Wies De Graeve is the executive director of Amnesty International Belgium’s Flemish branch. Tomorrow, Seán Binder will stand trial before the Mytilene Court of Appeals in Lesvos, Greece for his work as a volunteer rescuer, helping those in distress and at risk of drowning at sea. Alongside 23 other defendants, he faces criminal charges including membership in a criminal organization, money laundering and smuggling, with the risk of up to 20 years in prison if convicted. I first met Seán in 2019. A bright, articulate Irish activist in his twenties, he was our guest at the Belgian launch of Amnesty International’s annual end-of-year campaign. And there, he shared his equally inspiring yet shocking story of blatant injustice, as he and others were being prosecuted for saving lives. Two years earlier, Seán had traveled to Lesvos as a volunteer, joining a local search-and-rescue NGO to patrol the coastline for small boats in distress and provide first aid to those crossing from Turkey to Greece. Since 2015, the war in Syria has forced countless individuals to flee their homes and seek safety in Europe via dangerous routes — including the perilous journey across the Aegean Sea. In 2017 alone, more than 3,000 people were reported dead or missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean, and when authorities failed to step in, many volunteers from across Europe did so instead. Seán was one of them. He did what any of us would hope to do in his position: save lives and help people. Yet, in 2018, he was arrested by Greek authorities and held in pretrial detention for over 100 days before being charged with a range of crimes alongside other humanitarian workers. These charges aim to portray those who help people on the move as criminals. And it’s part of a trend sweeping across Europe that’s criminalizing solidarity. In Malta, three teenagers from West Africa stand accused of helping to bring more than 100 people rescued at sea to safety, and are facing charges that carry a lifelong sentence. In Italy, ships operated by search-and-rescue organizations are being impounded. And in France, mountain guides have faced prosecution for assisting people at the border with Italy. European governments are not only failing people seeking protection, they’re also punishing those who try to fill that dangerous gap. I met Seán again in 2021 and 2023, both times outside the courthouse in Mytilene on Lesvos. In 2023, the lesser misdemeanor charges against him and the other foreign defendants — forgery, espionage and the unlawful use of radio frequencies — were dropped. Then, in 2024, the rest of the defendants were acquitted of those same charges. While leaving the courthouse that day, still facing the more serious felony charges along with the other 23 aid workers, Seán said: “We want justice. Today, there has been less injustice, but no justice.” As Amnesty International, we’ve been consistently calling for these charges to be dropped. The U.N. and many human rights organizations have also expressed serious concerns about the case, while thousands across Europe and around the world have stood by Seán’s side in defense of solidarity with migrants and refugees, signing petitions and writing letters. This trial should set off alarms not only for Europe’s civil society but for any person’s ability to act according to their conscience. It isn’t just Seán who is on trial here, it’s solidarity itself. The criminalization of people showing compassion for those compelled to leave their homes because of war, violence or other hardships must stop. This trial should set off alarms not only for Europe’s civil society but for any person’s ability to act according to their conscience. | Manolis Lagoutaris/AFP via Getty Images Meanwhile, a full decade after Syrians fleeing war began arriving on Europe’s shores in search of safety and protection, Europe’s leaders need to reflect. They need to learn from people like Seán instead of prosecuting them. And instead of focusing on deterrence, they need to ensure the word “asylum,” from the Greek “asylon,” still means a place of refuge or sanctuary for those seeking safety in our region. People who save lives should be supported, not criminalized. This week, six years after our first encounter, Seán and I will once again meet in front of the Mytilene courthouse as his trial resumes. I will be there in solidarity, representing the thousands who have been demanding that these charges be dropped. I hope, with all my heart, to see him finally receive the justice he is entitled to. Humanity must win.

LONDON — British MP Tulip Siddiq has been handed a two-year prison sentence in Bangladesh in her absence following a corruption trial she did not attend. Siddiq, a former U.K. minister, was found guilty of influencing her aunt, Bangladesh’s ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to secure a plot of land for her family in the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, according to a BBC report of the trial. Siddiq, a former U.K. Treasury minister, has strongly denied the claims and is unlikely to serve the sentence. She is based in London and is the MP for the London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate. The case is one of a number launched by prosecutors against Hasina and her family in Bangladesh. Hasina fled the country last year after more than a decade in charge. The ex-PM was sentenced to death in a separate trial a fortnight ago. Siddiq quit as a  Treasury minister in January following multiple media reports — heavily disputed by Siddiq — that she benefited from her family’s rule of Bangladesh. She said she did not want to be a “distraction” for the government. In a statement at the start of the trial, Siddiq said prosecutors had “peddled false and vexatious allegations that have been briefed to the media but never formally put to me by investigators,” and insisted she had “done nothing wrong.” “Continuing to smear my name to score political points is both baseless and damaging,” she added. A group of senior lawyers, including Britain’s ex-Justice secretary Robert Buckland, former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, and Cherie Blair, a human rights lawyer and wife of former prime minister Tony Blair, last week said the trial had been “contrived and unfair.” The U.K. does not have an extradition treaty in place with Bangladesh. In a fresh statement Monday morning, Siddiq slammed what she called a “flawed and farcical” legal process. “The outcome of this kangaroo court is as predictable as it is unjustified,” she said. “I hope this so called ‘verdict’ will be treated with the contempt it deserves. My focus has always been my constituents in Hampstead and Highgate and I refuse to be distracted by the dirty politics of Bangladesh.”

