked the trend, Zuleeg said. After seven years in power, Mette Frederiksen is still in with a shout of staying on as the prime minister of Denmark after an election in which her Social Democrats party was left bloodied but not bowed. Coalition talks are continuing. Frederiksen had cut into the votes of the far right by taking a tough stance on immigration and had navigated the clash with Donald Trump over his claims to Greenland, a Danish territory. “She’s a steady hand,” said Emil Sondaj Hansen from the Europa thinktank in Copenhagen. But while the cost of living crisis was a major talking point in the recent elections, Denmark has also benefited from long-term energy planning, with 80% of the country’s electricity consumption now sourced from renewable energy, primarily wind power. Denmark’s economy is expected to grow by between 2% and 3% this year. Ultimately, today’s leaders can only do so much to make their mark. They operate in an environment shaped by the failures and successes of their predecessors.

Giant green pickle tells us UK’s Jewish culture month has begun

Londoners may have spotted a giant green pickle bobbing through the capital, turning up at landmarks including the Tate Modern and Southbank Centre, with a simple message: the UK’s first Jewish culture month has been launched. The celebration is aimed at bringing “less oy and more joy” after difficult years for the Jewish community. Beginning on 16 May, the festival, organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, will include more than 150 events across the UK, spanning food, music, comedy, architecture, fashion, film and literature. Institutions taking part include the V&A Museum, National Portrait Gallery, JW3 (London’s Jewish community centre), the British Library and the National Holocaust Museum. Liat Rosenthal, the Board’s director of culture, education and communities, said the project emerged from conversations with artists and cultural workers who felt Jewish life had become increasingly defined through hostility, grief and security concerns since the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel. “For me, the response to antisemitism has to be this bold, proud, public moment,” she said. “The history of British Jews is incredibly rich, and the contribution of British Jews to life across the UK spans not just arts and culture, but science, technology, innovation, psychotherapy, medicine and politics.” But she stressed that the month was intended for all, regardless of background or religion. “Everyone should get involved, learn something and eat lots of food.” That invitation to eat runs through much of the programme. At one event, the east London pickling company Shedletsky will host a traditional Friday night dinner. “The Jewish communities that came out of eastern Europe were deeply entrenched in pickling and preserving traditions,” said James Cooper, a co-founder. “There’s this great through-line from ancient preservation techniques” to the “big explosion” in modern deli culture where pickles have become the perfect accompaniment. His co-founder, Natalie Preston, said the pair had agreed with organisers who told them there “can’t be Jewish culture month without pickle involvement”. But food had also been a way of opening conversations between communities, she added. “I think that is one of the ways we can hopefully break down these awful barriers that are being put up at the moment.” At JW3, in Hampstead, north London, one event, L’Chaim / L’Chaos: 50 Years of Jewish Punk, will explore the enduring relationship between Jewish youth culture and Britain’s 1970s punk scene. “There was something about this outsider teen culture that really attracted young Jewish people in the 1970s,” said William Galinsky, JW3’s director of programming. “A lot of those young people were the first to go to university, or the first to decide they didn’t want to go into the family business.” Other events at JW3, which is marking its 13th anniversary with a “B’Mitzvah” (coming of age) celebration, include Miriam Elia’s satirical exhibition and book, Moses and the 613 Health and Safety Commandments. “I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the playwright Jack Rosenthal,” Galinsky said. “He was one of the first writers to show the non-Jewish British public that Jews were just like them. They might have had slightly different holidays and eaten different food, but essentially this generation of Jewish immigrants that came before the immigrants from south-east Asia and the West Indies, were just like them.” That message is as important now as it was in the 60s and 70s, he added. Elsewhere, the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) will run walking tours exploring Jewish histories outside London, including in Cardiff. Its head of next generations, Debra Barnes, said the month was partly an attempt to broaden public understanding of Jewish life beyond trauma. “If you mention Jews in Britain today, you think of antisemitism and attacks. It’s a very depressing outlook at the moment,” she said. “But we don’t want to only be seen as victims, and we don’t want to hide.” The tour will end in Wally’s Delicatessen & Kaffeehaus, which was started by a Jewish refugee and is now run by his grandson. The National Holocaust Museum in Newark, Nottinghamshire, will host an event titled What Does it Mean to be Jewish? in which visitors will hear stories from young British Jews from across the country. “This particular exhibition is about the celebration of Jewish life,” said the museum’s chief executive, Abi Levitt. “It asks what are the meaningful objects that bring Jewish culture to life? Whether it’s food, or things associated with religious observance, or community identity.” One exhibition at the museum includes a Friday night dinner table laid out with Shabbat (Sabbath) candlesticks and challah bread; also on display are mezuzahs – the small scroll cases attached to the entrances of Jewish homes – which children can touch and ask questions about. Levitt said: “It’s about just bringing the Jewish world to people in this part of the country.”

