Associated Press journalist Thein Zaw remains detained after he was arrested Saturday morning by police in Yangon, Myanmar while covering protests against the military coup that unseated leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government. According to the AP, he is being held in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison, which has long been known for its inhumane treatment of political prisoners. “The Associated Press calls for the immediate release of AP journalist Thein Zaw, who was detained in Myanmar while doing his job,” said Ian Phillips, AP vice president for international news. “Independent journalists must be allowed to freely and safely report the news without fear of retribution. AP decries in the strongest terms the arbitrary detention of Thein Zaw.” Security forces in the capital city of Yangon opened fire on protesters Sunday, killing at least 18 and wounding 30, said the UN Human Rights Office, citing “credible information.”
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The imprisonment of a rap artist for his music and tweets praising terrorist violence and insulting the Spanish monarchy has set off a powder keg of pent-up rage this week in the southern European country.
The arrest of Pablo Hasél has brought thousands to the streets for different reasons.
Under the banner of freedom of expression, many Spaniards strongly object to putting an artist behind bars for his lyrics and social media remarks. They are clamoring for Spain’s left-wing government to fulfill its promise and roll back the Public Security Law passed by the previous conservative administration that was used to prosecute Hasél and other artists.
Hasél’s imprisonment to serve a nine-month sentence on Tuesday has also tapped into a well of frustration among Spain’s youths, who have the highest unemployment rate in the European Union. Four in every 10 eligible workers under 25 years old are without a job.
“I think that what we are experiencing now with the cases of Pablo Hasél (…) and other rappers politically detained by this regime is a brutal attack against the freedom of speech,” 26-year-old student Pablo Castilla said during a protest in Barcelona. “The protests are being brutally repressed by the allegedly progressive national government and the Catalan government.
“They are attacking us youngsters because we are showing our anger.”
For many, including older peaceful protesters, Hasél’s case also represents what they perceive as a heavy-handed reaction by a state whose very structure is in need of deep reform. That’s even when some of his public remarks, especially in messages sent out on Twitter, Hasél expressed radical ideas, talked about attacking politicians and defended the now-defunct Grapo and ETA, two armed organizations that killed over 1,000 people in Spain.
Hasél’s lyrics that strike at King Felipe VI and his father, King Emeritus Juan Carlos I, have connected with a growing public debate on the future of Spain’s parliamentary monarchy. Unquestioned outside fringe circles of the Left until the past decade, the royal house has been plagued by financial scandal that has reached Juan Carlos himself. Many Spaniards were aghast when the former monarch left Spain for the United Arab Emirates amid a court investigation into his alleged fiscal improprieties.
As well as shouting its support for Hasél, a crowd that gathered in Madrid on Saturday chanted “Where is the change? Where is the progress?” and “Juan Carlos de Borbón, womanizer and thief.”
The debate has caused tensions inside Spain’s left-wing coalition government. While Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his Socialist Party back the parliamentary monarchy Spain has had since the end of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in the 1970s, their minor partner, the upstart United We Can party, wants to get rid of the monarchy and has supported this week’s protests for Hasél despite their violent turn.
In the rapper’s home region of Catalonia, the unrest also comes after years of separatist politicians urging citizens to ignore or disobey court rulings unfavorable to their cause. Although this week’s protests are missing widespread calls for Catalonia’s independence or flags supporting secession of the industrial region, the head of public safety for Barcelona’s town hall said that many of the most violent offenders were also heavily involved in the 2019 riots that followed the imprisonment of several separatist leaders.
“It is a varied, violent profile that we already are familiar with because it is very similar to those who played a large role in the incidents of October 2019, so we know the type,” Barcelona town council member Albert Batlle told Cadena SER radio.
Some leading pro-secessionist politicians have heavily criticized the handling of the protests by Catalan police, who made more than 35 arrests on Saturday night alone.
What started out as peaceful, if angry, protests by thousands in Barcelona and other nearby towns, degenerated into ugly incidents come nightfall caused by a violent minority bent on destroying property and battling with police.
“I think we must differentiate between those who come here in support of Pablo Hasél’s freedom and those who do not,” 19-year-old Joana Junca said. “Street barricades to defend themselves are okay. But those who go out there just to riot don’t have my support.”
The Mossos d’Esquadra police said Monday that 61 of the 75 people arrested in the Catalan capital since protests erupted on Feb. 16 were 25 or younger, including 24 minors. Three out of four had Spanish nationality and 26 of them had previous run-ins with authorities for public disorders or theft.