Christopher Silvester is a freelance journalist, author and consultant. U.S. President Donald Trump intends to sue the BBC for defamation in Florida over a documentary broadcast during the 2024 presidential campaign. Aired as part of the broadcaster’s flagship current affairs program “Panorama,” questionably edited footage from the president’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021 gave the impression he had urged his supporters to storm the capitol in Washington, DC. Trump only discovered this after the statute of limitations for libel action in the U.K. had passed, so he can’t sue there. Had he known in time, he may have received a settlement or award for damages worth tens of thousands of pounds — especially now the BBC has issued a public apology. But suing in the U.S. is different. On the one hand, Trump could make a vast claim for damages — somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion, he says. On the other, there’s no easy path for his lawyers to claim jurisdiction, as the offending documentary was never made available in the U.S. `They also face the substantial hurdle of proving his reputation has been materially damaged and that the program’s makers were guilty of express malice. The BBC, for its part, has made clear it will defend itself against any such claim. We’ve been here before. Long before Trump became a politician, an earlier edition of “Panorama” similarly plunged the BBC into an existential crisis — and it offers some crucial lessons. Back in the mid-1980s, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, the show found itself in similar turmoil. The controversy was over a program that, among other errors, manipulated footage to make several tendentious claims that a handful of backbench Conservative MPs were “racialists” or quasi-fascists. Margaret Thatcher being filmed by television crew at Chequers. | Jeff Overs/BBC News via Getty Images Entitled “Maggie’s Militant Tendency,” the program was a humdinger of a political knifing. The title alone was guaranteed to raise hackles on the right, as the Militant Tendency was a hard-left subsect that had used infiltrationist tactics to get a few of its followers elected as Labour MPs. Put plainly, “Panorama” was suggesting a similar sprinkling of right-wing extremists had been gaining ground in the Conservative Party. Writing about the incident in 2002, former “Panorama” reporter Tom Bower called it “a woefully misconceived programme … To consider equating a handful of alleged Tory racists with the widespread Marxist infiltration of the Labour party was lunacy, especially in the aftermath of Thatcher’s virulent criticism of the BBC during the Falklands war.” In the program, an interview with Conservative MP Harvey Proctor was “edited so crudely that it showed me in three different suits in what was presented as a single meeting,” Proctor recalled in a recent article. “John Selwyn Gummer, the Conservative Party Chairman, commented that he knew I was many things, but a quick-change artist I was not. It was not satire, it was broadcast reality.” In another sequence, footage of a uniform-clad MP Gerald Howarth was shown with simultaneous commentary, claiming he had attended a fascist meeting in Italy, implying he was wearing a fascist uniform. In fact, he had been wearing a train driver’s uniform while attending a rally of steam railway enthusiasts. It was certainly not investigative journalism’s finest hour. After airing in January 1984, “Maggie’s Military Tendency” eventually led to defamation actions from five Conservative MPs. While some dropped their suits, the actions brought by Howarth and Neil Hamilton came to court a little over two years later. And the BBC, rather than apologize for some of its errors, sought to fight them tooth and nail. I was a junior reporter at Private Eye magazine at the time, where I specialized in political gossip, and I had already met Hamilton and his wife Christine. After speaking to them at length, I had challenged the program’s thesis in print soon after it aired. To use an earthy phrase, it appeared Hamilton and Howarth had been stitched up like kippers. Once the trial began, it lasted a mere four days — and those four days had a touch of the absurd about them. One of the claims against Hamilton was that he’d done a Hitler impersonation after visiting the Reichstag in Berlin with a group of Conservative MPs. And in order to show that his impersonation had been satirical rather than a serious political commitment, he was asked to give a performance in the witness box not once but twice, as the judge had been taking notes the first time. “I would be staggered if anybody could possibly be upset by it,” Hamilton said. Another claim was that in 1973, he’d attended a convention of the Italian fascist party, MSI, in the company of two fellow members of the Monday Club — a British right-wing pressure group. There, Hamilton had “thought it was jolly good fun if I did a speech in Italian because I could do a Charlie Chaplin Great Dictator speech which they would not recognize but would give us a lot of enjoyment.” Whether it had worked as comedy or satire, one probably needed to have been there, but as proof of a genuine fascist mentality, it fell short by a substantial measure. Then, four days into proceedings, before the BBC defense could take the floor, the organization’s management, under pressure from its Board of Governors — which was, in turn, under pressure from Conservative ministers — made substantial settlements. The BBC apologized for falsely claiming that Hamilton and Howarth were members of a “virulently racist and anti-Semitic” extreme right-wing group called Tory Action, for falsely claiming they had misled the Conservative Party chairman by denying links to Tory Action, and for falsely claiming they had made racist remarks or goose-stepped while on a visit to Bonn in 1983. Tory MPs Neil Hamilton (left) and Gerald Howarth with their wives after winning their libel case against the BBC at the High Court in London. | PA Images via Getty Images Hamilton and Howarth each received £20,000 — a fair whack back then, and libel damages were tax-free. After the