Trump’s lack of focus on human rights in China is big departure for US diplomacy

Asked before he departed for Beijing if he would raise with the Chinese president the case of Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy activist jailed in Hong Kong, Donald Trump said: “I’ll bring him up.” But, the US president added: “It’s like saying to me, ‘If Comey ever went to jail, would you let him out?’ It might be a hard one for me.” Trump was referring to James B Comey, a former FBI director and a frequent target of Trump’s ire. Trump’s flippant attitude towards human rights comes as no surprise. Since he took office, his administration has launched widespread attacks on civil liberties, from immigration raids to attacks on gender-based healthcare to cutting funding for civil rights groups. But the near-total absence of human rights from current US-China dialogue is a marked departure from the diplomacy of previous generations – reflecting both the transformation of the US in the Trump era and China’s increasing confidence on the world stage. The Chinese Communist party now “seems immune to so-called condemnations and the international community”, said Ren Quanniu, a disbarred human rights lawyer. When George W Bush visited Beijing in 2008, he insisted on attending a Sunday church service to press his case for religious freedom in China. When Barack Obama made his state visit the following year, he urged China’s then president Hu Jintao to reopen talks with the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet. Both Bush and Obama have themselves been accused of war crimes and human rights abuses related to the US’s “war on terror”. But their public support for minorities and activists in China was welcomed by the country’s nascent civil society movement. One of the most high-profile cases of US intervention came in 2012 when the Obama administration helped to evacuate a blind human rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng after he escaped from house arrest. (Chen later urged US voters to elect Trump, claiming he would “stand up to tyranny”.) Even for less famous civil rights figures, support from the US can boost morale and lead to partial improvements in their conditions. “I have been told directly by any number of Chinese activists that raising their case has made a difference,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University in Washington. The difference might be an improvement in prison conditions or an easing of harassment outside prison. The US’s retreat from its claimed position – even if it was always a somewhat false one – as global human rights defender comes at a time when activists say the situation in China has worsened. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he has cracked down on civil society, punished feminist activists, narrowed the space for religious and ethnic expression and made crushing dissent a priority. Under his rule, China implemented a network of re-education camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang, which imprisoned up to 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the name of combating extremism. The UN said China’s policies in Xinjiang could constitute crimes against humanity, although Beijing strenuously denies those claims. “These are very, very difficult times for human rights defenders,” said Sophie Richardson, the co-executive director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an NGO. “I don’t think any democratic government has really kept pace in its interventions with Beijing.” During Trump’s first term, he took a more aggressive stance on China. His top team included many China hawks, such as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger. That administration sanctioned several officials accused of being connected to human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Trump’s current secretary of state Marco Rubio was himself sanctioned by China for his fierce criticism of the country’s human rights record when he was a senator (China nonetheless allowed him to accompany Trump to Beijing this week). But those hawks have been sidelined and Trump, a leader who has displayed many autocratic tendencies himself, has expressed admiration for Xi. On Thursday he told the Chinese leader: “You’re a great leader. Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway, because it’s true … it’s an honour to be your friend.” China, whose economy and military strength has increased rapidly in the past decades, has also grown more impervious to western criticism, which it long interpreted as lecturing and hypocritical. In 2021, China’s State Council released a 28-page report about human rights violations in the US that opened with the quote: “I can’t breathe,” the final words of George Floyd, an African American man whose murder by a police officer sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. Ren said Chinese propaganda had also persuaded many ordinary people that criticisms from the US were driven by “hostile foreign forces” rather than genuine humanitarian concern. “Many people don’t care what the Americans say any more,” Ren said. According to Trump, human rights did get a mention at this week’s summit. Although it did not feature in either side’s readout of the two-hour talks on Thursday, Trump told Fox News on his way home that he had discussed both Jimmy Lai and the case of several detained pastors with Xi. He said that Xi was “seriously considering” releasing the detained religious leaders, many of whom were targeted during a recent crackdown on Christians. That was welcomed by their relatives. Grace Jin Drexel, whose father, Ezra Jin, was detained last year, said: “It’s a major answer to our prayers and we’re also so grateful to everyone who has walked alongside us at the most difficult time.” But when it came to Lai, a 78-year-old former media mogul with broad bipartisan support in the US, Trump said it was a “tough one”.