Within that splinter group of troublemakers, some are out to do some timely looting, Catalonia’s regional interior minister, Miquel Sàmper, on Sunday told the regional TV3 broadcaster that what was “a protest over freedom of expression” had evolved to “acts of pure vandalism.”
Police point to small groups who bash their way into sporting goods stores and other shops while law enforcement officers are engaged by the clashes and the clearing barricades of burning trash containers and metal barriers strewn across streets. Police described what they called “pillaging” by “some people who take advantage of the disorder and cover provided by the large number of people.”
Then there are those, mostly teenage rioters, who appear to be motivated by an anarchist, anti-police bent and seek to disrupt public order by any means possible. They work in fast-moving packs, smashing store windows and trashing bank offices. They pick their moments to stop running and target police with coordinated hurling of stones and other objects. Police swing batons and fire foam bullets after pouring out of riot vans to disperse them — and the chase continues.
Eleven police officers were injured on Tuesday night when a mob attacked a police station in the Catalan town of Vic.
“The attack on the station in Vic was a turning point,” Imma Viudes, spokeswoman of the SAP-Fepol union for the Catalan police told Spanish National Radio. “We don’t have the means to control this mass violence. (…) Someone is going to have to put their fist down.”
On Monday, a few hundred marched along a central Barcelona boulevard passed the headquarters of the National Police but the group dissolved without much noise after a failed attempt to built new barricades.
That was a far cry from only 24 hours earlier. On their way to hurl bottles and firecrackers at a police station in Barcelona, a group of mostly black-clad youths marched behind a banner that they defiantly planted in front of a line of police vans.
It read: “You have taught us that being peaceful is useless.”
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AP journalists Aritz Parra in Madrid, and Renata Brito in Barcelona, contributed to this report.
Jessica Watkins, an Oath Keeper charged with conspiring to storm the US Capitol, has asked to be released from jail pending trial, alleging that she has been “treated harshly” and is at “particular risk in custody” because she is transgender. She also argues she is no threat to the public and only went to the Capitol because “she believed that the President of the United States was calling upon her.”
Watkins, 38, a former Army ranger who served in Afghanistan, was “forced out of the military after her sexual orientation was discovered,” her attorney wrote in a motion for home detention filed late Saturday. In the petition, Watkins alleged that while in a county jail in Ohio, she was stripped naked and left “in a cell with lights on 24 hours a day for 4 days in full view of everyone.” According to the attorney, that was a response to a hunger strike Watkins went on in a failed attempt to get medical attention for an injury to her arm.
Watkins has been held in at least two facilities since her arrest, including the Montgomery County Jail in Dayton, Ohio. A spokesperson for the county sheriff’s office, which administers the jail, said she could not provide immediate comment. It was not clear Saturday night where Watkins was currently being held.
Watkins, who operates a bar called the Jolly Roger in Woodstock, Ohio, turned herself in and was arrested on Jan. 17. She is facing some of the most serious charges to come out of the Jan 6 insurrection.
A grand jury has indicted her and eight others associated with the extremist group the Oath Keepers with descending upon the Capitol in “an organized and practiced fashion” to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election as president.
Watkins wore full tactical gear as she joined a line of Oath Keepers who pushed through the mob outside the Capitol, up the stairs, and finally inside the building. Prosecutors have obtained messages and videos in which she appeared to exult in what happened that day.
“Yeah. We stormed the Capitol today,” she wrote in one message posted to the social app Parler. “Teargassed, the whole 9. Pushed our way into the Rotunda. Made it into the Senate even. The news is lying (even Fox) about the Historical Events we created today.”
Prosecutors have alleged that Watkins was part of an organized group of Oath Keepers and charge that they conspired to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
Court filings indicate that as early as Nov. 9 — less than a week after the election — Watkins was sending text messages inviting people to her group’s basic training in Ohio, telling one person, “l need you fighting fit by innaugeration [sic].”
But Watkins’ attorney, federal public defender Michelle Peterson, argues that she poses no threat and should be allowed to return home with a GPS monitoring device pending trial.
According to Peterson, Watkins has no history of violence, no prior convictions, and that while she acknowledges entering the Capitol she “did not vandalize anything … or engage in any destruction of property, and in fact, encouraged others not to vandalize.”
The public defender also noted that while in the Capitol, Watkins spoke with police officers, followed their orders, and “participated in medical rescue operations for injured people during the event.” Watkins is a former firefighter and EMT, working for a local fire department in Fayetteville, NC, for several years.
