Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
Thailand legalizes same-sex marriage, allows couples to
wed starting in January
BANGKOK | Thailand’s landmark marriage equality bill was officially written into law Tuesday, allowing same-sex couples to legally wed.
The law was published in the Royal Gazette after endorsement by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and will come into effect in 120 days. This means LGBTQ+ couples will be able to register their marriage in January next year, making Thailand the third place in Asia, after Taiwan and Nepal, to allow same-sex marriage.
The bill, which grants full legal, financial and medical rights for marriage partners of any gender, sailed through both the House of Representatives and the Senate in April and June respectively.
“Congratulations to everyone’s love,” Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra wrote on X, adding the hashtag #Love Wins.
Thailand has a reputation for acceptance and inclusivity but struggled for decades to pass a marriage equality law. Thai society largely holds conservative values, and members of the LGBTQ+ community say they face discrimination in everyday life.
The government and state agencies are also historically conservative, and advocates for gender equality had a hard time pushing lawmakers and civil servants to accept change.
Bangkok Deputy Governor Sanon Wangsrangboon said last week that the city officials will be ready to register same-sex marriages as soon as the law gets enacted.
The legislation amended the country’s Civil and Commercial Code to replace gender-specific words such as “men and women” with gender-neutral words such as “individual.”
The government led by the Pheu Thai party has made marriage equality one of its main goals. It made a major effort to identify itself with the annual Bangkok Pride parade in June, in which thousands of people celebrated in one of Bangkok’s busiest commercial districts.
The organizers of Bangkok Pride announced on Facebook that it will organize a wedding for couples who wish to register their marriage on the very first day that the law becomes effective.
Dominican president warns of ‘drastic measures’ if anti-gang mission in Haiti fails
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico | The president of the Dominican Republic warned Wednesday that his administration would take “drastic measures” to protect the country if a U.N.-backed mission in neighboring Haiti targeting gang violence fails.
Luis Abinader did not provide details of what action he might take during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Gangs in Haiti control 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and they have grown more powerful since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. More than 3,600 people have been reported killed during the first half of this year, a more than 70% increase compared with the same period last year. The violence also has left nearly 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years and thousands have fled Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
Abinader thanked Kenya, which is leading the mission in Haiti with nearly 400 police officers from the East African country recently joined by nearly two dozen police and soldiers from Jamaica and two senior military officers from Belize. Another 300 police from Kenya are expected to deploy within a month.
The personnel, however, falls significantly short of the 2,500 pledged by various countries for the mission, which the U.S. government warns is lacking resources as it considers a possible U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Abinader said the current mission needs to be fully established so that free and transparent elections can be held. Haiti has not held elections since 2016, and a transitional presidential council was ordered to do so by February 2026.
“Practically one year from the holding of elections, the conditions are still not in place to do so,” Abinader said as he expressed concern over the future of the mission. “We cannot allow the effort made to date to fail. If that were to happen, Haiti’s collapse would be imminent.”
Earlier this year, gangs launched coordinated attacks targeting critical government infrastructure. They raided more than two dozen police stations, opened fire on the main international airport, forcing it to close for nearly three months, and stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing roughly 4,000 inmates.
The attacks led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the creation of a transitional presidential council.
“More than three years of instability in our neighboring country has put significant pressure on our own security,” Abinader said. “The Dominican state has shouldered a high responsibility in the Haitian crisis, far more than should be expected of it.”
Abinader said that last year, 10% of medical appointments involved Haitians and that 147,000 of 200,000 foreign minors in the Dominican education system are Haitian in origin.
“The crisis in Haiti warrants particular attention,” he said. “We can’t do it alone.”
Under Abinader, Dominican officials last year deported more than 170,000 people believed to be Haitians, according to government data. But the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration has estimated the number is closer to more than 224,000.
Activists have long criticized Abinader and his administration for what they say is the ongoing violation of the human rights of Haitians and those born in the Dominican Republic to parents of Haitian descent.
Abinader has rejected the accusations, reiterating Wednesday that “the Dominican government is profoundly committed to protecting human rights.”
In his speech, he noted that the Dominican Republic’s 19% poverty rate is the lowest in the country’s history, and the murder rate has dropped to 10 killings for every 100,000 inhabitants, compared with 13 in 2022.
