PRAGUE (AP) — A new memorial opened on Tuesday in the Czech Republic on the site of a former Nazi concentration camp for Roma, after a communist-era pig farm was removed.

The official opening capped a process that took decades and was made possible after the Czech government agreed to remove the farm.

“It’s very positive news for me that the whole project was completed,” said Jana Horvathova, the director of the Museum of Romani Culture, whose organization is in charge of the memorial.

Roma and human rights activists had long demanded the removal of the farm from Lety, 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Prague, where some 1,300 Czech Roma were sent between August 1942 and August 1943 during the Nazi occupation of what was then Czechoslovakia in World War II.

At least 335 people died there, according to the latest research, the museum said, while most of the others were taken to the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp.

“Most of all, we’re here not to forget because to remember the horrors of the past is the best protection against living though them again,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said at an opening ceremony that he attended together with President Petr Pavel.

The government acquired the farm, which had some 13,000 pigs and was established in the 1970s, in 2018 from a private owner for some 450 million Czech crowns ($19 million). Previous governments failed to do it, citing a lack of funding.

After an archaeological investigation, the pig farm was demolished in 2022 before work began on the memorial. The site houses the records of memories of survivors, as well as details from the effort to remove the pig farm, which began after then-President Vaclav Havel unveiled a monument nearby in 1995.

Only about 600 of some 6,500 Roma living on occupied Czechoslovak territory in 1942 are estimated to have survived the war. The current 250,000-strong Roma minority faces widespread prejudice.

ANDRESITO, Argentina (AP) — For millions across the heartland of South America, bitter-tasting yerba mate tea is a beloved staple of social gatherings and morning routines. But here, in the steamy grasslands of Argentina’s northeast Misiones Province, mate is also a way of life — literally.

For generations, low-paid laborers known as “tareferos” have toiled in the forests of Misiones, the mate capital of the world. They get paid by the weight, so each morning, the race is on. From dawn to sundown, they cut a seemingly endless harvest of the hardy leaves and stuff them into white bags until they burst at the seams. After being dried, packaged and trucked off, the herbs spread to virtually every Argentine household, office and school — as well as to neighboring Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and farther afield.

For tareferos, mate is mostly a commodity, sold for $22 a ton. But workers also sip the infusion during breaks in the fields, its caffeine helping them stay energized. The grueling work in northeastern Argentina dates back to the arrival of the Spanish, when Indigenous tribes worked Jesuit plantations in what is now Paraguay.

“Yerba mate gives us harmony and strength,” said Isabelino Mendez, an Indigenous village chief in Misiones. “It’s part of our culture.”

Argentina’s government has long supported the mate industry with price controls and subsidies, keeping farmers’ incomes higher than they would be if subjected to free-market competition.

But this year, libertarian President Javier Milei’s draconian financial measures to fix the economy have thrust mate producers and tareferos alike into uncertainty. To downsize the state, Milei seeks to scrap price controls and other regulations affecting a range of markets, including yerba mate.

Small producers fear that big companies will set prices they can’t afford to match and push them out of the market.

Julio Petterson, a mate producer from the northern Andresito village, fears a repeat of the 1990s, when similar liberal policies wreaked havoc on small producers. “We barely survived,” he said. “Thousands of other producers went bankrupt.”

Workers say they’re bracing for mass layoffs.

“If the government deregulates prices, this will harm the producers who own the land and, ultimately, we’ll lose our jobs,” said 40-year-old Antonio Pereyra Ramos, who oversees 18 workers. “The economic crisis is hitting us hard.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — The emir of Qatar landed in Nepal Tuesday on his first-ever visit to the South Asian country, after visiting Bangladesh and the Philippines, where improving migrant workers’ conditions in the Gulf state and a Nepali student still held hostage by Hamas are expected to be on the agenda.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is set to meet Nepali dignitaries, including President Ram Chandra Poudyal and Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal during his two-day visit.

Qatar hosts an estimated 400,000 Nepali workers, most in construction and manual labor. Concerns about working in extreme heat — that could reach over 40 C (104 F) — inadequate living facilities and abuse have risen in recent years.

New York-based Human Rights Watch called on Qatar, Nepal and Bangladesh in a statement Sunday to prioritize labor protection for migrant workers during the emir’s visit.

“It is important … to go beyond exchanging diplomatic pleasantries over their longstanding labor ties and seize this moment to publicly commit to concrete, enforceable protections that address the serious abuses that migrant workers in Qatar continue to face,” the statement quoted Michael Page, the agency’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director, as saying.

