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Business Insider
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Insider
Russia's Putin and Congo's Sassou-Nguesso reminisce on World War 2 as they discuss military ties
A Congolese delegation led by the Congo Republic's president, Sassou-Nguesso, met with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and his team to discuss the relationship between their countries. The Congolese president Sassou-Nguesso met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss bilateral relations between their nations. The meeting coincided with Russia's Victory Day commemorations, honoring their collaboration during the Second World War. Putin highlighted stable mutual trade, educational partnerships, and aligned approaches on global issues. After being welcomed by the Russian president during their meeting, the Congolese president thanked Putin for allowing him to participate in the celebrations commemorating the Great Patriotic War, which are currently being held in Moscow. 'I would like to cordially welcome you to today's meeting, which is taking place as part of our Victory Day commemoration of the Great Patriotic War,' Vladimir Putin stated. He also touched on how both countries collaborated in the Second World War as valued partners, even working together during the Soviet era. 'Our mutual trade is stable, even if absolute numbers are modest, but we keep working to make sure that we attain better results in this field,' the Russian President stated. 'We have been preparing Congolese personnel in Russia, we have some 750 Congolese students attending our universities, and we allocated 250 state scholarships, and we are ready to increase this quota. Russia and the Republic of the Congo share the same approaches to a number of global matters and matters on the global agenda. We appreciate the joint effort of our countries in the United Nations Organization,' he added. From then on, Sassou-Nguesso went on to speak on the long-standing relationship between our two countries. What Congolese president Sassou-Nguesso said The Congolese president touched specifically on the fact that Africa was part of the movement that liberated the world from the grip of Nazi Germany, and he thanked the Russian president for ackknowldging that fact. 'Some people prefer to mention only the French army in the context of victory, but there were the Congolese troops as well that participated in that march and that parade,' Sassou-Nguesso stated. 'And people of Africa were also part of this movement, and it is a matter of great pride for us, and we are glad to see that you remember that we were part of the forces that fought against the Nazis. Not only armed forces, but also our economic efforts were part of that Victory,' the Congolese President added. Speaking on both countries' military ties, the Congolese president noted that their relationship is waxing strong, as evidenced by the fact that he was persuaded by some countries not to visit Russia but did so regardless. 'I would also like to say that some countries launched campaigns to talk us out of travelling here from participating in this event, but still we are here,' he stated. 'I also would like to mention the efforts that we are undertaking to consolidate our cooperation in defense, in the field of supplying our law enforcement agencies, our cooperation in training our civil engineers… and other fields such as energy,' he added.
El Chorouk
05-05-2025
- Politics
- El Chorouk
French MPs call on Paris to repent and to recognize the May 8th 1945 heinous massacres in Algeria
The French National Assembly, the lower chamber of parliament, submitted a list signed by 71 deputies, calling on the French state to officially recognize and explicitly condemn the horrendous massacres committed on May 8, 1945 against Algerians in Setif, Kherrata, Guelma and neighboring areas, as a state crime committed against an unarmed people who demanded freedom, dignity and equality. According to the text of the proposal dated May 5, 2025, seen by Echorouk the bloody repression that took place on May 8, 1945, while France was celebrating its victory over Nazism, is another face of barbarism, this time in a colonial garment, practiced against the Algerian people who came out in peaceful demonstrations demanding legitimate rights, in line with the universal principles established by the United Nations Organization and the wave of liberation of peoples. These massacres began with the assassination of a young man, Bouzid Saal, for merely raising the Algerian flag, followed by a systematic and widespread repression, under orders from the highest French authorities, including the bombing of entire villages, mass executions, and the physical liquidation of unarmed civilians, making the French state fully responsible for these heinous crime, the signatories of the list noted. These practices were not isolated or exceptional, but rather fall within the policy of collective punishment adopted by the French occupation since its invasion of Algeria in 1830, towards a people it considered inferior and referred to as 'natives,' in a clear enshrinement of a discriminatory, racist and arrogant system. The deputies explained that the brutal repression continued for days on end, culminating in the region of Guelma, where French Deputy Governor Andre Achiar supervised the formation of local militias that carried out field liquidation operations that killed thousands of Algerians, while the evidence was covered up and the work of the investigation committee assigned to General Tubert was obstructed. The document stressed that serious academic and historical works agree that the number of victims amounted to tens of thousands of martyrs, which makes it the duty of the French Republic to officially recognize that what happened is a state crime committed against civilians, and completely contradicts the values it claims to defend. The deputies cited the testimony of French General Duval, who said after the massacres: 'I have given you ten years of peace, but everything must change in Algeria,' in a clear acknowledgment of the deep impact these heinous atrocities had on the relationship between France and the Algerian people. They also recalled that the first official recognition by the French authorities did not occur until 2005, when the French ambassador to Algeria at the time, Hubert Collin de Verdier, described what happened as an 'unforgivable tragedy.' They considered that the time has come for a full political recognition issued by the French Parliament, in order to turn the page of denial and start writing a common history on the basis of truth and justice. The proposal called for the full opening of documents and archives related to these tragic events, the establishment of an official national day to commemorate the horrific massacres of May 8, 1945, and their inclusion in French educational programs, in addition to supporting the process of historical reconciliation and mutual recognition between France and Algeria. The deputies concluded by calling on the French government to strengthen joint work with Algeria in the field of memory and history, including the May 8 massacres, which constituted a pivotal moment in the Algerian national struggle against the brutal yoke of colonization.
