New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said India was fully prepared to contribute to the peace process to find a solution to the Ukraine conflict.
“From the very beginning of the Ukraine conflict, India has made it clear that this dispute can only be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy. India is fully prepared to contribute to any peace process,” Modi said after bilateral talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Addressing the media alongside Modi, Meloni said Italy hoped that India, during its G-20 presidency, plays a central role in facilitating and negotiating the process for cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.
Modi said he and the Italian Prime Minister voiced concerns over the adverse impact the Ukraine conflict has had on developing countries.
He said all countries have been impacted by the food, fertiliser and fuel crisis triggered by the Ukraine conflict.
“Especially, developing countries have been affected adversely. We voiced our concerns on this issue and stressed on joint efforts to address these issues,” Modi said.
Modi’s remarks on the Ukraine crisis come at a time when foreign ministers of G-20 countries are meeting here.
Peskov: China’s plan to resolve the conflict in Ukraine is consistent with Moscow’s approach
Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov commented on the peace plan proposed by China to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His words convey RIA News.
Peskov said that in terms of ensuring security, he correlates with Moscow’s approach.
[ad_2]
#Peskov #spoke #Chinas #peace #plan #Ukraine
( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )
“China’s been trying to have it both ways — it’s on the one hand trying to present itself publicly as neutral and seeking peace, while at the same time it is talking up Russia’s false narrative about the war,” Blinken said. “There are 12 points in the Chinese plan. If they were serious about the first one, sovereignty, then this war could end tomorrow.”
Those comments echoed remarks from President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, the day before. “My first reaction to it is that it could stop at point one, which is to respect the sovereignty of all nations … this was a war of choice waged by Putin,” Sullivan told CNN on Thursday.
The proposal itself falls short of what Beijing had promised. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi touted last week that the plan would include “important propositions” from Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping “conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.” Instead it mostly restates Beijing’s existing positions on the war by linking it to the Kremlin’s “legitimate security concerns.”
The timing, however, is significant. The proposal comes after Blinken warned this week that China is considering providing lethal weaponry to Moscow to use against Ukraine.
And world leaders are coming out en masse to counter China’s messaging. Beijing’s peace proposal “doesn’t have much credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday. The EU would consider China’s proposals “against the backdrop that China has taken sides,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Beijing helped earn that distrust by abstaining from a United Nations’ resolution on Thursday demanding that Russia immediately withdraw from Ukraine.
Beijing’s proposal doesn’t reference Russia as the conflict’s aggressor or demand that Putin stop the war. Instead it calls for Kyiv and Moscow to “exercise restraint” and says it supports “promoting talks for peace.” The Chinese government also distances itself from leading such efforts by limiting its participation to a hands-off “constructive role.”
“The Chinese are running up against the problem that their buddy Russia has a maximalist position [on Ukraine] and is not going to budge,” said Daniel Fried, former assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs and now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. “But instead of pushing the Russians, they’re coming up with mush.”
That rhetoric could have impact in other parts of the globe, said Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He argued that the U.S. and European officials lashing out at the proposal may not be its intended audience.
China can now market the plan in the global south as proof of Beijing’s dedication to peace and tell the U.S. and its allies “It’s your job to convince the Ukrainians [to stop fighting] — our mission here is accomplished,” Gabuev said.
The document’s publication means “China gets a PR victory upfront without doing anything,” Gabuev said.
[ad_2]
#U.S #dismisses #Chinas #Ukraine #peace #proposal #attempt #distract
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“It happened that we were a lot of new foreign ministers,” Joly said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. The Liberal politician was four months into her foreign affairs role when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
She was not the only new face around the G-7 table. “[Liz] Truss was new. [Annalena] Baerbock was new. I was new — and [Antony] Blinken had only a year.” An affinity grew between the three women British, German and Canadian foreign ministers on a personal level, she said, as they faced a cataclysm with no end date.
“We wanted to talk to each other … We also knew that this crisis would be potentially the first crisis we would be facing — so it would define a lot of our work,” Joly said. “There is no other option than victory.”
