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Hundreds of Haiti’s national police officers (PNH) were in the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and the northern city of Cape Haitian Sunday, demanding better work conditions and a union to represent and defend their rights. This is the second time in a month police have protested.
“We need a union that can represent us when things aren’t good,” a member of POLIFRONT, Haiti’s Border Police unit of the National Police, told VOA Creole. He was in uniform and wearing a black face mask. “I’m talking about abuse, our meager 19,000 (Haitian gourdes) salary (about $208), which is not enough.”
The officer said the police are suffering because they don’t enjoy the same benefits reserved for their leaders, and they don’t have anyone to represent and defend them when they need it most.
“If we remain strong, we’ll get everything we need,” another police protester, dressed in civilian clothing, from the Mobilized Intervention Unit (BMI) of the national police told VOA.
This policeman of the Mobilized Intervention unit of @pnh_officiel says an 8 hour workday limit is essential to the officers. He believes the constitution will prevail and their demands will become a reality. ?Matiado Vilme #Haitipic.twitter.com/FErnXQDzt6
“The police is a legal force, recognized by the constitution, which also gives us the right to form a union. So if the constitution allows us to form a union, that means we will have it one way or another. And we should only be working eight hours a day, according to the law,” he added.
According to the officer, although a law was passed and signed by the director of the national police force, it has not gone into effect, and police officers often are subjected to long work days.
Female police officers also participated in the Port au Prince protest, Nov 17, 2019. (Photo: M. Vilme/VOA)
The Port-au-Prince protest was festive, with a truck and deejay accompanying the protesters in the streets while blaring motivational songs, ending with the country’s national anthem. “For the flag, for the nation,” they sang to a tune very similar to France’s national anthem “La Marseillaise.”
#Haiti national policemen @pnh_officiel are back in the streets today in PAP demanding better work conditions including higher salary, insurance, health care. They sang the national hymn too, which may sound familiar if you know La Marseillaise. ?Matiado Vilme @VOAKreyolpic.twitter.com/ubmu0SNgs0
Up north in Cape Haitian, hundreds of police officers took over the streets for a noisy, festive, peaceful protest. “Si yo pa reponn nou, nou pral nan rebelyon. We’ll shift to rebellion mode if they don’t respond to our demands” they chanted. Their demands are the same as their colleagues’ in the capital: better wages, insurance, health care and a union.
“Si Yo pa reponn nou, nou pral nan rebelyon” if they don’t respond we’ll shift to rebellion mode policemen in Cape Haitian chanted today. #Haiti ?Yvan Martin Jasmin @VOAKreyolpic.twitter.com/1ehBD89INx
Some of the protesters held posters that said: “Policemen are not slaves,” “Too many policemen have been imprisoned for no good reason” and “19,000 gourdes cannot take care of a family.”
Haiti’s National Police force has been plagued by allegations of corruption. They have also been accused of human rights violations for firing on unarmed civilians and using excessive force during peaceful protests.
Police protesters hold a banner that says IGPNH (inspector general of police) you can’t give what you don’t have, Nov 17, 2019, Port au Prince. (Photo: M. Vilme/VOA)
Earlier this month, the United Nations human rights office and Amnesty International expressed concern about the situation and asked the Moise administration to investigate the incidents “promptly, thoroughly and effectively.” National Police officials say the force that exists today is a work in progress and far more professional, but that problems persist.
During a recent visit to police stations in Carrefour and Petionville, two suburbs of the capital, President Jovenel Moise told the press he asked for officials to give him a detailed report on the officers’ working conditions so they could be addressed as soon as possible. He also commended the police for their dedication and hard work.
On November 15, a new police inspector general was named. In his inauguration speech, Herve Julien urged young officers to stay far away from politics for the good of the national police force.
New research has found that U.S. agriculture uses child workers without proper training and care for their safety. The report published last week in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine says 33 children are injured every day while working on U.S. farms, and more child workers die in agriculture than in any other industry. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports rights groups blame loopholes in U.S. laws for failing to protect child workers in agriculture
British photographer Terry O’Neill, whose images captured London’s Swinging ’60s and who created iconic portraits of Elton John, Brigitte Bardot and Winston Churchill, has died at age 81.
O’Neill died Saturday at his home in London following a long battle with cancer, according to Iconic Images, the agency that represented O’Neill.