The president of Haiti’s transitional presidential council, Edgard Leblanc Fils, is scheduled to speak Thursday at the U.N. General Assembly.
He and other government officials did not respond to messages for comment following Abinader’s speech.
Also on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who recently traveled to Haiti, met with other officials at the U.N. to discuss the mission. They talked about the status of contributions, the timeline of other deployments and the possibility of a U.N. peacekeeping mission as one option to secure funds and personnel.
A senior U.S. State Department official said the most urgent priority is to renew the mission’s mandate, which expires Oct. 2.
The official said the U.S. and some of its partners would like to make changes to the mandate to lay out a path “to become a more traditional peacekeeping operation,” but the Russians and Chinese, who supported the initial mandate, have expressed concerns about doing that.
The main benefit of modifying the mandate would be securing a more stable funding stream for the mission: “We’re optimistic that the renewal will happen in some form,” the official said.
Prime Minister Garry Conille said during the meeting that while Haiti’s situation has improved a bit, “we’re nowhere near winning this.”
He said about 25% of Haiti’s police officers have left the country, and of those still working, about two are wounded and one killed every week.
“The police force right now is underequipped to be able to handle this and will need further support and help and accompaniment if we’re to be successful,” Conille said.
He said he expects Haiti to hold elections by November “even though we know we will not have the highest level of security.”
During the meeting, Blinken announced an additional $160 million to help Haitians and U.S. Treasury Department sanctions against former Haitian lawmaker Prophane Victor, accused of supporting and arming gangs. Also sanctioned was gang leader Luckson Elan, accused of human rights abuses.
Neither could be reached for comment.
In a message delivered to officials who met to talk about the mission, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the first deployments were a positive step but warned gangs are still committing “egregious human rights abuses” and that funding for the mission “remains totally inadequate.”
“Improving security is crucial to creating the conditions necessary for these elections,” he said as he described the situation in Haiti as “one of the most disastrous humanitarian situations in the world.”
Tone deaf and color blind? Catholic Church struggles to keep accused abusers out of religious art
BRUSSELS | Little brings more heavenly bliss to the faithful or otherworldly wonder to casual visitors than ethereal hymns cascading amid the columns of Catholic cathedrals. That is, unless the composer is a known molester or someone accused of sexual abuse.
A few days before the highlight of Pope Francis’ visit to Belgium, a Mass at the biggest stadium in Brussels, the specially selected choir was rehearsing a brand-new closing hymn when it became known that the composer was a priest accused of molesting young women.
The hymn was hastily removed from the order of service and replaced with another composition but it was too late to reprint the official Magnificat booklet for the mass because of the number of copies required. The name of the alleged abuser, who died two weeks ago, is right there at the bottom of page 52, next to a request for donations, with bank account number, QR code and all.
It was the latest controversy in the Belgian church’s decades-long struggle to come to terms with an appalling history of sex abuse and cover-ups by its priests and clergy — a legacy Francis will confront in person when he meets with survivors during his visit.
“I pointed it out to them,” said the Rev. Rik Deville, a retired priest who has been a torchbearer for survivors of church abuse for three decades. “What happened with the hymn is only a symptom of a much wider problem. They still cannot deal with the issue,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
For over two decades, Belgium has been facing a continual cascade of abuse reports that officially total several hundred known cases but which, advocates say, are only the tip of the iceberg: Many of the victims and perpetrators have died, or the alleged crimes have exceeded their statute of limitations.
Deville said victims in villages come face to face with such issues on a weekly basis. The Sunday Mass scandal only started to roll early this week when an abuse victim pointed out to a local bishop that he had warmly eulogized the recently deceased priest-composer who had, in fact, been an abuser.
As a result, the Bishop of Limburg, Patrick Hoogmartens, announced he wouldn’t take part in celebratory papal events. It set off the chain of events leading to the change in the Mass program.
“It is only now because it is an international event that something is done about it,” said Deville. “But such things happen on a weekly basis in parishes across the nation that victims are confronted like that. And then nothing is done about it.”
Church authorities said the hymns were chosen in coordination with the musicians who were unaware of the case, which only came to public attention after the recent death of the priest. Hundreds of churches across Belgium still have hymnbooks with his works.