Support for Ukraine is a rare nonpartisan issue in Canada. Demographics help to explain Ottawa’s zealous response to a war 4,500 miles away.
Canada is home to 1.4 million Ukrainian-Canadians, making it a country with the second-largest Ukrainian diaspora community after Russia. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is arguably the country’s most prominent Ukrainian-Canadian.
Freeland, who serves double duty as federal finance minister, has called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “the biggest challenge to Canada’s national security since the Second World War.”
Trudeau’s government is especially motivated to do right by Ukraine to lock up support in the Prairie and the vote-rich Greater Toronto Area, regions where Ukrainian-Canadian population is highest. Opposition Conservative MPs, who represent many of the Prairie communities where Ukrainian immigrants first settled at the turn of the century and after the First World War, are incentivized to do the same.
Joly says the threat with the war is existential for Canada. “We’ve been the architect of many of the rules that we now know, that are our underpinning international rules-based order — I hate that word — but the international system.”
Top bloc decisions
The intelligence reports warning of a potential invasion started in December.
Joly said G-7 foreign ministers wanted the alliance to serve as a “coordination group” for Ukraine. The bloc, under Germany’s presidency at the time, would share diplomatic and military information and frank talks about Europe’s dependency on Russia for energy.
But organizing allies behind closed doors proved to be difficult work.
In early 2022, the alliance decided to declassify American intelligence. The strategy was intended to “bring everybody along and to inform our population regarding what information we had at hand,” Joly said, crediting the plan for creating trust and momentum among allies.
Declassification was a hard sell for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president feared a crush of declassified intelligence materials showing Russia’s plans would stoke mass panic and deliver his country premature economic collapse.
Defense talks eventually outgrew the G-7 “coordination group.” The alliance created a new forum at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany to house Ukraine Defense Contact Group meetings, which 54 countries are a part of now.
‘Very stressful’ early days
National Defense Minister Anita Anand was sworn into her role in October 2021, the same as Joly. Anand was thrown into briefings about global hot spots, she told POLITICO, including the buildup of Russian troops at the Ukrainian border and in Belarus.
Feb. 24, she said, “was a confirmation of events that we did not want to happen.”
She had been in Kyiv just three weeks earlier to meet with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.
“The days were very stressful,” she said.
As a rookie minister in Trudeau’s Cabinet, Anand had been tasked with procurement; the pandemic transformed her into the chief purveyor of Covid-19 vaccines, rapid tests and personal protective equipment. The two years of wrangling equipment in a crisis came in handy a year ago. “I was used to being in an environment that was urgent and where our government needed to make very effective, but quick decisions,” she said.
Anand said her modus operandi then, and since, has been to speak directly with Ukrainians, and specifically Reznikov, about the country’s equipment needs.
Then, she said, she looks at Canada’s naval and armed forces inventory, decides what needs to be procured to outfit the Armed Forces of Ukraine “and then ensures we are providing the training that is necessary on the equipment that we’re providing.”
Ottawa sent the first of four Leopard 2 main battle tanks, and training crews, to Ukraine earlier this month as the war continued to ratchet up.
Canada isn’t a nuclear power but has found other ways to contribute including sanctions, paying out C$2 billion in loans to Ukraine and sending C$320 million in humanitarian assistance.
Canada has also taken in nearly 170,000 immigrants of Ukrainian origin while approving the temporary resident visa applications of more than half a million Ukrainian nationals and their families.
The country’s military budget is notoriously malnourished if NATO’s target, that members should spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense, is the yardstick used to measure might. But Canada’s Operation UNIFIER mission, deployed in 2015 to Ukraine to train the country’s armed forces following the Crimean crisis, put Ottawa in a position of being an interlocutor for other nations figuring out how to support Ukraine.
“Many countries have come to Canada — and certainly this was the case at the beginning — to ask whether we had advice for them about how they can effectively help Ukraine,” Anand said.
