Read the daily news to learn English

Calls grow in Iran for independent inquiry into protest death toll

Calls are growing inside Iran for an independent inquiry into the number of people killed during recent protests after the government said it would oversee the publication of the names of the deceased. The highly unusual government move, announced on Thursday, is designed to head off claims that crimes against humanity have been committed and that as many as 30,000 Iranians have been killed. Iran’s official death toll released by the Martyr’s Foundation is 3,117, including members of the security services. Iranian reformists said the planned government identification process was not sufficiently transparent and unlikely to end the dispute about how many people had been killed. Mohsen Borhani, a law professor at Tehran University and a critic of the Iranian government who has served time in Evin prison, said the government proposal to identify the dead publicly was a positive development because in previous major protests, Iranians “faced an absolute lack of information regarding the deceased and injured”. Borhani said the best way to achieve transparency was to create a website and announce the names of the deceased “so that the information is not one-sided”. “Citizens should be able to publicly and openly upload names and information about the deceased without being identified. The site should then commit itself to verifying and providing necessary information about each announced name.” One difficulty is that families willing to identify a fatality risk facing retribution, especially if they insist their family member was killed by the security services. In a sign that many Iranians believe the death toll is far higher than the official claim, the Tehran teachers union issued a statement demanding the release of all detainees, claiming “in less than a week one of the bloodiest chapters of repression in contemporary Iranian history has unfolded. Tens of thousands of children, women and women have been drenched in blood.” Ahmad Zeidabadi, a reformist analyst, said distrust between the state and society had grown “so deep and wide” that many people no longer accepted official data. He said the best solution would be to allow the United Nations to send an unimpeachable fact-finding team to Iran. Writing on his Telegram channel, Zeidabadi asked: “Why not entrust this task to a legitimate international body so that the opposition forces and countries cannot easily cast doubt on it?” The Reform Front, an alliance of reformist groupings that worked to secure the election of the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, also called for an independent committee “to investigate this unprecedented disaster and present a transparent and candid report to the Iranian nation”. The reformist lawyer Ali Mojtahedzadeh said the government had to address the root causes of the distrust by building a stronger civil society. In his first intervention, the former president Hassan Rouhani said the protests led by a generation born and raised in the Islamic Republic showed the need for major change. He called for the formation of political parties and an end to the filtering of electoral candidates. Separately, an unofficial committee has been set up to identify all those still in detention, as security services continue their sweeps through the country looking for what they describe as the ringleaders of the protests. No official number exists for those in detention, but it is believed to be in the tens of thousands. The number of children under 18 being held has not been released, but teaching union websites are publishing the photographs of every child that has been verified as killed. Government officials have also been photographed visiting detainees. Lawyers have told Iranian media that the majority of those arrested were born between 1980 and 1985, and were the main breadwinner in the family. Initial sentences of two to five years are being issued. Many are from working-class families and cannot afford the bail money required.

Living hell of North Korea’s ‘paradise on Earth’ scheme back in spotlight in Japan