Express Tribune
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
War and human civilisation: a moral paradox
Listen to article The question might sound naive to bellicists, yet it is pertinent in this age of admirable human development and scientific advancements around the world: Can, despite all the claims of human knowledgibility and maturity of consciousness, the raging wars in Gaza and Ukraine be justified, particularly when the war casualties impact the innocent children and women? After all, what type of future is being bequeathed to the generations to come? Would they not think that the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, consciousness, scientific progress and human development cannot guarantee a world sans barbarism which human civilisation claims to have left far behind? Such wars seem to be the telltale signs of human regression towards the Stone Age with animalistic instincts as the law of the jungle. Such bloodshed and genocide with carte blanche remind me of Mark Twain's satirical essay, The Damned Human Race, wherein he proposes a theory and corroborates it with historical details that man is not the highest point of evolution, rather arguably the lowest. He says that unlike humans, animals kill only for a reason, not for fun or greed; they don't conduct wars because they don't possess any religion or patriotism. Similarly, in the second voyage of The Gulliver's Travels by J Swift, on the Gulliver's proposal to the Brobdingnagian king to use gunpowder against the enemies, the king appallingly summarises the human civilisation: "I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth." The so-called guardians designated to keeping or restoring peace on this earthly planet, like the League of Nations and the United Nations Organization, had and have proved incapable of implementing their existential writ the world over. As the former had failed in stopping WWII from happening and died its natural death, the latter too would follow suit if it fails to stop either of the above wars because such wars can balloon into a world war. These institutions had been established to be proactive to defang the impunity of any group, organisation or country to threaten the world peace, but their inertness shows that peaceful human existence would soon become extinct as it has already become an endangered species due to the species' own self- or auto-destruct practices. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres branded the war "the deadliest of conflicts" in decades. Speaking of Israeli carte blanche, he highlighted that Israel killed 196 humanitarians, including 175 UN staffers; most of them belonged to the Palestine relief agency UNRWA. "More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades," says an Oxfam study published on 30th September 2024. Now the question is not "Will the UN act to play its role in stopping genocide in Gaza?" as it has long been answered with a resounding NO. Instead, the very question arising from the pyre of disappointment with the UN has matured into a philosophical, moral and deeply political one: Is the UN helpless against the impunity of the US and Israel? "To assuage their collective guilt for their early years of indifference towards one genocide - the Nazi extermination of millions of European Jews - the United States and Europe have prepared the grounds for another," said Arundhati Roy in her acceptance speech on receiving the PEN Pinter Prize 2024. "If the US government withdrew its support of Israel, the war could stop today," she said, calling a spade a spade. The justification of Israel's egregious human rights violations against Palestinian civilians by labelling the October 7 attack by Hamas as a terrorist attack reminds me of one of the Aesop's fables wherein a wolf cooks up false rationale to attack the lamb. It would not be wrong to say that the world is under the siege of exploitative capitalistic pursuits. "The nuclear-armed state of Israel was to serve as a military outpost and gateway to the natural wealth and resources of the Middle East for US and Europe," says Arundhati Roy in the speech.