Canada says it wants to help with efforts to rebuild Ukraine, but there are headwinds.
“Private capital will not be interested in investing in reconstructing cities if the geopolitical risk is still there,” Joly said. The statement leaves the door open for discussions about public funding for reconstruction in an era when cost-of-living anxieties debates over government spending have pierced domestic politics as a challenge for incumbent leaders.
The conversations about long-term security support for Ukraine are just beginning around the G-7 table.
“Even after the war, Russia will still be a very dangerous neighbor,” she said, offering a grim reality check. “Particularly if Putin is in charge.”
Somewhere during the past year, the words “finding a peaceful solution” dropped from Joly’s vocabulary.
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
#Canada #year #Ukraine #war #time #talk #peace
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Kohima: Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday that the Central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has continued the Naga peace talks, adding it will be a successful one.
Addressing an election rally in Tuensang Sadar in Nagaland, the Home Minister said that the Narendra Modi government has taken forward both peace and development in Nagaland.
“Naga peace talks are going on. What PM Modi has started will be successful, and Naga culture, language, attire, tradition and history would be protected and developed in the coming days,” he told the gathering.
The Home Minister, expressing his happiness about the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation’s (ENPO) withdrawal of the vote boycott (February 27), said that all the issues of ENPO had been discussed and an agreement would be signed after the assembly elections.
“Due to the model code of conduct of the assembly elections, an agreement could not be signed. After the February 27 assembly polls, an agreement would be signed by the Union Home Ministry ensuring the Naga people’s rights and development,” Shah said.
The influential Naga body, ENPO, after getting an assurance from the Home Minister on February 4, withdrew its call to boycott the February 27 Assembly polls in support of its demand for a separate ‘Frontier Nagaland’ state.
The Home Minister said that the Armed Forces (Special Power) Act (AFSPA) was withdrawn from 15 police station areas of seven Nagaland districts, and within three to four years, the AFSPA would be withdrawn from the entire Nagaland.
As the Modi government has done a lot of work, including peace accords with several militant outfits, incidents of extremist violence have been reduced by 70 percent in the entire northeast region during the past eight years, he said.
Shah said that the killing of civilians reduced by 83 percent and the killing of security personnel came down to 60 percent in eight years.
He also said that Narendra Modi is the only Prime Minister who has visited the northeast more than 50 times and took the development of the region to a new height.
Noting that for the first time in 75 years, a poor tribal woman became the President of India, the Union Minister said that the Central budget for the development of tribal areas and tribal people was Rs 21,000 crore before 2014, and now it has been increased to Rs 86,000 crore.
The Home Minister said that to develop the remote and far-flung areas of the northeast, satellite-based surveys and monitoring are being conducted for 130 infrastructure projects.
Since 2015, 53 large infrastructure projects have been completed and 142 such projects are now in the pipeline in Nagaland, he said, adding that 14 lakh people of Nagaland are getting 5 kg of rice per month free of cost.
The Home Minister also highlighted the Centre’s help in providing housing, water supply, cash transfer to farmers and health support.
The Home Minister addressed an election rally in Nagaland’s Mon town on Monday and spent the night in Mon town.
Shah also met representatives of ENPO and other organisations during his stay in Mon district, bordering Myanmar.
Budapest: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called for peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and warned of the escalation of the conflict here.
Giving his annual state of the nation address, Orban said that the conflict could last for years, and everyone in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) is “on the side of the war, except for Hungary”.
In his televised speech, Orban explained that the EU was already at war with Russia, albeit indirectly, because they were sending weapons and training military personnel, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Europe is on the verge of drifting into war, they are walking on a very thin platform,” he said.
The Hungarian PM promised that even if it becomes increasingly hard, Hungary would stick to its position, and continue to maintain economic relations with Russia.
According to Orban, the Hungarian position was only an exception within Europe, but was in fact “quite common in the rest of the world.”
He said that the European population would get tired of the price they have to pay for the sanctions and new governments to be elected would be closer to the Hungarian position.