It has been more than six decades since Eiko Kawasaki left Japan to begin a new life in North Korea. Then 17, she was among tens of thousands of people with Korean heritage who had been lured to the communist state by the promise of a “paradise on Earth”. Instead, they encountered something closer to a living hell. They were denied basic human rights and forced to endure extreme hardship. Official promises of free education and healthcare plus guaranteed jobs and housing had been a cruel mirage. And to their horror, they were prevented from travelling to Japan to visit the families they had left behind. But this week, after years of campaigning, four settlers who had escaped to Japan secured justice of sorts, when a court in Tokyo ordered the North Korean government to pay each of them at least 20m yen (£94,000) in compensation. Between 1959 and 1984, more than 90,000 people, mostly zainichi – the name for people of Korean descent who live in Japan – became the victims of an elaborate North Korean scheme to recruit workers and deal a propaganda blow to the north’s former colonial occupier. A few, like Kawasaki, managed to flee and alert the world to what critics of the scheme say amounted to state-sanctioned kidnapping. Kawasaki, 83, who said she was “overwhelmed with emotion” after the verdict, conceded that she and her fellow plaintiffs were unlikely to see a single yen. The Tokyo high court has no way of enforcing the ruling in the case, in which it symbolically summoned the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to testify. “I’m sure the North Korean government will just ignore the court order,” she said. Kenji Fukuda, a chief lawyer for the case, said the most realistic option to retrieve the money was to confiscate North Korean assets and property in Japan. The plaintiffs, who launched their action in 2018, are among an estimated 150 people to have escaped from the programme in the North and returned to Japan. The regime in Pyongyang, with the support of the Japanese government and help from the International Committee of the Red Cross, had promised ethnic Koreans a new life in a socialist paradise, with free public services and a higher standard of living. The Japanese government and the Red Cross were not targeted in the compensation suit. This week’s verdict was the first time “a Japanese court exercised its sovereignty against North Korea to recognise its malpractice”, Atsushi Shiraki, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said of the “historic” ruling. Kanae Doi, the Japan director of Human Rights Watch, hailed the ruling as “one very important, successful example of attempts to hold North Korea accountable” for its international crimes. Under the programme, those suspected of disloyalty “faced severe punishment, including imprisonment with forced labour or as political prisoners”, according to the group. The initiative was backed by the Japanese government at the time, with the media describing the programme as humanitarian and aimed at Koreans struggling to build a life in Japan due to widespread discrimination in housing, education and employment. Many had been taken to Japan against their will to work in mines and factories during Japan’s 1910 to 1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula. The emigrants included 1,830 Japanese women who had married Korean men. Kawasaki, a second-generation zainichi who was born in Kyoto, boarded a ship to North Korea in 1960 after being persuaded by promises of utopia made by the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan – the North’s de facto embassy. Instead, the plaintiffs claimed, the regime had wanted to attract ethnic Koreans, especially skilled workers and technicians, to address a labour shortage. Kawasaki realised she had been deceived as soon as she arrived at a North Korean port, where she was greeted by hundreds of clearly malnourished people covered in soot. She stayed for 43 years until 2003, when she defected to Japan via China, leaving behind her adult children. One of Kawasaki’s daughters and her two children have since escaped from North Korea, but she has had no contact with her other children since the regime sealed the country’s borders in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. “I don’t even know if they are still alive,” she said. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Ukraine war briefing: US reports ’constructive’ peace talks with Russia as Zelenskyy pushes for ‘results’

The US envoy Steve Witkoff has said he held constructive talks with a Russian envoy in Florida as part of Washington’s drive to end the war in Ukraine. The meeting on Saturday came just a day before Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were scheduled to meet in Abu Dhabi to discuss a US-backed plan to halt the conflict. “Today in Florida, the Russian Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev held productive and constructive meetings as part of the US mediation effort toward advancing a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian conflict,” Witkoff posted on X. “We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine.” He said the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum also attended the talks. Neither side released details of what was discussed. The second round of peace talks in Abu Dhabi were set to start on Sunday, even if the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, suggested earlier this week that it might be postponed because of the US-Iran crisis. Zelensky said in his evening address on Saturday his negotiators were also waiting to hear from the US on further meetings. “Ukraine is ready to work in all working formats,” Zelenskyy said. “It is important that there are results and that the meetings take place. We are counting on meetings next week and are preparing for them.” Teams from Ukraine and Russia met last week in Abu Dhabi in their first in-person negotiations on a plan being pushed by Trump. The US says both sides are close to a deal, but they have so far been unable to find a compromise on the key issue of territory in a postwar settlement, according to Kyiv. An overnight Russian strike in the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk killed two people, authorities said on Sunday. A man and a woman in the city of Dnipro “died due to an enemy UAV strike”, Oleksandr Ganzha, the head of the regional military administration, said in a statement posted on Telegram. Ganzha said the drone caused a fire, destroyed a house and caused damage to two more residences and a car. Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities and neighbouring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid a commitment from Russia to pause strikes on Kyiv as Ukraine battles one of its bleakest winters in years. Donald Trump on Thursday claimed Vladimir Putin had agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for a week. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Trump “made a personal request” to Putin to stop targeting Kyiv until Sunday “in order to create favourable conditions for negotiations”. In a post on social media, Zelenskyy noted Russia has turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks. Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, said that the outages on Saturday had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova. The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid”, triggering automatic protection systems, he said. Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the centre and north-east of the country respectively. The outage cut water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended because of low voltage on the network. The state emergency service said its teams led 500 stranded passengers out of metro stations. Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said. “Due to the loss of power lines on the territory of Ukraine, the automatic protection system was triggered, which disconnected the electricity supply,” Moldova’s energy minister Dorin Junghietu said in a post on Facebook. “I encourage the population to stay calm until electricity is restored.” The large-scale outage followed weeks of Russian strikes against Ukraine’s already struggling energy grid, which have triggered long stretches of severe power shortages. Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat, light and running water over the course of the war, in a strategy that Ukrainian officials describe as “weaponising winter”. Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a brutally cold period stretching into next week. Temperatures in some areas will drop to -30C, authorities said.

