Kosovo opposition protests detention of its leader

October 13, 2015

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Fifteen policemen and one civilian were injured during a violent protest by the opposition Self-Determination Party (Vetevendosje!) after an opposition lawmaker was taken in for questioning, Kosovo police said Tuesday.

Police spokesman Baki Kelani says opposition leader Albin Kurti was taken to a police station Monday evening to be questioned on the use of tear gas to disrupt the parliament session last week. The opposition had been protesting against the government's recent EU-sponsored deal with Serbia giving the Kosovo's Serb-majority areas greater powers.

Video images of the session showed Kurti opening the first canister of tear gas. "A small group" of protesters gathered in front of the police station where Kurti was being interviewed, hurling stones, other hard objects and putting two cars of the prosecutor's office on fire, Kelani said, adding that half a dozen cars were also damaged.

"They did not respect police calls to disperse and police were obliged to intervene," Kelani said by telephone, adding that Kurti was questioned based on a prosecutor's warrant. Kurti's Vetevendosje! said police did not explain why Kurti was being questioned, adding that hundreds of citizens and supporters faced with "exaggerated violence from police" using tear gas and also iron and plastic batons injuring many of them.

Kurti, a member of parliament, was released after midnight while nine protesters have been arrested, Kelani said Tuesday. The party called for more anti-government protests. "Pristina, Kosovo ... will topple down this government of mafia and collaborationists too," said a statement from the Vetevendosje! party.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but Serbia has refused to recognize it.

Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this report.

New migrant route opens in Europe as Hungary seals border

October 17, 2015

PETISOVCI, Slovenia (AP) — Hundreds of people started arriving in Slovenia on Saturday as a new migrant route opened in Europe after Hungary sealed its border for their free flow, adding another hurdle in their frantic flight from wars and poverty toward what they hope is a better life in Western Europe.

The closure of Hungary's border with Croatia early Saturday caused redirections of thousands of people — including women and small children soaked in cold rain — further west toward Croatia's border with Slovenia, the small European Union-member state which has limited capacity to process large numbers wishing to head toward Austria and Germany.

This could leave thousands stranded in Croatia and further east and south in Serbia and Macedonia. Several buses packed with migrants arrived in the Slovenian border town of Petisovci on Saturday from Croatia. Police spokeswoman Suzana Raus said that after processing, most of them will be transferred toward the Austrian border.

The U.N. refugee agency said Slovenia has the capacity to accept some 7,000 migrants a day. UNHCR spokeswoman Caroline Van Buren said at Slovenia's border with Croatia Saturday that "all is going well" as the first groups of migrants started arriving to the small Alpine nation.

"We have been in cold since two in the morning in Serbia," said Omar Thaqfa, 33, from Mosul in Iraq. "We were sitting in the street. Very cold. Inshallah, I am going to Germany." Slovenia, the country of some 2 million people, has said it would beef up border controls and create entry points for migrants to manage the influx, but would keep accepting migrants as long as Austria and Germany kept their borders open. Croatia has said it will close its border with Serbia if Slovenia does the same with Croatia.

Migrants had been coming through Croatia to get to Hungary and then further west. But Hungary blocked that route after midnight when police pulled a barbed-wire fence over a passage on the border with Croatia where about 140,000 migrants have passed since mid-September.

Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said Hungary's decision won't stop the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa who have been surging into Europe. "Nobody can stop this flow without shooting," Ostojic said, adding that further closure of frontiers for migrants would cause "a domino effect and lot of troubles for all countries" that are on the migrant route.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced the decision to close the border after a meeting of the national security Cabinet on Friday. Hungary decided to order the border clampdown after EU leaders who met Thursday in Brussels failed to agree on a plan backed by Hungary to send EU forces to block migrants from reaching Greece.

Szijjarto said in a statement Saturday that the government was defending Hungary and its citizens from the "mass wave of unidentified, uncontrolled migrants." He has said normal border checkpoints with Croatia would remain open, though inspections will be tightened.

Although Croatia is also a member of the European Union, unlike Hungary it is not part of the Schengen zone of passport-free travel. Slovenia is in the Schengen zone. Over 383,000 migrants have entered Hungary this year, nearly all passing through on their way to Germany and other destinations further west in the EU. The country clamped down on its border with Serbia with a similar razor wire fence on Sept. 15 and since then migrants have been taking a detour through Croatia to reach Hungary.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Saturday's edition of the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Germany can control its borders but not close them completely — "that wouldn't even succeed with a fence, as the example of Hungary shows."

Thousands of new arrivals a day have stretched Germany's capacity to house refugees and other migrants. But Merkel said she won't promise "false solutions" because they wouldn't hold even for two weeks and would create bigger disappointment that the problem hasn't been resolved.

