Latest news with #politicalPrisoner
Yahoo
10-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Money Doctor and ‘Captain Pakistan': Steve Hanke on his last call with Imran Khan and the doom loop gripping South Asia
August 5th marked another grim day for Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan and one of the world's greatest cricketers. It was the second anniversary of his incarceration in Rawalpindi's Adiala jail on trumped-up charges. Thanks to General Asim Munir, the Army's Chief of Staff, Khan has been held in solitary confinement in a six-by-eight 'death cell' for two years. Anyone less that 'Captain Pakistan,' as Khan is known, would have met the Grim Reaper long ago. The last time I spoke to Khan was on April 2, 2023. We spoke for an hour-and-a-half via Zoom. I was at my residence in Baltimore, and Khan was in Lahore. We had an intense discussion that went on until past midnight in Lahore. What did we talk about? The cricketer and the currency board The focus of our conversation was economic policy. Not for the first time, we grappled with what needed to be done to extract Pakistan from its economic doom loop. Our point of departure was the rupee, which had shed 48% of its value against the U.S. dollar since June 2021. To pull Pakistan out of its doom loop and establish stability, I recommended the medicine that I had successfully prescribed in Estonia (1992), Lithuania (1994), Bulgaria (1997), and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1997). In all those cases, a currency board did the trick, as they always do. Indeed, since the first currency board was established in Mauritius (1849), there have been over 70 currency boards, and none have failed. Even the currency board that John Maynard Keynes installed in Archangel during Russia's civil war (1918) worked without a glitch. Just what is a currency board? A currency board issues notes and coins convertible on demand into a foreign anchor currency, such as the U.S. dollar, at a fixed exchange rate. It is required to hold anchor-currency reserves equal to 100% of its monetary liabilities. A currency board has no discretionary monetary powers and cannot issue credit. It has an exchange-rate policy but no monetary policy. Its sole function is to exchange the domestic currency it issues for an anchor currency at a fied rate. A currency board's currency is a clone of its anchor currency. A currency board requires no preconditions and can be installed rapidly. Government finances, state-owned enterprises, and trade need not be reformed before a currency board can issue money. The Bulgarian and Lithuanian examples Khan and I spent a great deal of time on our April 2023 Zoom call discussing the currency board that I installed in Bulgaria, when I was President Petar Stoyanov's Chief Economic Adviser. In 1997, Bulgaria faced a raging hyperinflation of 24% per month and a banking crisis. Once the currency board was installed in July, hyperinflation stopped immediately. By 1998, the banking system was solvebnt, money-market interest rates had plunged from triple digits to an average of 2.4%, a massive fiscal deficit turned into a surplus, a deep depression became economic growth, and Bulgaria's foreign-exchange reserves more than tripled. Today, thanks to its currency board, Bulgaria has the second lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the EU, behind only Estonia. What struck me about Khan during that evening back in 2023 was that he understood the technical details and the political ramifications of installing a currency board. Our brainstorming session reminded me of the days when I was a State Counselor in Lithuania and Chief Adviser to Lithuania's Prime Minister Adolfas Šleževičius (1994-1996). Not surprisingly, Šleževičius was capable of dealing with technical arguments and their political ramifications. After all, he held a doctorate degree from Moscow State University. Pakistan's doom loop A currency board would stabilize Pakistan's economy and provide a massive confidence shock, with that, Pakistan would exit its doom loop, which is characterized by the lack of confidence in the rupee, a flight of capital, and the accumulation of ever more debt. Just how big is the problem? Using the World Bank's residual method for measuring capital flight, I estimate that capital flight in Pakistan has amounted to a whopping 37% of the huge debt that Pakistan has piled up since 2000. Unfortunately for Pakistanis, a staggering 37% of the funds that flow into Pakistan are siphoned off and squirreled away outside Pakistan, primarily in Dubai. This doom loop requires ever more borrowing. That's why Pakistan has passed the begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund 24 times, and counting. As I write on the second year of Imran Khan's incarceration on multiple phony charges, I can understand why the Pakistani elites, including General Munir, want to keep him behind bars. They want to keep parking money in Dubai. The opinions expressed in commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
The Guardian
17-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Egypt and Alaa Abd el-Fattah: Starmer and Lammy vowed to do all they can. So do it
