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.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) removed former minister of foreign affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) from his post after an investigation concluded that he had conducted an affair and fathered a child while serving as ambassador to the US, the Wall Street Journal reported. Top officials were told in August that a CCP inquiry into Qin uncovered “lifestyle issues,” the newspaper reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the situation that it did not describe. That phrase usually means sexual misbehavior of some type in the parlance of Chinese officialdom. Two of the people said the affair led to the birth of a child in
GUNNED DOWN: The Canadian PM said there were credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey on June 18 India yesterday dismissed allegations that its government was linked to the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada as “absurd,” expelling a senior Canadian diplomat and accusing Canada of interfering in India’s internal affairs. It came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described what he called credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an advocate of Sikh independence from India who was gunned down on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia, and Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a
SECURITY: Wang met with the US national security adviser in Malta over the weekend, with the US side noting the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday headed to Russia for security talks after two days of meetings with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan over the weekend in Malta. China’s top foreign policy official will be in Russia until Thursday for a round of China-Russia strategic security consultations, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement. The US and China are at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China has refrained from taking sides in the war, saying that while a country’s territory must be respected, the West needs to consider Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s
LOST BATTLE: The Varroa mite, which Canberra has called the ‘most serious pest’ to face bees, would cause serious economic damage, an ecologist said Australia yesterday abandoned its fight to eradicate the destructive Varroa mite, an invasive parasite responsible for the collapse of honeybee populations across the planet. Desperate to keep Varroa out of the country, authorities have destroyed more than 14,000 infected beehives since the tiny red-brown pest was first detected north of Sydney in June last year. The government said its US$64 million eradication plan could not stop the mite from spreading, and the country’s beekeepers should now prepare to live with the incursion. “The recent spike in new detections have made it clear that the Varroa mite infestation is more widespread and has
RSS