verdict, Hamilton reacted to their victory by channeling one of Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches: “This is a magnificent victory of David over Goliath, and represents, for us, the end of the beginning, but for some on the BBC probably the beginning of the end.” Later, Hamilton and Howarth sought a meeting with the new BBC Chairman Duke Hussey to ensure the organization’s “integrity can be restored, its political impartiality re-established, and its legitimate editorial independence protected.” Then, as now, there was a crisis of governance at the BBC. Then, as now, there was a wider context of BBC travails. And then, as now, there was an impending political challenge for the BBC to obtain charter renewal and an extension of its jealously guarded license fee. All media organizations fight to defend against defamation actions, and the BBC is no exception. But while the broadcaster may justifiably contend it has no case to argue against Trump, it would serve us well to remember that in the 1980’s, the BBC was excoriated for wasting license-payers’ money in defending indefensible claims for almost two years — and rightly so. 

The EU’s top court ruled Tuesday that when a same-sex couple is legally married in one member country, any other member country where they move or reside must recognize that marriage. The case concerned two Polish citizens who were resident in Germany and married in Berlin in 2018. When they sought recognition of their marriage in Poland, authorities refused, citing national law, which does not recognize same-sex marriages. The couple took the case to the Polish Supreme Administrative Court, which referred it to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Luxembourg-based court said this was contrary to EU law because it “infringes” on the freedom of movement “and the right to respect for private and family life.” In a press release summarizing the judgment, the court added: “Member States are therefore required to recognize, for the purpose of the exercise of the rights conferred by EU law, the marital status lawfully acquired in another Member State.” Member countries “enjoy a margin of discretion to choose the procedures for recognizing such a marriage,” the court added. The court stressed, however, that its ruling does not oblige countries to introduce same-sex marriage under their domestic laws.

James A. Goldston is the executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump lambasted the United Nations for “empty words” that “don’t solve war.” At the same time, reports emerged that his administration was poised to issue a fatal blow against one of the crowning achievements of multilateralism: the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC’s creation in 1998 fulfilled a century-long ambition: to see perpetrators of the greatest crimes, no matter their station, held to account when national governments fail to act against them. In its short life, the court has prosecuted heinous acts of sexual violence, cultural desecration and the use of child soldiers. It has charged Russia’s and Israel’s most senior officials for alleged crimes in Ukraine and Gaza respectively, as well as Myanmar’s military commander-in-chief for the alleged persecution of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya. But now, with America exerting enormous financial and political pressure on the court, this may all fall away. In an effort to protect Israel’s leaders, over the past few months the Trump administration has undertaken an all-out assault on the ICC, imposing draconian targeted sanctions on its prosecutor and his two deputies, six judges, one U.N. special rapporteur and three NGOs accused of aiding the court’s investigation into and prosecution of crimes in Gaza. Threatening judges and prosecutors with travel bans and asset freezes isn’t just wrong — it betrays the U.S.’s proud, if uneven, history of leading the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II, and its help in addressing subsequent atrocities in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. It’s also an odd way to defend American sovereignty, particularly when — as Israel has done — Washington is free to argue its jurisdictional objections in The Hague. Concerning as the existing measures are, the discussed new sanctions on the ICC as a whole would go even further, barring banks, software providers and other vendors from servicing the institution, effectively shutting down its operations. If these sanctions were to result in the court’s destruction, the losses would be incalculable. Joe Raedle/Getty Images Detainees like former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines — accused of orchestrating mass killing — could go free. Investigations and prosecutions for abuses by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Myanmar, Ukraine and Venezuela would all come to a halt. Thousands of survivors, advocates, doctors and journalists the world over would lose their last and only recourse for redress. And the cause of a world governed by law rather than violence, however imperfectly, would be set back. America’s on-again, off-again history with the ICC notwithstanding — it has never joined the court, and has alternately both helped and blocked it — this possibility is shocking. And the relative quiescence of others, including many of the court’s 125 member countries from Europe, Africa and Latin America, is disappointing — particularly when international stages, such as the U.N. General Assembly and various fora in each of the world’s major regions, provide ready-made opportunities to lift up the ICC’s mission and work. Though some countries have made their objections public, many have declined to do so. In July, little over one-third of the court’s membership signed an anodyne statement expressing “deep concern” at “recent measures” targeting the four judges, and pledged “full support” for the ICC without specifying what they would do. Civil society has sounded the alarm. But if ever there were a moment for governments to defend the ICC, this is it. For months, EU members have debated and failed to adopt legal tools that would provide