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To free 36 million modern slaves, ‘hit it at all levels,’ says Head of the Church of England
By Madalena Araujo, CNN
Governments, businesses, and NGOs all need to play a role in the fight against modern slavery, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Head of the Church of England, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“You have to hit it at all levels. There needs to be government involvement; we’ve seen the French and British governments are leading the way with anti-slavery laws, which are going to have an impact. They change the culture, they also give the police powers to deal with things. There’s a hard edge to dealing with this, it’s a policing matter.”
Welby’s comments followed a landmark event at the Vatican where, for the first time, leaders of the world’s major faiths gathered together to sign a joint declaration to end modern slavery by 2020.
The panel, which Amanpour MCed, included Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as leaders of Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Shiite and Sunni Islam.
Besides government involvement, Welby explained, modern slavery’s “business edge” needs to be tackled.
Hong Kong MP praises students’ cause, but criticizes tactics
By Madalena Araujo, CNN
The Chairwoman of Hong Kong's Democratic Party urged pro-democracy protesters on Monday to “exercise maximum restraint” following hours of violent clashes with the police as they tried to encircle government headquarters.
“I think people are getting frustrated because we do not get any response from Beijing and from the Hong Kong government. But the students want to escalate the action and their confrontation with the police, and [this is] resulting in police brutality,” Emily Lau told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“But I hope the people will exercise maximum restraint. We want to conduct the struggle in a peaceful and non-violent way."
"I think they are beginning to realize that [if] you keep escalating the action; you keep having confrontation with the police, you will lose the support of the Hong Kong people and the international community.”
The renewed violence came after the student leaders’ call for an escalation of their civil disobedience actions, a move that marked a shift in the so-far largely peaceful “Umbrella Revolution.”
‘Israel is democratic towards Jews and Jewish towards Arabs,’ says Arab-Israeli MP
By Mick Krever, CNN
With a controversial nationhood bill on hold and the governing coalition wobbling, a prominent Arab-Israeli politician decried what he described as “inflammatory declarations and bills” aimed at gaining right-wing votes.
“There are two or three pyromaniacs in the Israeli cabinet,” Ahmad Tibi told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“The nationality bill is totally proof of what I said during the last decades: that in Israel, Israel is democratic towards Jews and Jewish towards Arabs.”
A proposed bill, backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, passed a hurdle when it was approved by Israel’s cabinet during a testy meeting last week.
It would enshrine Jewish teachings as the basis of the Israeli legal system and would give Arab Israelis individual rights, but not the “national” rights Jewish Israelis would have.
“Jewish and democratic, the definition of the State of Israel for the last thirty years, is an oxymoron,” Tibi said. “You cannot be democratic, believing in equality between all citizens, and define yourself as an ethnic definition, ‘Jewish.’”
Why The New York Times wants America to open up to Cuba
By Madalena Araujo, CNN
It is time for the Obama Administration to improve the long-strained relations with Cuba, Ernesto Londoño, a member of the New York Times' editorial board, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired Thursday.
“I think we've entered a new era and I think the months ahead represent an opportunity for the Obama Administration to take a pretty bold move and to move this relationship in a direction that I think the president himself has long wanted to take it.”
The New York Times, arguably America's most important newspaper, has taken a very public stand calling for the end of the decades-old economic blockade of Cuba.
“I think reforms in Cuba and the political landscape in the United States offer the right conditions for this relationship to move on a healthier trajectory, for the two countries, for instance, to think about resuming formal diplomatic relations.”
Londoño joined Amanpour from the Cuban capital Havana, following a series of editorials Cuba-focussed editorial in the paper. The more than 50-year embargo was a Cold War measure implemented by the U.S. in 1960 when Fidel Castro, a friend of the then-Soviet Union, came to power.
In horrific year for journalists, some of most courageous honored for their work
It has been a horrific year for journalists.
As long as reporters have done their work, people have tried to stop them from doing it; but the dangers of the profession have been especially apparent this year.
