The World Today for July 19, 2024

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The Pot Bubbles Over

WORLD

The recent assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, who is running again for the country’s top leadership post, is just the latest example of how the stew of political violence simmering throughout the world for years is now bubbling over.

Following the shooting on Saturday and condemnations for the act that poured in from leaders from across the globe, many politicians vowed to turn down the heat, and punish perpetrators.

One thing is clear – as lone actors and criminal gangs take violent action, political violence is rising across the globe, and it is not just a developed world problem anymore.

Recently, for example, an Ecuadoran court sentenced five people to prison – with two receiving sentences touching 35 years in length – for their involvement in the assassination of Ecuadoran presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio last August, reported the BBC.

Villavicencio, a former journalist, was an anticorruption campaigner who sought to fight drug gangs that have grown to hold tremendous power and influence in the South American country. As Al Jazeera explained, Ecuador sits between Colombia and Peru, two of the largest cocaine exporters in the world. Ecuadoran ports are key segments of their distribution networks to the rest of the world.

In Mexico, where Claudia Sheinbaum recently won the presidential election, violence against politicians increased 150 percent compared with elections in 2021, wrote CNBC, citing political consultancy Integralia. Drug gangs drove much of the killing and harassment, too.

Europe has seen an alarming rise in attacks on politicians over the past year.

During the recent high-stakes election in France, for example, where tensions were running high, there were more than 50 instances of people assaulting political candidates and campaigners, reported CNN. Deploying 30,000 police to deter disorder and violence, the government detained around 30 alleged assailants for questioning. A few candidates needed hospitalization.

In neighboring Germany, ahead of European parliamentary elections in June, saw a rise in attacks, particularly against politicians from the left-leaning Social Democrats and the Greens. German news magazine Der Spiegel commented that hundreds of “brutal” attacks “against politicians are shaking democracy.”

And in Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and seriously injured in May in a “politically motivated” attack.

Meanwhile, in Asia, physical attacks against political leaders are not uncommon. In one of the most devastating such incidents in the region in recent history, lawmaker and former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down in 2022 at a political event in a country where gun violence is exceedingly rare.

In South Korea in January this year, just months before the elections, South Korean Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, the country’s main opposition leader and former presidential candidate, was stabbed in the neck, the South China Morning Post wrote. That same month, Bae Hyun-jin, a conservative lawmaker was assaulted by a teen with a brick, suffering head injuries.

“Political terrorism is a threat to democracy and cannot be tolerated for any reason,” said Ho Jun Seok, a spokesperson for South Korea’s ruling People Power Party. “Political terrorism is the product of politics based on extremism and hatred, and politicians have a responsibility to unite society.”

After the assassination attempt on Trump, many world leaders said such an attack on a political leader should be unthinkable, Reuters noted. But British government expert on political violence John Woodcock, whose title is Lord Walney, has long warned of the threats posed by radical groups on the right and left in his country. Speaking to the Guardian, he said the assault on Trump was “a vivid reminder of the vulnerability of all politicians.”

Woodcock’s critics at left-wing British news outlet Novara Media, however, argued that Woodcock has advocated for silencing protests and dissent, compromising freedom of speech and assembly, surveilling organizations, communities and other supposed agitators more closely, and other repressive measures.

Some researchers say that political polarization has led to harsher rhetoric from politicians in Europe and a change in the norms of what is acceptable speech and behavior – and opened the door to violence.

“And that’s always been led to some extent by right-wing populist parties popping up (in Europe) and suddenly no longer obeying the rules of the game,” Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, told NPR. “No longer being polite and pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of discourse, pushing the boundaries in terms of very militant language that is being employed.”

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

Word Wars

SPAIN

The Spanish government will introduce a series of measures aimed at curbing the spread of fake news, an initiative the conservative opposition panned as an attempt to censor critical media, especially conservative outlets, while journalists worried it would endanger press freedoms, Reuters reported.

On Wednesday, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the new media rules to the lower house of parliament which will target all forms of media in Spain, including social media platforms and traditional print and broadcast media, in line with the European Media Freedom Act (MFA) approved earlier this year.

The MFA was designed to regulate the media and shield journalists from government spying or being forced to reveal their sources.

“Without free media of quality, there is no democracy,” Sánchez said in an address to the lower house. “Without reliable and diverse sources of information, the citizens are blind.”

Sánchez added that the rules will require outlets to disclose all shareholders who influence editorial policy, detail the amounts they receive from public advertising and third countries, as well as provide transparent audience data.

He added that the government will not give a “stamp of approval” to any media outlet. It would, meanwhile, dole out a $109 million subsidy to help traditional media go digital.

The opposition People’s Party, meanwhile, criticized the new rules as a “law of censorship” and accused Sanchez of seeking to restrict conservative media outlets.

That party said the draft law’s timing is suspect because it comes as Sánchez’s wife Begona Gomez is to appear before a court this week as part of a corruption and influence peddling probe. That story broke in April and Sánchez has since criticized the allegations as a “harassment and bullying operation” against him and his wife by his so-called conservative enemies in politics and the media.

Journalists and media rights advocates told the Voice of America that the proposal may limit the media’s role as a public watchdog.

“They have said they are going to change the law to distinguish between good and bad media,” Nacho Cardero, director of El Confidencial, a news website that has published a series of reports on Gomez, told VOA. “But they have not said what they are going to do.”

