San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
10,000 MARCH TO DEMAND BELARUS PRESIDENT RESIGN
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has strongly defended his government’s plan to override sections of the Brexit deal he negotiated with the European Union, arguing that the EU has an “extreme” interpretation of the treaty that could jeopardize the U.K.’S future.
In a column published Saturday in The Daily Telegraph, Johnson said the government’s Internal Market Bill is needed to end EU threats to impose a “blockade” in the Irish Sea that the prime minister asserted could “carve up our country.”
The legislation, which the British government has conceded violates international law in places, has prompted an outcry within the EU and Johnson’s Conservative Party. British lawmakers are expected to debate it next week.
With the government showing no sign of changing course, there are real concerns that ongoing talks on a future trade deal between the U.K. and the EU could collapse within weeks.
If that happens, tariffs and other impediments to trade will be imposed by both sides at the start of 2021.
The furor is largely based on the fact that the bill would diminish the EU’S previously agreed oversight of trade between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland in the event a trade agreement isn’t secured.
Michael Gove, a senior member of Johnson’s Cabinet, told Sky News on Saturday that the government needs to take out an “insurance policy.”
The U.K. left the EU on Jan. 31, but it is in a Brexit transition period that effectively sees it benefit from the bloc’s tariff-free trade until the end of the year while a future relationship is negotiated.
One major element of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, which allowed for the U.K.’S smooth departure from the EU, is the section related to ensuring an open border on the island of Ireland to protect the peace process in Northern Ireland
The issue proved particularly thorny during the more than two years of discussions it took to get a Brexit deal done, as the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is the only land link between the U.K. and the EU.
The EU wanted assurances the border would not be used as a back-route for unlicensed goods arriving in Ireland from the rest of the U.K. — England, Scotland and Wales.
As a result, the two sides agreed there would be some kind of regulatory border between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.
In his newspaper column, Johnson wrote he was “now hearing” that unless his government agrees to the EU’S terms in the trade discussions, then the bloc will use “an extreme interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol to impose a full-scale trade border down the Irish Sea.”
He said that could mean the EU imposing tariffs on goods moving to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. or that the bloc stops the transport of food products.
“I have to say that we never seriously believed that the EU would be willing to use a treaty, negotiated in good faith, to blockade one part of the U.K., to cut it off; or that they would actually threaten to destroy the economic and territorial integrity of the U.K.,” the prime minister wrote.
EU leaders have expressed dismay at the U.K’S bill and warned that the trade talks will end if Johnson does not pull the contested proposal. Legal action has also been threatened.
The EU-U.K. trade discussions are set to resume on Monday in Brussels.
About 10,000 women marched noisily through the Belarusian capital on Saturday, beating pots and pans and shouting for the resignation of the country’s authoritarian president in the 35th consecutive day of large anti-government protests.
Many carried portraits of Maria Kolesnikova, a leader of the opposition Coordination Council that is seeking a new presidential election for the ex-soviet nation of 9.5 million people. She was jailed this past week after police tried to force her out of the country. Her lawyer says Kolesnikova was driven to the border with Ukraine, but tore up her passport and refused to leave Belarus.
Others carried placards reading “You painted my heart with blue pain,” referring to President Alexander Lukashenko’s claim that some women previously had painted themselves to appear to have been bruised by police beatings.
The human rights group Viasna said more than 70 people were detained by police during the march.
Lukashenko refuses to meet with the council, and most of its leaders have been detained or have left the country.
The protests began Aug. 9 after a presidential election that officials say handed Lukashenko a sixth term in office with 80 percent support. Opponents and some poll workers say the election results were rigged. Some protesters have displayed bruises from a violent police crackdown in the days after the election, when over 7,000 protesters were detained.
The protests are the largest and most widespread of Lukashenko’s 26 years in power. Sunday demonstrations in the capital, Minsk, have repeatedly brought out crowds of more than 100,000. Protests have broken out in other major cities in Belarus and strikes have hit some of the country’s major state-owned industries, previously a base of support for the embattled 66-year-old leader.
Lukashenko met Saturday with top officials of the country’s security agencies. Throughout the unrest, he has rejected any concessions, has repeatedly accused Belarus’ western neighbors of preparing to overthrow his government. In one show of aggressive defiance, he was seen striding with an automatic rifle across the grounds of his presidential residence.