Where is Dela Rosa? Philippine senator outmanoeuvres president in evading arrest

The wanted man outran security agents, rallied protesters and even serenaded the media with a military hymn. Then, after a sudden exchange of gunfire, the Philippines’ most controversial lawmaker slipped out of the heavily guarded senate building in the middle of the night. Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who is wanted by the international criminal court for crimes against humanity, is now nowhere to be seen. The week’s shambolic events have not only prompted criticism of the country’s senate, where Duterte’s allies controversially shielded Dela Rosa from arrest, but also of the president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who appears outmanoeuvred. Dela Rosa is wanted by the international criminal court for his role as the enforcer of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, in which thousands of people were killed. But the saga over his arrest is also underlined by a fierce power struggle between Marcos and Duterte’s daughter, the vice-president, Sara Duterte. They once campaigned together but relations quickly soured, reaching an all-time low last year when Marcos allowed her father to be arrested and transferred to the ICC. The 81-year-old leader is now imprisoned at The Hague, facing charges of crimes against humanity. Both Marcos and Dela Rosa deny wrongdoing. Dela Rosa, a tough-talking former head of the Philippine national police, had been in hiding for months after reports emerged of his looming arrest in November. He made a surprise appearance at the senate on Monday, turning up to back a successful bid by another staunch Duterte ally to become senate president. It proved a risky move for Dela Rosa, who found himself theatrically racing through hallways and clambering up senate stairways when security agents chased him through the building. He outran the agents, however. Along with his allies he has, perhaps, outmanoeuvred Marcos politically, too. When Dela Rosa reached the senate chamber he was granted protective custody by the new senate president, Alan Peter Cayetano. The concept of senate protection is deemed dubious by some experts, but paved the way for a three-day standoff with the authorities. For the first night, he hunkered down at the office of fellow senator Jinggoy Estrada, he told Super Radyo DZBB. “His room was better, it also has more food,” said Dela Rosa, who is known by the nickname Bato, which translates as “rock”. He admitted he did not have much of an appetite, however. Inside the senate, he kept himself busy – drumming up public support through Facebook live streams and media interviews. He called on his “fellow men in uniform” to oppose his arrest, bellowing out the military hymn to awaiting media in front of a media scrum, and made an appeal to Marcos not to hand him over to the ICC, with tears in his eyes. His announcement on Wednesday night that he faced imminent arrest led to a heavy security presence and protesters outside the senate. Inside the building, the media captured scenes of chaos as they tried to locate the senator. Some reporters gathered at a doorway, holding their mics up to the door to capture the sound of drilling, as passageways were apparently being sealed. Then, gunshots were fired, forcing reporters to scramble for cover. Dela Rosa fled hours later. GMA News reported he had told bodyguards he was nipping to the toilet, but instead fled through a fire exit and cruised off in an SUV with a fellow Duterte-aligned senator. Some have questioned if the shooting and commotion were staged to allow Dela Rosa an escape. Cayetano has denied this. He claimed the senate was “under attack”, blaming the national bureau of investigations, which had originally tried to arrest Dela Rosa on Monday. However, it later emerged senate security fired first. “I myself do not know what to make of it,” said the senator Vicente Sotto, who was ousted as senate president and replaced by Cayetano on Monday. “Some firearms shooting by the [senate security] at I don’t know what, when most of us should have been home. Then Bato escapes,” he said. The Marcos government has said it will respect a supreme court decision on Wednesday, which gave the government 72 hours to comment on a petition filed by Dela Rosa challenging his arrest. “I sense that Marcos Jr wants to be more careful at this point compared to when Duterte was arrested,” said Jean Encinas-Franco, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman. When Duterte was arrested, Marcos’s “approval and trust ratings suffered”, she said. He doesn’t want to risk the same happening again. “However, what is coming out is that the government is weak and incompetent, given the bungled attempts to arrest Bato,” she added. In contrast, Sara Duterte is performing well in surveys. Her allies’ grip on the senate has been tightened this week with Cayetano’s appointment – a helpful development given that she faces a looming impeachment trial. Dela Rosa will no doubt be keeping an eye on its proceedings. He is relatively young and may not be able to elude justice for ever, said Sol Iglesias, an associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines. “However, if Sara Duterte is not convicted and wins the presidency in 2028, he can expect to be shielded for as long as his allies remain in power,” she added. For now, his whereabouts remain a mystery.

