whlw: no. 296

• South Korea has a new president (and I don't like him)
• Capital punishment in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere
• How Greece is turning some refugees into criminals
• Plus: A hijab ban in one part of India, new heads of state in Chile, Hungary and Turkmenistan, another very controversial decision in Israel, some cool science-y stuff and some good news for the Rohingya in Myanmar

Now without further ado, here's what happened last week,
Sham 

what happened last week

• He's a Sagittarius (December 18, 1960)
• He's from Seoul; doesn't have a driver's licence (can't get one)
• He's not just a politician (member of the conservative People Power Party and currently the main opposition party in South Korea); he's also a lawyer and the country's former chief prosecutor (he even played a key role in convicting former president Park Geun-hye for abuse of power)

• In July, Yoon advocated for a 120-hour work week.
• Yoon also advocated deregulating food safety standards because, in his opinion, "poor people should be allowed to eat substandard food for lower prices", citing economist Milton Friedman's 1980 book Free to Choose: A Personal Statement as the inspiration for the idea.
• In August, he basically said 'feminism is the reason we don't have babies anymore'. Idaenam (term used in South Korea to refer to men in their 20s with negative tendencies toward feminism) are superfans of his. 
• In October, Yoon fan-boyed about former far-right military dictator of South Korea Chun Doo-hwan; "many people still consider Chun as having done well in politics, except the military coup and the Gwangju Uprising."
  • Good to know: Chun Doo-hwan is a much-hated guy in South Korea. He was responsible for a lot of human rights abuses.

• Zoom out: The United States government also executes people in 27 states. Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, too.

• Did you know that if you murder someone in Saudi Arabia, you can escape the death penalty sometimes? Only if the family of your victim accepts your 'blood money'.

• Refresher: A lot of refugees have migrated to Europe by boat, from Turkey to Greece, to seek asylum. Some of them are now convicted of 'people smuggling' and have to go to prison for a really long time. Greek police says, 'they were smuggling people on the boat they arrived to Greece in.' And the refugees say, 'I had no other choice. If I hadn't we would all have drowned.' They usually get put on trial super quickly, no real legal support and on the basis of flimsy evidence.

Two men from Afghanistan, Amir Zahiri and Akif Rasuli, are now on trial on the island of Lesvos, Greece for 'facilitating illegal entry' of undocumented refugees and 'provoking a shipwreck' on the island of Chios and convicted for 50 years. They say, 'we are innocent.' Last week, both wanted to appeal against their jail terms but it has now been postponed until April 7.

Why this matters: Before Covid-19, asylum seekers convicted of human smuggling accounted for the second largest category of inmates in Greece, according to this 2020 report. 

Wait, what? What if there is no driver?
"If there is no driver, the Hellenic police or coastguard will randomly pick whoever is at the helm of the vessel and name him the boat’s captain, automatically opening the way to very serious criminal charges," said Alexandros Georgoulis, one of the lawyers representing them. (I paraphrase Georgoulis) 'This is the policy of the Greek authorities. They do this and hope it will scare others off.'

But what if they were smugglers? How sure are we?
Well, Zahiri was with his pregnant wife and child when he crossed the Aegean sea from Turkey to Greece. His lawyers are like, 'this is not the profile of a professional people smuggler.' And Rasuli? “I still don’t understand. The court only allowed me to speak for one minute and then gave me 50 years in prison.”

What does the Greek government say?
Some members of parliament (short MEPs) are worried that the refugees accused of those crimes are getting fair trials. Four of them flew into Lesvos to attend last week's hearing, like Stelios Kouloglou, an MEP for Greece’s main opposition, the leftist Syriza party. He wants to raise these cases at the European parliament; like the case of Hanad Abdi Mohammad, a man from Somalia, who was convicted of people smuggling and now has to go to prison for at least 142 years.

In other extremely horrible news, 
This is Ayman al-Saleh. He died last week. He was four years old.

Why this matters: There are so many more 'Alan Kurdis' we don't talk or know about. 

First, the bad news

Israel: The Israeli Knesset (parliament) made it illegal for Palestinian spouses of Israelis to obtain citizenship if they came from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The parliament also blocks family reunification of Israelis and their spouses if they came from "enemy countries" such as Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

India: A court in the state of Karnataka doubled down on the 'no hijab in class' ruling. Some are worried that this could set a precedent for the rest of the country. Some 200 million Muslims live in this country.

France: The Corsican nationalist leader Yvan Colonna died a couple of weeks after being assaulted in prison by another inmate. The attack resulted in riots on the French island.

The neutral

Chile: Gabriel Boric is sworn-in as president of Chile, becoming the youngest person to serve as president.

Hungary: Fidesz's Katalin Novák is elected the first female president of Hungary.

Turkmenistan: Serdar Berdimuhamedow is sworn-in as president of Turkmenistan, succeeding his father Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

And now, the good news

Science

• 2022 EB5, a small 0.8-2 meter asteroid, was discovered by the Konkoly Observatory. It is the smallest asteroid to be discovered before impact.
• They found a 330 million-year-old fossil of an octopus in Montana, United States last week. 'We now think octopuses were around before dinosaurs.'