The new rules come as debate over media freedom and the policing of harmful or misleading content has intensified in Europe and elsewhere.

Tradition and the Unwilling

ZAMBIA

Zambian authorities rescued 48 boys from an unauthorized male circumcision camp in the country’s south this month, following demands from desperate parents saying their children had been kidnapped, the BBC reported.

Officials said the boys, between the ages of 10 and 17, were found in a secretive, traditional rite-of-passage camp, near the city of Livingstone.

The site was established two weeks ago without permission near a national wildlife park, with officials saying the children were “caged” in unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

One of the boys had been missing his HIV medication for two weeks and three others were briefly hospitalized for complications from circumcision, typically performed with razor blades.

These children were caught up in a traditional initiation practice in Zambia known as “mukanda,” which involves forcefully taking boys from schools, with some being coerced, although some others go along willingly. The initiation is a test of endurance, requiring boys to endure pain and harsh living conditions as a transition to manhood, with the practice shrouded in secrecy and cultural taboo.

Even so, parents reported being contacted by phone with demands for up to $75 for expenses, a large amount of money for many Zambians, despite not having given their consent for their children’s participation. The rescued boys also said they were physically abused when they attempted to escape.

The camp was subsequently burned down. Education officials in Livingstone welcomed the intervention, calling the tradition harmful to the community.

Caught in the Net

EL SALVADOR

Salvadorian authorities have detained thousands of children in an ongoing anti-gang crackdown, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), prompting questions about President Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown that has made the Central American nation one of the safest in the region since it began more than two years ago, Al Jazeera reported.

Since March 2022, Bukele declared a state of emergency in an effort to tackle gangs that controlled and terrorized neighborhoods across El Salvador.

The campaign has seen the detention of around 80,000 suspected gang members, which has sharply reduced the country’s homicide rates.

But the crackdown has been criticized for human rights abuses, with advocates saying some suspects have been arrested with little evidence or because of their background.

The government has freed about 7,000 people because of a lack of evidence, the Associated Press wrote.

Earlier this week, HRW released a report saying that police have detained up to 3,319 minors in “countless indiscriminate raids” that often target those in “low-income neighborhoods” known to be hotbeds of crime.

The organization alleged that many of the arrested had “no apparent connection to gangs’ abusive activity,” adding that they were targeted because of their physical appearance or socioeconomic background.

The underage suspects were often convicted on charges such as “unlawful association,” which the report notes “have overbroad definitions and harsh maximum sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years.”

A total of 841 minors remained in custody as of January, according to the report.

The findings also showed that at least 60 minors suffered abuse in custody, such as being deprived of food and healthcare, and endured torture and sexual assault from adult inmates.

Despite criticism and human rights abuse allegations, Bukele’s iron-fisted approach remains popular in El Salvador and won him reelection earlier this year with 85 percent of the vote. His party controls the legislature and recently extended the anti-gang emergency powers.

While El Salvador is seeing a drop in crime rates, another country in Latin America may be becoming the next hub for gangs: Paraguay seized more than four tons of cocaine worth roughly $240 million this week, the largest drug bust in the South American country’s history, CBS News noted.

The bust marked the second time in a week that Paraguayan officials announced a major seizure involving cocaine hidden in a food shipment.

President Santiago Peña described the seizures as a series of “very sad episodes” that underscored how the strategically located Paraguay is transforming into a key drug trafficking hub in the region.

The origin of the drugs is unclear – unlike Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, Paraguay does not produce cocaine.

However, it has recently become a smuggling hub for cigarettes, luxury goods, and drugs as cartels establish new routes to new markets.

DISCOVERIES

No Ant Left Behind

In medieval societies, amputations were common, performed to save a life in the days before antibiotics revolutionized wound care.

Now, a new study shows that Florida carpenter ants also do such surgery, the first time this kind of behavior has been observed in the animal and insect world.

“I didn’t believe this (at first) because it was very counterintuitive,” said the lead author of a new study, Erik Frank, of the University of Würzburg, Germany.

In previous, separate research published last year, scientists found that some ants applied antimicrobial substances – produced by what’s known as metapleural glands – on the wounds of nestmates to cleanse them of pathogens.

Some ant species, including carpenter ants, however, do not have these glands, supposedly because they live in structures hewn from wood, Frank told CNN.

Nonetheless, Florida carpenter ants, a species rather common in the southern United States, are still exposed to injuries.

After one of his students serendipitously witnessed an ant biting off a wounded nestmate’s leg, Frank started investigating the behavior with his team.

They manually injured ants and infected some of the animals’ wounds. One group was kept isolated, another group had amputations performed by the scientists, and a third group was released into the colony.

The ants that returned to the nest were quickly approached by one or two comrades, which gnawed the leg above the femur, amputating it entirely, according to a review of the study in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Ninety percent of the ants that had this “surgery” survived. In contrast, only 40 percent of those left alone lived.

Frank’s team found that most of the surviving ants were those that had injuries to the femur and had amputations performed. Meanwhile, they also observed that ants never performed amputations for lower-leg injuries because those, due to ant physiology, don’t stop infection with the same effectiveness as amputations carried out higher up the leg, something “the ants just seem to know.”

“It’s like retrieving injured soldiers from the battlefield and then treating them,” said Daniel Kronauer, an expert on ant biology at Rockefeller University who was not involved with the research.

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