The president of Catalonia has accused the Spanish government of acting “beyond the limits of a respectable democracy” and violating fundamental rights in its latest efforts to prevent an independence referendum from being held in 10 days’ time. But writing in the Guardian a day after Spanish Guardia Civil officers raided regional government buildings and arrested 14 senior officials, Carles Puigdemont insists the vote will go ahead despite the mounting pressure. “Catalan home rule has effectively been suspended due to this anti-democratic attitude from the Spanish government,” he writes. “It’s a situation that harks back to the dark past of this country, when democracy was not a part of the Spanish dictionary. What is happening here in Catalonia would not happen anywhere else in the European Union.”

Puigdemont says requests for negotiations with the Madrid government have been ignored dozens of times, and the Spanish executive is refusing to entertain any dialogue on the issue. “Instead of engaging in discourse, the Spanish government has opted for police and judges, taking us beyond the limits of a respectable democracy,” he writes. “With the arrests of high-ranking officials and threats to detain democratically elected politicians, I believe the Spanish government has violated the European charter of fundamental rights.”(theguardian)…[+]

The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, has said he would have his son killed if drug trafficking allegations against the younger politician were true, and that the police who carry out the hit would be protected from prosecution.  Paolo Duterte, 42, appeared this month before a senate inquiry to deny accusations made by an opposition lawmaker that he was a member of a Chinese triad gang who helped smuggle in a huge shipment of crystal methamphetamine from China.

Duterte did not refer to the allegations specifically but reiterated his statement from last year’s election campaign that none of his children were involved in drugs, but they would face the harshest punishment if they were. “I said before my order was: ‘If I have children who are into drugs, kill them so people will not have anything to say,’” Duterte said in a speech on Wednesday night in front of government workers at the presidential palace in Manila. “So I told Pulong [Paolo’s nickname]: ‘My order is to kill you if you are caught. And I will protect the police who kill you, if it is true,’” he said.

Duterte, 72, won the presidential elections on a brutal law-and-order platform in which he promised an unprecedented campaign to eradicate illegal drugs in society by killing up to 100,000 traffickers and addicts. Since he assumed office in the middle of last year, police have reported killing more than 3,800 people in anti-drug operations while thousands of others have been murdered in unexplained circumstances.(theguardian)…[+]

The European parliament’s Brexit negotiator has launched a scathing attack on Boris Johnson, saying his recent criticism of young voters who feel allegiance to Europe was “old-fashioned” and “nonsense”. Guy Verhofstadt told a special meeting of three committees in the Irish parliament that it was perfectly possible to feel European while at the same time feeling allegiance to your country of birth.  “Some British politicians – not to name Boris Johnson – criticise their countrymen and women for wanting to keep their European identity. He accuses them of ‘split allegiance’. I think this is a binary, old-fashioned and reductionist understanding of identity. I think we need to be smarter, more open and more inventive then that,” he said.

“It’s nonsense to talk about split allegiance. It’s perfectly possible to feel English, British and European at the same time. As it is perfectly normal to be a Dubliner, Irish and European at the same time,” he said. “It is this position that needs to be defended by our European Union just as the European Union needs to [make sure] there is no return to the past, to hard borders on our continent, and certainly not to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.” Verhofstadt’s attack comes after the foreign secretary’s Daily Telegraph article in which he said lack of allegiance to the country by some voters drove the leave result in the EU referendum last year.(theguardian)…[+]