Because of the “war and high inflation”, Orban called 2022 the most difficult year for Hungary since 1990. He promised that “inflation will return to the single digits”.
“We will stay out of the war, Hungary will remain an island of peace and security, and we will also break inflation, this is the government’s job, there will be no mistakes in it,” he noted.
MUNICH — China is trying to drive a fresh wedge between Europe and the United States as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine trudges past its one-year mark.
Such was the motif of China’s newly promoted foreign policy chief Wang Yi when he broke the news at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that President Xi Jinping would soon present a “peace proposal” to resolve what Beijing calls a conflict — not a war — between Moscow and Kyiv. And he pointedly urged his European audience to get on board and shun the Americans.
In a major speech, Wang appealed specifically to the European leaders gathered in the room.
“We need to think calmly, especially our friends in Europe, about what efforts should be made to stop the warfare; what framework should there be to bring lasting peace to Europe; what role should Europe play to manifest its strategic autonomy,” said Wang, who will continue his Europe tour with a stop in Moscow.
In contrast, Wang launched a vociferous attack on “weak” Washington’s “near-hysterical” reaction to Chinese balloons over U.S. airspace, portraying the country as warmongering.
“Some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize,” he said, widely interpreted as a reference to the U.S. “They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, [nor] the harms on Europe. They might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself. This warfare must not continue.”
Yet at the conference, Europe showed no signs of distancing itself from the U.S. nor pulling back on military support for Ukraine. The once-hesitant German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Europe to give Ukraine even more modern tanks. And French President Emmanuel Macron shot down the idea of immediate peace talks with the Kremlin.
And, predictably, there was widespread skepticism that China’s idea of “peace” will match that of Europe.
“China has not been able to condemn the invasion,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a group of reporters. Beijing’s peace plan, he added, “is quite vague.” Peace, the NATO chief emphasized, is only possible if Russia respects Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Europe watches with caution
Wang’s overtures illustrate the delicate dance China has been trying to pull off since the war began.
Keen to ensure Russia is not weakened in the long run, Beijing has offered Vladimir Putin much-needed diplomatic support, while steering clear of any direct military assistance that would attract Western sanctions against its economic and trade relations with the world.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“We will put forward China’s position on the political settlement on the Ukraine crisis, and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue,” Wang said. “We do not add fuel to the fire, and we are against reaping benefit from this crisis.”
According to Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who met Wang earlier this week, Xi will make his “peace proposal” on the first anniversary of the war, which is Friday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich. He said he hoped to have a “frank” conversation with the Beijing envoy.
“We believe that compliance with the principle of territorial integrity is China’s fundamental interest in the international arena,” Kuleba told journalists in Munich. “And that commitment to the observance and protection of this principle is a driving force for China, greater than other arguments offered by Ukraine, the United States, or any other country.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is also expected to meet Wang later on Saturday.
Many in Munich were wary of the upcoming Chinese plan.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s effort to use its influence to foster peace but told reporters she had “talked intensively” with Wang during a bilateral meeting on Friday about “what a just peace means: not rewarding the attacker, the aggressor, but standing up for international law and for those who have been attacked.”
“A just peace,” she added, “presupposes that the party that has violated territorial integrity — meaning Russia — withdraws its troops from the occupied country.”
One reason for Europe’s concerns is the Chinese peace plan could undermine an effort at the United Nations to rally support for a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which will be on the U.N.’s General Assembly agenda next week, according to three European officials and diplomats.
Taiwan issue stokes up US-China tension
If China was keen to talk about peace in Ukraine, it’s more reluctant to do so in a case closer to home.
When Wolfgang Ischinger, the veteran German diplomat behind the conference, asked Wang if he could reassure the audience Beijing was not planning an imminent military escalation against Taiwan, the Chinese envoy was non-committal.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in east Asia tomorrow” | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory. It has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future,” Wang said.