The filing notes that when Watkins learned she was wanted for questioning, she “drove nearly eight hours to turn herself in to local police.”
When she did so, according to court papers, authorities were not even aware that she was wanted because her arrest warrant had not yet been entered into the national system.
In a filing last week arguing she should remain behind bars, prosecutors argued that Watkins, who in 2019 founded the Ohio State Regular Militia and is a dues-paying member of the Oath Keepers, “was thus not an ancillary player who became swept up in the moment, but a key figure who put into motion the violence that overwhelmed the Capitol.”
Watkins, they added, “formed a subset of the most extreme insurgents that plotted then tried to execute a sophisticated plan to forcibly stop the results of a Presidential Election from taking effect.”
Watkins, for her part, argued that she was induced to go to the Capitol by Trump. “Although misguided,” her attorney wrote, “she believed she was supporting the Constitution and her government by providing security services at the rally organized by Mr. Trump and the Republican lawmakers who supported his goals.”
Last week, a federal judge denied a request for release by Thomas Caldwell, a Virginia man accused of coordinating the Capitol raid with Watkins, and indicted along with her and the others. Caldwell “represents not just a danger to the community but to the fabric of democracy,” Judge Amit Mehta said.
For more than a month, Munawar Faruqui, a tousled-haired, 30-year-old comic, has languished in jail for a joke he didn’t tell.
Faruqui was beginning to make his name in the crowded ranks of India’s up-and-coming stand-up comedians. More than half a million people subscribed to his YouTube channel, where his performances feature an edgy mix of social and political commentary, one-liners and takedowns of religious fundamentalism delivered in rapid-fire Hindi.
The trouble started on New Year’s Day, when Faruqui took the microphone at a cafe in the central city of Indore. Just as he was beginning his set, a man wearing a white shirt and unzipped vest walked onstage and began harassing the comedian, accusing him of insulting Hinduism.
The crowd cheered on Faruqui, who is Muslim, and burst into applause when the man left. Minutes later, Faruqui and four other comedians and event organizers were arrested by police for allegedly making “indecent” and “vulgar” remarks.
Denied bail three times by a state court, Faruqui has become a prominent example of what critics say is an escalating crackdown against free speech in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India.
A growing number of entertainers, activists, lawyers and academics who have spoken against Modi’s Hindu nationalist government have been arrested, charged with sedition and other serious crimes, or viciously attacked on social media.
In recent days, India has filed criminal charges against journalists who covered a Jan. 26 protest by farmers against proposed agricultural laws. It ordered Twitter to block hundreds of accounts critical of the prime minister and threatened the company’s employees with jail time if they didn’t comply. Last month, the producers of a fictional Amazon Prime Video series called “Tandav” apologized after politicians from Modi’s party claimed the show had insulted Hindus.
Farmers protest against new agricultural laws on the outskirts of New Delhi.
(Manish Swarup / Associated Press)
Faruqui’s friends say he was targeted in part because of his faith. The allegations have jeopardized the promising career of a small-town striver whose only offense, they argue, was poking fun at the powerful establishment in a country that increasingly seems to lack a sense of humor.
Muslims, who make up about 14% of the population, are the largest religious minority in overwhelmingly Hindu India. Since Modi came to power in 2014 on a Hindu nationalist wave, members of his Bharatiya Janata Party and allied groups have promoted laws that have marginalized Muslims and subjected many to vigilante violence.
Faruqui’s case shows that in India, the world’s most populous democracy, “the judiciary sometimes looks at the accused, not the accusation,” said Sanjay Hegde, a prominent lawyer who is not involved in the case.
The man who accosted him onstage, Eklavya Gaur, is the son of a local leader associated with the ruling BJP. Gaur is the leader of a group called the Hind Rakshak Sangathan, one of many hard-line Hindu organizations that have risen to prominence under Modi’s government and claim to defend the faith.
A video shot by an audience member shows Gaur addressing the crowd, saying: “This is Munawar Faruqui. He makes fun of our gods and goddesses and you pay to watch his shows. Don’t you have any shame?”
“Sir,” Faruqui responded calmly, “I don’t target anyone. I have made jokes about Islam. I have also made jokes about triple talaq” — a practice, until recently legal in India, by which a Muslim man could divorce his wife merely by uttering (or texting) the word three times.