Archbishop Luc Terlinden promised the church would look into it as soon as the Pope leaves. “Every Sunday in every parish his songs are sung. So it is a wider problem. And I want to look into this as of Monday to see what we will do in the future with our policy on culprits, on facts out of respect for the victims,” Terlinden told VRT network.
Debates over what to do with art, be it music or paintings when the artist has engaged in problematic or even criminal behavior, have confronted the church and society at large for centuries, long before “cancel culture” became a buzzword.
Few people argue that Caravaggio’s religious masterpieces should be destroyed or taken down because of his criminal life: The man he killed is dead, as is he.
But in Los Angeles four years ago, the archdiocese banned the music of Catholic composer David Haas amid an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, allegations Haas strenuously denied.
And more recently, the mosaics of one of the Catholic Church’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, the Rev. Marko Rupnik, have come under scrutiny.
Rupnik’s Jesuit religious order expelled him in 2023 after more than two dozen women accused him of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuses, some while he was creating the artwork. Francis reopened a church investigation, amid suspicions that Rupnik had escaped punishment in Francis’ Jesuit-friendly Vatican.
Rupnik hasn’t responded publicly to the allegations, but his art studio has defended him and denounced what it has called a media “lynching”.
The issue about what to do with his artwork is not minor, since Rupnik’s mosaics decorate the facades and altars of some of the most-visited basilicas and churches around the world, including at Lourdes, France; Fatima, Portugal and even in the Vatican’s apostolic palace.
So far, the bishop of Lourdes decided to keep the Rupnik mosaics — for now — because there was no consensus within a committee of experts he formed about what to do with them. The Knights of Columbus religious fraternity decided this summer to cover the mosaics at its shrine in Washington D.C., and chapel in Connecticut.
But earlier this year, the head of the Vatican’s communications department created an uproar when he defended the continued use of images of Rupnik’s mosaics on the Vatican’s own news portal, Vatican News, even as a canonical investigation is underway at the Vatican’s sex crimes office.
He argued, as have others, that one must separate the art from the artist.
That argument didn’t sit well with the pope’s top adviser on child protection and fighting clergy abuse, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He penned a letter to the heads of all Vatican offices in June urging them to refrain from displaying Rupnik’s artwork as a gesture to abuse victims.
“Pastoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense,” he wrote in June. “We must avoid sending a message that the Holy See is oblivious to the psychological distress that so many are suffering.”
Man smashes Ai Weiwei sculpture at exhibition opening in Italy
ROME | A man smashed a sculpture by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei during the private opening of his exhibition in the northern Italian city of Bologna, in an act of vandalism that the show’s curator described Tuesday as a “reckless and senseless act.”
The large blue and white “Porcelain Cube” was part of the exhibition “Who am I?” inaugurated at Bologna’s Palazzo Fava on Saturday.
Italian media reported that local police arrested a 57-year-old Czech man, who said he was an artist. He was known for targeting important works of art in the past.
It is still unclear how the man gained access to Friday’s invitation-only event, but the museum confirmed that the exhibition opened to the public as planned on Saturday.
According to the artist’s wishes, the work’s fragments were covered with a cloth and removed. They will be replaced by a life-sized print and a label explaining what happened.
Ai shared CCTV footage of the attack on his Instagram account, which showed the man hanging around the work before moving suddenly behind it and pushing it so that it smashed on the gallery floor.
The man then held a broken fragment in a gesture of triumph before the museum’s security blocked him, pulling him onto the floor.
Ai himself is known around the globe for making creative statements destroying artwork. One of Ai’s most famous pieces, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, (1995)” captures the artist as he drops a 2,000-year-old ceremonial urn, allowing it to smash to the floor at his feet.
“The act of vandalism against Ai Weiwei’s work ‘Porcelain Cube’ is even more shocking when we consider that several of the works on display explore the theme of destruction itself,” said the exhibition’s curator Arturo Galansino.
“The destruction that Ai Weiwei depicts in his works is a warning against the violence and injustice perpetrated by those in power, and has nothing to do with this violent, potentially dangerous, reckless and senseless act,” he added.
Galansino described the attacker as “an habitual troublemaker seeking attention by damaging artists, works, monuments and institutions.”
—From AP reports