“Terry was a class act, quick witted and filled with charm,” the agency said in a statement posted to its website. “Anyone who was lucky enough to know or work with him can attest to his generosity and modesty. As one of the most iconic photographers of the last 60 years, his legendary pictures will forever remain imprinted in our memories as well as in our hearts and minds.”
Born in London in 1938, O’Neill was working as a photographer for an airline at Heathrow Airport when he snapped a picture of a well-dressed man sleeping on a bench. The man turned out to be the British home secretary, and O’Neill was hired by a London newspaper.
In the early 1960s he photographed the Beatles during the recording of their first hit single, and he captured the image of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill clutching a cigar as he was carried to an ambulance after a 1962 hospital stay.
O’Neill later said that when photographing the Beatles he placed John Lennon in the foreground because he thought that “it was obvious John was the one with the personality.”
Soon O’Neill was photographing the hottest stars of the mid and late ’60s: Bardot, Raquel Welch, Michael Caine, Steve McQueen, Diana Ross and Audrey Hepburn.
He photographed many other big names over the course of a career that spanned decades, including model Kate Moss, Queen Elizabeth II, singers David Bowie and Amy Winehouse and former first lady Laura Bush.
O’Neill’s photos of Elton John remain among his most recognizable. One shows the singer, exuberant and sparkling in a sequined baseball uniform, with an audience of thousands in the background.
“He was brilliant, funny and I absolutely loved his company,” John tweeted Sunday.
Another iconic O’Neill photo, this one from 1977, depicted actress Faye Dunaway lounging poolside the morning after winning a best actress Oscar for her performance in “Network,” the statuette sitting on a table and newspapers strewn on the ground.
O’Neill was married to Dunaway for three years in the 1980s. According to British newspaper The Guardian, the couple had a son. O’Neill later married Laraine Ashton, a modelling industry executive.
In an interview with the Guardian last year, O’Neill discussed how he viewed his past photos.
“The perfectionist in me always left me thinking I could have taken a better shot. But now when I look at photos of all the icons I’ve shot – like Mandela, Sir Winston Churchill and Sinatra – the memories come flooding back and I think: ‘Yeah, I did all right.’”
Fighting reportedly intensified between Turkish-backed Syrian fighters and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces Sunday over a major highway and a strategic town in northeastern Syria.
Local news reported that Turkish military and allied Syrian militias continued shelling positions belonging to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in a bid to control the town of Tal Tamr and the nearby M4 highway.
In an effort to prevent Turkish-backed forces from advancing into the town, the SDF has reportedly reached a cease-fire deal with Russia, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday.
The deal, according to the war monitor, would allow Russian and Syrian government troops to be deployed near the Christian-majority Tal Tamr and parts of the M4 highway, locally known as the “International Road.”
“Our sources on the ground have confirmed the agreement between the SDF and Russia,” Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told VOA.
He added that some areas outside the town have been handed over to the Turkish military, while Russian and Syrian government troops have taken control of the International Road.
‘No deal yet’
But SDF officials denied these reports, saying that no cease-fire has been reached as Turkish forces and their Syrian allies continued their attacks.
“We are aware of the rumors that M4 highway and Tal Tamr will be handed over to Syrian Army as part of a deal. There is no truth to these reports. In contrast, fierce attacks by Turkish-backed armed groups continue in that area,” Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesperson, said in a tweet Sunday.
Ekrem Salih, a local reporter covering the ongoing developments, said violent clashes took place outside Tal Tamr.
“I was in the town this afternoon. There was fierce fighting in several villages outside the town. But Tal Tamr itself witnessed no fighting and it is still under SDF control,” he told VOA.
Strategic highway
The 500-kilometer M4 highway, which stretches from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in the west to the Iraqi border in the east, represents a strategic significance for all warring sides, experts said.
“This is a very strategic road in northern Syria,” Abdulrahman said. “If Turkey and its allies took control of this highway, the entire northern region of Syria will be cut off from the rest of northeast Syria.”
He added, “Turkey wants to make sure that Kurdish-held areas are not geographically connected.”
Turkey has been carrying out a military offensive since early October against U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces that Ankara views as terrorists.
The operation came days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the withdrawel of U.S. troop from several border areas in Syria, where they were stationed as part of the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State (IS) terror group.