limited protection for companies and individuals who seek to continue providing services to designated ICC-affiliated persons.Meanwhile, States Parties to the Rome Statute could demonstrate a determination to stand with the ICC in other ways, like assisting with witness protection and sentence execution, boosting finances and committing to execute outstanding arrest warrants. Finally, as an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by the ICC chief prosecutor approaches its 12th month, the court’s governing body could do more to ensure this probe is completed with integrity and expedition, and that preparations are in place for swift action when it does — whether that be reinstatement or the selection of a successor. It’s true that the ICC’s performance to date — 11 convictions and four acquittals in 20 years — hasn’t met the ambition of its creators. However, the court has secured important judicial rulings, pushed governments to prosecute war criminals themselves, created an impartial historical record for countries in conflict, and modeled a system of law for generations to come. It took 50 years after the horrors of the Holocaust to establish the ICC. Without more robust assistance from its allies, sanctions will make the court a weaker institution — if it survives at all. And the damage to international law and justice may be irreversible. All those who believe in the ICC’s vital mission must make their voices heard.

Peter Pomerantsev is a Ukrainian-born British journalist and a senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Propaganda plays a vital role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But will those pushing these campaigns face accountability? Or, will they walk away, claiming “free speech” as their defense? When, exactly, are words war crimes? The challenge for anyone trying to bring propagandists to trial has always been connecting vile words to horrific acts. Consider the Nuremberg trials: One of the propagandists on trial, Julius Streicher — editor of the vitriolic antisemitic Der Sturmer, a leading Hitler ally and senior party member from the earliest days — was found guilty of inciting extermination of the Jews. But Hans Fritzsche, the smooth-talking editor-in-chief of the Reich’s radio, was found not guilty. He claimed he was merely following instructions with his screeds and had no idea about the Holocaust. After the tribunal, new evidence emerged that Fritzsche actively helped bring about the murder of Jews in Poland — but by then it was too late. Since Nuremberg, the world has seen mixed results when it comes to holding propagandists accountable. After the Rwandan genocide, media bosses who encouraged militias and called for the extermination of Tutsis were found guilty of incitement to commit genocide. By contrast, Serbian ultranationalist Vojislav Šešelj was found not guilty, as judges at The Hague couldn’t ascertain whether his dehumanizing speeches about Bosnians were intended to cause specific criminal acts during the Balkan wars. Now, the chase is on to hold Russian propagandists accountable. Question is, can their disinformation campaigns possibly offer a new avenue for establishing responsibility? When going after propagandists, some of the ongoing efforts focus on the horrific language used by Russia’s leading hate-mongers, such as media personalities referring to Ukrainians as “subhuman” and calling to “deworm” them. To that end, a submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by a coalition of lawyers, including Nobel Peace Prize Winner Oleksandra Matvichuk, argues: “Every day Ukrainians die under Russian bombs; Ukrainian civilians in the occupation are detained and tortured. These grave violations of human rights would not be possible without the dehumanizing campaign of Russian propagandists, who are just as guilty as those who pull their triggers killing Ukrainian civilians.” But there is another way Russian propagandists enable violence: Creating disinformation about who is responsible for a war crime before it is committed. Yes, you read that right. The language in such cases isn’t necessarily vile, as the aim isn’t to dehumanize victims. It is to preemptively blame someone else — often the victims themselves — for the atrocities Russian forces are about commit. A joint report from the Reckoning Project and the humanitarian law firm Global Rights Compliance lays out the consistent use of these so-called information alibis — a pattern first established in Syria, when Russian diplomats and state media would accuse the Syrian opposition and first responders of using chemical weapons against civilians, thus creating an alibi for the Syrian regime’s own subsequent use of poison gas. According to the report, this tactic has increased since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the run-up to Russia’s bombardment of a maternity ward in Mariupol in 2022, for example, the Telegram channels and news services of the Russian security services and Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vasily Nebenzya accused Ukrainian forces of using the city’s maternity wards as human shields. But a subsequent U.N. investigation, as well as reports from the Associated Press and CNN, found no evidence of the claims. When going after propagandists, some of the ongoing efforts focus on the horrific language used by Russia’s leading hate-mongers, such as media personalities referring to Ukrainians as “subhuman” and calling to “deworm” them. | Peter Kneffel/Getty Images Then, again in Mariupol in 2022, a correspondent for Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper claimed a theater where over a thousand civilians had taken shelter was about to be shelled by Ukrainian forces as a “provocation.” A few days later, the Russian air force hit the theater with two 500-kilogram bombs. So far, there has been no evidence of any such “provocation,” and both Amnesty International and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights confirmed the theater was destroyed with an air strike. The precise number of fatalities is unknown, though the AP estimates the number at 600. In essence, however absurd an “information alibi” may seem, it serves to give Russia a veneer of deniability for a planned atrocity. Push the message enough, and it can muddy the waters about who’s responsible. And there are many countries that are all too keen to reach for an excuse, however dubious, to forgive Russia’s actions if it serves their pro-Russia policies. Recently, we’ve even seen claims in leading pro-government Hungarian media that the massacre of Ukrainian civilians at Bucha was staged. Sometimes alibis can be created months in advance, such as with Russian claims that Ukraine blew up the Kakhovka dam, or that Ukrainian forces used U.S. arms to murder prisoners of war captured by Russia, who were about to incriminate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in heinous war crimes. But sometimes things can go awry: On April 8, 2022, for example, a Russian missile hit the Kramatorsk rail station, killing 63 civilians; and at 10:25 a.m., Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti published a post blaming a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile. However, the first eyewitness reports from the scene only started to emerge at about 10:30 a.m. In their eagerness to blame Ukraine, the agency was premature. Furthermore, it was published via TweetDeck, which can be used to schedule posts in advance. This mistake shows how digital technology can both enhance and reveal the coordinated nature of “information alibis.” A network of telegram channels, such as the somewhat ironically entitled “War on Fakes,” lie at the heart of Russia’s “information alibis.” At first glance, they can seem independent, but as an indictment by the U.S. Justice Department showed, they closely coordinate with the Kremlin. When propagandists participate in coordinated action with military forces and state authorities to preemptively cover up a crime, their role goes beyond typical disinformation. “By seeding doubt that derails investigations, covers up crime, or obstructs criminal investigations, propagandists can materially contribute to a common purpose,” explained Global Rights Compliance’s Scott Martin. Think of them like getaway drivers, delivering a bank robber or assassin to a crime scene, then driving them away. If one could establish responsibility for “information alibis” in this way, it would do more than just open the opportunity for in-person trials. It would also create opportunities for other forms of accountability, such as with sanctions. And it would put more pressure on tech platforms too — it’s one thing to have disinformation on a site, it’s quite another to enable the coordination of atrocities. Moreover, recognizing “information alibis” would help democracies delineate more clearly between freedom of speech and crime — especially at a time when there’s so much controversy over what speech should be regulated. Untrue, vile and derogatory political speech isn’t usually illegal. But the milder speech involved in “information alibis” is directly contributing to actual crimes. The most dangerous words aren’t necessarily the most violent ones. Rather, it’s often calm, seemingly measured, coordinated words that are part of the preparation for murder — these are what propagandists should be held accountable for.

Haris Doukas is a member of the Eurocities Executive Committee and the mayor of Athens. Vasil Terziev is the president of the B40 network and the mayor of Sofia. On a dry late August afternoon, we stood outside Silivri — the high-security prison west of Istanbul, where Ekrem İmamoğlu, the elected leader of Europe’s largest city, has been detained for months. Behind us, Turkish civil society leaders held aloft banners; beside us were colleagues from his municipal team; and around us were a quiet but resolute crowd of supporters, including six other local leaders from large cities across Europe. It wasn’t the visit we had planned, but it was powerful all the same. In that moment, what struck us most wasn’t just the absence of the man we had traveled to see — and to whom national authorities had denied us access. It was the presence of his values echoing from every voice that spoke. Hope, we realized, isn’t incarcerated by prison walls. And everything we witnessed only deepened our resolve to stand by our fellow city leaders and defend local democracy. What we heard in Istanbul wasn’t despair but moral strength. İmamoğlu’s colleagues told us of how he remains engaged even behind bars, how he still asks about city projects and encourages his team to stay the course, insisting that the work of building a more inclusive, sustainable Istanbul continues. He isn’t the only target. Dozens of opposition mayors in Turkey have been arrested for dubious charges in recent months. Any local leader who dares to govern differently, who poses a threat to the central government’s grip, will be punished — that’s the message. Istanbul is the country’s economic engine, and its democratic mandate is being steadily eroded. But even under such immense government pressure, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality continues to serve its people. Acting Mayor Nuri Aslan told us how the city is still pushing forward with policies to improve life for all its residents — more public transportation, support for women, migrant integration and earthquake resilience. We also met with İmamoğlu’s wife, Dilek, who has become a still yet powerful voice for justice despite threats to her family. And her resilience reminded us that political repression doesn’t just affect the individuals targeted but their families too. This visit wasn’t our first act of solidarity. Back in March, just days after İmamoğlu’s arrest, over 80 European mayors joined a public declaration, coordinated by Eurocities, calling for his release and for EU action. This mission was built on that commitment. So, why should this matter to Brussels? Because Turkey remains an EU candidate country, which presupposes rule of law. It’s also a crucial trading partner and a strategic neighbor. Turning a blind eye to political repression at the bloc’s borders sends a dangerous signal — not only to Ankara but to other regimes that are watching. The EU’s