‘Keep on dreaming’: could Europe really defend itself without the US?

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, was typically blunt when he met members of the European parliament this week. From the dais of the blond-wood committee room in Brussels, he was clear: “If anyone thinks that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can’t. We can’t.” And if Europe wanted to supplant the US nuclear deterrent, existing spending commitments would have to double, he added – “so hey, good luck!” His comments left some MEPs fuming. The former Dutch prime minister – who provoked mockery when he called Donald Trump “Daddy” – had already irritated some deputies with his robust defence of the US president’s interest in the Arctic. France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, chided Rutte a day later on social media: “Europeans can and must take charge of their own security. Even the United States agrees. It is the European pillar of Nato.” Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, suggested a different approach: “We must go for a European army,” he told reporters in Brussels this week, adding, “I’m very much aware that you don’t do that from one day to another”. Europe, he said, needed “all sorts of deterrence – economic, political, security deterrence – in our hands”. But a European army has always raised more questions than answers. Is it an EU, or Europe-wide army? A brand-new force commanded from Brussels, or a souped-up version of existing structures? Sophia Besch, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, observed: “To supporters, it is a very visionary goal, and then to critics it is the symbol of overreach – and it’s just vague enough that we never have to really discuss details.” Behind the discordant public tones, however, lies a consensus that Nato’s European members need to pull their weight. Nato must “become more European” to maintain its strength, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said this week. “Europe must step up,” she told a defence industry audience. “No great power in history has ever outsourced its survival and survived.” The Nato alliance last year pledged to increase defence spending to 5% national income by 2035. The EU, which includes 23 Nato countries among its 27 members, has embarked on an €800bn defence spending plan. But after a long holiday from history, can Europe get its act together? “The Europeans are moving in the right direction and can do it,” Camille Grand, a former Nato assistant secretary-general, told the Guardian. “It is a matter of a sustained effort over a few years. It is a matter of buying and acquiring the right set of capabilities to reduce their dependency on the US,” said Grand, now secretary general of the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association for Europe. Europe’s ability to stand on its own two feet does not have a precise launch date. “It is not as if we could say on the 1st of January 2030: the Europeans will be completely autonomous,” Grand said. But the date matters because policymakers, responding to warnings from the security services about a possible Russian attack, say Europe should have “credible deterrence” to put off potential invaders by 2030. From the point of view of military planners, 2030 is “tomorrow”, said Grand, but Europe could achieve “significant progress” by then in acquiring stronger capabilities across a swathe of “strategic enablers”. This refers to a mixed bag of critical capabilities where the US dominates, such as intelligence, satellites, long-range missiles, airlift and ballistic missile defence. Europe probably would not “tick every single box by 2030” but “we can achieve significant progress”, Grand said. Although, he added, it would also require an “honest conversation with the US” that Europe would need some American assets beyond 2030. But Trump’s threats over Greenland and hot-cold support for Ukraine that often tips into Russian talking points, have called into question Washington’s commitment in a crisis. Tobias Billström, a former foreign minister of Sweden who helped negotiate his country’s Nato entry, retains confidence that the US would come to Europe’s aid if the collective defence clause, article 5, was triggered. He pointed out the US benefitted from Nato, citing the location and military capabilities of Arctic members, such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland. Billström, who now works for Nordic Air Defence, a startup developing low-cost drone interceptors, said Europe would have to be ready to defend itself for years to come. “Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Russia will be, graphically, where it is. It will be revanchistic. It will be set on hybrid actions. It wants to disrupt. It’s going to have a very, very clear incentive to be aggressive against us for a foreseeable future.” Not everyone is so sure about US guarantees. Besch, the defence expert at the Carnegie centre in Washington, thinks trust has gone. “I don’t think that there is very much illusion among any European policymakers now that they can trust in US security guarantees.” Europe, she suggested, had to shake off decades-old habits about defining its defence interests. Europe’s capability planning – “what we buy and what we develop” – is derived from Nato’s regional capability plans, which still rely on a substantive contribution from the US, she said. “The risk of what I believe is happening right now, is that we’re all spending huge amounts of money and will not actually be much more independent from the US in 10 to 15 years’ time, because that money is not being spent in a coordinated and directed way to actually replace these US enablers.” Money alone is not the answer to Europe’s defence weakness, as illustrated by the troubled €100bn Franco-German fighter jet project, beset by disagreement and mistrust between the developers. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, indicated this week that the project could be scaled down to joint systems, without an aircraft. A fighter-jet system without a fighter jet would be an emblem of European defence for all the wrong reasons. Meanwhile, Europe has long struggled to join up its defence spending, meaning costly duplication and a mishmash of different systems that hinder effectiveness on the battlefield. EU countries, for instance, have provided 10 different types of howitzer capable of firing 155mm shells to Ukraine “creating serious logistical difficulties for Ukraine’s armed forces”, according to a report by the former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi. In another example of fragmentation, Draghi noted EU member states operated 12 different types of battle tanks, while the US used one. For Besch, the problem runs deeper than national industrial rivalries. “The key question here is who is Europe, what is Europe, and then what are we actually trying to do? … If our standard for success is to replace everything the US does now with European capabilities, militaries, enablers etc, we are bound to fail,” she said. Europe, she said, needed to figure out its own strategic interests, for instance a European version of nuclear deterrence or how to safeguard its interests in regions from the Arctic to the Pacific, which could mean “cheaper, faster” systems. “My fear is that we are still caught up in this conversation around ‘can we replace the US’, rather than trying to decide what are we actually trying to do without them.”

Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes across Berlin

Germans love their potatoes. They eat on average 63kg a person every year, according to official statistics. But the exceptional glut of potatoes produced by farmers during the last harvest has overwhelmed even the hardiest of fans. Named the Kartoffel-Flut (potato flood), after the highest yield in 25 years, the bumper crop has inspired one farmer to organise a potato dump on Berlin, with appeals going out around the German capital for people to come to various hotspots and pick them up for free. Soup kitchens, homeless shelters, kindergartens, schools, churches and non-profit organisations are among those to have taken their fill. Even Berlin zoo has participated in the “rescue mission”, taking tonnes of potatoes that would otherwise have gone to landfill, or to produce biogas, to feed its animals. Two lorry loads have been sent to Ukraine. Ordinary city residents, many feeling the squeeze over the rise in the cost of living, have arrived at pre-announced potato dump locations, filling up anything from sacks and buckets to handcarts. Astrid Marz queued recently in Kaulsdorf, on the eastern edge of Berlin, one of 174 distribution points spontaneously set up around the city, to stuff an old rucksack with spuds. “I stopped counting at 150. I think I’ve got enough to keep me and my neighbours going until the end of the year,” she said. The operation, called 4000 Tonnes after the surplus a single potato farmer near Leipzig offered in December after a sale fell through at the last minute, was organised by a Berlin newspaper with the Berlin-based eco-friendly not-for-profit search engine Ecosia. “At first I thought it was some AI-generated fake news when I saw it on social media,” Marz, a teacher, said. “There were pictures of huge mountains of ‘earth apples’,” she recalled, using the word Erdäpfel, an affectionate term for the potato sometimes used by Berliners, “with the instruction to come and get them for free!” The excitement has lifted spirits at a time when arctic cold has Berlin in its grip, hampering travel, grinding public transport to a halt and leaving pavements hazardously icy. “There was a really party-like atmosphere,” said Ronald, describing how people cheerily helped one other with heavy loads and swapped culinary tips when he recently picked up potatoes for his family at the Tempelhofer Feld. As a result of the buzz, the potato is receiving something of a new lease of life. It has helped resurrect stories about how the humble tuber first became popular in Germany, after Prussia’s Frederick II issued an order for its cultivation in the 18th century, known as the Kartoffelbefehl (potato decree), establishing it as a staple food despite reported initial scepticism over its strange texture and form. Recipes galore are being shared online as those who have scooped up the spuds try to work out what to do with the surfeit. Although the potato has sometimes been spurned in recent years as some fitness gurus have recommended avoiding carbohydrates, experts have highlighted its nutritional properties, such as vitamin C and potassium. Celebrity Berlin chef Marco Müller of the Rutz restaurant has said now is the ideal moment to give the potato the Michelin-star treatment. He uses an innovative technique to make a rich broth from roasted potato peelings and a sought-after potato vinaigrette. Another of the recipes doing the rounds is Angela Merkel’s Kartoffelsuppe (potato soup), which the former German chancellor first shared with voters in the run-up to 2017’s general election in an interview with a celebrity magazine. Her hot pot tip? To give it the necessary lumpy texture, she revealed: “I always pound the potatoes myself with a potato masher, rather than using a food mixer.” Criticism has come from farmers in the region, who say the market in Berlin is even more saturated and their crop has been devalued further still by the vast giveaway. More widely, environmental lobbyists have said the glut in part stems from a warped and out-of-control food industry, and that the mountains of potatoes pictured in storage facilities across the region is reminiscent of the notorious butter mountains and milk lakes of the 1970s, when farmers were overly incentivised to produce food owing to the European Economic Community’s guarantee to buy up surplus products at high prices. While it’s the potato’s turn this year, last year hops were in surplus and next year, it is predicted, it will be milk. A last hoorah for the intervention is expected in the coming days, and those keen to participate in the potato party are urged to keep a close eye on the organisers’ website for the next drops. There are, in theory, about 3,200 tonnes (3,200,000kg or 7,056,000lbs) still up for grabs.

