Feed aggregator

L’Allemagne et le Royaume-Uni devraient conclure cet été un important traité bilatéral d’amitié, selon des sources proches du dossier. Un accord que Berlin et Londres présentent comme « sans précédent ».

The post Berlin et Londres signeront un traité historique cet été appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Discrètement mais sûrement, l’Algérie s’impose comme l’un des rares pays arabes à posséder un programme nucléaire civil structuré, conforme aux standards internationaux. Avec deux réacteurs […]

L’article Nucléaire : l’Algérie parmi les rares pays arabes dotés de capacités structurées est apparu en premier sur .

Martin Candinas a déposé une motion au parlement visant à doubler le prix du pass autoroutier. Mais cela ne devrait avoir aucun impact sur les automobilistes suisses. Explications.

L’application et le site des CFF ont connu une panne majeure ce vendredi matin. Mastercard, Visa, PostFinance, TWINT… presque tous les moyens de paiement ont été touchés.

In response, China accused the EU of "double standards" over protectionism.

Après avoir fermement soutenu  le projet de règlement de l’UE sur les retours, la Première ministre italienne exprime désormais des inquiétudes — une première inflexion sur un texte qu’elle présentait comme un succès de la politique migratoire européenne.

The post Retours de migrants : Rome soulève des objections sur le plan de l’UE appeared first on Euractiv FR.

L'échange de missiles entre Israël et l'Iran a fait craindre que l'Iran ne tente de fermer la voie maritime du détroit d'Ormuz, le point d'étranglement le plus vital du monde pour le transit du pétrole. Environ un cinquième du pétrole brut de la planète passe par ce canal qui ne fait que 40 km de large en son point le plus étroit.

L'échange de missiles entre Israël et l'Iran a fait craindre que l'Iran ne tente de fermer la voie maritime du détroit d'Ormuz, le point d'étranglement le plus vital du monde pour le transit du pétrole. Environ un cinquième du pétrole brut de la planète passe par ce canal qui ne fait que 40 km de large en son point le plus étroit.

Il va faire (très) chaud ce week-end, mais les températures devraient redescendre dès lundi.

Am Donnerstagnachmittag hat in der Stadt Schaffhausen eine Autofahrerin einen 10-jährigen Velofahrer übersehen. Der Bub wurde verletzt.

Police line up at an anti-government outside the parliament building in Tbilisi. Credit: Gvantsa Kalandadze

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jun 20 2025 (IPS)

Having attended hundreds of anti-government protests in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, Gvantsa Kalandadze is no stranger to police intimidation and violence.

Police brutality has become common at the daily protests that have taken place in the city since the end of last year, when the autocratic government of the Georgian Dream party said it was stopping the country’s process of integration into the EU.

Kalandadze has seen others fall victim to police brutality and experienced it on more than one occasion herself—soon after leaving a protest in December last year, she was pushed to the ground and kicked viciously by a group of officers for questioning the arrest of a man in the street, and during another gathering a few weeks later, she was knocked out when officers pushed her and other protestors into a ditch.

But when the protests began, police violence against protesters seemed indiscriminate; research by rights group Amnesty International suggests that women protesters are now being targeted specifically and are facing escalating violence and gender-based reprisals.

Kalandadze says she is not surprised by the news.

“It’s true. The police are aggressive and they harass women both verbally, using demeaning terms such as ‘slut,’ ‘daughter of a whore,’ and others, and threaten us with rape and assault,” she says.

Amnesty’s research details the police’s methods to target women, which involves increasing use of gender-based violence including sexist insults, threats of sexual violence and unlawful and degrading strip searches against women involved in protests.

“We have spoken to people personally about what they experienced at the hands of the police, such as being forced to undergo strip-searches and threats of rape during detention,” Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, told IPS.

The group’s research also highlights individual cases of this abuse, including cases of women being violently restrained by officers, forced to strip naked, denied access to medical treatment, threatened with rape, and subjected to sexual insults.