"I am working with all my power for sustainable solutions, and they don't depend on us Germans alone and will take time," she said. Turkey's state-run news agency said 12 migrants have drowned after their boat sank off the Turkish coast in the Aegean sea. The Anadolu Agency said the Turkish coast guard rescued 25 other migrants from the sea.

Greece's coast guard said four children drowned when a boat carrying migrants sank off the small island of Kalolimnos. The group was trying to reach the island the Greek island of Lesbos — an entry point for a majority of migrants making the journey from the nearby Turkish coast.

Associated Press reporters Pablo Gorondi in Budapest, Hungary, and Dusan Stojanovic and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed.

Next Guatemala president must respond to restive populace

October 23, 2015

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A TV comic and a former first lady will vie for Guatemala's presidency Sunday, and the winner will face a tide of public anger at politicians that already drove the last elected president and vice president from office in disgrace.

The country will have either its first female president or its first political neophyte in the office. Whichever it is, the victor will have to respond quickly to demands for deep reform, said Alejandro Maldonado, who took over as interim president after Otto Perez Molina swapped the presidential palace for a prison cell Sept. 3.

"The new government will have a year before the people fill the plazas, streets, avenues and highways in social protest," Maldonado said during a recent speech to business executives. "And it could once again be successful."

In Sunday's presidential runoff, comedian Jimmy Morales, who boasted of his outsider status on the campaign trail, faces Sandra Torres, a businesswoman and longtime political party operative who in a previous campaign divorced former President Alvaro Colom to try to get around a rule barring presidential relatives from seeking the office.

An opinion poll released Wednesday gave the advantage to Morales with 67 percent voter preference, compared with 32 percent for Torres. The survey published by the newspaper Prensa Libre was conducted Oct. 9-14 by ProDatos O and had a margin of error of three percentage points.

If that trend bears out, it would be a continuation of the citizens' revolt that made Morales the surprise top vote-getter in the election's Sept. 6 opening round, when Guatemalans punished establishment favorite Manuel Baldizon, the 2011 runner-up who campaigned on the slogan, "It's his turn."

The protests began in April after a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal involving bribery at the customs agency was unveiled by Guatemalan prosecutors and a U.N. commission that is investigating criminal networks in the country.

Investigators first targeted former Vice President Roxana Baldetti, whose personal secretary was named as the alleged ringleader of the scheme, and then Perez Molina. Morales and Torres have jockeyed to position themselves as the anti-corruption candidate.

Both promise to keep Attorney General Thelma Aldana, a key figure in the investigation, and the U.N. commission in place. Morales vows to strengthen controls and transparency, while Torres would ask the U.N. body for help conducting a government-wide audit.

"From the get-go we must combat corruption at its core," Torres told The Associated Press, offering the "testimony of a life's work." "You can't talk about transparency if you're not transparent," she said.

Morales said in a debate this week that the government has controls and auditing powers at its disposal. "All the elements for auditing available to the presidency and vice presidency are going to be put to work," he said.

But many are skeptical that either candidate will truly work to root out entrenched corruption and find honest public servants to form a government. "I've seen the forums and debates and I'm not convinced," said Oneida de Bertrand, a homemaker who took part in the protests. "They say what we all know about how the country is, but when it comes time to make proposals they don't say how. And the worst part is neither one has said who will be in their Cabinet."

With Baldizon out of the race, the country has broken a cycle of four straight elections in which the previous runner-up won. While the protests focused on corruption, for many they also came to encompass broader demands for profound change in a country with chronic issues of poverty and inequality.

Guatemala also struggles with gangs that buy influence in government and dominate many aspects of society and it has one of the world's highest homicide rates. Observers note that the country's institutions remain dominated by the same political parties and many of the lawmakers elected in September are products of the system that the protests sought to upend.

The new legislators have "the same tricks" as always, said Eduardo Stein, a former vice president and political analyst. He said the next president will have to deal not only with a short-fused populace but also an underfinanced state due to poor budget management. Nonetheless, he sees a moment of historic potential for reform.

"We are facing an extraordinary and unique opportunity to take great steps in the quality of our society," Stein said. Renzo Rosal, another analyst, was more pessimistic, saying the candidates' proposals are merely cosmetic.

"What they have done here is build up a retaining wall for the (people's) demands," Rosal said. "The arrival of a new government is the perfect disguise to make us believe that ... will be different, but they won't."

Fires, stun grenades as students protest in SAfrica

October 23, 2015

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Thousands of South African university students protesting planned tuition hikes flocked to the country's main government complex on Friday, with some setting fires and throwing stones as police responded with stun grenades, tear gas and a water cannon.