The Turkish offensive has displaced more than 180,000 Syrian civilians in the border region, according to the U.N.
Turkey defends its offensive and maintains that it has sent troops to northeast Syria to clear the region from People’s Protection Units also known as YPG, the main fighting force within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey accuses the group of being an offshoot of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a U.S.-designated terror group.
Washington differs with Ankara over the classification of YPG as a terror group and views the SDF as an ally against IS.
The biennial Dubai Airshow opened Sunday as major Gulf airlines rein back big-ticket purchases after a staggering $140 billion in new orders were announced at the 2013 show before global oil prices collapsed.
The airshow, which runs until Thursday, draws major commercial and military firms from around the world, as well as smaller manufacturers competing for business in the Middle East. The United States has the largest foreign country presence with over 100 companies represented.
The Chicago-based Boeing will likely use the airshow to emphasize its dedication to safety after crashes of its 737 Max killed 346 people. The planes have been grounded around the world, impacting customers like flydubai which has more than a dozen of the jets in its fleet and more than 230 on order.
Boeing and Biman Bangladesh Airlines signed a deal for two 787-9s aircraft, which list at $292.5 million a piece. However, buyers often get better deals from manufacturers.
The Burkina Faso army said on Sunday it had killed 32 “terrorists” in two operations in the north of the country after an attack on a patrol.
One soldier was killed in the operations, which come less than a month after 37 people were killed in an ambush on a convoy transporting employees of a Canadian mining company.
The army said 24 people were killed in the first operation on Friday and a further eight in a second on Saturday.
The first operation in Yorsala in Loroum province saw a number of women who “had been held and used by the terrorists as sex slaves” freed.
Arms, ammunition and other materials were also recovered in the second operation on the outskirts of Bourzanga in Bam province, the army statement added.
The impoverished and politically fragile Sahel country has been struggling to quell a rising jihadist revolt that has claimed hundreds of lives since early 2015.
The attacks — typically hit-and-run raids on villages, road mines and suicide bombings — have claimed nearly 700 lives across the country since early 2015, according to an AFP toll.
Almost 500,000 people have also been forced to flee their homes.
The attacks have been claimed by a range of jihadist groups, including Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The country’s badly equipped, poorly trained and underfunded security forces have been unable to stem the violence, which has intensified throughout 2019 to become almost daily.
The Sahel region, including Burkina Faso’s neighbors Mali and Niger, has been afflicted by the violence despite the presence of the regional G5 Sahel force as well as French and U.S. troops.
A trove of leaked Chinese government documents reveals details of its clampdown on Uighurs and other Muslims in the country’s western Xinjiang region under President Xi Jinping, the New York Times reported Saturday.
United Nations experts and activists say at least 1 million Uighurs and members of other largely Muslim minority groups have been detained in camps in Xinjiang in a crackdown that has drawn condemnation from the United States and other countries.
The documents, which the newspaper said were leaked by “a member of the Chinese political establishment,” show how Xi gave a series of internal speeches to officials during and after a 2014 visit to Xinjiang following a stabbing attack by Uighur militants at a train station that killed 31 people.
The report said Xi called for an “all-out ‘struggle against terrorism, infiltration, and separatism’ using the ‘organs of dictatorship,’ and showing ‘absolutely no mercy.’”
The documents show that the Chinese leadership’s fears were heightened by terrorist attacks in other countries and the U.S. drawdown of troops from Afghanistan.
It is unclear how the documents totaling 403 pages were gathered and selected, the newspaper said.
Beijing denies any mistreatment of the Uighurs or others in Xinjiang, saying it is providing vocational training to help stamp out Islamic extremism and separatism and teach new skills.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment from Reuters on Sunday.
The documents show how officials were given talking points to explain to returning university students that their family members had been taken away for training, and how the program faced pushback from some local officials, the report said.
They also show that the internment camps expanded quickly after Chen Quanguo was appointed in August 2016 as the party boss of the region, the report said. Chen had taken a tough line to quell restiveness against Communist Party rule during his previous posting in Tibet.
Samoa declared a state of emergency this weekend, closing all schools and cracking down on public gatherings, after several deaths linked to a measles outbreak that has spread across the Pacific islands.
The island state of about 200,000, south of the equator and half way between Hawaii and New Zealand, declared a measles epidemic late in October after the first deaths were reported.