UK joins European deal to send rejected asylum seekers to third-country hubs

The UK and 45 other European countries have signed an agreement that explicitly endorses plans to send unwanted asylum seekers to third country hubs. A political declaration from the 46 members of the Council of Europe, the body that oversees the European convention on human rights (ECHR), said states had an “undeniable sovereign right” to control their borders. It is understood that the UK is now seeking a deal with an unnamed third country, similar to the Italy-Albania agreement that allowed Rome to place detention centres in Albania. In that deal, the hubs were initially intended for asylum seekers from countries considered safe while their applications were processed. Giorgia Meloni’s government has since used them to hold people to be deported whose applications have been rejected. According to the seven-page document, countries should be free “to address and potentially deter irregular migration”. It said: “Amongst the forms of new approaches that have been envisaged by several member states are processing requests for international protection in a third country, third country ‘return hubs’, and cooperation with countries of transit.” The agreement also attempts to give more scope for countries to deport people to places where they may be in danger of inhuman or degrading treatment, and to limit courts’ powers to intervene. Ministers have claimed that articles 3 and 8 of the convention – the right to live free from torture and the right to family life – have been used to prevent people with no right to be in the UK from being removed. “Caution should be exercised … when assessing whether the expulsion or extradition of an individual to a non-state party would violate a state’s obligations under article 3 of the convention,” the agreement said. The convention has become a significant point of contention between the main political parties. While Keir Starmer backs ECHR changes, the Conservatives and Reform UK have pledged to leave. One leading migration specialist said she was not convinced that a political agreement would have a significant effect on immigration cases. Madeleine Sumption, the director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, said: “It’s not clear how much impact a political declaration makes given that judges’ decisions are also driven by domestic and international case law, which this declaration does not change. How much concrete difference it will make remains to be seen.” Yvette Cooper, who finalised the agreement at the high-level meeting in Chişinău, Moldova, is expected to discuss hubs over the next two days. The foreign secretary told the Guardian: “Reform and the Conservatives have called for the ripping up of international law altogether – even though those same international laws are essential to our law enforcement cooperation against the criminal smuggler gangs, or to upholding pillars such as the Good Friday agreement. “The Greens have called instead for the ripping up of border controls – damaging our national security. Neither of their approaches delivers for our national interest. “That is why Labour is reforming the ECHR with partners from across the continent, because we know the relationships we build abroad make us stronger at home.” Alain Berset, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, said discussions about removing people who arrived in Europe by irregular routes would take place during the conference “at a multilateral level”. Starmer’s government has promoted setting up return hubs as a possible deterrent to irregular migration. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, told MPs in November that the Home Office was in “active negotiations” with several countries, but no deals had been confirmed. The previous government’s plans to send people arriving by small boats to Rwanda, which cost £715m by 2024, was cancelled after failing to send a single person. The supreme court ruled the policy was unlawful because Rwanda was not a safe country. The EU has voted to allow the possibility of return hubs, with Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands involved in talks. Discussions have reportedly centred on 11 countries – Armenia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Libya, Mauritania, Rwanda, Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda and Uzbekistan. Montenegro has denied reports that it is considering housing refused asylum seekers. Prof Eirik Bjorge KC, a legal academic at the University of Bristol, also questioned the effect of the declaration, but “deplored” attempts to modify human rights protections. “Article 3 is an embodiment of the very object and purpose of the convention and as such cannot be modified through political declarations,” he said. “In that regard, I deplore the attempt to relativise the notion of inhuman and degrading treatment.” Human rights organisations said they were concerned by the declaration. Akiko Hart, the director of Liberty, said: “The Chişinău political declaration on the ECHR is a hugely significant moment. “We are deeply concerned that changing how the ECHR is used by UK courts will open the door to a gradual weakening of human rights protections.”