credibility as a defender of democracy is at stake here. Back in March, just days after İmamoğlu’s arrest, over 80 European mayors joined a public declaration, coordinated by Eurocities, calling for his release and for EU action. | Laura Guerrero/Barcelona City Council And why should it matter to mayors across Europe? Because city leaders aren’t just local administrators, they’re defenders of democratic values. Throughout history, cities have been places of openness, diversity and dialogue. That’s what makes them so threatening to authoritarian regimes, which fear example not ideology. Moreover, democracy doesn’t just disappear overnight. It begins with legal harassment, budget cuts and disinformation. Then it escalates. We’ve seen it before, and we’re seeing signs of it again — not just in Turkey but also uncomfortably closer to home. For example, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who joined our delegation, faces similar pressures in Hungary. Yet, he still came to Istanbul. Not for himself but to show solidarity — because he understands democracy must be defended beyond borders. Nowadays, cities must become diplomatic actors in their own right. They can’t wait for national governments to lead. And we’re inviting EU institutions to join us in this fight. Until now, their response has been weak at best — a bland statement here, a half-hearted expression of concern there. Only the European Parliament and the Committee of the Regions have spoken with any real clarity on the matter, but they lack the tools to act. And for all its rhetoric about defending European values, the European Commission seems unwilling to do so. That’s why we’re calling for a meeting with the European Commissioner for Enlargement to discuss how Turkey’s EU accession process and pre-accession funds relate to this assault on democracy. We’re also asking that the European Council put this case on its agenda. Together, we can lift the bars erected to confine local democracy in Turkey — and in Europe. Our commitment doesn’t end with this mission. We will continue to advocate, organize and speak out. We owe it to İmamoğlu, and to every city leader risking their freedom for their citizens. Democracy begins locally. If we don’t defend it here, we risk losing it everywhere.

Elena Vasilyeva is a Belarusian journalist based in Warsaw, Poland. She explores the parallels between her country and others through her writing and documentary video reporting. Talking about the latest elections in the pub, first you lower your voice. Then, you come to realize the smart move isn’t to talk about politics at all. When someone sends a link with the latest news to the group chat, the conversation dies. It’s neither smart nor polite to send such a link. It can be seen as a provocation, or it might actually be one. And you certainly don’t discuss politics with a taxi driver because, well, you never know. I bet you can’t imagine this happening in your country. I couldn’t either — until it did. For me, it all started with a “thank you” in 2017. That spring, my best friend and I had called an Uber to take us to the “anti-parasite” protest in Minsk. At the time, people had taken to the streets to protest a law that would force the unemployed to pay a so-called parasite tax. In the 90s, international media referred to Belarus as a “Soviet-era relic.” It wasn’t a pleasant label, but it was probably accurate. Twenty years later, the label remained, but by then, it was neither pleasant nor true. There we were, openly chatting about our country’s political situation in the car, involving our Uber driver in the conversation. And we planned to continue our discussion at a trendy bar after the protest was over. But that’s not how our day went. At the protest, my friend was detained. Waiting for him on the first floor of the police station, all I knew was that he’d been brought to that building. And I remember meeting a woman there who didn’t even have that luxury. She was stuck waiting, not knowing whether the man she loved was there or some other police department in the city. My friend, however, was released later that evening. And that’s when I first heard it: “Be grateful they let him go.” I heard those same words again three years later, in 2020, right before another protest — we had many that summer. But this time, the police tried to detain every single journalist who was covering the event — literally, all of them. A blue van, the kind used by security forces, pulled up to where we reporters had gathered. They loaded all of us into the van and took us to the police station, stopping along the way to pick up any journalists who were running late to cover the protest. We were offered tea and cookies, and were released once the demonstration had ended. Again, they said: “Be grateful we let you go the same day.” Then, the gaps between those “be gratefuls” started getting shorter. Just a week after the cookies, I was asked if I had footage of a student march. Six journalists had been detained and accused of “leading the column” rather than covering the protests, and the video could help prove they didn’t. Those journalists weren’t released that evening, though. Nor were they released the next evening. This time, the court had decided on three days of detention. And again, I caught myself thinking: “We should all be grateful.” In an administrative case, there was always a chance it could have been 14 days — let alone the possibility of it turning into a criminal case. So, I didn’t dwell too much on my unhealthy “gratitude.” As it turns out, however, a criminal case for journalists was on the way — we need only have waited a couple months more. It didn’t take long after that for political dissidents in Belarus to reach the point of saying “thank you” for a year in prison. To them, a year became so little, many of considered it lucky. “I don’t want to say it, but that’s a lucky verdict,” is what they would say publicly. Then, that phase passed too. And by 2022, when a group of Belarusian activists tried to stop Russian military trains heading to Ukraine, the phrase became: “Be grateful it’s not the death penalty.” Because stopping a train could