February 11-17, 2017
World News
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TURKS AND CAICOS WEEKLY NEWS
Obama spotted kitesurfing in Caribbean with billionaire Richard Branson
An image purporting to show children digging up a road at a North Korean ski resort.
North Korea forcing children as young as seven to work, report says HUMAN Rights Watch has accused North Korea of exploiting children as young as seven through forced manual labour, urging the United Nations to take action against the repressive regime. Research conducted by the group, along with three South Korean activist organisations, found that the North Korean authorities forced children to work by co-opting their schools and universities. Party wings, such as the Korean Children’s Union, which is compulsory for students aged seven to 13, also compelled children to engage in farming, the construction of buildings, statues, roads and railways, and in the collection of scrap materials to sell. Older teenagers, often from poor families, can be strong-armed to join paramilitary forced labour brigades, where they may be left to toil for up to ten years without pay, said HRW. The North Korean government
claims to have abolished child labour 70 years ago. Officials are known to refer to the tasks as “team-building” exercises for the good of the country. “Forcing children to work is an egregious human rights abuse condemned worldwide, but for many North Korean students, it’s a part of their everyday life,” said Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director. “The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child should demand that Pyongyang tell the truth about these abusive practices and immediately bring them to a halt.” The group’s findings, currently being presented to the UN in Geneva, include evidence from two teenagers who managed to escape. Jeon HyoVin, 16, said she experienced forced labour in school almost every day. The film revealed little girls hammering the tracks, and boys carrying heavy stones to wheelbarrows.
Peru to give visas to thousands of crisis-weary Venezuelans PERU has created a temporary visa that will allow thousands of Venezuelans to work and study in the country, part of a migratory policy that aims to “build bridges” and “not walls,” the Andean nation’s interior ministry said. President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s government issued 20 temporary visas to Venezuelan migrants in Peru this week. Kuczysnki, a centrist, has expressed concern about shortages of food and medicine in Venezuela, mired in a deep economic crisis. Some 6,000 Venezuelans are expected to receive the permit, which will allow them to study, work and receive health services in Peru for a year, the interior ministry said late on Thursday. Peru has enjoyed nearly two decades of uninterrupted economic growth and single-digit inflation, a sharp contrast to socialist-led
Venezuela, where the ranks of the poor have swollen in recent years. “We want to offer a different message on migration than what’s offered in other places. We want to build bridges that unite us and not walls to separate us,” Interior Minister Carlos Basombrio said in a statement. U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed a temporary entry ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, and insisted that Mexico will pay for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to curb illegal immigration. Kuczynski and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said last week that they would stand with Mexico and seek to strengthen regional trade, in the wake of rising tensions between Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trump. (Reuters)
A NUMBER of people around the world are stressed out about what’s going on in the White House — but former President Barack Obama doesn’t look like he’s one of them. A smiling Obama was enjoying being jobless as he rode the waves recently in the Virgin Islands with Richard Branson. Branson published a blog post Tuesday with pictures and video of the ex-president kitesurfing off one of his private islands in the British Virgin Islands. Obama, and his wife, Michelle, have spent time vacationing with the Virgin Group founder since leaving the White House Jan 20. Branson writes that Obama, a native of Hawaii, told him he was prevented from surfing by his security detail during his time in office, so he jumped at the chance to learn how to kitesurf. “It was a huge honour to be able to invite President Barack and Michelle Obama down to the British Virgin Islands for a complete break after Barack finished his second term as President and the family left the White House,” Branson wrote. The billionaire said he and the former leader of the free world challenged one another to see if Obama could learn to kitesurf before Branson learned how to foilboard, a form of surfing where the board has a hydrofoil on the bottom. The Obamas have been enjoying life since turning over the White
Former President Barack Obama learned how to kitesurf during a trip to the British Virgin Islands with Richard Branson during a vacation after the end of his second term as President, Feb. 2017.
House to President Trump last month. The pair spent some time in Palm Springs, Calif. before hitting the Caribbean. The former first couple will return to Washington, D.C. shortly, where they are renting a home about two miles from the White House while their younger daughter, Sasha, completes high school. Obama is the first president to stay in D.C. after his term since Woodrow Wilson in 1921
He has said he plans to spend his time writing his memoirs of his time in office and working on the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group of Democratic organisers led by former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. “I want to do some writing,” Obama told reporters ahead of his retirement. “I want to be quiet a little bit and not hear myself talk so darn much. I want to spend precious time with my girls.” (NYDailynews)
Topless women protest for right to sunbathe in Argentina DOZENS of topless women, joined by hundreds of fully clothed protesters, demonstrated in Buenos Aires on Tuesday to demand the right to sunbathe semi-nude after police asked bare-breasted women to leave a nearby beach. Smaller protests have occurred throughout the country in recent weeks in response to the January incident and it remains unclear if Argentine law allows women to go topless on public beaches. Police cited a national criminal code article prohibiting “obscene displays” to justify asking the women to leave the beach, although at least one judge ruled after the incident that going topless was not a crime. Arguing that women should have the same right as men to sunbathe topless, the women chanted, painted slogans on their bodies and held signs reading: “The only breasts that bother them are the ones that aren’t for sale.” The demonstration in downtown Buenos Aires followed the “Not One Less” protests late last year in which tens of thousands of Argentines protested gender-related
A woman holds a sign that reads in Spanish “People are uncomfortable with sexuality that is not for male consumption,” during a bare-breasted demonstration in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Tuesday.
violence after the rape and killing of a 16-year-old girl. The protesters said the incident on the beach exemplified social inequality between men and women in Argentina. “In many places, when a woman reports gender violence, they don’t listen, but when a woman shows her breasts they send so many
police,” said Grace Prounesti Piquet, a 33-year-old photographer with the words “The breast is not a crime” painted in pink on her back. “It’s a shame.” The protest drew a large number of male gawkers, prompting chants of “Get out” from women demonstrators.