Harvey Weinstein’s New York retrial ends in mistrial with jury deadlocked

Harvey Weinstein’s retrial in New York on a rape charge ended in a mistrial on Friday after the jury deadlocked in the closely watched criminal case that another jury had already failed to decide last year. The disgraced former Hollywood mogul has been convicted of other sex crimes on the US east and west coasts and is already in jail. But Friday’s declaration of another mistrial leaves the New York rape charge in limbo after three trials. A majority-male jury in Manhattan had been weighing whether Weinstein raped Jessica Mann, a hairstylist and actor. Weinstein’s lawyers argued that sexual encounter between them was consensual. It happened in 2013 during a fraught relationship between Weinstein, who was married at the time, and Mann, decades his junior. The signs of stalemate emerged on Friday a few hours into the third day of deliberations. Jurors sent a note saying they “have concluded that they cannot reach” a unanimous verdict. Judge Curtis Farber initially instructed the group to continue deliberating. An appeals court overturned his 2020 New York conviction on charges that involved Mann and another accuser. At a retrial last year, jury deliberations broke down amid infighting on Mann’s portion of the case, leading to this current retrial. Weinstein is charged with one count of rape in the third degree. Mann, 40, has testified that she willingly had some sexual interludes with the movie producer, but that he subjected her to unwanted sex that day, after she repeatedly said no. Weinstein’s lawyers have emphasized that Mann subsequently continued seeing Weinstein after the encounter and expressing warmth toward him. Mann has said she was mired in complicated feelings about him, herself and what had happened. Her viewpoint changed in 2017, when a series of allegations against Weinstein propelled the #MeToo movement. Some of those accusations generated criminal convictions against Weinstein in New York and California. Weinstein, 74, has said he “acted wrongly” but never assaulted anyone. The current jury heard nearly three weeks of testimony, five days of it from Mann. Weinstein did not testify. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted. Mann, however, has agreed to be named. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, issued a statement saying his prosecution team was disappointed with the outcome but said “we deeply respect the jury system and sincerely thank all of the jurors for their time and dedication.” Bragg added: “For nearly a decade, Jessica Mann has fought for justice. Over the course of many weeks during three separate trials, she relived unthinkably painful experiences in front of complete strangers. Her perseverance and bravery are inspiring to the members of my office, and more importantly, to survivors everywhere.” He said his office would consider its next steps in consultation with Mann “and in consideration of Harvey Weinstein’s pending sentencing following last year’s trial conviction for forcibly sexually assaulting Miriam Haley”. Weinstein was convicted on one count, concerning Haley, and acquitted on a charge involving another woman, after a three-week trial that revived accusations from a successful 2020 prosecution that was overturned on appeal. Weinstein reported chest pains in court on Wednesday during jury deliberations. He is generally transported to court in a wheelchair and returned to court on Thursday as deliberations continued. He is incarcerated at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City and has been in and out of hospital in the city with heart trouble and other health conditions since his original conviction. Bragg’s statement concluded: “As always, we will continue to prosecute crimes of sexual violence – no matter who the defendant is – in a survivor-centered manner that uplifts their voices in the pursuit of justice.” The Associated Press contributed reporting