‘Under pressure’: Greenland’s PM gains fans at home and abroad after his rebuke of Trump

This time last year, Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, was better known on the global stage for his sporting achievements than international politics. For years he dominated the territory’s badminton scene, winning the singles and doubles championships almost every year. He won several medals at the Island Games, earning himself a reputation for “very competitive” play on the court. As it turned out, that was useful preparation for his time in office. The 34-year-old was sworn in last April after winning a surprise election victory fought against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire his homeland. Those threats morphed into a full-blown crisis this year when, fresh from his seizure of Nicolás Maduro from Caracas, the US president reiterated his desire for Greenland and initially refused to rule out taking it by force. Europe’s biggest crisis since the second world war saw Nielsen, who often sports a blue anorak in keeping with Greenlandic formal attire, thrust into the geopolitical spotlight. He seems to have weathered the storm: Greenlanders say that, after Trump pulled back from threats of military intervention at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the young leader has more of a voice on the world stage. A key moment in Nielsen’s handling of the rapidly escalating crisis came in January, on the eve of a tense meeting in Washington DC with the US vice-president, JD Vance. “If we have to choose between the US and Denmark here and now,” he said, “we choose Denmark, Nato and the EU”. Aqqaluk Lynge, a veteran of Greenlandic politics who co-founded the party Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA), said shortly afterwards it was the moment Greenlanders had been waiting for. “I don’t know if I could have done that when I was his age,” he told the Guardian. Nielsen grew up in Nuuk, capital of the semi-autonomous Danish territory, with a Greenlandic mother and Danish father. He speaks both languages, which some say helps him to see both sides of the relationship between Greenland and its former colonial ruler, Denmark. He has previously said he was bullied in school for looking Danish. On the badminton court, however, he flourished. In 2020, aged 28, having helped shape its direction as a consultant while studying social sciences at the University of Greenland in Nuuk, he became chair of his party, the centre-right Democrats. “Even I probably wouldn’t have seen it coming so soon. But the opportunity presented itself and I jumped at the chance because I want this,” he told the newspaper Sermitsiaq the same year. For a short period he had a government position as minister of industry and mineral resources but lost it when he withdrew his party from the government. Then, last March, the Democrats more than tripled their seats to become the biggest party in the Inatsisartut, the Greenlandic parliament. Weeks later, just hours before Vance arrived in Greenland at the US’s Pituffik space base, Nielsen and the leaders of three other parties announced a broad four-party coalition government in a show of national unity. In a clear rebuke to Trump’s threats, the first page of the coalition agreement stated: “Greenland belongs to us.” Nielsen’s straightforward style and clear messaging seem to be impressing leaders in the rest of Europe. This week he was received by the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, side by side with Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister. “We have some red lines we cannot cross but, from a Greenlandic perspective, we will try to sort out some sort of agreement,” he said in Paris. “We have been working with the US for many years now.” Alongside the pragmatism Nielsen painted a vivid picture of the fear and stress of the unprecedented situation. “We are under pressure, serious pressure,” he said, adding that many in Greenland were “afraid and scared”. Government figures in Denmark appreciate his style. A source close to the Foreign Office said his comments about choosing Copenhagen over the US were appreciated. “In the Danish public he is a very well-liked figure and people are very impressed that he has been able to handle it under pressure and young.” His good rapport with Frederiksen also helps. “He is a great guy and he has a great chemistry with the Danish prime minister and Danish government in general, so we are pleased it is him in office,” said the source. Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament and representative of IA, who has known Nielsen since he was a child, said she thought he was doing “an amazing job” on the global stage. It takes courage to do what he has done, she said: “He is a young leader and a leader gaining experience as we speak, so of course it is a big task.”

