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Day: November 14, 2025

Who is Jeannette Jara, the communist leading Chile’s presidential election?

Who is Jeannette Jara, the communist leading Chile’s presidential election?

Fears of crime Yet not all Chileans are convinced. Virginia Peredo, a domestic worker, told Al Jazeera she “would never” vote for the left-wing candidate, offering a blunt explanation: “She is a communist.” Peredo was one of the nearly 200 supporters at a rally for Jara’s right-wing rival Kast in Copiapo, a mining town some 750km (466 miles) north of Villa Alemana. Many of Kast’s supporters believe that Jara stands for the status quo. Under President Boric, Jara’s former boss, Chile saw a period of slow economic growth. Boric has also struggled to quell concerns about an increase in organised crime and undocumented immigration. Peredo, for instance, said she is afraid to leave the house at night. Although she moved to Chile from Bolivia 10 years ago, she supports Kast’s hardline stance, which includes militarising the country’s borders and deporting all irregular immigrants. “The good ones can stay, but the bad ones have to go,” Peredo said of immigrants to Chile. “They make us all look bad.” Candidate Jose Antonio Kast speaks to voters in Copiapo, Chile [Sophia Boddenberg/Al Jazeera] Kast, a 59-year-old Catholic and founder of the far-right Republican Party, has leaned into those fears of immigration and violence to build his base of support. A report released in April from the University of San Sebastian found that activity linked to organised crime increased by 8.4 percent between 2022 and 2023. “This is not a crisis. It’s an emergency,” Kast told his supporters in Copiapo. Christopher Sabatini, senior research fellow for Latin America at the think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that Kast’s “iron-fisted approach to crime” has struck a chord among voters. “If you look at number-one demands, security, crime and immigration are all up there. Those are not what Jara is running on,” he said. Sabatini sees parallels between Kast and the rise of other right-wing leaders, like Donald Trump in the United States and Javier Milei in Argentina. In Milei’s case, his victory in the 2023 presidential race was seen as a sign of discontent with the left-wing Peronist government that was in power at the time. “[Kast is] exploiting people’s fears very effectively, in the same way Milei was able to exploit people’s hate with 16 years of Peronism, and Trump was able to with immigration,” Sabatini explained. Adblock test (Why?)

Tanzania’s president announces probe into post-election protest deaths

Tanzania’s president announces probe into post-election protest deaths

Samia Suluhu Hassan, whose re-election prompted protests and a deadly police crackdown, faces international calls for accountability. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan says her government will launch an inquiry into the deadly unrest that erupted following her controversial re-election last month, as claims of an undemocratic vote process prompted mass protests. Speaking during the opening session of Tanzania’s new parliament on Friday, Hassan said she was “deeply saddened by the incident” and offered condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the crackdown. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list “The government has taken the step of forming an inquiry commission to investigate what happened,” she added. Her comments mark the first conciliatory message since Tanzanian authorities violently cracked down on widespread demonstrations following the country’s October 29 presidential election. Hassan was declared the winner of the vote with nearly 98 percent support, after her leading rivals were barred from participating, fuelling anger and frustration among many Tanzanians who said the contest was unfair. While the exact death toll is unclear, Tanzania’s main opposition party has said hundreds of people were killed as the government sent troops into the streets to disperse the protests. Authorities also imposed an internet blackout on the East African nation. ‘Grave human rights violations’ Rights groups have called for an independent and thorough investigation into what happened, with Amnesty International saying the authorities committed “grave human rights violations that include unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, unlawful detentions”. Advertisement “Authorities should promptly, thoroughly, independently, impartially, transparently and effectively investigate all killings by security agents and bring to justice in fair trials those suspected of being responsible,” the organisation said in a statement in early November. The United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, also urged the Tanzanian government earlier this week to investigate the killings and other rights violations. He called on the authorities to provide information about the whereabouts of people who have gone missing and to hand over the bodies of those killed. Reports of families desperately searching everywhere for their loved ones, visiting one police station after another and one hospital after another are harrowing,” Turk said, adding that his office has been unable to verify casualty figures due to the security situation and internet shutdown. Probe into youth ‘offences’ Meanwhile, dozens of people have been charged with treason and other offences in relation to the protests. On Friday, President Hassan, who first took power in 2021 after the sudden death of her predecessor, John Magufuli, appeared to indicate there would be leniency. “I realise that many youths who were arrested and charged with treason did not know what they were doing,” she said during her address in parliament. “As the mother of this nation, I direct the law enforcement agencies and especially the office of the director of police to look at the level of offences committed by our youths. “For those who seem to have followed the crowd and did not intend to commit a crime, let them erase their mistakes,” she added. Hassan also acknowledged the demands of the opposition Chadema party, which has said, for any meaningful reconciliation to happen, constitutional reforms are needed. She said her administration would embark on a constitutional reform process within its first 100 days. Adblock test (Why?)