Gaur said he didn’t care; he accused Faruqui of mocking Ram, a Hindu god, which he found unacceptable. Gaur appeared to be referring to a joke, seen in a clip online, about a classic Bollywood love song in which a woman invokes Ram to celebrate her husband returning home.
Faruqui joked in English: “Ram-ji doesn’t give a — about your husband.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party has cracked down on critics, including entertainers and journalists.
(Manish Swarup / Associated Press)
In a complaint filed with Indore police, Gaur accused Faruqui of “deliberately intending to outrage religious feelings,” a criminal offense punishable by up to four years in prison.
Faruqui’s lawyer, Anshuman Srivastava, said Faruqui did not perform that joke in Indore, and that Gaur has alleged only that he “overheard” him practicing the line.
“The police registered the complaint without conducting a preliminary investigation,” Srivastava said. “It appears this is happening under political pressure.”
With barbed, well-timed punchlines, Faruqui did tread on sensitive topics during his brief time on stage. He opened with a joke about his home state. “I was born and brought up in Gujarat,” he told the crowd. After a pause, he added, “Survived in Gujarat.”
The crowd laughed, but the joke was dark: Gujarat, a prosperous state in western India, was led by Modi for more than a decade before he became prime minister. Under his watch, in 2002, religious riots killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.
For years, Modi was dogged by allegations that he did not take action to stop the bloodletting. Although he has never been convicted of wrongdoing, the riots remain a blot on the prime minister’s career. Many Muslims in Gujarat continue to associate Modi and the BJP with religious persecution.
“I think I survived,” Faruqui continued, “because I believe [the] government is not good in completing their targets.”
Low whistles this time, then laughter and applause.
A few minutes later, he and the others were arrested.
Indians participate in a candlelight vigil in 2012 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Gujarat religious riots.
(Ajit Solanki / Associated Press)
Faruqui, who hails from the city of Junagarh, lost his mother at a young age and moved to Mumbai as a teenager to support his family. His first job was at a utensil shop, where he earned about $1 a day for a 13-hour shift. At the time, he couldn’t speak Hindi or English.
He later found work at a graphic design company, where he discovered he was gifted at coming up with witty one-liners for posters. It was around 2017, when a surge in mobile internet access and the arrival of international streaming platforms like Netflix were driving a boom in Indian stand-up comedy, so he decided to try telling jokes before an audience.
Around that time, he met another aspiring comic, Saad Shaikh, at a show where they were the only Muslims performing. The bearded Shaikh said many Indians didn’t immediately peg Faruqui, whose wispy stubble and baggy T-shirts give him the look of a distracted college student, as a practicing Muslim.
Their difference in appearance may help explain their approaches to comedy: Shaikh said he tends to avoid political humor, whereas Faruqui took more risks with his material.
“It is very easy for a Muslim comedian to be targeted,” Shaikh said.
Aditi Mittal, a Mumbai-based stand-up comic, said political comedy has become increasingly fraught under Modi’s government. Since 2014, Mittal said, even joking about rising gas prices earned howls of protest from the prime minister’s partisans.
“You never know what may lead to a controversy, and that is always at the back of my mind when I write jokes,” she said. “But it is our responsibility to speak up.”
Last summer, comedian Agrima Joshua received rape and death threats for telling jokes allegedly insulting Shivaji, the 17th century warrior king revered by Hindu nationalists in Maharashtra state, which includes Mumbai.
Comedian Kunal Kamra is facing contempt charges in India’s Supreme Court for tweets criticizing the court after it granted bail to pro-BJP news anchor Arnab Goswami in a case involving the 2018 deaths of an interior designer and the designer’s mother.
Indian news anchor Arnab Goswami sits inside a police vehicle after his arrest in Mumbai in November on charges of abetment of suicide.
(Associated Press)
Kamra refused to apologize and issued a passionate statement in which he wrote: “Should powerful people and institutions continue to show an inability to tolerate rebuke or criticism, we would be reduced to a country of incarcerated artists and flourishing lapdogs.”
Sanjay Rajoura, a New Delhi-based member of the Aisi Taisi Democracy satirical troupe, said the case against Faruqui is the sign of a “rotten society,” and would dog him even if he were released and cleared of wrongdoing.
“Who will give him shows?” Rajoura said. “Those who own venues will have a fear of backlash. So will the sponsors. It will have an impact on his career.”
