<p><strong>Maduro tightens the noose around the opposition:</strong> It's been well over a year now since most of the world's democracies recognized Venezuelan National Assembly speaker Juan Guaidó as "interim president." But despite that slight, and a deepening social and economic crisis, strongman president Nicolas Maduro remains firmly in power, while Guaidó seems more and more like a spent force. Now Maduro is laying the groundwork to undercut Guaidó further after a Supreme Court packed with regime cronies <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">replaced</a> the heads of two major opposition parties this week, placing them under the control of figures loyal to Maduro. While Guaidó's own party isn't affected, the two parties in question control nearly a third of the National Assembly seats, a major reason why the body remains the only branch of government that is not under Maduro's control. Taken together with last week's move to seat a new electoral commission under the control of Maduro loyalists, it looks like the regime wants to make it nearly impossible for the opposition to keep control over the Assembly in elections that are to be scheduled later this year. Both the US and EU — which recognize Guaidó as the country's legitimate interim president — <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-53080659" target="_blank">have condemned </a>the moves, but what are they prepared to do about it?</p><strong>George Floyd's impact on a verdict in Indonesia: </strong>US protests against police brutality and racism have reverberated around the world in many ways, but did they even echo into an Indonesian courtroom? A leader of the decades-old movement for Papuan independence and one of the "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/06/16/world/asia/16reuters-indonesia-rights.html" target="_blank">Balikpapan Seven</a>" was found <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/indonesian-court-announce-verdict-west-papua-treason-trial-200616234247673.html" target="_blank">guilty</a> of treason this week, for leading 2019 rallies in response to a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/23/indonesian-officers-racist-slurs-trigger-riots-papua" target="_blank">viral video</a> of Indonesian police using r<a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2019/08/19/todays-minkes-racism-at-heart-of-jakarta-papua-conflict.html" target="_blank">acial slurs</a> against ethnic West Papuan students. But the sentence was only 11 months behind bars, much less than the 17 years demanded by the prosecution. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/17/seven-papuan-activists-convicted-of-treason-after-anti-racism-protests" target="_blank">According</a> to one Papuan activist — who spent over 10 years in prison for waving the (banned) Morning Star flag — the judge was influenced by the global anti-racism protests sparked by George Floyd's death.
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