Tag Archives: Civil Unrest

French government offers sweeteners to head off fresh ‘yellow vest’ unrest

A French fireman extinguishes a burning car as youths and high school students protest against the French government's reform plan, in Nantes, France, December 6, 2018. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

By Richard Lough and Marine Pennetier

PARIS (Reuters) – The French government hinted at more concessions to ‘yellow vest’ protesters on Thursday in a bid to head off another wave of violence in the capital over living costs and regain the initiative after weeks of civil unrest.

With protesters calling on social media for “Act IV” – a fourth weekend of protest – Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said 65,000 police would be drafted in to stop a repeat of last Saturday’s mayhem in Paris when rioters torched cars and looted shops off the famed Champs Elysees boulevard.

Philippe told the Senate he was open to new measures to help the lowest-paid workers. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said he was prepared to accelerate tax cuts for households and that he wanted workers’ bonuses to be tax-free.

“I am ready to look at all measures that will help raise the pay of those on the minimum wage without doing excessive damage to our competitiveness and businesses,” Philippe told the parliament’s upper house.

The rush of sweeteners to soothe public anger began with Philippe’s climb-down on fuel tax hikes, the first major U-turn of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.

Yet, five days after the worst rioting central Paris has seen since 1968, all signs are that the government has failed to quell the revolt.

A repeat of last Saturday’s violence in Paris’s city center — which saw rioters deface the Arc de Triomphe with anti-Macron graffiti — would deal a blow to the economy and raise doubts over the government’s survival.

Philippe said the state would do all it could to maintain order. At least four first division football matches have been canceled and several museums including Paris’ Grand Palais said they would close.

ACT IV

An official in Macron’s office said intelligence suggested some protesters would come to the capital with the aim to “vandalize and kill”. There is concern about far-right, anarchist and anti-capitalist groups like the Black Bloc, which have piggybacked off the ‘yellow vest’ movement.

The Paris prefecture on Thursday told restaurants and luxury boutiques along the Champs Elysees boulevard to close on Saturday and asked local Paris authorities to prepare their districts for violence.

On Facebook and across social media, protesters are calling for “Act IV”.

“France is fed up!! We will be there in bigger numbers, stronger, standing up for French people. Meet in Paris on Dec. 8,” read one group’s banner.

Security sources said the government was considering using troops currently deployed on anti-terrorism patrols to protect public buildings.

The protests, named after the fluorescent safety jackets French motorists have to keep in their cars, erupted in November over the squeeze on household budgets caused by fuel taxes. Demonstrations swiftly grew into a broad, sometimes-violent rebellion against Macron, with no formal leader.

Their demands are diverse and include lower taxes, higher salaries, cheaper energy costs, better retirement provisions and even Macron’s resignation.

STREET POLITICS

Reversing course on next year’s fuel-tax hikes have left a gaping 4 billion euro hole in the government’s 2019 budget which it is now searching for ways to plug.

Citing unnamed sources, Les Echos business daily said the government as considering delaying corporate tax easing planned next year or putting off an increase in the minimum wage.

The unrest has exposed the deep-seated resentment among non-city dwellers that Macron is out-of-touch with the hard-pressed middle class and blue-collar workers. They see the 40-year-old former investment banker as closer to big business.

An Elabe poll on Thursday showed that only 23 percent of people trusted Macron, now lower than his predecessor Francois Hollande at the same period in his presidency.

Trouble is also brewing elsewhere for Macron. Teenage students on Thursday blocked access to more than 200 high schools across the country, burnt garbage bins and setting alight a car in the western city of Nantes. Hundreds of students were arrested after clashes with riot police.

Meanwhile, farmers who have long complained that retailers are squeezing their margins and are furious over a delay to the planned rise in minimum food prices, and truckers are threatening to strike from Sunday.

Le Maire said France was no longer spared from the wave of populism that has swept across Europe.

“It’s only that in France, it’s not manifesting itself at the ballot box, but in the streets.”

(Reporting by Richard Lough and Marine Pennetier; additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Michel Rose, Emmanuel Jarry, John Irish and Myriam Rivet; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

As populations swell, the greater demand for food could spark unrest

A passerby walks outside a restaurant, the day Hong Kong government releases its latest consumer price

By Lin Taylor

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Swelling populations and demand for food combined with ever scarcer water and land resources could lead to a doubling of food prices and trigger civil unrest in some developing countries, a new report says.

Demand for food with a higher environmental impact, such as meat, has surged as emerging countries like China and India grow in size and in wealth, said Martin Halle, policy analyst at Global Footprint Network (GFN).

“A few things are very clear: the demand for food is going up tremendously because of population growth,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“[Food production] is becoming more unstable because climate change is affecting production, in the context of growing land and water scarcity. There’s very little leeway between supply and demand.”

In the past, countries were able to meet those demands by growing more food on more land. But this has come at a cost, Halle said, since the planet is now running out of water and arable land.

The last time the world saw a severe food crisis was in 2007 and 2008, the report said, when extreme weather events hit major grain producing regions the year earlier, causing spikes in the demand and cost of food.