In Iraq and Syria, the Muslim extremist group ISIS has captured and executed journalists in horrific fashion, starting with the beheading of James Foley.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says that 42 journalists have been killed this year alone; last year, 211 were jailed.
Every year, that same organization puts a spotlight on those who, as the Czech leader Vaclav Havel said, strive for “living in truth.”
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who hosted this year’s awards ceremony on Tuesday, spoke this week with two of the honorees – Mikhail Zygar, a Russian journalist struggling to keep the country’s only intendant TV news station on the air, and Siamak Ghaderi, who served four years in an Iranian prison and received 60 lashes for his work.
Click above to watch.
Bishop: Obama’s action on immigration a ‘real relief’ for millions
By Madalena Araujo, CNN
President Obama’s new action on immigration will provide “real relief” for millions of families who are just trying to find “a better life,” Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“I am very welcoming… [of] his move, his action, of course, because [it] will benefit at least five million people to really legalize their statuses here, and especially for all those adults who have already children, U.S. citizens born here.”
“And so it will be great for them to have a legal status and work here normally. And for them it's a real relief.”
Last week, through an executive order, the U.S. President announced that he intends to grant large numbers of undocumented immigrants protection from deportation; The Migration Policy Institute estimates that more than five million people could be protected.
In America, ‘equal justice under law’?
By Madalena Araujo, CNN
The grand jury decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson over the death of an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown has angered many Americans, who feel that equal justice under the country’s law system is failing.
So is that the case? CNN’s Christiane Amanpour put the question on Tuesday to Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and to CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst and Former Prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin.
They started by looking into how prosecutor Robert McCulloch handled the investigation into Brown’s death, which sparked protests in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson in August. The demonstrations have since spread across the country.
“I would draw a distinction between the process and the result. I actually think the result – no charges – is defensive, but I don’t think the process he [McCulloch] followed was appropriate,” Toobin told Amanpour.
“The best thing the criminal justice system can do is treat everyone the same, and the process the prosecutor used, using a grand jury, which is rarely used in any kind of setting and throwing all the evidence, rather than a selection of it before the grand jury almost seemed to dictate the result, which was an exoneration."
Turkish President Erdogan’s sexist remarks ‘reinforces prejudices against women’
By Madalena Araujo, CNN
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s sexist remarks serve to reinforce discrimination against women, Turkish parliament member Binnaz Toprak told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
Erdogan triggered a storm of criticism on Monday when he said at a summit hosted by a women’s group in Istanbul that women and men are not equal "because their nature is different."
Toprak, a member of parliament from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, started by saying that “I think … what he means by this, that men and women are not equal, is physical equality.”
But the Turkish MP went on to explain that when one says “gender equality, the principle has to do with legal equality and equal opportunities and legal rights.”
“So I think even if he [President Erdogan] says that it has to do with legality, I think the very statement that men and women are not equal reinforces prejudices against women, reinforces men's ideas that women are not equal and cannot ever be equal and so on in a country where quite a number of people have conservative views on this issue.”
Europe goes from hopeful to haggard
Imagine a world where Europe has become the sick and beleaguered grandmother of the world.
It’s the world we have now according to Pope Francis, who warned that the continent is “slowly losing its soul.” Christiane Amanpour has the story.
St. Louis rapper: In U.S., police murder of blacks legal in all but name
By Madalena Araujo, CNN
St. Louis rapper Tef Poe told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday that he has “come to terms with the fact that in the United States of America it is perfectly legal for police officers to murder people of color.”
Poe’s comments come as Americans have taken to the streets across the country to voice their frustration at a grand jury decision not to indict the police officer who shot dead an unarmed black 18-year-old in August.
The idea that a police office can kill someone without accountability is something "we’re coping with and that’s the reality that we live in."
"There is no justice when you are murdered by a police officer when you are a person of color – that is a harsh fact to embrace and accept in today’s time.”
Poe, who is calling for justice for Michael Brown and for “every victim of police brutality,” said today was “a very emotional day” for the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.
He told Amanpour that, in his opinion, teenager Michael Brown was “murdered because [officer] Darren Wilson feared his black skin.”
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