Last month, Sir Keir Starmer promised to do 'everything I possibly can' to free Egypt's highest profile political prisoner, Alaa Abd el-Fattah. A few months earlier, the foreign secretary had described the case of the British-Egyptian writer and campaigner as the 'number one issue'. In opposition, David Lammy had joined a protest in Mr Abd el-Fattah's support outside the Foreign Office and demanded serious diplomatic consequences for Cairo if no progress was made. Progress has not been made and time is running out. Arbitrary detention has stolen almost a decade of Mr Abd el-Fattah's life, while that of his remarkable mother, Laila Soueif, may be drawing to its close. As of Tuesday, the 69-year-old, who lives in London, had not eaten for 261 days, as she demands her son's release. After taking 300-calorie liquid supplements for a short period, she returned to a full hunger strike almost a month ago and has been hospitalised since the end of May. In Egypt, Mr Abd el-Fattah has been on hunger strike for more than 100 days. Mr Abd el-Fattah, whose current ordeal began when he was detained in 2019, should never have been held. He was sentenced to five years for 'spreading false news'; his real offence was to speak truth to power. But the injustice was compounded when, instead of releasing him in September, as Egypt's own criminal code requires, the state chose to ignore his pre-trial detention. His jail term was deemed to have begun only after his conviction in December 2021, meaning that it would run until the end of next year. The UN working group on arbitrary detention found last month that his detention was unlawful on multiple grounds, including the lack of arrest warrant, violation of his right to free expression and the lack of a fair trial. His 13-year-old son, who lives in Brighton, has been denied the chance to know his father. In over a decade in office, Gen Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt's president, has proved to be even more repressive than his former boss, Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown in the Arab spring. Executions have soared, and more than 1,500 political prisoners were detained last year alone. Sir Keir has twice raised Mr Abd el-Fattah's case directly in calls with Gen Sisi, and has written to him multiple times. Yet Britain has not even gained consular access to the 43-year-old. Egypt has released dual nationals before when under pressure. It appears particularly obdurate in this case. Supporters have made a strong case for imposing sanctions and bringing a case at the international court of justice. Given the health of Mr Abd el-Fattah and Ms Soueif, however, the priority must be measures with immediate effect. The first should be to change travel advice, warning against travelling to Egypt, and to refuse trade talks. Mr Abd el-Fattah's case clearly indicates the risks for Britons, given the lack of fair process and consular access. Egypt's economy, which remains fragile following an International Monetary Fund bailout last year, is heavily dependent on tourism and around half a million Britons travel there every year. The prime minister's advocacy is welcome. But as Mr Lammy demanded in 2022, 'what diplomatic price has Egypt paid for denying the right of consular access to a British citizen?' It is clear that Britain has not, in fact, done everything it possibly can to change the Egyptian government's mind. It must now do so. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Fox News
03-06-2025
- General
- Fox News
MORNING GLORY: Why the world should care about Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai
On Thursday, May 29, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation awarded an Honorary Bradley Prize to Jimmy Lai, a political prisoner of China's General Secretary Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. Lai was a serial entrepreneur who began with nothing and founded and grew major businesses in China before his imprisonment, where his Hong Kong-based media organizations, including Apple News, prospered and where he had become a symbol of free speech in the embattled city. Lai is also the most prominent persecuted Catholic in the world and should be all that Pope Leo XIV needs to know about Xi and his sinister plans for the church in China. (Leo should exit the ill-advised agreement his predecessor entered into with the Chinese communists, an agreement that is as sacrilegious as it is dangerous to the worldwide church.) Lai believed deeply in the rights of Hong Kong residents guaranteed them when the United Kingdom returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. At that time the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China entered into an agreement, known as the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which the PRC committed to the United Kingdom that Hong Kong citizens would retain their high degree of autonomy and the preservation of their capitalist system and way of life for 50 years. This included the right to a separate executive, legislative and independent judicial system apart from that of Beijing's, as well as freedoms of assembly, speech and the press. The world can judge Xi's credibility by his actions vis-à-vis Jimmy Lai. The Bradley Foundation awards its prizes to individuals whose work exemplifies the foundation's mission to promote American exceptionalism and the Western tradition. It recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to scholarship, cultural institutions or public policy, often with a focus on conservative or classical liberal themes. The foundation's decision to highlight the plight of Jimmy Lai was an honorable and important step in bringing attention to his captivity in solitary confinement and under harsh conditions. Xi now faces a dilemma. He rightly must