The Guatemalan navy on Thursday dispatched a vessel to watch over a Dutch “abortion ship” carrying activists vowing to help women circumvent the nation’s longstanding prohibition on terminating pregnancies.
“The military will not permit this group to carry out its activities in the country,” the military said in a formal complaint to the prosecutor’s office issued on instructions from Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales.
The group, Women on Waves, said in a statement that their sailing ship was being “detained” illegally by the military, which it accused of “obstructing a lawful protest against the state’s restrictions on the Guatemalan women’s right to safe abortion.”
Photo: AFP
The arrival of the Dutch-registered ship in the port of San Jose, south of the Guatemalan capital, prompted fierce protests by Christian groups.
They disrupted a news conference by the activists, who counted 10 people from Brazil, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Guatemala.
“They say they are fighting for life and human rights, but it looks like murder has become a human right,” said Gil Hernandez, a seminary student from Cuba.
Port officials have ordered the activists to stay on board their ship, saying they had not declared the motive of their trip and therefore could not go ashore.
The group has pledged to offer abortions in international waters just off Guatemala’s coast over the next five days.
Abortion is allowed in Guatemala only in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
According to Women on Waves, about 65,000 illegal and unsafe abortions take place in the Central American nation every year. Set up in 1999, Women on Waves has generated controversy with its abortion ships in the past.
Founder Rebecca Gomberts confirmed that the Guatemala trip was the first since a 2012 campaign in Morocco, when the Moroccan navy blocked a harbor to prevent the group’s ship from docking.
For its mission to Central America, the organization said in a statement: “The ship can provide women with free legal medical abortions till 10 weeks of pregnancy after sailing to international waters, 12 miles [19.3km] outside Guatemala.”
Gomberts said the plan was to pick up five women at a time by dinghy and take them to the ship waiting outside Guatemalan waters.
Abortions would be induced with two pills. Counseling, treatment and aftercare would also be available for women seeking the group’s services.
An Austrian doctor on board, Christian Fiala, said the abortion by pills was 99 percent safe and approved by the WHO.
In past years, a Women on Waves ship has also visited Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain, prompting protests by pro-life groups in each country.
An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft has acquired imagery data covering all of Mars, including visuals of its south pole, after circling the planet more than 1,300 times since early last year, state media reported yesterday. The Tianwen-1 successfully reached the Red Planet in February last year on the country’s inaugural mission there. A robotic rover has since been deployed on the surface as an orbiter surveyed the planet from space. Among the images taken from space were China’s first photographs of the Martian south pole, where almost all of the planet’s water resources are locked. In 2018, an orbiting probe operated by the European
QUARANTINE SHORTENED: A new protocol detailing risk levels and local policy responses would be ‘more scientific and accurate,’ a health agency spokesman said China’s revised COVID-19 guidelines, which cut a quarantine requirement in half for inbound travelers, also create a standardized policy for mass testing and lockdowns when cases of the disease flare, showing that the country still has a zero-tolerance approach to the virus. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) solidified the position during a trip to Wuhan, where the pathogen first emerged in 2019, saying that China is capable of achieving a “final victory” over the virus. The “zero COVID-19” policy is the most effective and economic approach for the country, Xi said during the trip on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported. The first
A former South Korean Navy SEAL turned YouTuber who risked jail time to leave Seoul and fight for Ukraine said it would have been a “crime” not to use his skills to help. Ken Rhee, a former special warfare officer, signed up at the Ukrainian embassy in Seoul the moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked for global volunteers and was fighting on the front lines near Kyiv by early March. To get there, he had to break South Korean law — Seoul banned its citizens from traveling to Ukraine, and Rhee, who was injured in a fall while leading a special operations
Yogesh Zanzamera lays out his bed on the floor of the factory where he works and lives, one of about 2 million Indians polishing diamonds in an industry being hit hard by the war in Ukraine. With the air reeking from the only toilet for 35to 40 people, conditions at workshops such as this in Gujarat state leave workers at risk of lung disease, deteriorating vision and other illnesses. However, Zanzamera and others like him have other more immediate worries: the faraway war in Europe and the resulting sanctions on Russia, India’s biggest supplier of “rough” gemstones and a long-standing strategic ally. “There