A note from Madrid.
I'm sending just a short note this week because I am visiting family in Spain, where corruption scandals and gender issues are the main topics of the day.
The case of "the Mediator," in which parliamentarians from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the Canary Islands were extorting business leaders and using the money to pay for prostitutes, dominates the news.
The leftist government also recently passed a code of ethics "encouraging toy shops and manufacturers to avoid gender bias when marketing toys in Spain." It passed a law giving women the right to take three days off of work each month because they have their periods. It also announced a new Equal Representation law requiring women to make up 40 percent of the corporate board of any listed company with more than 250 workers.
And a recent “only yes is yes” law aimed to make consent a central factor in defining sex crimes. The only problem is a loophole included in the law reduced the sentences of hundreds of sex offenders, including around 74 who were released from jail early. People aren't so happy about that part.
Never a dull moment in Spain.
It's been a crazy, beautiful week for Georgia, too, where young protesters faced off against their increasingly pro-Russian government and its security forces until politicians finally agreed not to pass a foreign agents law inspired by the Russian one. გამარჯვება!
I was heartened to see this getting some media attention in Spain, where Georgia was consistently trending on Twitter this week.
What I'm reading:
Good news in 🇬🇪Georgia: the authorities decided to unconditionally withdraw both Russia-inspired "foreign agent" bills following massive protests and domestic and international outcry! For background https://t.co/0eim5h5CqM pic.twitter.com/n92LT3z0Hd
— Giorgi Gogia (@Giorgi_Gogia) March 9, 2023
🇬🇪 @GovernmentGeo is using a really nasty siren at #TbilisiProtests and this is how youngsters react 🥷
in the country full of ravers, you can't scare them away with noice! No way! 😅 #Georgia #NoToRussianLaw pic.twitter.com/VCj3njSfu1— Giorgi Tabagari (@Tabagari) March 8, 2023
• Protesters in Georgia threw petrol bombs and stones at police after parliament gave its initial backing to a draft foreign agents law, which critics say represents an authoritarian shift, Reuters reports. The law was modeled after a similar law that Russia passed years ago in an attempt to censor anyone with contacts or ties to the West.
The situation in Tbilisi is escalating - protesters started throwing "Molotov's cocktails" at police. President of Georgia will address the nation soon. pic.twitter.com/nwHeubcbtZ
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) March 7, 2023
• Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said Georgia’s parliament should firmly reject the two bills, which would require individuals, civil society organizations, and media outlets to register with the Justice Ministry as “agents of foreign influence” if they receive at least 20 percent of their funds from abroad. The organizations say the bills are incompatible with international human rights law and standards that protect the rights to freedom of expression and association.
• Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili, who was visiting the U.S., said in a video address: “This law — which no one needed — does not come out of nowhere. It is something dictated by Moscow.”
• Georgia’s ruling party has said it will withdraw the controversial foreign influence bill following mass protests and international criticism, the BBC reports.
• “I want to thank everyone who has been holding Ukrainian flags in the squares and streets of Georgia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in one of his nightly addresses this week. “I want to express gratitude for our national anthem being played in Tbilisi. This is respect for Ukraine, and I want to express my sincere respect for Georgia.”
• Two German public broadcasters and the newspaper Die Zeit published reports citing unnamed officials claiming Western intelligence services traced the attacks against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to an unnamed pro-Ukrainian group. The New York Times had a similar story.
• The Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist, Ales Bialiatski, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Belarusian court, the Washington Post reports.
• Estonia’s centrist Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was the clear winner of last night’s parliamentary election, with her party coming first, Politico Europe reports. More than half of the ballots were cast electronically, which likely helped get a record turnout of 63 percent.
• Slovakia’s caretaker Prime Minister Eduard Heger formed a new party called Demokrati, which he said will be based on pro-Western democratic values and will support aid to Ukraine, the Associated Press reports. Slovakia will hold an early parliamentary election on September 30.
• The United Kingdom will outline plans for a new law barring those entering the country through unofficial routes from claiming asylum, Reuters reports.
• Israeli fighter pilots vowed not to attend training in an unprecedented protest against the government’s planned judicial reforms, the BBC reports. Reservists in an elite intelligence unit have also said they would not report for duty, prompting ten former Israeli Air Force chiefs to publish an open letter calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “stop and find a solution” to the crisis.
• A massive fire razed parts of the world’s largest refugee camp, leaving 12,000 people without shelter in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the BBC reports.
• Thousands of Afghan women who secured divorces without their husband’s consent now face potential imprisonment and violent reprisals under the Taliban’s draconian interpretation of Islamic law, the Washington Post reports.
You can write to me for any reason: c.maza@protonmail.com.