NEWS OF THE DAY
1 Belarus crisis: Over 360 more people have been detained in Belarus during protests against the country’s authoritarian president, who was unexpectedly sworn in to his sixth term in office after an election the opposition says was rigged. Thousands of Belarusians took to the streets of the capital of Minsk and other cities on Wednesday evening to protest President Alexander Lukashenko’s morning inauguration, which took place without advance public notice. Police fiercely dispersed the crowds of protesters, using truncheons and water cannons, leaving dozens injured. The Interior Ministry said Thursday that 364 people were detained, including 252 in the capital.
2 Abuse payments: The Catholic Church in Germany is setting up a new system to compensate survivors of sexual abuse by clergy that will provide for payments of up to $58,400 each. Victims will be able to apply for payments under the new system starting Jan. 1, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, said Thursday. A churchcommissioned report in 2018 concluded that at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014. More than half of the victims were ages 13 or younger when the abuse took place, and nearly a third of them were altar boys.
3 Activist arrested: Joshua Wong, one of Hong Kong’s most visible prodemocracy activists, has been arrested multiple times for taking part in antigovernment protests that erupted over the past year and roiled the city for months before the coronavirus pandemic hit. And when he walked into the Central Police Station on Thursday as part of a regular checkin, he was arrested again — this time, police said, not only for attending an unauthorized demonstration last October, but also for violating a government ban on wearing a mask during that gathering. Other activists have fled the city or have tried to do so, fearing the loss of myriad freedoms and harsher crackdowns under a sweeping national security law imposed on Hong Kong in June to quell the continued protests.
4 War crimes charges: A special international court said Thursday that a former commander of the separatist fighters in Kosovo’s 19981999 war has been arrested as part of a war crimes and crimes against humanity probe stemming from the conflict with Serbia. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, based in The Hague, said former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Salih Mustafa was arrested based on a “warrant, transfer order and confirmed indictment issued by a pretrial judge.” The court’s statement did not identify the charges on which he was indicted. The court said Mustafa would be transferred to its detention facilities in The Hague and “appear before the pretrial judge without undue delay.” He is the first ethnic Albanian to be arrested on war crimes charges arising from the 1990s conflict.
5 Official killed: South Korea said Thursday that North Korean troops fatally shot a South Korean government official who may have attempted to defect and set his body on fire after finding him on a floating object near the countries’ disputed sea boundary. South Korean officials condemned what they called North Korea’s “atrocious act” and urged it to apologize and punish those responsible. North Korea is unlikely to accept the South Korean demand, and ties between the rivals — already strained amid a deadlock in broader nuclear diplomacy — will probably suffer a further setback, observers say. According to Seoul, the man disappeared from a government ship that was checking on possible unauthorized fishing south of the boundary on Monday, a day before he was found in North Korean waters.