The statement added that while Qatar-based jobs have allowed migrant workers “to send remittances back home to their families,” many experience abuse, including “wage theft, contract violations, and chronic illness linked to unsafe working conditions.”

Nepali officials are also likely to seek Al Thani’s help in freeing a local, Bipin Joshi, who is held hostage by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Joshi was among 17 Nepali students studying agriculture in Alumim kibbutz, near the Gaza Strip, when Hamas attacked Southern Israel on Oct.7. Ten of the students were killed, six injured and Joshi was held captive.

Though there has been no information on his condition or whereabouts, Nepali officials said they believed he was still alive.

Hamas’ sudden attack in October killed 1,200 people and some 250 others hostage were taken hostage. This has sparked a war that has so far killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, at least two-thirds of them women and children, according to the local health ministry.

Qatar has been a key intermediary throughout the war in Gaza. It, along with the U.S. and Egypt, was instrumental in helping negotiate a brief halt to the fighting in November that led to the release of dozens of hostages.

A spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday his country was undergoing an assessment of its role in mediating talks between Israel and Hamas over a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. He also said discussions were ongoing about Hamas’ presence in Qatar where the militant group has had a political office in the capital, Doha, for years.

France and Qatar mediated a deal in January for the shipment of medicine for the dozens of hostages held captive by Hamas.

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s far-right-led government wants to allow anti-abortion groups access to women considering ending their pregnancies, reviving tensions around abortion in Italy 46 years after it was legalized in the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

The Senate on Tuesday was voting on legislation tied to European Union COVID-19 recovery funds that includes an amendment sponsored by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. The text, already passed by the lower Chamber of Deputies, allows regions to permit groups “with a qualified experience supporting motherhood” to have access to public support centers where women considering abortions go to receive counseling.

For the right, the amendment merely fulfills the original intent of the 1978 law legalizing abortion, known as Law 194, which includes provisions to prevent the procedure and support motherhood.

For the left-wing opposition, the amendment marks a chipping away of abortion rights that opponents warned would follow Meloni’s 2022 election.

“The government should realize that they keep saying they absolutely do not want to boycott or touch Law 194, but the truth is that the right-wing opposes women’s reproductive autonomy, fears women’s choices regarding motherhood, sexuality, and abortion,” Cecilia D’Elia, a Democratic Party senator, said at a protest this week against the legislation.

Under the 1978 law, Italy allows abortion on request in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, or later if a woman’s health or life is endangered. It provides for publicly funded counseling centers to advise pregnant women of their rights and services offered if they want to terminate the pregnancies.

But easy access to abortion isn’t always guaranteed. The law allows health care personnel to register as conscientious objectors and refuse to perform abortions, and many have, meaning women sometimes have to travel far to have the procedure.

Meloni, who campaigned on a slogan of “God, fatherland and family,” has insisted she won’t roll back the 1978 law and merely wants to implement it fully. But she has also prioritized encouraging women to have babies to reverse Italy’s demographic crisis.

Italy’s birthrate, already one of the lowest in the world, has been falling steadily for about 15 years and reached a record low last year with 379,000 babies born. Meloni’s conservative forces, backed strongly by the Vatican, have mounted a campaign to encourage at least 500,000 births annually by 2033, a rate that demographers say is necessary to prevent the economy from collapsing under the weight of Italy’s aging population.

Meloni has called the left-wing opposition to the proposed amendment “fake news,” recalling that Law 194 provides for measures to prevent abortions, which would include counselling pregnant women about alternatives. The amendment specifically allows anti-abortion groups, or groups “supporting motherhood,” to be among the volunteer groups that can work in the counseling centers.

“I think we have to guarantee a free choice,” Meloni said recently. “And to guarantee a free choice you have to have all information and opportunities available. And that’s what the Law 194 provides.”

The new tensions over abortion in Italy come against the backdrop of developments elsewhere in Europe going somewhat in the opposite direction. France marked International Women’s Day by inscribing the guaranteed right to abortion into its constitution. Last year, overwhelmingly Catholic Malta voted to ease the strictest abortion laws in the EU. Polish lawmakers moved forward with proposals to lift a near-total ban on abortion enacted by the country’s previous right-wing government.

At the same time, Italy’s left fears the country might go the way of the U.S., where states are restricting access after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down landmark legislation that had guaranteed access to abortion nationwide.