The worry over Taiwan resonated in a speech from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in east Asia tomorrow.” Reminding the audience of the painful experience of relying on Russia’s energy supply, he said: “We should not make the same mistakes with China and other authoritarian regimes.”
But China’s most forceful attack was reserved for the U.S. Calling its decision to shoot down Chinese and other balloons “absurd” and “near-hysterical,” Wang said: “It does not show the U.S. is strong; on the contrary, it shows it is weak.
Wang also amplified the message in other bilateral meetings, including one with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. “U.S. bias and ignorance against China has reached a ridiculous level,” he said. “The U.S. … has to stop this kind of absurd nonsense out of domestic political needs.”
It remains unclear if Wang will hold a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while in Germany, as has been discussed.
Hans von der Burchard and Lili Bayer reported from Munich, and Stuart Lau reported from Brussels.
[ad_2]
#China #talks #peace #woos #Europe #trashes #Biden #Munich
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
His message aimed to revive hopes in the world’s youngest country, which gained independence from the majority Muslim Sudan in 2011 but has been beset by civil war and conflict.
President Salva Kiir, his longtime rival Riek Machar and other opposition groups signed a peace agreement in 2018, but the deal’s provisions, including the formation of a national unified army, remain largely unimplemented and fighting has continued to flare.
“We have suffered a lot,” said Natalima Andrea, a 66-year-old mother of seven who wiped a tear from her eye as she waited for Francis’ Mass to begin. “We need a permanent peace now and I hope these prayers would yield to lasting peace.”
The Vatican said more than 100,000 people attended the service, filling the field of the Garang Mausoleum and surrounding roads.
In a bid to spur the process along, Francis was joined on the novel ecumenical peace mission by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. Iain Greenshields. The aim of the Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian leaders was to push Kiir and Machar to recommit themselves to the 2018 deal.
Welby and Greenshields joined Francis on the altar at Mass on Sunday and were to accompany him on the flight back to Rome.
The three also aimed to put a global spotlight on the plight of the country, oil-rich and yet one of the world’s poorest, where humanitarian needs are soaring for the 2 million people who have been displaced by continued clashes and years of above-average flooding. Watchdogs’ allegations of corruption are also widespread; some South Sudanese upon the pope’s arrival noted that his modest vehicle was overshadowed by local officials’ luxury ones.
During the three-day visit, Francis, Welby and Greenshields sought to draw attention to the plight of South Sudan’s most vulnerable people, the women and children who have borne the brunt of displacement and make up the majority of people living in temporary camps.
They raised in particular the plight of women in a country where sexual violence is rampant, child brides are common and the maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world.
“If we look at South Sudan, I would just use one word: South Sudan is a patriarchal country,” said Elizabeth Nyibol Malou, a lecturer in economics at the Catholic University of South Sudan. Citing cultural norms in which wealth is passed down to male heirs and women are married young for dowries, she said it is a constant struggle to keep girls in school.
Women in South Sudan, she said, “are tired. They are struggling. They are frustrated, and they’re stuck.”
Edmund Yakani, executive director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, said the visit of the three leaders was an important push to the peace process.
He called it a “critical exposure of our political leaders towards their personal responsibility for making peace and stability prevail in the country.”
[ad_2]
#Pope #final #bid #peace #forgiveness #South #Sudan
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
A person familiar with the move, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive withdrawal, said the volunteers are headed to the Peace Corps’ post in Ecuador.
The decision comes after weeks of popular unrest against a government that has taken over following a failed December coup attempt by a Peruvian president facing impeachment. The South American country has had a politically tumultuous few years, cycling through several presidents amid various corruption and other scandals.
Peace Corps volunteers often work in areas far from national capitals and with less immediate protections than U.S. diplomats — meaning they are sometimes the first group of U.S. workers to be evacuated when unrest hits.
Though the U.S. has issued some travel alerts for Peru, there’s no current indication that the U.S. Embassy in Peru, U.S. Agency for International Development officials or other government agents are leaving the country.