The higher prices led to social and political unrest in North Africa, the Middle East and South East and South Asia.

The report published this week by GFN and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)said most of the same countries, namely Morocco, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Indonesia, are again at risk if food prices were to increase in the next few years.

CLIMATE CHANGE VOLATILITY

Climate change and extreme weather patterns will further increase volatility in food production, Halle added, meaning food prices will become more unstable in the coming years.

“The real game-changer comes when you factor in the environmental constraints – climate change, land scarcity and water scarcity, and all of these are linked,” said Halle.

Drought is becoming more frequent and severe in places like southern Africa, and that – combined with the recent El Nino phenomenon – is taking a heavy toll on rural lives and economies.

For example, maize prices in South Africa, the continent’s top producer of the staple crop, reached near record highs late 2015, in the face of rolling heat waves and poor rains over key growing areas.

Using models from data across 110 countries, the study found that if the cost of food doubled, household spending would increase by more than 10 percent in 37 countries.

Five African countries – Benin, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ghana – would be the worst affected in terms of highest percentage loss to GDP.

The major emerging economies of China and India are forecast to lose $161 billion and $49 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) respectively with a doubling of food commodity prices.

“What this provides is a litmus test,” said Ivo Mulder, economics advisor at UNEP. “We are overusing what is available for us and we don’t really know what the magnitude of the risk is.”

While higher income countries, like the United States, could benefit from food price hikes, Mulder said, their high demand for meat-based products is contributing to the problem.

“It’s important to be honest about the types of risks that countries face,” he said. “Because even if developed countries are less exposed than developing countries, it doesn’t mean there is no risk at all.”

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, conflicts, land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

Venezuela Moves Quickly To Eliminate Opposition

Venezuelan leaders have begun to blatantly ignore human rights in squelching protests and opposition to their rule.

President Nicolas Maduro has been warning opposition leaders for weeks that they will be jailed and tortured like opposition hardliner Leopoldo Lopez if they do not stop opposing his plans for the country.

Thursday the government arrested two opposition members of the legislature and had already sentenced one of them to 10 months in jail.  Another congresswoman is jailed and the government is working to strip away her congressional immunity from prosecution because of her opposition to Maduro.

The mayor of San Diego, Enzo Scarano, was removed from his position by the Supreme Court which is loaded with Maduro associates.  He was jailed for not following a court order to remove protester barricades from the city.

Maduro said Thursday he will “neutralize” the “country’s enemies.”

Ukrainian President Removed From Power

The former President of the Ukraine is on the run after being removed from power and charged with mass murder in connection with the deaths of protesters.

Victor Yanukovich was removed by the country’s Parliament over the weekend and immediately went into hiding while declaring he was still the nation’s leader and experiencing a coup d’état.

The parliament called for a new Presidential election on May 25th and appointed an interim president who immediately issued an arrest warrant for Yanukovich for mass murder.  In the weeks leading to the Yanukovich’s removal, the government had been stepping up violent actions against protesters including more than two dozen deaths.

Prosecutors say the killings came at the order of Yanukovich who ordered all the protest camps destroyed and crowd forcibly removed from downtown Kiev.

The removal of Yanukovich is drawing the ire of Russian leaders who have lost a key ally in the region.  The new government, and the leaders of the opposition who lead the protests, have been calling for the Ukraine to join the European Union.  The protests began when Yanukovich withdrew from a tentative agreement with the EU in favor of close ties with Russia.

Venezuelan Government Threatening Foreign Press

Venezuelan’s government is trying to keep the world from finding out about the degrading conditions in the country.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is threatening to throw CNN out of the country if they don’t stop providing truthful coverage of the protests and civil unrest in the nation.

“I’ve asked minister Delcy Rodríguez to tell CNN we have started the administrative process to remove them from Venezuela if they don’t rectify (their coverage),” Maduro said on state TV. “Enough! I won’t accept war propaganda against Venezuela. If they don’t rectify this, they’re out of the country.”

The government has been trying to hide the level of protests in the country since the arrest of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez on terrorism charges.  Human rights groups around the world have condemned the arrest as purely political.

The government has kept Venezuelan media from reporting on the protests.

Ukraine Moves Closer To Civil War

Civil war in the Ukraine continues to grow likely after another short-lived truce between the country’s President and opposition leaders fell apart Thursday morning. 

At least 100 protesters are dead and over 500 injured when police and military troops attacked protest camps in the capital city of Kiev.  The deaths come after a hastily called cease-fire by government leaders after worldwide outcry over the killings of 28 protesters on Tuesday.

Ukrainian government officials say 25 police or military members have been injured or killed during the protests since Tuesday.

Hospital officials say that obviously professional and highly skilled snipers killed many of the protesters.  They say the wounds were directly to the heart, head or at the base of the neck where there was no chance to save their lives.

Officials with the European Union are beginning to pressure Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to call for early elections as a way to placate the opposition leadership and protesters.  Russia, a close ally of Yanukovych, immediately denounced EU nations for the call, saying they are trying to force the country to align with western interests.