conclude that Lai's case is soaring in the attention it receives around the world and that harsh judgments of Xi by the world's leaders and its businesses follow attention to the case. Xi ought also to fear what the martyrdom of Lai would mean in the longer term for China. Who wants to invest in, much less visit, a country so cruel as to imprison a 77-year-old and increasingly frail man of faith? Did Xi learn nothing from the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was preceded by the world's attention on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and Vladimir Bukovsky? High-profile dissidents are largely forgotten once they are exiled from their countries. The United Kingdom would accept Lai if Xi expelled him, but Xi's reputation for ruthlessness only increases and thus the world's wariness only climbs the longer Lai remains imprisoned. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have already linked their legacies to the freeing of Lai, and Pope Leo's is now inextricably connected to the heroic witness for the faith that Lai is living. We can pray the Bradley Foundation has provided the spark the world needed to focus on Lai. "As you can see, I am not Jimmy Lai," Jimmy Lai's son Sebastian said on accepting the Bradley Prize in his father's place on May 29. "Instead of being here with you wonderful people, accepting this prestigious award, my father sits in a maximum-security jail in Hong Kong as a high-risk category a prisoner. He's in jail in Hong Kong for the same reason he is being celebrated here, for courage in the face of oppression." We should hope everyone in the world doing business with China realizes they are complicit in the harsh imprisonment of Jimmy Lai. They have the ability to appeal to Xi to #FreeJimmyLai as the hashtag puts it. Will they use it? Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel's news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/tv show today.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Legendary dissident Ayşe Seitmuratova dies in Crimea
Ayşe Seitmuratova, a veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement, has died in occupied Crimea at the age of 88. Source: Head of Crimean Tatar Mejlis Refat Chubarov on Facebook Quote: "Again, sad news has come in from Russian-occupied Crimea which I do not want to believe – the legendary dissident, political prisoner during the Soviet era, journalist, historian and veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement Ayşe Seitmuratova has died at the age of 88." For reference: Ayşe Seitmuratova was a Crimean Tatar public figure, human rights activist, member of the national movement of Crimean Tatars, political prisoner of the Soviet regime, journalist and publicist in exile. In 1964 she joined the Crimean Tatar national movement in Samarkand Oblast in modern Uzbekistan. She participated in meetings with representatives of the Soviet government, in particular in the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1966, she was arrested on charges of "inciting national hatred" and put on probation for three years. In 1971, she was again arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for "spreading deliberately false ideas that defame the Soviet state and public order." She served her sentence in Mordovian camps. After her release in 1974, she continued her human rights activism. In 1978, she emigrated to the United States, fearing forced psychiatric treatment. There she worked as a journalist for the Voice of America, Freedom, BBC and Deutsche Welle radio stations, covering the problems of the Crimean Tatar people, the history of their repression, Russification and assimilation. Ayşe Seitmuratova became a symbol of the struggle of the Crimean Tatar people for their rights, dignity and return to their homeland. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Associated Press
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
X restricts access to jailed Istanbul mayor's account after Turkey's request, group says
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Access to jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu 's social media account on X has been blocked in Turkey, a monitoring platform said Thursday, the latest move against a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to Engelli Web, a website that that tracks and reports internet censorship in Turkey, X restricted Imamoglu's account in Turkey complying with a legal request by Turkish authorities who cited national security and public order concerns. There was no immediate comment from X but a notice on the platform says the account — which has 9.7 million followers — has been 'withheld in TR in response to a legal demand.' The account remains accessible outside of Turkey. Imamoglu, seen as the main opposition challenger to Erdogan's 22-year rule, was arrested on March 19 and jailed on corruption charges. He was nominated as his Republican People's Party, or CHP's presidential candidate while in custody. His arrest has been widely viewed as politically motivated although the government insists Turkey's judiciary is independent and free of political influence. It triggered widespread demonstrations calling for his release and an end to Turkey's democratic backsliding under Erdogan. Despite his detention, Imamoglu had remained active on social media. His lawyers are expected to appeal the legal restriction. Opposition politicians criticized the restriction as an assault attack on free speech in Turkey.