The Peace Corps has a long, though somewhat intermittent history in Peru. Hundreds of volunteers cycled through the country between 1962 and 1975, when the program closed due to political and economic instability. It returned to the country in 2002.
Analysts are fearful that the situation in Peru — and the conditions that allowed Peace Corps volunteers to work there — aren’t set to improve.
“The government has doubled down on the crackdowns,” said Jo-Marie Burt, a professor of Latin America studies at George Mason University. “Things are going to get worse before they get better.”
[ad_2]
#Peace #Corps #evacuates #volunteers #Peru #worsening #political #crisis
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
During the church service, Thomas offered a prayer for Nichols’ family, asking God to “shower them with your blessings.”
The loss is “still very emotional” for the family, a lawyer representing them said Sunday, but they are using all their energy to advocate for reforms both in Memphis and on the federal level.
“His mother is having problems sleeping but she continues to pray with the understanding, as she believes in her heart, that Tyre was sent here for an assignment, and that there will be a greater good that comes from this tragedy,” Attorney Ben Crump said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Crump welcomed disbanding the city’s so-called Scorpion unit, which Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis announced Saturday, citing a “cloud of dishonor” from the newly released video.
Davis acted a day after the harrowing video was released, saying she listened to Nichols’ relatives, community leaders and uninvolved officers in making the decision. Her announcement came as the nation and the city struggled to come to grips with the violence of the officers, who are also Black. The video renewed outrage over repeated fatal encounters with law enforcement that keep happening despite nationwide demands for change.
Crump told “This Week” that Nichols’ case points to a systemic problem in how people of color are treated regardless of whether officers are white, Black or any other race.
The “implicit, biased police” culture that exists in America is just as responsible for Nichols’ death as the five Black officers who killed him, Crump said.
“I believe it’s part of the institutionalized police culture that makes it somehow allowed that they can use this type of excessive force and brutality against people of color,” Crump told “This Week.” “It is not the race of the police officer that is the determinant factor whether they’re going to engage in excessive use of force, but it is the race of the citizen.”
He alleged other members of the Memphis community have been assaulted by the now shuttered Scorpion unit, which was composed of three teams of about 30 officers whose stated aim was to target violent offenders in high-crime areas. The unit had been inactive since Nichols’ Jan. 7 arrest.
Scorpion stands for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods.
The five officers involved in Nichols’ beating — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — have been fired and charged with murder and other crimes in Nichols’ death. They face up to 60 years in prison if convicted of second-degree murder.
Video images of Nichols’ encounter with police show officers savagely beating the FedEx worker for three minutes while screaming profanities at him. Nichols calls out for his mother before his limp body is propped against a squad car and the officers exchange fist-bumps.
Brenda Goss Andrews, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, told The Associated Press she was struck by the immediate aggression from officers as soon as they got out of the car: “It just went to 100. … This was never a matter of de-escalation,” she said, adding, “The young man never had a chance.”
On a phone call with President Joe Biden, Crump and Nichols parents discussed the need federal reform like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would prohibit racial profiling, ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, limit the transfer of military equipment to police departments, and make it easier to bring charges against offending officers.
Biden said he told Nichols’ mother he would be “making a case” to Congress to pass the Floyd Act “to get this under control.”
Memphis Police had already implemented reforms after Floyd’s killing, including a requirement to de-escalate or intervene if they saw others using excessive force.
Speaking on “This Week,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said Congress can pass additional measures like “screening, training, accreditation, to up the game so that the people who have this responsibility to keep us safe really are stable and approaching this in a professional manner.”
The fact that law enforcement is primarily a state and local responsibility “does not absolve us. Under the federal Constitution we have standards, due process standards and others, that we are responsible for,” Durbin said.
“What we saw on the streets of Memphis was just inhumane and horrible,” he continued. “I don’t know what created this — this rage in these police officers that they would congratulate themselves for beating a man to death. But that is literally what happened.”
[ad_2]
#Memphis #pastor #prays #continued #peace #video #release
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
