• "Friends no longer, Ukraine removes Russian statues and street names

    The Guardian, Thu 28 Apr 2022
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/28/friends-no-longer-ukraine-removes-russian-statues-and-street-names
    Lorenzo Tondo and Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv

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    The head of a Russian worker, accidentally decapitated while the monument to friendship was pulled down in Kyiv on Tuesday. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardia n

    At 5.36 pm on Tuesday in the historic Kyiv district of Pecherskyi, an imposing Soviet-era bronze monument symbolising the friendship between Russia and Ukraine was accidentally decapitated and then deliberately dismantled to the applause of hundreds of people.

    As local officials explained, when one country invades and bombs another, killing its people, their friendship is over.

    The 40-year-old statue, depicting a Ukrainian and a Russian worker on a plinth, was pulled down on the order of local authorities in Kyiv. It is one of the first steps of a plan to demolish about 60 monuments and to rename dozens of streets associated with the Soviet Union, Russia and Russian figures, including the writers Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Pushkin, as a result of the war between the two countries.

    Serhii Myrhorodskyi, 86, an architect from Kyiv, watched excitedly as the head of the Russian worker accidentally broke off from its body and tumbled to the ground during the removal. He did not appear bothered, despite the fact it was he who had designed the monument, erected in 1982 as a gift from the Soviet regime to the Ukrainian government.

    “It is the right thing to do,” he told the Guardian. “There is no friendship with Russia and there will not be any friendship for a long time while Putin and his gang are in this world. After they drop dead, maybe in 30 years, something will change.

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    The dismantling of the Soviet-era bronze monument
    A woman cheers as the Soviet-era monument in Kyiv symbolising the former friendship between Russia and Ukraine is dismantled. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

    “The presence of the monument that represents a friendship with Russia is a sin. Removing it is the only right decision. And we could use that bronze of which the monument is made. We could melt it down and sculpt a new monument dedicated to Ukraine the motherland, which would symbolise the unity of all Ukrainian lands.”

    “As for my emotions,” he added, “I am just happy to see that people are glad this whole thing is being taken away.”

    As the monument began to fall, the crowd chanted: “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes, glory to the nation of Ukraine.”

    The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, who presided over the dismantling, said the removal of Russian symbols from the city was now under way. “You don’t kill your brother. You don’t rape your sister. You don’t destroy your friend’s country. That’s why, today, we have dismantled this monument, once created as a sign of friendship between Ukraine and Russia,” he said.

    Other cities in Ukraine have in recent days begun to rename streets associated with Russian figures or to dismantle monuments related to the Soviet Union.

    Memorial plaques for Soviet cities replaced with the names of Ukrainian cities
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6425d68f27a2373c04d056471e66dafcdd359eec/0_399_6720_4032/master/6720.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=390ab3b0aa45bc86 plaques for Soviet ‘hero cities’ that resisted the Nazis have been replaced with the names of Ukrainian cities under Russian occupation or attack. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

    The city of Ternopil, in western Ukraine, has renamed a street dedicated to the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and removed a Soviet tank and aircraft. The aircraft is to be replaced with a “heroes of Ukraine” monument.

    Fontanka, a village near Odesa, decided to turn a street dedicated to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky into Boris Johnson Street, after the UK promised to send a £100m weapons package to Ukraine.
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    And the mayor of Dnipro, Borys Filatov, said streets named after Russian towns would be rededicated to Ukrainian cities and symbols: Abkhazia Street became Irpin, while the street of the 30th Irkutsk Division is now called Ukrainian Soldiers.

    Officials in Kyiv are to approve a law to rename 60 streets, meaning Russian writers and Ukrainians who wrote in Russian – or even assumed a Russian identity – are among those who may be written out of public life in the city. A metro station named after Tolstoy is on the list.