Since then, at least six deaths, mostly infants younger than 2, have been linked to the outbreak, the health ministry said in a statement late last week. Of the 716 suspected cases of measles, 40% required hospitalization.
Worst yet to come
As of the weekend, vaccination “for members of the public who have not yet received a vaccination injection, is now a mandatory legal requirement,” the government said in a statement. Only about two-thirds of the population has been immunized, according to the health ministry.
“The way it is going now and the poor (immunization) coverage, we are anticipating the worst to come,” Samoa’s Director General of Health Leausa Take Naseri was cited in the health ministry statement as saying.
He added that the children who died had not been vaccinated.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Friday his country would send 3,000 doses of vaccine and 12 nurses to Samoa to assist with the outbreak.
“Measles is highly contagious, and the outbreak has taken lives in Samoa,” Peters said in a statement. “It is in everybody’s interests that we work together to stop its spread.”
Measles on the rise
Measles cases are rising globally, including in wealthy nations such as the United States and Germany, where some parents shun immunization mostly for philosophical or religious reasons, or concerns, debunked by medical science, that such vaccines could cause autism.
In Tonga, about 900km (559.23 miles) from Samoa, the ministry of health last week said an outbreak of measles in the country occurred following the return of a squad of Tongan rugby players from New Zealand.
Since then, 251 cases of confirmed or suspected measles have been identified, the ministry said in the statement.
American Samoa, a U.S. territory neighboring Samoa, declared a public health emergency Thursday following the measles outbreak in Samoa and Tonga, according to New Zealand media.
According to Samoa’s Naseri about 90% of population in Tonga and American Samoa has been immunized and neither of these countries have reported any measles-related deaths.
A court in Pakistan has allowed ailing former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to travel abroad for four weeks for medical treatment.
Sharif, 69, was given a seven-year jail term by an anti-graft court in 2018 for corruption and money laundering. But doctors say his health has deteriorated because he is suffering from multiple medical complications.
The high court in the city of Lahore ordered the government on Saturday to remove Sharif’s name from a so-called “exit control list” or ECL that bars people or convicts from leaving the country.
The ruling gives Sharif four weeks to seek medical treatment abroad and the duration can be extended further on doctor recommendations.
The former prime minister was released on bail last month on medical grounds but his lawyers argued his ailment required him to consult his regular doctors based in London. Sharif’s travel plans were not known.
The Pakistani government had asked Sharif to deposit financial guaranties in the form of an “indemnity bond” to ensure he comes back home after receiving treatment and serve his prison term in addition to facing several other ongoing cases of corruption against him.
But Sharif’s opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N party refused to submit the indemnity bond and instead approached the court against the government’s one-time conditional permission to travel abroad and succeeded in getting the judicial relief for its leader.
The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan had maintained it wanted assurances from Sharif because five members of his family, including two sons, previously left Pakistan and have not returned to appear in courts in corruption cases against them. The Sharif family rejects the corruption charges as politically motivated.
Sharif was forced by the Supreme Court in 2017 to step down from the office of the prime minister for not declaring his overseas assets in his election nomination papers.
Iranian protesters are on the streets in dozens of towns and cities across the country as anger spreads following a government decision to double the price of fuel. The protests appear to have gained momentum after the top Shi’ite cleric in neighboring Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, sided with protesters in a Friday prayer sermon delivered by one of his followers.
Dozens of protesters in the capital of Iran’s Azerbaijan province, Tabriz, clashed with government security forces Saturday, pelting them with stones on a major highway through the city. Amateur video showed traffic stopped as police charged protesters in an attempt to chase them off the roadway.
Protesters also blocked traffic using cars and buses in the capital, Tehran, amid an unseasonal snow storm. Other video showed demonstrators chanting slogans in front of a pro-government militia office in Tehran.
Protests were reported Saturday in dozens of Iranian towns and cities for the second straight day, following a government decision to raise fuel prices. A number of people reportedly were killed or wounded, but reports were conflicting over the exact casualty count. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV reported that 9 protesters were killed Saturday.
Amateur video showed protesters in the region of Karaj chasing police after officers shot and reportedly killed two unarmed demonstrators. VOA could not confirm the deaths.
Arab media also reported that Iran closed a major border crossing with neighboring Iraq as demonstrations there continued unabated. Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, came out in support of protesters against government corruption during a Friday prayer sermon delivered by one of his followers.
