Week of 1 February 2021

EUROPE: Full-scale Eurovision Song Contest ruled out – the competition’s organisers have said that Eurovision will not take place as it would normally under any circumstances, leaving three scenarios being planned for with varying reductions for events and capacities. The event, due to be held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in May, was canceled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The organisers say they are focusing their planning on ‘Option B’, currently the least restrictive of the remaining options, however they are keeping the option to scale down on the table. 

MYANMAR: Coup sees democratically elected leaders arrested – the army have placed several of Myanmar’s leaders under arrest, including democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and have taken control of ruling the country. Around 80% of the population had voted for Aung San Suu Kyi and her party in the most recent elections, although the democratic government has fallen out of favour with the army, who were demanding a rerun of the elections, alleging unproven fraud. A state of emergency has been declared in the country. 

PORTUGAL: Emergency aid flown in from Germany – a Luftwaffe plane landed at Lisbon airport bringing doctors, extra beds and ventilator equipment to the urgent aid of a Portuguese health system at breaking point. Portugal is experiencing a recent surge in cases which places it as the worst-hit country in the world in terms of numbers of case compared to the size of the population.

RUSSIA: Navalny sentenced to three years and six months in prison – a Russian court has sentenced opposition leader Alexei Navalny to three-and-a-half years in prison for violating parole in relation to a sentence handed to him in 2014, despite widespread protests which led to arrests across the country. Sarah Rainsford at the BBC has written that these tough tactics may end up backfiring for the Kremlin. 

Week of 18 January 2021

EGYPT: Scandal and arrests over ‘immoral’ cakes, generating debate – a pastry chef in Cairo has been arrested over cakes which were decorated with icing in the shape of genitals. Images from the birthday celebrations at the Gezira Sporting Club were shared widely across social media and blurred versions featured in tabloid newspapers. BBC Arabic dedicated a segment of their ‘Trending’ programme to discussing the debate that had sprung up on social media about the cakes. There have been a number of prominent stories concerning arrests in Egypt over the past few years for violating family values and immorality, including the story of two TikTokers who were arrested but later acquitted earlier this month.

ITALY: Earlier this week, the Italian Government led by Giuseppe Conte barely managed to weather a crisis following a split in the parliamentary coalition supporting it. Italia Viva, the centrist party led by former PM Matteo Renzi, left the coalition apparently due to disagreements on the post-Covid economic strategy. In separate confidence votes, PM Conte secured a slim majority in the Chamber of Deputies (321 out of 630) but only a plurality in the Senate (156 for, 140 against, 16 abstaining out of 321 senators). While winning a plurality allowed Conte to avoid an outright crisis, it will be hard for him to get significant pieces of legislation through, and some observers think a snap election may eventually be triggered before the current Parliament expires in 2023.

RUSSIA: Arrests in the face of opposition protests – top aides of Alexei Navalny, the man described by BBC News as ‘the most prominent face of Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin’, have been arrested ahead of a large demonstration planned for Saturday. Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent last August and nearly died, but returned to Russia this week, where he was immediately arrested. The protests are aimed at influencing Navalny’s release or the length of any sentence he is handed. The Guardian has reported, though, that even in prison, Navalny represents a threat to Putin. This week Navalny’s team released a massive-scale investigation into Putin’s wealth. The video, called ‘Putin’s Palace’ and published on YouTube on Tuesday 19th, is just under two hours long and has amassed almost 60 million views.

UNITED STATES: On Wednesday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States. It was a historic inauguration from several points of view. Biden is the oldest sitting president and the first former vice president to ascend to the presidency since George H.W. Bush; Harris is the first woman, first Asian American and first African American to become vice president. Upon taking office, Biden immediately signed 17 executive orders aimed at undoing some of Trump’s legacy – measures ranged from rejoining the Paris Agreement to stopping the construction of the wall on the Mexican border.