Elly Schlein, head of Italy’s opposition Democratic Party, told a conference on women Tuesday that the country needs to establish an obligatory percentage of doctors willing to perform abortions in public hospitals, “otherwise these rights remain on paper only.”

BERLIN (AP) — One of the best-known figures in the far-right Alternative for Germany party said Tuesday at his trial on charges of using a Nazi slogan that he is “completely innocent.”

Björn Höcke went on trial at the state court in the eastern city of Halle last week, months before a regional election in the state of Thuringia in which he plans to run for the governor’s job. He is accused of using symbols of unconstitutional organizations, a charge that can carry a fine or a prison sentence of up to three years.

Höcke is accused of ending a speech in nearby Merseburg in May 2021 with the words “Everything for Germany!” Prosecutors contend he was aware of the origin of the phrase as a slogan of the Nazis’ SA stormtroopers, but Höcke has argued that it is an “everyday saying.”

There are no formal pleas in the German legal system and defendants aren’t obliged to respond to the charges. But Höcke did so on Tuesday, German news agency dpa reported.

“I am in fact completely innocent,” he said. The former history teacher described himself as a “law-abiding citizen.”

Court sessions in the trial are scheduled through May 14.

The 52-year-old Höcke is an influential figure on the hard right of Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

He has led the AfD’s regional branch in Thuringia since 2013, the year the party was founded, and is due to lead its campaign in a state election set for Sept. 1.

He once called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame” and called for Germany to perform a “180-degree turn” in how it remembers its past. A party tribunal in 2018 rejected a bid to have him expelled.

The Thuringia branch of the AfD is now one of three that the domestic intelligence agency has under official surveillance as a “proven right-wing extremist” group.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Parliament approved rules on Tuesday to ban in the EU the sale, import and export of goods made using forced labour.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

The move was driven by EU lawmakers concerned about human rights in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. 

The United States enacted a similar law in 2021 to safeguard its market from products potentially tainted by human rights abuses in Xinjiang, where the U.S. government says China is committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims.

China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a major cotton producer that also supplies much of the world’s materials for solar panels.

HOW IT WORKS

National authorities in the 27-country bloc or the executive Commission will be able to investigate suspicious goods, supply chains, and manufacturers. Preliminary investigations should be wrapped up within 30 working days.

If a product is deemed to have been made using forced labour, it will no longer be possible to sell it in the EU market and shipments will be intercepted at the EU’s borders.

KEY QUOTE

“Today, worldwide, 28 million people are trapped in the hands of human traffickers and states who force them to work for little or no pay. Europe cannot export its values while importing products made with forced labour. The fact that the EU finally has a law to ban these products is one of the biggest achievements of this mandate,” Maria-Manuel Leitao-Marques, a Portuguese Member of the Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the Parliament, said. 

WHAT’S NEXT

The EU Parliament approved the law with a large majority of 555 votes in favour, six against, and 45 abstentions.

It still needs approval from EU countries to enter into force – a final step that is usually a formality which approves laws with no changes.

EU countries will have to start applying the law within three years.

(Writing by Nette Nöstlinger, Editing by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Ros Russell)

MAILUU-SUU, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) – Dams holding vast amounts of uranium mine tailings above the fertile Fergana valley in Central Asia are unstable, threatening a possible Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster if they collapse that would make the region uninhabitable, studies have revealed.

Dams holding some 700,000 cubic meters (185 million gallons) of uranium mine tailings in Kyrgyzstan have become unreliable following a 2017 landslide. A further landslide or earthquake could send their contents into a river system used to irrigate Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajik farmlands, the studies at the Soviet-era radioactive waste disposal facility showed. That event would possibly displace millions in those three countries.

The studies, part of a project by the European Commission and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to reinforce the facilities, show that the type of waste involved cannot be safely contained in their current locations and needs to be moved away from the banks of the Mailuu-Suu river.

The Fergana valley, where the contaminated water would go, is the most densely populated area in Central Asia with 16 million people, many of whom are involved in the cultivation of cotton, rice, grains, fruit and vegetables.

“If a landslide causes the river to burst, the waste from two mine dumps will enter the water,” says Gulshair Abdullayeva, a manager of the Mailuu-Suu radiology lab.

“The environmental disaster would almost be comparable with Chernobyl.”

Studies have shown that the waste in those dumps is liquid, making it more hazardous, and it could flow into the river in the event of a strong earthquake, says Sebastian Hess, an engineer with German firm G.E.O.S. contracted by the Kyrgyz government.