be qualified as terrorism — and Belarus still has the death penalty. Today, I think back on that woman in the police station in 2017. Her name is Marina Adamovich, the wife of Belarusian opposition leader Mikola Statkevich. And again, she’s in the same position she was all those years ago. Her husband was detained again in 2020, and has been kept incommunicado for 900 days. Back then, I suppose she “should have been grateful” when he came home the next day. I’m sure she wasn’t. But I was. I was grateful. My friend was released, and we went to the bar to celebrate. They made good cocktails there, and we could sit there and talk about politics, or anything else in the world. Just like in any other bar in Minsk. And we were able to carry on doing that for the next few years. But I couldn’t have imagined where our good manners could lead us. Now, all the bars I frequent — though not yet favorites — are outside Belarus. Here, it’s possible to talk about anything at all, including politics. And sometimes in these bars I hear Europeans or Americans compare their countries to mine, and say things like: “The screws are tightening here too.” My Belarusian friends usually get irritated by this. To them, it still feels like there’s a long way from canceling Stephen Colbert’s late night show to putting journalists in prison for years. But for me, I feel relieved when someone refuses to say that first “thank you” just because an evil could have been worse. That is how it grows.

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe. With Britain, France and Canada declaring they will recognize Palestinian statehood in the fall, Israel’s traditional allies are finally breaking rank. And if you ask former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the country’s current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his zealous right-wing coalition government only have themselves to blame. “There’s an ever-widening gap between the appalling atrocities Hamas inflicted on Israelis on Oct. 7 and what we are now inflicting on the Palestinians,” he told POLITICO. “We have become a pariah state.” But is the criticism and isolation enough to change the direction of travel? Olmert was in office from 2006 to 2009 as leader of the liberal Kadima party — a breakaway from Netanyahu’s Likud party — and he’s a rare voice in Israel. A fierce critic of the conduct of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, he has warned from the start that it lacked a clear endgame. Now, Netanyahu is at odds with some of the country’s staunchest allies, even prompting unease from Germany, Olmert lamented. Chancellor Friedrich Merz is under growing domestic pressure to join other EU countries and penalize Israel over Gaza, which would mark a critical break in Berlin’s traditionally unwavering support. And U.S. President Donald Trump recently contradicted Netanyahu over reports of hunger in Gaza, saying the Palestinian enclave was experiencing “real starvation” — albeit clearly blaming Hamas for stalled ceasefire negotiations. “We’re losing the kind of international support, which always tied Israel to the strongest, most powerful, most important, most enlightened elements in the Western world,” he said. In a trenchant op-ed titled “Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes,” the former prime minister wrote: “What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination.” He also warned that an Israeli government proposal to herd Gazans into a “humanitarian city” — which he calls a concentration camp — would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing, and senior Israeli military commanders are wary of such a plan as well. In another break from the norm, Olmert’s war crimes charge was also recently echoed by two of Israel’s most prominent human rights organizations — B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights — who say Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and that the country’s Western allies have a legal and moral obligation to stop it. Olmert himself had previously defended Israel against “accusations of genocide and war crimes” at the start of the campaign, but his position evolved as Israel’s conduct turned more brutal, “with the widespread slaughter of civilians, including women, children and the elderly, and the deliberate starving of Gazans by blocking food and medical aid,” he said — civilian death and injury shouldn’t be justified as collateral damage. Unsurprisingly, Olmert’s disapproval has enraged Netanyahu’s allies, who see his remarks as treasonous and accuse him of “stabbing soldiers in the back.” Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Olmert of “taking an active part in a diplomatic campaign, in a propaganda war and in legal warfare against the State of Israel and the IDF.” And Education Minister Yoav Kisch accused him of joining a “radical leftist chorus defaming Israel.” Israeli government officials angrily deny all allegations of war crimes and genocide, which have now been raised at The Hague. | Teresa Suarez/EPA The only other Israeli politician to be held in such disdain by the country’s right wing is Democrat party head Yair Golan, who prompted an outcry when he told Israel’s national broadcaster that “a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.” But Israeli government officials angrily deny all allegations of war crimes and genocide, which have now been raised at The Hague. They’ve also described the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant as examples of antisemitism. The knee-jerk conflation of antisemitism and any criticism of Israeli war policy “is a very easy way out for us,” Olmert observed. “We condemn everyone as antisemites,” which is wrong and dangerous and risks fueling antisemitism. “Rage across the world now on the humanitarian issue is spreading rapidly,” he told POLITICO. Some of those demonstrations and protest marches may well have “been influenced by the latent antisemitism we know to exist and which has been part of our lives for generations,” Olmert said. “But the reason for the public eruptions is [that] the war now waged by Netanyahu has lost any legitimacy, as we see the accumulation of civilian deaths in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis and children being shot at near aid distribution sites.” By the Israeli government’s own admission, around 30,000 civilians have been killed since October 2023. Hamas’ declaration that it won’t lay down its arms, even in the face of Arab League calls to do so, doesn’t help those arguing for the prioritization of civilian Palestinians either. Ordinary Gazans are caught between a militant Islamist group happy to trade their lives, and Israeli supremacists who see them as abettors of Hamas.  