- The Guardian Saturday 3 August 2019
(^30) World
Thunberg
hits back at
columnist
who mocked
her autism
A$AP Rocky
faces demand
for six-month
jail sentence
actual bodily harm in a case that has
outraged the US rapper’s fans and
infl amed transatlantic relations.
The prosecutor, Daniel Sune-
son, told the court in Stockholm the
musician, whose real name is Rakim
Mayers, should serve a longer sentence
than two members of his crew who are
also accused of attacking the alleged
victim, Mustafa Jafari, in a street brawl
in the Swedish capital on 30 June.
Suneson also demanded that the
three remain in custody because of the
risk they might fl ee the country. The y
have been in detention since 3 July in
connection with the incident, leading
celebrities, including Kim Kardashian
communicate and act on the science,”
she tweeted. “Where are the adults?”
Bolt’s column dismissed the
16-year-old campaigner’s followers as
members of a cult and disparaged her
decision to sail across the Atlantic in a
high-speed racing yacht to attend UN
climate summits in the US and Chile.
“Thunberg has announced she’s
fi nally going to the United States, the
last bastion of the heathen, to preach
the global warming faith to the Amer-
icans,” Bolt wrote. “Of course, she’s
going by racing yacht .”
He referred to her mental health,
saying she was “deeply disturbed”,
“freakishly infl uential” and “strange”.
“I have never seen a girl so young and
with so many mental disorders treated
by so many adults as a guru,” he wrote.
Thunberg sees her condition not as a
disability but as a gift that has helped
open her eyes to the climate crisis.
Bolt said she was wrong because
“the evidence does not suggest that
humanity faces doom”. “What is so
fascinating about this Thunberg cult is
not just that she’s believed so fervently
even though she’s wrong,” he wrote.
Attacks on the teenager are com-
mon in the rightwing media. On the
same day Bolt’s column appeared, an
anonymous column in the News Corp
broadsheet the Australian referred to
her as “the pig-tailed soothsayer”.
The editor of the Herald Sun, Damon
Johnston, did not respond to a request
for comment.
‘She’s back
with me’
Ilhan Omar
posted a photo
of herself and
the House
speaker, Nancy
Pelosi, on a
visit to Ghana,
mocking
racist calls
directed to the
Democratic
congress-
woman at a
Trump rally to
‘send her back’.
PHOTOGRAPH:
INSTAGRAM
Authorities take hard
line on eve of new
Moscow protest rally
Shaun Walker
Moscow
Russian authorities yesterday threat-
ened lengthy jail sentences against
protesters in Moscow in an attempt
to dampen an unexpected surge of
support for a rally today.
Police detained a record number of
people last weekend , some of them
violently, for taking part in a peaceful
protest in central Moscow over access
for opposition candidates to local elec-
tions due next month.
Most of the more than 1,300 peo-
ple who were detained were released
immediately, but many of the candi-
dates remain in jail, and the Russian
news agency Tass reported that at
least nine people had been arrested
on charges of organising or participat-
ing in “mass unrest” , which can carry
a jail term of up to 15 years.
Three people appeared in court yes-
terday and a judge ordered that they
be held in jail for two months while the
investigation continue s.
Almost all of the violence last week-
end came from police, with the worst
act from a protester captured on cam-
era being a man throwing a rubbish bin
in the direction of riot police. However,
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin ,
made it clear that the authorities
would take a hard line when he went
on television earlier this week to claim
offi cers had foiled “pre-planned and
well-prepared mass unrest”.
Elections to Moscow’s city parlia-
ment had been expected to pass off
without much interest, but instead
there has been a furious response to
authorities refusing to let independ-
ent candidates stand. One of them,
Lyubov Sobol , is three weeks into a
hunger strike over her demands to be
allowed to stand.
“There is not a single reason that
we should not be allowed to take part
in the elections,” she said in an inter-
view this week.
Opposition figures have called
for a new protest march today along
Moscow’s central boulevard ring.
Authorities suggested another option
further out from the centre, which was
rejected by protest leaders, meaning
the rally is “unsanctioned” and there
is the prospect of further mass arrests.
Alexei Navalny, the most prominent
opposition leader, was arrested before
last weekend’s rally and jailed for 30
days. On Sunday, he was rushed from
prison to hospital after suff ering swell-
ing and a rash that his personal doctors
said indicated potential poisoning.
He was returned to prison on Mon-
day, against the wishes of his doctors,
after the hospital where he was treated
told the media that there was no sign
he had been poisoned and had simply
been suff ering from hives.
Vladimir Putin has not yet com-
mented on the protests, but the offi cial
response is reminiscent of the last
major wave of protests in Russia, in
2011 and 2012. They culminated in a
huge rally the day before Putin was
inaugurated as president in May 2012.
Then, several protesters were put on
trial and given long sentences.
▲ Greta Thunberg criticised hate
campaigns by climate crisis deniers
Amanda Meade
Sydney
The climate activist Greta Thunberg
has hit back at an Australian column-
ist for writing a deeply off ensive article
that mocked her autism diagnosis.
The Swedish schoolgirl called out
the “hate and conspiracy campaigns”
run by climate crisis deniers such as
Andrew Bolt, a columnist for Rupert
Murdoch’s Herald Sun, turning his
insult that she was “deeply disturbed”
back on him.
“I am indeed ‘deeply disturbed’
about the fact that these hate and con-
spiracy campaigns are allowed to go on
and on and on just because we children
West and Justin Bieber , to back a #Jus-
ticeForRocky campaign and Donald
Trump to demand Mayers’ release.
The prosecution alleges that May-
ers, 30, threw Jafari, 19, to the ground,
after which he and his two companions
kicked and punched him and hit him
with a bottle. Jafari is claiming 139,700
kronor (£12,050) in damages for the
alleged attack, after which he need ed
hospital treatment.
Mayers and the two members of his
entourage have conceded hitting the
plaintiff but denied using a bottle. All
said they were responding to harass-
ment and have pleaded not guilty to
assault causing actual bodily harm.
Jon Henley
A Swedish prosecutor yesterday
demanded that A$AP Rocky serve six
months in prison for assault causing
Nuclear treaty lapses
A key international nuclear
disarmament treaty collapsed
yesterday amid recriminations
between the west and Russia.
The Nato secretary general,
Jens Stoltenberg , said alliance
members were facing a threat from
previously banned Russian land-
based cruise missiles that could
“reach EU cities with only minutes
of warning time”.
The 1987 Intermediate-range
Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty , signed
by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail
Gorbachev, in eff ect removed
surface-to-surface missiles from
Europe. The treaty lapsed after
Donald Trump’s administration
accused Russia of developing a
land-based nuclear-capable cruise
missile that the US and its Nato
allies say violates INF restrictions.
Russia’s foreign ministry said
the deal was terminated “at the
initiative of the US”. Dan Sabbagh
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