“That would be a horrible catastrophe,” he said. “This water is used to irrigate fields which means agricultural produce would be contaminated.”

The dams’ foundations were weakened by water during a 2017 landslide which raised the river’s water level, bring it closer to the tailings, engineers have said.

The Bishkek government and G.E.O.S. estimate that 22-25 million euros would be needed to move the waste from the two unsafe locations to one further away from the river.

The area near the town of the Mailuu-Suu, one of the world’s biggest uranium ore dumps, was developed by the Soviet Union between the 1940s and 1960s. A factory in the town also processed uranium ore from other nearby mines.

(Reporting by Aigerim Turgunbaeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

By Sam Tobin

LONDON (Reuters) – A Palestinian rights group’s legal challenge to try to stop British arms exports to Israel over allegations of breaches of international law in the war in Gaza will be heard in October at London’s High Court, a judge ruled on Tuesday.

West Bank-based Al-Haq, which documents alleged rights violations by Israel and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, is taking legal action against Britain over export licences for weapons and military equipment.

Al-Haq – which is involved in similar cases in Canada and Denmark – says there is a clear risk that arms being exported from Britain will be used in violation of international humanitarian law, which makes their continued export unlawful.

Britain is defending Al-Haq’s case and its lawyers said in court filings for a preliminary hearing on Tuesday that the government’s processes for evaluating potential violations are “robust and detailed”.

The Department for Business and Trade’s lawyer James Eadie said the process had been “honed and refined” following separate cases brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade over arms exports to Saudi Arabia for possible use in Yemen.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has come under heavy pressure to revoke arms export licenses, as Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in Israel, has killed tens of thousands.

Al-Haq’s lawyer Victoria Wakefield urged the High Court to hear its case as soon as possible given the “truly desperate situation on the ground in Gaza”.

However, the group also accepted that a hearing could not take place before October after Britain said it needed more time to examine potentially sensitive information.

Foreign Minister David Cameron said earlier this month that Britain would not halt arms sales, having reviewed the latest legal advice on the matter.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Law enforcement officers in Bosnia arrested 23 people suspected of belonging to a “global drug kingpin’s inner circle,” including police and security officials, in a clampdown on criminal networks controlling much of Europe’s cocaine trade, authorities said Tuesday.

Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, and Bosnian officials said the suspects were detained Monday as security forces searched their homes and other locations. They are suspected of drug trafficking, money laundering and other organized crime offenses, officials said.

“Among the 23 persons arrested yesterday are not only accomplices, but also corrupt officials identified as facilitators of the network’s criminal activities,” Europol said in a statement.

The 23 are suspected of being part of the “inner circle” of a drug kingpin arrested in 2022 and sentenced to seven years in prison a year later in the Netherlands, it said.

Police seized guns, money, cars, laptops and other evidence during the raids.

Bosnian authorities had previously arrested two other people and seized 55,000 euros ($58,000), eight firearms, 11 police radios and money-laundering documentation, Europol said.

It said Monday’s arrests were “another milestone” in the fight against the alliance of criminal networks.

Agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI also participated in the operation, it said.

In Bosnia, the state security agency SIPA said authorities temporarily froze bank accounts belonging to the suspects and halted any financial transactions.

It said evidence against the group included encrypted phone conversations.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnian police backed by international law enforcement agencies raided dozens of locations and arrested 23 people suspected of working for the jailed kingpin of a European drug cartel, the European Union police agency (Europol) said on Tuesday.

Among those arrested during raids in Sarajevo, Mostar and Zenica on Monday were several high-ranking police officials suspected of organised crime and money laundering, Bosnia’s chief prosecutor said in a statement.

Suspects were being questioned to decide whether formal charges will be filed.

“Europol supported yesterday´s action which serves as another milestone in the fight against the so-called ‘super cartel’, an alliance of criminal networks that controls much of Europe’s cocaine trade,” a Europol statement said.

It said the main aim of the operation was to nab the inner circle of a Bosnian-Dutch druglord who was convicted and jailed in the Netherlands in 2023 but might still be steering the drug trade from South America to Europe and Australia.

The man, who Europol did not name, was among 49 suspects arrested in 2022 in coordinated raids carried out across Europe and the United Arab Emirates, targeting major alleged drug bosses.

Europol specialists as well as agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) backed the Bosnian police raids.

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; editing by Mark Heinrich)