Normalising hate: Israel leans in to anti-Palestinian violence, rhetoric

Normalising hate: Israel leans in to anti-Palestinian violence, rhetoric

The US-imposed ceasefire of October 10 has not stopped Israel’s regular attacks on the Gaza Strip. Nor has it threatened to hold a parliament and society that largely cheered on the war, which has been deemed genocidal by multiple international bodies, accountable for their actions. Instead, fuelled by what analysts from within Israel have described as an absolute sense of impunity, anti-Palestinian violence has intensified across the country and the occupied West Bank while much of the world continues to look away, convinced that the work of the ceasefire is done. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list In the parliament, or Knesset, a senior lawmaker and member of the governing party openly defended convicted ultranationalist Meir Kahane, long considered beyond the pale even by members of Israel’s right wing and whose Kach movement has been banned as a “terrorist organisation”. At the same time, the parliament is debating reintroducing the death penalty, as well as expanding the terms of the offences for which it might apply – both unambiguously targeting Palestinians. Under the legislation, proposed by ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – who himself has past “terrorism”-related convictions for his outspoken support of Kahane –  anyone found guilty of killing Israelis because of “racist” motives and “with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the revival of the Jewish people in its land” would face execution. That bill passed its first reading this week. “The absence of any attempt to assert accountability from the outside, from Israel’s allies, echoes into Israel’s own Knesset,” analyst and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy said. “There’s no sense that Israel has done anything wrong or that anyone should be held to account.” Even Israel’s media, traditionally cheerleaders of the country’s war on Gaza, has not proven exempt from the hardening of attitudes. Legislation is already under way to close Army Radio because it had been broadcasting what Defence Minister Israel Katz described as political content that could undermine the army, as well as extend what lawmakers have referred to as the so-called “Al Jazeera law”, allowing them to shutter any foreign media perceived as a threat to Israel’s national security. Advertisement “Israel has built up this energy through two years of genocide,” Orly Noy, editor of the Hebrew-language Local Call, told Al Jazeera. “That hasn’t gone anywhere. “Just because there’s a ceasefire and the hostages are back, the racism, the supremacy and the unmasked violence didn’t just disappear. We’re seeing daily pogroms by soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. There are daily attacks on Palestinian bus drivers. It’s become dangerous to speak Arabic, not just within the ‘48, but anywhere,” she said, referring to Israel’s initial borders of 1948. ‘May your village burn’ In the West Bank, Israeli violence against Palestinians has reached unprecedented proportions. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there were 264 attacks against Palestinians in the month the ceasefire was announced: the equivalent of eight attacks per day, the highest number since the agency first started tracking attacks in 2006. An Israeli settler gestures as he argues with a Palestinian farmer (not pictured), during olive harvesting in Silwad, near Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, October 29, 2025 [Mohammed Torokman/Reuters] Israel’s interior appears no less secure from the mob. On Tuesday, a meeting at a private house in Pardes Hanna near Haifa, hosted by Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, was surrounded and attacked by a mob of right-wing protesters. As police reportedly stood nearby, Israeli protesters surrounded the house, chanting “Terrorist! Terrorist!” and singing “May your village burn” in an attempt to interrupt the meeting, which was billed as a chance to build “partnership and peace” after “two years characterised mainly by pain and hostility”. And in the Israeli Supreme Court on Monday, two of the soldiers accused of the brutal gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman prison last year were met, not by condemnation, but applause and chants of “We are all Unit 100”, referring to the military unit accused of raping the Palestinian man. “They’re not cheering rapists, they’re cheering this idea that nothing matters any more,” Ori Goldberg, a political scientist based near Tel Aviv, said. “Genocide devalues everything. Once you’ve carried out a genocide, nothing matters any more. Not the lives of those you’ve killed and, by extension, not your own. Nothing carries any consequence. Not your actions, nothing. We’ve become hollow.” Seeming to prove Goldberg’s point in the Knesset on Wednesday was Nissim Vaturi, the body’s deputy speaker and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing Likud party. Vaturi crossed one of Israel’s few political rubicons and directly referenced Kahane, whose name has become a rallying cry for settlers and ultranationalist groups across Israel. Meir Kahane’s violent anti-Arab ideology was considered so repugnant that Israel banned him from parliament and the US listed his party, Kach, as a ‘terrorist group’, October 27, 1988 [Susan Ragan/AP] Asked if he was in favour of “Jewish terror”, Vaturi replied “I support it. Believe me, Kahane was right in many ways where we were wrong, where the people of Israel were wrong,” he said, referencing the former lawmakers convicted of “terrorism” offences in both Israel and the US and whose party, Kach, remains a proscribed “terrorist group” across much of the world. Advertisement “Once you’ve manufactured consent for genocide, you need to be proactive in dialling the cruelty levels down, which is something we’re not seeing,” analyst and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy said. “If anything, we’re just seeing it continue. They have dialled the cruelty levels up to 11 …  and they’re leaving them there.” Adblock test (Why?)