2023

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s election commission on Thursday accepted former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s nomination for the 2024 elections, weeks after a court overturned two graft convictions, ARY News reported.

But Sharif still needs the removal of a life ban on holding any public office to qualify to stand, so it was not immediately clear how his nomination was accepted. A hearing on that ban will be held in January.

Sharif was banned from running in elections by the Supreme Court in 2017 which declared him dishonest for not disclosing income from a company owned by his son.

More recently, a court overturned two convictions for graft.

Sharif, who arrived back home in October from four years of self-imposed exile in London, is bidding for a fourth premiership in the Feb. 8 elections.

Sharif’s biggest challenge will be to wrest back his support base from his main rival, former cricket hero Imran Khan, who, despite being in jail for graft, remains popular following his ouster from the premiership in 2022.

Khan, 71, is disqualified from the election because of the graft conviction, which he has appealed. Khan filed nomination papers for the election on Friday.

(Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh; editing by Sudipto Ganguly and Nick Macfie)

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By Richard Lough

PARIS (Reuters) – An open letter penned by dozens of actresses and other artists in defense of Gerard Depardieu, the cinema giant accused of sexual harassment, has laid bare divisions in France over the #Metoo reckoning with sexism.

Actresses Nathalie Baye and Carole Bouquet – a former partner of Depardieu – as well as singer and former first lady Carla Bruni were among the more than 50 household cultural figures who called Depardieu the victim of a public “lynching”.

Entitled ‘Don’t Cancel Gerard Depardieu’, the letter published this week in conservative daily Le Figaro alleged Depardieu had been the recipient of a “torrent of hatred”.

“We can no longer remain silent in the face of the lynching that has descended upon him,” the letter’s authors wrote.

“Gerard Depardieu is probably the greatest of all actors. When you attack Gerard Depardieu like this, it is art you are attacking.”

Depardieu, 75, who has starred in scores of French-language movies, rising to prominence in 1974 with “Going Places”, has been at the centre of a growing number of sexual assault allegations in recent years.

In March, 2022, investigative magistrates placed Depardieu under formal investigation in one case on suspicion of rape and sexual assault. Actress Charlotte Arnould, 28, later revealed she was behind those accusations, saying she could not bear remaining silent any longer. Since then, more than 10 women have accused Depardieu of sexual violence.

Depardieu has consistently denied any wrongdoing and through his lawyers previously “firmly rejected” the accusations against him.

“Never, absolutely never, have I abused a woman,” he wrote in an Oct. 2 letter also published in Le Figaro. He has not been convicted of any of the accusations against him.

President Emmanuel Macron rallied to the defense of Depardieu shortly before Christmas, when asked in an interview about his culture minister’s plans to review Depardieu’s Legion d’Honneur medal – France’s highest decoration.

Macron condemned the “manhunt” against Depardieu without expressing sympathy for his alleged victims. “He’s an immense actor, a genius of his art,” Macron said. “He makes France proud.”

GENERATIONAL DIVIDE

The president’s remarks and Monday’s letter drew dismay from feminists and younger actresses who decry an attempt to drown out the voices of victims of sexual violence and undermine the #Metoo movement against sexual harassment in France.

“There’s a generation that still doesn’t understand this societal evolution,” Murielle Reus, vice president of #MeTooMedia which campaigns against sexism and sexual misconduct in the media, said in a radio interview this week.

Critics of the #Metoo campaign in France accuse it of a puritanical fight fuelled by a contempt for men and the art of seduction.

Catherine Deneuve, one of France’s best known actresses, was among 100 French women who in 2018 wrote a newspaper column accusing the #Metoo campaign of going too far.

“We defend a right to pester, which is vital to sexual freedom,” they said.

Earlier this month, public broadcaster France 2 ran a documentary, Depardieu: The Fall of an Ogre, which showed the actor making lewd comments to women during a 2018 trip to North Korea and featured interviews with Arnould and another actress, Helene Darras, who in September filed a lawsuit against Depardieu alleging sexual assault.

Berenice Hamidi, a lecturer at the Lumiere Lyon 2 university said it was unsurprising the global #Metoo movement was born out of the U.S. cinema industry, where she said livelihoods can be precarious and the boundaries of fact and fiction blurred.

“There is a real cultural exception in French cinema, which refuses to consider acts committed by artists as violence and to condemn them,” Hamidi told franceinfo radio.

Depardieu told RTL radio he considered those who wrote this week’s open letter to be “very courageous”.

(Reporting by Richard Lough; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

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BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany and its European Union partners are examining whether they could mount a new maritime mission to protect commercial vessels under threat of attack in the Red Sea, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday.

“We as the German government are ready for this. It is important that we as the EU are able to act as quickly as possible in view of the ongoing attacks,” the spokesperson said, adding that a decision on the matter had not yet been taken.

The Iran-backed Houthis have attacked or seized a dozen ships with missiles and drones since Nov. 19, trying to inflict an international cost for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which followed the militants’ deadly Oct. 7 rampage in the south of the country.

The United States has been spearheading a new maritime force, known as Operation Prosperity Guardian, to respond to the attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, but some allies have been reluctant.

Germany is continuing to examine the question of possible participation in the U.S.-led mission, added the spokesperson.

There have also been talks in Brussels about extending an existing EU anti-piracy mission, Atalanta, to protect Red Sea shipping, but no decision has been made, said the spokesperson.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had said on Wednesday that he was willing to consider the creation of a different mission to tackle the problem, after Spain said it opposes expanding Atalanta and would not join the U.S.-led maritime force.

(Reporting by Miranda Murray, Editing by Rachel More, Alexandra Hudson)

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