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      The Guardian view on Evan Gershkovich’s year behind bars: Moscow should free him now | Editorial

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 18:38 · 1 minute

    The Wall Street Journal correspondent is not a spy. He is a journalist, and should be released immediately from his Russian jail

    Evan Gershkovich , a Wall Street Journal reporter, has spent nearly a year in a Moscow prison, awaiting trial for a crime he did not commit. Mr Gershkovich was arrested last March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and jailed on espionage charges. He is not a spy. He is a journalist, and should be released immediately. Hostage diplomacy lies behind his incarceration. As the US ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy , said, Mr Gershkovich’s case “is not about evidence, due process, or rule of law. It is about using American citizens as pawns to achieve political ends”.

    Vladimir Putin indicated in February that a prisoner exchange could lead to the release of Mr Gershkovich. There have been high-profile prisoner swaps in the past. In December 2022, Moscow traded a US basketball star convicted of a drugs offence in Russia for a Russian arms trafficker. But a journalist’s detention to secure the release of a Russian hitman would underscore Russia’s retreat into a Soviet past. In 1986 an American journalist, Nicholas Daniloff , was arrested and charged with espionage. He was let go after two weeks when the US released a Soviet diplomat accused of spying. Mr Gershkovich has been inside for nearly 12 months.

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      Woman bailed after chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ in Manchester protest

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 7 days ago - 12:08

    Exclusive: Police accused of suppressing free speech as Musa Khawaja, who is of Palestinian heritage, banned from city centre

    Police have been accused of suppressing legitimate protest after a woman was arrested for chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and given bail conditions banning her from Manchester city centre or from being in a group of more than three people.

    Musa Khawaja, 26, from Lancashire, was arrested for the chant outside the offices of BNY Mellon in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, during a demonstration against the bank’s investment of more than £10m in the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems .

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      Article 23: China hits back at criticism of Hong Kong’s hardline new security law

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 7 days ago - 05:43

    Beijing dismisses chorus of concern from western governments over punitive new law as slander

    China has accused western governments and the United Nations of slander after they criticised Hong Kong’s new national security law , which was rushed through the city’s pro-Beijing parliament this week.

    The law, known as Article 23 , covers newly defined acts of treason, espionage, theft of state secrets, sedition and foreign interference. Critics said it was ushering in a “new era of authoritarianism”, would further erode the rights and freedoms of residents, and would scare off international business and investment.

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      The Guardian view on Hong Kong’s new national security law: double the pain | Editorial

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 20 March - 18:49

    Punitive legislation is already in place. But the territory’s masters are hammering home the message

    Residents of Hong Kong could be forgiven for a sense of deja vu. A draconian new national security law (NSL), broad in scope and harsh in penalties, is trampling over basic rights. It first happened four years ago, in response to the extraordinary uprising that saw one in four people take to the streets to defend the region’s autonomy and way of life.

    Beijing imposed the 2020 law upon the territory, demolishing any vestiges of its claim to run Hong Kong on a “one country, two systems” basis. That legislation, both vague and sweeping, claims jurisdiction over acts committed by anyone anywhere in the world. It introduced trials without juries. It is so stringent that a police chief said that even watching a documentary on the protests might breach the law.

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      Ironies abound in Michael Gove’s definition of extremism | Letters

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 19 March - 18:06

    Readers respond to the government’s proposed new definition of extremism and its implications

    Rafael Behr says that the killers of Jo Cox and David Amess “cannot be used to discredit the causes they appropriated” ( There is a far bigger threat to Britain than fringe extremists, 13 March ). However, Thomas Mair, Cox’s killer, shouted “Britain first” as he attacked her, and that he did this after weeks of often intimidatory nationalist rhetoric by some leave campaigners suggests that Behr’s conclusion does not always apply.

    Ironically, the leave campaign, in which Michael Gove played a leading role, is probably the strongest case of a nonviolent campaign inspiring violent action – there was a wave of attacks against Europeans, Muslims, gay people and others. Not a case for banning Vote Leave, as Gove’s new plans might lead us to conclude, of course, but cause to reflect on where the inspiration for extremism has been coming from in British politics over the last decade.
    Prof Martin Shaw
    University of Sussex

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      Ofcom’s approach to GB News will dilute trust in media – just when we need it most | Stewart Purvis and Chris Banatvala

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 13 March - 13:52

    The law hasn’t changed. Yet the regulator is allowing these channels to transmit partisan political content

    • Stewart Purvis is a former Ofcom content partner and Chris Banatvala was Ofcom’s founding director of standards

    Ofcom has signalled the start of the 2024 election season by issuing its advice to broadcasters on coverage of the local elections in May. It does this before every election to help its licensees maintain their legal obligation of impartiality. But in our editorial and regulatory experience, stretching back 40 years, there has never been so much cause for confusion and concern about what lies ahead in broadcast coverage of both local and general election campaigns.

    Is Ofcom going to allow senior party officials to present election programmes as long as they are not actual candidates? Could a channel host party loyalists from only one side, delivering nightly unchallenged polemics on each day’s campaign news? Will channels with poor compliance records and fewer viewers than the public service broadcasters be given greater flexibility in achieving “due impartiality” on the basis of what Ofcom calls “ audience expectations ”?

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      MPs, understand this: protests are inevitable when you fail to represent the people | Andy Beckett

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 10 March - 13:01

    Politics is not just an activity conducted in Westminster corridors, with the voters locked out – as marches over the climate crisis and Gaza show

    Where should politics happen? For most MPs, accustomed to the Palace of Westminster’s inward-looking spaces and rituals, the answer is obvious. In parliament and its associated offices, corridors, committee rooms, bars and tea rooms; in Downing Street and its surrounding maze of ministries; and in the parts of the media that mould political opinion.

    This country is supposed to be a representative democracy. Except for very occasional referendums, periodic elections, voxpops and opinion polls, or perhaps the odd exchange with their MP, voters are not meant to be directly involved. A sign of a healthy political system, we are often told, is one where most people get on with their lives and leave politics to the professionals.

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      Michelle Donelan deserves to lose her job over false allegations against two academics | Observer editorial

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 10 March - 06:00

    The science and innovation secretary falsely accused two academics with whom she disagreed of holding extremist views

    Conservative ministers have in recent years bullied civil servants , been criminally sanctioned for breaking the law and sent restricted material to those unauthorised to receive it. Now there is a new misdemeanour to add to the list: the science and innovation secretary, Michelle Donelan, has had to pay damages and apologise to two academics after they launched legal action, accusing her of libelling them.

    Last October, Donelan wrote to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-departmental umbrella body that oversees seven higher education research councils, Innovate UK and Research England, to complain about two members of the latter’s new equality, diversity and inclusion expert advisory group. She accused the two academics of “sharing extremist views on social media”, expressed her “disgust and outrage” at their appointment, and asked UKRI’s chief executive to disband the working group.

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      Socialism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion on Prevent list of terrorism warning signs

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 7 March - 13:38


    Communism also among ideologies on document as human rights groups say UK scheme has been politicised

    A document from Prevent, the official scheme to stop radicalisation, includes believing in socialism, communism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion in a list of potential signs of ideologies leading to terrorism.

    It comes as the Conservative government considers widening what it will consider to be extremism.

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