Cars block a street during a protest against a rise in gasoline prices, in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, Nov. 16, 2019.
Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr told VOA there are many Iranians who follow Ayatollah Sistani and that his message of support for the Iraqi people undoubtedly is reverberating in Iran as well.
Bani Sadr said that Ayatollah Sistani came out in favor of the people as the source of legitimacy of the government. That is a direct rebuke against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the principle of the Vilayet-al-Faqih. which requires that the country be ruled by an enlightened religious figure.
Bani Sadr also stressed that the economic situation in Iran is “extremely serious,” and that the country has a massive budget deficit of more than $5 billion. The decision to raise fuel prices, he insisted, was made directly by Ayatollah Khamenei, and not the Iranian parliament, inciting anger against him.
Amateur video showed protesters setting fire to billboards showing the picture of Ayatollah Khamenei in the town of Islamshahr, near the capital, Tehran.
Amateur video also showed protesters setting fire to a branch of the Iranian central bank in the town of Behbahan. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Protesters also chanted against Iran’s military involvement in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian territories in several towns and cities. Protesters in Islamshahr chanted “no money, no gas, screw Palestine.”
A senior White House budget official arrived on Capitol Hill Saturday to testify behind closed doors before congressional investigators who are conducting an impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump.
Mark Sandy, a longtime career official with the Office of Management and Budget, is the first agency employee to be deposed in the inquiry after three employees appointed by Trump defied congressional subpoenas to testify. It remains unclear if a subpoena had been issued to Sandy.
Sandy could provide valuable information about the U.S. delay of nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine last summer, allegedly in exchange for the newly-elected Ukrainian president to launch investigations into 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son at Trump’s request. Investigators are also exploring debunked claims promoted by Trump and allies that Ukraine, and not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Sandy was among the career employees who questioned the holdup, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
His signature is on at least one document that prevented the provision of the aid to Ukraine, according to copies of documents investigators discussed during an earlier deposition. A transcript of the discussion has been publicly disclosed.
Sandy appears before the House foreign affairs, intelligence, and oversight and reform committees.
FILE – Members of Congress head to a resticted area for a closed-door deposition held as part of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 23, 2019.
In a statement, the three Democratic-led committees said they are investigating “the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters.”
Sandy’s deposition comes one day after the ousted former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, testified at the congressional impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump that she was “shocked and devastated” over remarks Trump made about her during a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“I didn’t know what to think, but I was very concerned,” she told the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. “It felt like a threat.”
Her testimony was consistent with her closed-door testimony last month when she said she felt “threatened” and worried about her safety after Trump said “she’s going to go through some things.”
A career diplomat, Yovanovitch was unceremoniously recalled to Washington after Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and his allies waged what her colleagues and Democrats have described as a smear campaign against her. Two Giuliani associates recently arrested for campaign finance violations are accused of lobbying former Republican House member Pete Sessions of Texas for her ouster.
Yovanovitch was mentioned in Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy that triggered the impeachment probe after a whistleblower filed a complaint. According to the White House summary of the call, Trump said Yovanovitch was “bad news.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 15, 2019.
An unusual exchange occurred during the hearing that began when Trump took to Twitter to again criticize Yovanovitch. He tweeted, “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.”
Democratic committee chairman Adam Schiff interrupted the proceedings to read the tweet and asked her to respond. Yovanovitch paused before saying, “It’s very intimidating” and added: “I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but the effect is to be intimidating.”
Schiff responded that, “Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
Trump’s Twitter attack drew the ire of Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the third highest-ranking Republican in the House.
She said Trump “was wrong” and that Yovanovitch “clearly is somebody who’s been a public servant to the United States for decades, and I don’t think the president should have done that.”
The White House later issued a statement denying accusations of intimidation.
“The tweet was not witness intimidation, it was simply the President’s opinion, which he is entitled to,” the statement said. “This is not a trial, it is a partisan political process—or to put it more accurately, a totally illegitimate, charade stacked against the President. There is less due process in this hearing than any such event in the history of our country. It’s a true disgrace.”
Yovanovitch also told lawmakers that she was the target of a “campaign of disinformation” during which “unofficial back channels” were used to oust her.
Yovanovitch said repeated attacks from “corrupt interests” have created a “crisis in the State Department,” which she said “is being hallowed out within a competitive and complex time on the world stage.”