President Jacob Zuma met with student leaders and university managers and his office later announced that there would be no fee increase for university students in 2016, a significant concession to their demands.One of the biggest student movements to have emerged since South Africa rejected white minority rule in 1994 poses a challenge to the ruling African National Congress party.

The announcement did not satisfy many student protesters. "We should be having free education," said 18-year-old Bongani Shabangu, who is studying education at a Pretoria university. "Most of us are from poor families."

Troy Mathebula, a student leader who attended the meeting with Zuma, said students were promised a freeze on tuition hikes next year. But Mathebula said student demands for free education were not met.

"What's going to happen in 2017? We have to come up with a solution that's going to cover us for the next many years," he said. "We're not happy about it," Mathebula said. Lucky Mahlatse, a 20-year-old computer science and statistics student, said more challenges lie ahead for graduating students.

"It's not that easy to get a job," he said. Security forces periodically detonated stun grenades to clear students who were trying to force an opening in the fence and throwing stones at police officers. Some knocked over portable toilets and set them alight.

Most of the protesters were not involved in the clashes. The students, some chanting and singing, had gathered in throngs on a large lawn at the foot of the Union Buildings in the capital, Pretoria, capping more than a week of protests against tuition increases planned for next year. A large statue of the late anti-apartheid icon and former President Nelson Mandela with a wide smile and arms outstretched overlooked the mayhem, which spilled into surrounding streets as armored police vehicles careened toward stone-throwing demonstrators.

Many students accuse the government of not doing enough to support university students and their families who are struggling to pay bills. Students had expected Zuma to address the protesters outside the Union Buildings on Friday and after it became apparent he would not come, protesters threw stones at police who responded with stun grenades and tear gas.

Zuma and other leaders of the ruling party have said they are sympathetic to student concerns and welcome their protests, as long as they are peaceful. A police helicopter flew overhead as some students pushed and pulled on a fence preventing them from getting closer to the government offices.

"Stop corruption, fund students," read one student placard. Another said: "Dear Mr. President: How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?" Costs vary, but annual tuition for undergraduate students in South Africa runs to several thousand dollars at some universities. That amount, combined with textbook and accommodation costs, is a burden for many poor students in a country with a wide gulf between the affluent and those with limited means.

The protests began last week at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, which later dropped plans for a 10.5 percent tuition hike in 2016 and has suspended classes until at least next week because of the disruption.

Many universities are in exam season, and there have been reports of protesters going into lecture halls and forcing some students to stop taking exams. On Wednesday, a student protest outside parliament in Cape Town turned violent and 30 demonstrators were arrested.

Russia, Jordan to coordinate militaries on Syria

October 23, 2015

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian news reports say Moscow and Jordan have agreed on creating a center in Amman for coordinating their military activities in Syria.

The reports say the agreement was reached Friday during talks in Vienna between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Syrian counterpart, Nasser Judeh. Lavrov said the center in the Jordanian capital would coordinate the military air campaigns of the two countries over Syria.

Russia began extensive airstrikes in Syria on Sept. 30, which Moscow says are targeting camps and facilities of the militant Islamic State group.

Greece's Tsipras win austerity vote after snap poll

October 17, 2015

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece's parliament has approved a new round of austerity measures — the first major test for leftwing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras after snap general elections last month, triggered by dissent over Greece's latest bailout deal.

Lawmakers early Saturday voted 154-140 in favor of the bill required for a 2 billion-euro ($2.3 billion) loan installment. It is part of Greece's third major bailout agreement with eurozone lenders, worth 86 billion euros ($98 billion) over three years.

"There are no new measures here. There are difficult measures that we all knew about," Tsipras said. That July bailout deal saw Tsipras abandon a pledge to bring an end to austerity and alienated a large section of his radical left Syriza party.

The split forced him to call an early election held on Sept. 20. Syriza came out on top and was able to return to government with the small right-wing Independent Greeks. Late Friday, several thousand protesters, many from a Communist backed labor union, joined a peaceful anti-austerity rally outside parliament before the vote. Several prominent politicians who were former Tsipras allies joined the protest.

"We can't accept a new crime at the people's expense. They're trying to destroy the welfare state. Everyone must fight it," protester Eleni Menegaki said. The new cost-cutting measures include penalizing early retirement and expanding a widely hated property tax.

Tsipras' Cabinet is now racing to overhaul its troubled pension system and impose a raft of new cutbacks. The measures are required before crucial funds can be injected into the country's ailing banks.

The government also wants relief from its debt, which is set to exceed 190 percent of Greece's annual national income next year. Eurozone lenders have promised discussions but only if certain economic measures are met.