    The entrance to Leo Tolstoy Square metro station in central Kyiv
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    The entrance to Leo Tolstoy Square metro station in central Kyiv. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

    “The war changed everything and things have accelerated the times,” Alina Mykhailova, one of the two Kyiv city deputies who put forward the law, wrote on Facebook. “Finally, there is an understanding that [our] colonial heritage must be destroyed.”
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    Mykhailova and her colleague Ksenia Semenova campaigned for the removal of the People’s Friendship monument that was dismantled on Tuesday. There had been plans to remove the statue under Ukraine’s decommunisation laws passed in 2015, but at the time they received pushback from other members of the Kyiv city council, Mykhailova wrote.

    The Ukrainian language and Ukrainian national identity were suppressed by tsarist Russia and its Soviet successor. Russian was considered the language of high culture and official business, and many Ukrainians, particularly peasants who moved to the big cities after the second world war, adopted Russian to distance themselves from their rural origins.

    Perhaps more controversially, the de-Russification list includes Ukrainian-born writers such as Mikhail – or Mykhailo, in Ukrainian – Bulgakov, who was born in Ukraine, wrote about Kyiv, but had derogatory views about the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian national identity. His statue sits next to his former house on one of Kyiv’s most famous streets, which is now the Bulgakov Museum and is popular with tourists.

    “Only idiots could do this because Leo Tolstoy is a world-famous writer, not just Russian or Ukrainian,” said Ihor Serhiivych, a Kyiv resident, inside Leo Tolstoy Square metro station.

    “There are lots of [ethnic] Russians who live in Kyiv and they are probably doing more right now to protect Ukraine than those western Ukrainians who think of themselves as the elite,” Serhiivych said. He said there was a gulf in understanding between those Ukrainians who lived for a significant period under Soviet and tsarist rule and those in western Ukraine who did not.

    “If it was a Putin statue I would understand, but you have to differentiate between enemies and world-famous literature.”
    A Soviet monument to the tank divisions that fought against Nazi Germany is adorned with a Ukrainian flag
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    A Soviet monument to the tank divisions that fought against Nazi Germany is adorned with a Ukrainian flag. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

    Another person at the station, Valetyna Hryhoryvycha, said: “I think people need to think about it a bit more. I don’t see how they relate to what’s happening now. It is part of our history.”

    Ivan Andreiev, who works near Bulgakov Museum, said: “I’m for the removal of the friendship monument because there can’t be friendship between enemies. But I think it’s a fake that they’re planning on taking down Bulgakov’s monument. What Russian or Ukrainian would vote for such a thing? It’s just history.”

    While Ukrainian authorities are working hard to disassemble the Russian monuments in their country, Moscow is doing the opposite in Ukrainian territories it has occupied, restoring statues and symbols of the Soviet era.

    Two weeks ago in the seaside town of Henichesk, in the Kherson region, which is occupied by the Russian troops, a familiar figure returned to the main square. A statue of the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, sporting his familiar goatee and moustache, was back on his pedestal, erected by Russian soldiers."

    #Contestedmonuments #Ukraine #Russie #Stalin #Marx #monuments #statue #soviet

  • Private equity executive sought to undermine #NSO critics, data suggests
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/28/private-equity-executive-sought-to-undermine-nso-critics-data-suggests

    Ron Deibert, the longtime director of the Canadian research group, is one of the world’s leading experts on identifying digital threats against civil society.

    John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at #Citizen_Lab, is among a relatively small group of experts globally who can identify which iPhones and Android devices have been infected with #Pegasus, and which government clients are likely to have been responsible.

    It is unsurprising, then, that the pair were an intense focus at #Novalpina, the London-based private equity group which took over NSO Group in 2019, and quickly sought to stem its reputation for enabling repressive governments to commit widespread human rights abuses.
    Using UK data protection laws, Deibert and Scott-Railton last year sought the personal data held on them by Novalpina. The results of their so-called subject access requests, recently shared with the Guardian, contain snippets of hundreds of emails and attachments that included their names.