Amnesty says these abuses not only violate Georgian law, which prohibits full undressing during searches, but also international human rights law and standards aimed at safeguarding human dignity and protecting people from gender-based violence.

“Forcing someone to completely strip naked [in detention] is against both international and Georgian law, yet despite this, the police are forcing protesters to do this. It is clearly a deliberate police policy, despite it being against the law,” said Krivosheev.

While Amnesty says it has spoken to numerous women about such abuse, Krivosheev said, “the number [of women who are victims of this targeting] is far more than we have been able to document simply because many victims are scared to speak out about what happened to them.”

Female protesters who spoke to IPS confirmed that police harassment of women at protests was widespread, but also that it was often used to provoke a specific response, and not always just from women.

“The thing is that women are never violent at protests; they would never attack police, and the police are insulting us—usually with sexual slurs like saying we’re all sluts, bitches, whores, and insults about oral and anal sex—to try and provoke us into doing something that would get us arrested or force the men around us to try and protect us and do something that will get those men arrested,” Vera*, who has attended scores of protests in Tbilisi, told IPS.

“I know multiple women who were physically pushed, dragged, or detained. Some were insulted with misogynistic language. A few were groped during arrests—and that isn’t isolated… many of us know someone personally who’s experienced this abuse,” Tamar*, a civil rights campaigner from Tbilisi who has attended scores of protests, told IPS.

She added that police were even cooperating with, or at least tolerating, criminals abusing women protesters.

“The police have used violence—tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and physical force—but that’s only part of the story. What’s even more disturbing is the presence of organized criminal gangs. These groups operate with impunity, clearly coordinated, yet the police don’t intervene. They specifically target women activists—chasing them, splashing green substances on their faces, shouting threats, and trying to scare them off the streets.

“I was personally hit in the head with a stone by one of these thugs. When I asked a police officer for help, he sarcastically told me to ask my ‘fellow democratic fighters’ who did it, as if it had come from among the people protesting. There’s zero accountability when the violence comes from those orchestrated to look like random citizens. It’s a deliberate tactic to terrorize protesters, especially women, while maintaining official deniability,” she said.

Many female protesters believe the reasons behind the targeting of women are rooted in not just the role women are playing in the current protests but also the “misogynist tendencies” of many officers.

“There is also a culture of toxic masculinity that goes hand in hand with the conservative part of society—the police are angry that women are taking the initiative [in protests]—female participation in the current protests is a lot larger than ever before—and that causes their aggression. The police see (or, at least, saw at the beginning) women at protests as ‘inferior’ compared to men and think they will be easier to break morally and easier to overpower physically.

“Another factor is the sexual deviations of individuals in the police force—when they feel power over the women after detaining them, their perversion takes over,” Vera explained.

Others put it down to how police perceive women as a serious threat to their authority.

“I think that the real reason the police are targeting women is that women are truly fearless in these protests. They are very resilient and persistent and always on the frontlines. They have actually physically saved a lot of men from the hands of violent police. I truly believe that the police feel threatened by them,” Paata Sabelashvili, a rights campaigner in Tbilisi who has taken part in protests, told IPS.

He added, though, that “in light of the misogyny and sexism among police officers, this is, sadly, not unexpected, and I fear it will only get worse in the future.”

While Amnesty has called on Georgian authorities to immediately end all forms of gender-based reprisals and all unlawful use of force by law enforcement, investigate every allegation of abuse during the protests, and ensure accountability at all levels, neither the group itself nor protesters who spoke to IPS, believe that is likely to happen soon.

“There is little hope under the current government for accountability and effective investigation [of police abuse during protests],” said Krivosheev.

Local media have reported that investigations into complaints made by women about the violence and threats they have faced from police at protests have largely gone nowhere, as have investigations by the Special Investigation Service, which is tasked with independently investigating crimes committed by police, despite hundreds of reports of police violence in 2024 alone.

