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Geopolitics

Italian Journalist Freed After Five Months As Hostage In Syria

LA STAMPA (Italy)

Worldcrunch

ROME — Domenico Quirico, a veteran war correspondent for the Italian daily La Stampa, has been freed after five months as a hostage in Syria.

Quirico, 62, who was released Sunday together with a Belgian teacher, Pier Piccinin, was kidnapped by Syrian rebels during his fourth trip to the country to cover the civil war.

Here is a May report from La Stampa/Worldcrunch soon after Quirico disappeared:

ITALIAN WAR JOURNALIST MISSING IN SYRIA - A TASTE OF HIS WORK, AND COURAGE

And below is Quirico upon his arrival at Rome’s Ciampino airport.

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Geopolitics

Senegal's Democratic Unrest And The Ghosts Of French Colonialism

The violence that erupted following the sentencing of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison left 16 people dead and 500 arrested. This reveals deep fractures in Senegalese democracy that has traces to France's colonial past.

Image of Senegalese ​Protesters celebrating Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Protesters celebrate Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — For a long time, Senegal had the glowing image of one of Africa's rare democracies. The reality was more complicated than that, even in the days of the poet-president Léopold Sedar Senghor, who also had his dark side.

But for years, the country has been moving down what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "gentle slope of... the weakening and corrosion of the gains of Senegalese democracy."

This has been demonstrated once again over the last few days, with a wave of violence that has left 16 people dead, 500 arrested, the internet censored, and a tense situation with troubling consequences. The trigger? The sentencing last Thursday of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison, which could exclude him from the 2024 presidential elections.

Young people took to the streets when the verdict was announced, accusing the justice system of having become a political tool. Ousmane Sonko had been accused of rape but was convicted of "corruption of youth," a change that rendered the decision incomprehensible.

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