    #surveillance

  • Shanghai lockdown: some parents allowed to stay with Covid-positive children after backlash | China | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/07/shanghai-lockdown-some-parents-allowed-to-stay-with-covid-positive-chil
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/afcacc667f64f6e84fb3a4e5381b268dd005f536/0_171_3851_2310/master/3851.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

    Shanghai lockdown: some parents allowed to stay with Covid-positive children after backlash
    Sanitation workers wearing PPE conduct disinfection work in Shanghai.
    Shanghai is allowing some parents to stay with their Covid-infected children during lockdown after a public backlash. Photograph: VCG/Getty Images
    Associated Press
    Shanghai is allowing at least some parents to stay with children infected with Covid-19, making an exception to a policy of isolating anyone who tests positive after a public outcry.The announcement came as China’s largest city remained in lockdown and conducted more mass testing on Wednesday following another jump in new cases.A top city health official said at a news conference that parents could apply to stay with children with “special needs” and accompany them if they fully comprehend the health risks and sign an agreement.
    The parents must wear masks, dine at a different time than their children, avoid sharing items with them and strictly follow all regulations, said Wu Qianyu of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission. She did not define what qualified as “special needs.”Her announcement followed Chinese state media reports a day earlier that an isolation site set up at the Shanghai New International Expo Center was accepting children with parents. The city has opened sprawling isolation centres for tens of thousands of people to isolate the growing number of positive cases.Reports that parents were being separated from their infected children had sparked a wave of protest online last weekend, fuelled by photos showing several children in cots at a quarantine site with no parents in sight.Footage of a pet corgi being beaten to death on the streets of Shanghai over fears it may have the virus has also sparked outrage and frustration with China’s zero-Covid policy.
    “There is no humanity, and while the whole world is living a normal and orderly life, there are still ‘volunteers’ who have lost their humanity. Happening in China in 2022. Very sad,” one person wrote on Weibo.Last November, the death of another corgi – killed in its apartment while its owner was serving mandatory hotel quarantine in Jiangxi province – sparked a similar outcry.Shanghai reported 17,077 new cases detected over the previous day, all but 311 of them in people who showed no symptoms. Under China’s zero-Covid approach, the city requires all those who test positive to be held in designated locations for observation, along with their close contacts.The latest cases bring Shanghai’s total to about 90,000 in an outbreak that began last month. No deaths have been ascribed to the outbreak driven by the Omicron BA.2 variant, which is much more infectious but also less lethal than the previous Delta strain. Two deaths have been reported in another ongoing outbreak in Jilin province in China’s northeast.
    An official from the EU Chamber of Commerce in China joined a growing chorus of criticism of the Shanghai lockdown, which has disrupted daily life and commerce in a major financial and business centre.
    “Another really big fear is ending up in one of those mass central quarantine sites,” Schoen-Behanzin said in an online event for member companies and journalists.Others complained earlier about shortages of medical workers, volunteers and beds in the isolation wards. More than 38,000 health workers from 15 provinces have been sent to Shanghai to help with mass testing and other needs.Beijing is also tightening measures after 11 cases were detected in the Chinese capital in recent days. Authorities closed down a shopping and office centre in the busy Wangjing district and are requiring those arriving in the city to report to their place of work or residence within 12 hours and undergo a Covid-19 test within 72 hours. They must undergo another test within 48 hours of returning to their place of work.Despite growing public frustration and concerns about the economic effects, China says it is sticking to its hard-line “zero-tolerance” approach mandating lockdowns, mass testing and the compulsory isolation of all suspected cases and close contacts. While China’s vaccination rate hovers about 90%, its domestically produced inactivated virus vaccines are seen as weaker than the mRNA vaccines such as those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that are used abroad, as well as in the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau. Vaccination rates among elderly people are also much lower than the population at large, with only around half of those over 80 fully vaccinated.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#chine#shangai#sante#confinement#isolement#zerocovid#vaccination#restrictionsanitaire#hongkong#macau