The government has not commented on claims of women protesters being targeted by police, but in the past it has justified police action at protests as being a response to violence from protesters and has claimed, without evidence, that the protests are being funded from abroad.

But while women protesters are suffering from abuse and harassment by police, the tactics appear to be galvanizing female participation in protests.

“These gender-based reprisals may have been aimed at scaring women into giving up, but that has not been the case. Women have continued protesting, and if anything, even more intensively. Many women continue to speak up about how the police are treating them,” said Krivosheev.

Kalandadze says that despite her experiences, she will not stop attending protests.

“The day the government announced it would suspend Georgia’s EU integration, I decided to join the street protests, and the violent suppression began the same night. Since then, I have attended every protest where protesters have been in danger—every gathering where the police special forces were called in. Even today, I take part in every protest where police forces are mobilized,” she says.

Vera pointed out that although the size of street protests in Tbilisi has grown smaller, they continue on a daily basis.

“The fact that there is some kind of protest in the capital every day is discomfiting for the government and also serves to ensure that the regime is not legitimized in the eyes of the country’s former western partners. There are lots of female activists and the leaders of the protest marches are always women. We have shown so much resilience. We believe in each other. This country is ours,” she said.

Tamar was even more defiant.

“When women lead, especially in a patriarchal society, it destabilizes the whole narrative. It’s not just about political dissent; it’s about cultural control. Yes, I fear things may get worse before they get better. But we aren’t taking a step back,” she said.

*Names have been changed for their safety.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Related Articles

• A Step Closer to Justice For Slain Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia
• Health Workers in Conflict Zones Experience an Epidemic of Violence
• Hungary’s LGBTQI Amendment an Affront to Human Rights, Say Activists

Sean McCann, Maddies jüngerer Bruder, macht als erfolgreicher Schwimmer auf sich aufmerksam. Der 20-jährige strebt eine Profikarriere an.

Neuf États de l’UE critiques à l’égard d’Israël appellent la Commission à mettre un terme au commerce avec les colonies israéliennes implantées dans les territoires palestiniens occupés.

The post Neuf États de l’UE pressent Bruxelles de cesser tout commerce avec les colonies israéliennes appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Mit Anzug, Krawatte – und voller Fahrt über Roms berühmteste Treppe: Ein 81-Jähriger ist mit seinem Mercedes A-Klasse die Spanische Treppe hinuntergerauscht. Auf halber Strecke blieb er stecken. Jetzt prüft die Polizei den Führerscheinentzug.

A budapesti pályafelújítási munkák miatt június 20. és július 28. között változásokra kell számítaniuk a Párkányon keresztül Magyarországra tartó EuroCity és EuroNight vonatok utasainak.

Hadja Lahbib, die EU-Gleichstellungskommissarin, ist bislang die einzige Kommissarin, die an der Budapest Pride teilnehmen wird. Damit widersetzt sie sich den internen Empfehlungen des Teams von Ursula von der Leyen, die davon abraten.

Mit den Schlussabstimmungen haben die eidgenössischen Räte am Freitag die Sommersession abgeschlossen. 19 Vorlagen haben National- und Ständerat parlamentarisch unter Dach und Fach gebracht.

Flexibles Arbeiten ist für viele Menschen hierzulande nicht mehr wegzudenken. Laut einer Umfrage wünscht sich fast jeder Zweite mehr Homeoffice. Auch eine 4-Tage-Woche ist für viele attraktiv.

Regelmässige Anfeindungen gegen Schiedsrichter alarmieren Politiker von links bis rechts. Der Bundesrat soll nun gesetzliche Massnahmen prüfen, um Unparteiische besser zu schützen. Auch die Vereine sollen stärker in die Pflicht genommen werden.

À l’approche d’un été qui s’annonce dense, l’Algérie déploie un vaste dispositif logistique pour accueillir les milliers de ressortissants algériens établis à l’étranger, qui affluent […]

L’article Retour au pays : Ports et aéroports algériens fin prêts pour accueillir les estivants est apparu en premier sur .