The cost of the austerity measures, alongside with the ongoing controls on money transfers in the country, are expected to keep Greece in recession over the next two years and unemployment above 25 percent.

Tsipras faced little dissent from his party or right-wing coalition partners during a parliamentary debate on the bill that started at committee level Tuesday. All six opposition parties voted against the bill.

Now in Germany, a Syrian doctor wrestles with war memories

October 22, 2015

SAARLOUIS, Germany (AP) — By any measure, Dr. Osman al-Haj Osman has been a success among the tens of thousands of Syrians who have streamed into Europe. He received asylum in Germany. He's taking lessons in the language, is getting help from the state in finding a job and was able to bring wife and kids to join him.

But the 33-year-old surgeon is haunted by doubt over whether he made the right decision for his family in immigrating to such a different world. He's also burdened by memories of his country's civil war and the way in which his two young sons were branded by its horrors before they fled his home city of Aleppo in northern Syria more than a year ago.

"Everything around me, I feel, is temporary. Until now, I find it really hard to write my home address as anywhere other than Aleppo," he said on a rainy afternoon in September in Saarlouis. In 2012, Osman was the senior doctor at a front-line hospital in a rebel-held district of Aleppo under siege by Syrian government forces. Round the clock, casualties flowed into the Dar al-Shifaa hospital, civilians and rebels, wounded or dying in the intense urban warfare and heavy bombardment by Syrian forces.

Looking constantly exhausted, Osman hardly ever took off his often blood-stained, green surgery scrubs as he and the overwhelmed staff tried to deal with the wounded. "I have to make a choice between a child with a 10 percent chance of survival and one with a 25 percent chance," he told the AP at the time. When a wounded rebel died, often his comrades would burst into rage at the staff, convinced more could have been done.

Osman's wife and two young sons were living in the hospital with him. His older boy, Omar, who was 4 at the time, would walk among the maimed or dying, passing the pools of blood on the floor and the occasional severed limb. He would play in the hospital hallways or make joke announcements on the hospital PA system.

Now looking back, Osman said he regrets bringing his family into the hospital. He'd wanted his wife and children near him, but he said he hadn't realized until it was too late the trauma he had inflicted on his children. The boys now draw pictures of tanks, warplanes, wounded people and wrecked houses.

Omar still has nightmares. Osman recalled running errands in the streets of Aleppo with the boy, who, whenever a plane passed overhead, would ask his father if it was about to bomb them. Osman recalled another question Omar asked him once. "Papa, who created the world? The person who created it, can't he see what's happening to it?"

Dar al-Shifaa closed in November 2012 after a government airstrike hit a neighboring building, heavily damaging the hospital and killing four inside. Osman eventually worked at a clinic with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, trying to lay low as Islamic militants gained increasing power in the rebel-held districts of the city.

In August 2013, the militants arrested him, and he was questioned by an Egyptian militant who told him that MSF was headed by a "kafir," an infidel. Later in detention, he heard the Egyptian talking to other militants, telling them they would eventually have to kill him — but not now, they had other priorities. So they let him go. He left MSF three months later.

Finally in early 2014, he fled with his family to Turkey. After months of looking for work, he decided to head for Europe. His wife had resisted the idea of coming to Germany. Still, she and their kids — Omar, now 7 years old, and Rushd, 5 — arrived in Turkey on Tuesday.

He shares her doubts about life in a different culture. "Many young Syrians abandon their identity soon after they arrive here," he said, speaking as he was reunited with Mohammed al-Haj, a 26-year-old Syrian who had volunteered in the same Aleppo hospital. Al-Haj had just arrived after a 14-day journey from Turkey across Greece and the Balkans, sneaking across borders.

Now living in the state of Saarland, Osman has applied to two hospitals for jobs. He takes German lessons in the town of Saarlouis, not far from the town he lives in. With asylum, he gets a stipend of around 1,000 Euros ($1,100) a month.

"The situation in Germany is now good for Syrians," he said. "But there are no guarantees it will continue to be the same. What if a terror attack happens and is blamed on Muslims? I must have a Plan B."

Osman believes the danger of Islamic terror on German soil doesn't necessarily stem from the possibility militants have slipped in with the refugees streaming into Europe. He said militant ideas are already here in Germany.

He recounted an incident in the nearby town of Merzig in July when a Syrian man harshly berated a 12-year-old Syrian boy for wearing shorts in the mosque, accusing him of disrespecting the place, leading to a fight with others trying to calm the man down.

Regardless of what may happen, Osman is filled with gratitude for Germany. "I have a debt to repay to Germany, the country that helped me when no one else did," he said. The stipend, he said, he'll pay back quickly through income tax once he starts working. "But I can never repay the moral debt I owe to Germany."