A transcript of a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is shown during former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony on Capitol Hill, Nov. 15, 2019.
The veteran diplomat said that senior officials at the State Department, right up to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, failed to defend her from attacks from Trump and his allies, including Guiliani.
Yovanovitch, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from July 2016 to May 2019, also testified last month that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland had recommended she praise Trump on Twitter if she wanted to save her job.
During opening remarks, Schiff said Yovanovitch was “smeared and cast aside” by Trump because she was viewed as an obstacle to Trump’s political and personal agenda.
Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, described the hearings as nothing more than “spectacles” for Democrats to “advance their operation to topple a duly elected president.”
Republicans, led by Nunes and their lead counsel, Steve Castor, tried to portray Yovanovitch as immaterial to the impeachment inquiry.
Nunes suggested that Yovanovitch’s complaints are a personnel matter that is “more appropriate for the Subcommittee on Human Resources on Foreign Affairs” and declared she is “not a material fact witness.”
Castor peppered Yovanovitch with questions aimed at proving her irrelevance, including whether she was involved in preparations for the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy or plans for a White House meeting between the two leaders. She answered in the negative to all the questions.
Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, left, talks to Steve Castor, Republican staff attorney, during testimony from former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 15, 2019.
Nunes also read a rough transcript of an April call Trump had with newly elected Zelenskiy that shows Zelenskiy was eager to have Trump attend his inauguration in Ukraine. The White House released the transcript just minutes after the hearing began, apparently an attempt to dispel any notions of wrongdoing by the president.
“I know how busy you are, but if it’s possible for you to come to the inauguration ceremony, that would be a great, great thing for you to do to be with us on that day.”
Trump vowed to have a “great representative” attend the event if he was unable to.
The U.S. delegation to inauguration was led by Energy Secretary Rick Perry after Vice President Mike Pence canceled the trip.
Yovanovitch’s removal sent shockwaves through the foreign service, with more than 50 former female U.S. ambassadors writing a letter to Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to protect foreign service officers from political retaliation.
William Taylor, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine, testified on Wednesday during the first day of the historic televised hearings that could lead to a House vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year.
George Kent, senior State Department official, left, and Ambassador William Taylor, charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, are sworn in at at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 13, 2019.
All three diplomats have previously testified behind closed doors about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son, Hunter, and to probe a discredited conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 president election.
Democrats say the open hearings will allow the public to assess the credibility of the witnesses and their testimonies. Republicans hope to discredit the impeachment proceedings and poke holes in the witnesses’ testimony.
Also Friday, David Holmes, a staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, appeared before House investigators for closed-door testimony. Holmes testified he overheard Trump ask Sondland about the status of “investigations” during a phone call after Trump’s July 25 conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart.
Sondland later explained the probes pertained to Biden, a former U.S. vice president, and his son, Hunter, according to Holmes. No wrongdoing by either Biden has been substantiated.
Holmes’ testimony was one of the first direct accounts of Trump pursuing investigations of a political rival.
Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry to determine if Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine unless President Zelenskiy publicly committed himself to investigating 2020 Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden for corruption.
FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.
Trump also has repeated an unfounded claim that Ukraine, and not Russia, meddled in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Democrats and their candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Republicans have contended that Trump did not improperly pressure Ukraine to investigate political rivals for political advantage.
Under pressure from Trump, Republican lawmakers have waged a vigorous defense of the president’s actions in dealing with Ukraine over a several-month period, and they have asserted that the Democrats’ case for impeachment against Trump is non-existent.
Next week, the House panel will hold public hearings again. The schedule for testimony includes:
Tuesday: Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence; Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, Ambassador Kurt Volker, former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine; and Tim Morrison, a White House aide with the National Security Council focusing on Europe and Russia policy.
Wednesday: Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union; Laura Cooper, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs; and David Hale, under secretary of state for political affairs.
Thursday: Fiona Hill, former National Security Council senior director for Europe and Russia.
The impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump centers on the question of whether he suspended close to 400 million dollars in U.S. military aid to Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate one of his own political opponents. Top U.S. diplomats and other foreign policy experts said any threat to that U.S. security assistance sends the wrong signal, both to Ukraine, and to the stronger power it is fighting on its own soil, Russia. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.