  • Shanghai lockdown: some parents allowed to stay with Covid-positive children after backlash | China | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/07/shanghai-lockdown-some-parents-allowed-to-stay-with-covid-positive-chil
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/afcacc667f64f6e84fb3a4e5381b268dd005f536/0_171_3851_2310/master/3851.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

    Shanghai lockdown: some parents allowed to stay with Covid-positive children after backlash
    Sanitation workers wearing PPE conduct disinfection work in Shanghai.
    Shanghai is allowing some parents to stay with their Covid-infected children during lockdown after a public backlash. Photograph: VCG/Getty Images
    Associated Press
    Shanghai is allowing at least some parents to stay with children infected with Covid-19, making an exception to a policy of isolating anyone who tests positive after a public outcry.The announcement came as China’s largest city remained in lockdown and conducted more mass testing on Wednesday following another jump in new cases.A top city health official said at a news conference that parents could apply to stay with children with “special needs” and accompany them if they fully comprehend the health risks and sign an agreement.
    The parents must wear masks, dine at a different time than their children, avoid sharing items with them and strictly follow all regulations, said Wu Qianyu of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission. She did not define what qualified as “special needs.”Her announcement followed Chinese state media reports a day earlier that an isolation site set up at the Shanghai New International Expo Center was accepting children with parents. The city has opened sprawling isolation centres for tens of thousands of people to isolate the growing number of positive cases.Reports that parents were being separated from their infected children had sparked a wave of protest online last weekend, fuelled by photos showing several children in cots at a quarantine site with no parents in sight.Footage of a pet corgi being beaten to death on the streets of Shanghai over fears it may have the virus has also sparked outrage and frustration with China’s zero-Covid policy.
    “There is no humanity, and while the whole world is living a normal and orderly life, there are still ‘volunteers’ who have lost their humanity. Happening in China in 2022. Very sad,” one person wrote on Weibo.Last November, the death of another corgi – killed in its apartment while its owner was serving mandatory hotel quarantine in Jiangxi province – sparked a similar outcry.Shanghai reported 17,077 new cases detected over the previous day, all but 311 of them in people who showed no symptoms. Under China’s zero-Covid approach, the city requires all those who test positive to be held in designated locations for observation, along with their close contacts.The latest cases bring Shanghai’s total to about 90,000 in an outbreak that began last month. No deaths have been ascribed to the outbreak driven by the Omicron BA.2 variant, which is much more infectious but also less lethal than the previous Delta strain. Two deaths have been reported in another ongoing outbreak in Jilin province in China’s northeast.
    An official from the EU Chamber of Commerce in China joined a growing chorus of criticism of the Shanghai lockdown, which has disrupted daily life and commerce in a major financial and business centre.
    “Another really big fear is ending up in one of those mass central quarantine sites,” Schoen-Behanzin said in an online event for member companies and journalists.Others complained earlier about shortages of medical workers, volunteers and beds in the isolation wards. More than 38,000 health workers from 15 provinces have been sent to Shanghai to help with mass testing and other needs.Beijing is also tightening measures after 11 cases were detected in the Chinese capital in recent days. Authorities closed down a shopping and office centre in the busy Wangjing district and are requiring those arriving in the city to report to their place of work or residence within 12 hours and undergo a Covid-19 test within 72 hours. They must undergo another test within 48 hours of returning to their place of work.Despite growing public frustration and concerns about the economic effects, China says it is sticking to its hard-line “zero-tolerance” approach mandating lockdowns, mass testing and the compulsory isolation of all suspected cases and close contacts. While China’s vaccination rate hovers about 90%, its domestically produced inactivated virus vaccines are seen as weaker than the mRNA vaccines such as those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that are used abroad, as well as in the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau. Vaccination rates among elderly people are also much lower than the population at large, with only around half of those over 80 fully vaccinated.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#chine#shangai#sante#confinement#isolement#zerocovid#vaccination#restrictionsanitaire#hongkong#macau