Meanwhile, accusing French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of antisemitism or of supporting terror is also absurd, especially considering both helped intercept ballistic missiles that Iran launched at Israel in April, Olmert explained. “Of course, the accusation of antisemitism is a weapon wielded by a self-righteous government. Netanyahu and the others in the coalition are using the allegation to try to defend themselves against justified accusations of using excessive force.” Other critics of the Gaza campaign, like left-wing Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy, also suspect the scattershot antisemitism allegations — which are broadly endorsed across Israeli society — displace a sense of guilt about what the country is doing. “Here we have the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors talking about transferring 2.3 million people, talking about it openly. You cannot digest it. So, you better deny it,” he said. During his time in office, Olmert was responsible for negotiations around the establishment of a Palestinian state across more than 94 percent of the occupied West Bank and, arguably, he came closer than any other Israeli leader to pulling it off. However, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Mahmoud Abbas backed away from Olmert’s plan, feeling his Israeli interlocutor couldn’t deliver. And, indeed, Olmert resigned shortly after and was convicted of obstruction of justice and for accepting bribes during his time as trade minister and as mayor of Jerusalem. Today, with nearly half-a-million Israeli settlers in the West Bank, Olmert’s plan would be far more hazardous for any Israeli government to try and pull off — even if it wanted to. Not that Netanyahu or his coalition partners have any interest in endorsing a genuine two-state deal. Even in February 2023, the most Netanyahu said he’d be willing to do is grant Palestinians autonomy but not sovereignty. And still, Israel would have to maintain full control over the West Bank’s security. Chancellor Friedrich Merz is under growing domestic pressure to join other EU countries and penalize Israel over Gaza. | Clemens Bilan/EPA To hammer the point home, the Israeli Prime Minister’s been damning the Oslo process at every available opportunity, reiterating that it was all a terrible mistake and that there’s no one to negotiate with on the Palestinian side. Olmert, for his part, believes there are Palestinian partners to negotiate with, but that Israel is constantly undermining moderate Palestinians. He’s also worried what comes next might be an annexation of Gaza and even the West Bank — something Netanyahu’s key right-wing partners have long advocated. And the only man he thinks can stop this happening is Trump. “What’s happening is totally unacceptable and unforgivable. And at some point, Trump will have to intervene,” he said. “I don’t know if Trump has a heart. But something may force him to tell Netanyahu ‘enough is enough’ as that sentiment becomes more widespread in America.” But with Trump’s envoys praising Israel’s aid distribution in the enclave at the weekend — a view other traditional allies of Israel don’t share — that seems a dim prospect.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reacted with fury on Friday as the EU’s top court raised the threshold for member countries to reject asylum-seekers. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said EU nations may only create national lists of safe countries outside the bloc if they fully justify their assessments with public sources. According to the court, a country can only be considered “safe” for repatriation if “the entire population” is protected across all regions. Meloni called the court’s decision “surprising” and a power grab by EU judges. “Once again, the judiciary, this time at the European level, claims spaces that do not belong to it, in the face of responsibilities that are political,” she said. The case was brought by two Bangladeshis who were rescued at sea and brought to an Italian detention center in Albania. They challenged the rejection of their asylum application, arguing that Bangladesh is not safe, contrary to its designation on Italy’s list of safe countries. Friday’s ruling impacts Italy’s so-called Albania model. In 2023, Meloni struck a deal with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to detain and process the asylum claims of up to 30,000 migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean, building two facilities in Albania. However, the plan has faced repeated setbacks in Italian courts. Judges refused to validate the detention of the first three groups of asylum-seekers transferred to Albania in October and November 2024, and February, citing a CJEU ruling from October that said the criteria for designating a third country as a safe country of origin must be met throughout its territory. In those cases, Bangladesh and Egypt were not considered fully safe across all regions or for all groups of people. In an attempt to bypass this legal obstacle, the Italian government issued a decree in December listing 19 countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, as “safe” for repatriation. But Italian judges — who Meloni has been at odds with for years — referred the matter to the CJEU, seeking clarification on how a country’s safety should be determined and whether EU law overrides national law in cases of conflict. Meloni vowed that Italy would pursue all possible technical and legal solutions in the 10 months remaining before the new EU Migration Pact takes effect.