Ashutosh Bagri, the police superintendent in Indore, said has pledged a “fair and impartial” investigation. But the court in Madhya Pradesh state has sharply criticized Faruqui, most recently in a hearing Jan. 25, when a judge accused him of taking “undue advantage of others’ religious sentiments and emotions” in his act.
“What is wrong with your mindset?” the judge asked. “How can you do this for the purpose of your business? Such people must not be spared.”
The judge ordered Faruqui back to his cell in Indore, where he has been held incommunicado since the first week of January.
Shaikh said that in the months before the incident in Indore, Faruqui began to realize that many people in India felt the same way as the judge. Last April, social media trolls threatened him over his jokes about Hinduism. A hashtag calling for his arrest briefly trended nationally.
“That shook him,” Shaikh recalled. “He was even questioning his comedy at the time, but we told him to have faith in the judiciary. Looking back, we were probably wrong.”
Special correspondent Parth M.N. reported from Mumbai and Times staff writer Bengali from Singapore.
A Tennessee man was arrested Friday for alleged harassment after authorities said he distributed a disrespectful photo of a law enforcement officer’s grave on social media.
Joshua Andrew Garton, 28, was arrested on suspicion of harassment and jailed in Dickson County, Tennessee, on $76,000 bond, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
The bureau said Garton recently produced and distributed a doctored photo of two men urinating on the grave of Dickson County sheriff’s Sgt. Daniel Baker, who was fatally shot in the line of duty in 2018.
“Just showing my respect to deputy Daniel Baker,” text accompanying the image said.
State detectives visited the gravesite and determined the photo did not depict an actual desecration, according to the bureau.
Nashville lawyer Daniel Horwitz, who does not represent Garton, said by email that the arrest appeared to be a violation of the Constitution.
“The First Amendment clearly and unmistakably protects this man’s right to post an offensive photo about a police officer,” he said. “The only people who broke the law here were the police officers and TBI agents who participated in this flagrantly unconstitutional arrest.”
The bureau said by email that the investigation and arrest were done at the behest of District Attorney General Ray Crouch.
“When requested to investigate an incident by a District Attorney General, TBI agents serve as fact-finders,” said bureau spokeswoman Leslie Earhart. “The D.A. determines what, if any, charges are placed.”
Crouch did not respond to a request for his comment Saturday. A county public defender also did not respond.
On Twitter, Horwitz, who specializes in constitutional law, criticized law enforcement for the arrest.
“I am riled up about the government imprisoning someone for disrespecting them,” he said.
Dennis Romero
Dennis Romero writes for NBC News and is based in Los Angeles.
The demonstrations kicked off in Russia’s far east city of Vladivostok and spread to the west as the day progressed. Videos posted on social media showed crowds of people gathered in Vladivostok and a number of cities across Siberia and central Russia.
One video showed a small protest in the city of Yakutsk, where temperatures dropped to -53 degrees Celsius (- 63 Fahrenheit) on Saturday.
The demonstrations have not received an official government permit and the authorities have warned people not to attend them.
Several allies of Navalny have been detained this week for inciting the protests, including his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh, Anti-Corruption Foundation investigator Georgy Alburov and opposition activist Lyubov Sobol.
The coordinator of Navalny’s Moscow office, Oleg Stepanov, was detained on Saturday, according to a tweet from Navalny’s Moscow team. A protest in the Russian capital was due to start at 2 p.m. local time (6 a.m ET).
The Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs has accused the United States of encouraging the protests after the US Embassy in Russia posted an alert on its website advising US citizens to avoid the demonstrations.
In a tweet posted on Saturday, the ministry said that posting information about the rallies was “in line with Washington’s provocative policy of encouraging protests in countries whose governments are seen by US as undesirable.”
Under Russian law, an official appeal for approval of a protest has to be made to local authorities at least 10 days before the event. Navalny was only arrested less than a week ago, so the organizers had insufficient time to launch an appeal.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport late Sunday, just moments after arriving from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from Novichok poisoning he blamed on the Russian government. The Kremlin repeatedly denied any involvement.
On Monday, he faced an unexpected hearing where a judge ordered Navalny to remain in custody for 30 days ahead of a court hearing to determine whether he had violated the terms of his suspended sentence in a 2014 embezzlement case, which he claims was politically motivated.
Russian internet regulator said Thursday it was planning to fine major social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and TikTok, for “spreading information prohibited by law and aimed at attracting minors to participate in unauthorized mass public events.”
CNN’s Fred Pleitgen, Zahra Ullah and Anna Chernova in Moscow contributed reporting.