South African artist sues minister for blocking her Venice Biennale Gaza entry

A South African artist is suing the arts minister after he blocked her from representing the country at the Venice Biennale, having called her work addressing Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza “highly divisive”. Gabrielle Goliath filed the lawsuit last week, with Ingrid Masondo, who would have curated the pavilion, and the studio manager, James Macdonald. It accuses Gayton McKenzie of acting unlawfully and violating the right to freedom of expression and demands the high court reinstates her participation by 18 February, the deadline for confirming installations with biennale organisers. Goliath, whose video work Elegy pays tribute to a Palestinian poet killed by an Israeli airstrike, told the Guardian: “We hope to reclaim the pavilion, which we believe is rightfully ours. “But more importantly than that, it is the significance of the work … that speaks far more eloquently to these very difficult questions of whose life is recognised as a life worth grieving after.” The Venice Biennale rotates between art and architecture each year. A main exhibition features works chosen by a central curator, while governments organise national exhibition pavilions. In 2024, 86 nations participated. McKenzie responded to the backlash in a statement earlier this month, indicating his concern originated from the suggestion that “a foreign country” had offered to fund South Africa’s exhibition, and alleging that South Africa’s platform was being “used as a proxy by a foreign power to endorse a geopolitical message about the actions of Israel in Gaza”. The statement seemed to refer to Qatar Museums’ inquiry about the possibility of funding South Africa’s pavilion and buying the artworks, before Goliath was selected by an independent panel. These discussions did not go anywhere, Goliath’s affidavit said. Goliath said: “I utterly reject the accusation of foreign capture,” calling it a “damaging conspiracy theory”. McKenzie, in a letter on 22 December included in Goliath’s court filing, said: “The subject matter, as outlined, is known to be highly divisive in nature and is related to an ongoing international conflict that is widely polarising.” A second letter, dated 2 January, said: “It would not be wise or defensible for South Africa to support an installation against a country currently accused of genocide, while we as South Africa are also fielding unjustified accusations of genocide.” South Africa’s government launched a lawsuit in 2023 accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Before McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance party joined a national coalition government in 2024, McKenzie had said there was “no genocide” of Palestinians. Donald Trump and US officials have falsely claimed there is a “white genocide” in South Africa. Goliath had planned to exhibit three videos of Elegy, a work that has been shown for more than a decade, in which female singers take turns to step on to a dais and sing the same note. One video was to honour the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed alongside her son by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis on 20 October 2023. The other videos would have paid tribute to Ipeleng Christine Moholane, a 19-year-old murdered in South Africa in 2015, and two female victims of the German genocide in Namibia. The minister’s decision provoked outrage among South African artists, with groups of writers and non-profits also signing open letters condemning Goliath’s removal. The Democratic Alliance, which is in the national coalition, reported him to the country’s public watchdog. The minister and his department have not made public any plans to replace Goliath’s work in Venice. McKenzie’s spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions. In July 2025, the Lebanese-Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi was reinstated as Australia’s representative at the 2026 biennale. He had been dropped that February after controversy over some of his past works, including a depiction of the former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a video rendering of the 9/11 attacks on the US.