Germany: We agree with America to shift focus with Iran from the nuclear file to issues of rights and to exert pressure on Tehran to stop repression

Germany: We agree with America to shift focus with Iran from the nuclear file to issues of rights and to exert pressure on Tehran to stop repression

    Monday, November 21, 2022   No comments

Germany agrees with the United States in shifting its focus away from reviving the nuclear deal with Iran to supporting the Iranian people in the face of the country's violent crackdown on mass protests, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

"We are indeed moving along the same tracks," the spokesman said at a routine government briefing.

"Currently, our focus is on supporting the Iranian people and putting pressure on the Iranian ruling regime to stop suppressing the rights of its people," he added.

This coordianted action seems to be in line with the US shift from reviving the nuclear deal it abondoned in 2018 to freeing Iran.

Germany, the state whose policy during the first half of the 20th century was the full extermination of the German Jews is now concerned for human rights in Muslim-majority countries.

US intelligence: parties within the government of Ukraine are behind the assassination of Daria Dugin

US intelligence: parties within the government of Ukraine are behind the assassination of Daria Dugin

    Thursday, October 06, 2022   No comments

The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies said that the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August, which killed Daria Dugin, the daughter of the Russian philosopher and thinker Alexander Dugin.

The newspaper quoted officials as saying that "the United States did not participate in the attack, whether by providing intelligence or other assistance."

They also added that they "were not aware of the operation ahead of time, and would have opposed the killing if they had been consulted," as they put it.

"We are frustrated by Ukraine's lack of transparency about its military and secret plans, especially on Russian soil," they said.

According to the newspaper, US officials warned Ukrainian officials against the assassination.

An accurate assessment of Ukrainian complicity, which has not previously been reported, was shared within the US government last week.

The newspaper pointed out that "the United States is concerned that such attacks - despite their high symbolic value - have little direct impact on the battlefield and could provoke Moscow to carry out its own strikes against senior Ukrainian officials."

It is worth noting that on August 22, the Russian Federal Security Service announced, in a statement, that "as a result of a set of urgent operational search procedures, the service has uncovered the details of the case of the murder of Russian journalist Daria Dugin, born in 1992."

Environmental degradation is a crime whose effects are disproportionately shouldered by the poor and the future of humanity--the childen

Environmental degradation is a crime whose effects are disproportionately shouldered by the poor and the future of humanity--the childen

    Monday, August 29, 2022   No comments

Pardon this editorial rant; but it has to be said; for the lives lost, and the lives to be lost, the lives that did not have to be lost if it were not for our greed and gluttony.

-- The Editors

270,000 Flee Myanmar in Two Weeks: UN Migration Agency in Bangladesh Scales Up Emergency Response

270,000 Flee Myanmar in Two Weeks: UN Migration Agency in Bangladesh Scales Up Emergency Response

    Sunday, September 10, 2017   No comments

Bangladesh, - IOM, the UN Migration Agency, today (8/9) confirmed that 270,000 people have fled violence in Myanmar to seek safety in Bangladesh since 25 August.

IOM, which yesterday allocated USD 1 million from its emergency funds to boost the humanitarian response in Cox’s Bazar, is working with the government and partners to scale up its delivery of lifesaving aid to those most in need. Immediate priorities have been identified as shelter, drinking water, food and medical assistance.

The UN Central Emergency Response Fund yesterday also announced a further USD 7 million to help the thousands of destitute people who continue to flood into Bangladesh.

“I came here three days back along with my husband and four children. It took us six days to walk here, and we had very little to eat. I couldn’t bring anything with me. Even the clothes we had with us, we lost on the way. We now desperately need food and shelter. We need materials to cook with and a place to wash. We haven’t been able to get anything yet, except this meal today,” said Najuma Begum, speaking to IOM staff collecting needs data at a food distribution centre near the Kutupalong makeshift settlement.

While Najuma’s family managed to get a ready cooked meal at the food distribution centre, many people have now set up camp in areas which are too far from established support centres to receive help. Most families are living in the open, in the rain, with children and the elderly at particularly high risk of getting sick.

The number of new arrivals has increased considerably in part due to the joint needs assessment carried out on 6 September, when inter-agency teams visited more host community locations. Arrivals identified in previously unvisited host community settings tally 75,000 in 9 locations visited. At the same time, arrival numbers in the previously known makeshift locations also continue to increase, and over 10,000 are staying in Teknaf Municipality area.

An estimated 130,000 of the new arrivals are now living in the registered refugee camps and three makeshift settlements of Kutupalong, Leda and Balukhali. Another estimated 90,000 people are sheltering in host communities, and nearly 50,000 have settled in new spontaneous settlements which are expanding quickly with people still searching for space to make temporary shelters.

Continue reading...

 

 

The Rohingya Genocide

The Rohingya Genocide

    Saturday, September 09, 2017   No comments

Nobel laureate issues heartfelt letter to fellow peace prize winner calling for her to speak up for Rohingya in Myanmar
  
  The Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has called on Aung San Suu Kyi to end military-led operations against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority that have driven 270,000 refugees from the country in the past fortnight.
 
The 85-year old archbishop said the “unfolding horror” and “ethnic cleansing” in the country’s Rahkine region had forced him to speak out against the woman he admired and considered “a dearly beloved sister”.
...

On Tuesday, the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said the government clearance operations in Rakhine “risked” ethnic cleansing. A Change.org petition to revoke Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel peace prize had reached 377,332 signatures by Friday. source

...

Myanmar's security forces have been attacking the Rohingya Muslims and torching their villages since October 2016 in a bid to push them out of the western state of Rakhine.

The attacks have intensified since August 25, following alleged armed attacks on police and military posts in Rakhine.

Prior to that, the Muslims were frequent targets of Buddhist mobs. Tens of thousands of Rohingya were driven from their homes in another wave of violence in 2012.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, confirmed Thursday that some 164,000 Rohingya Muslims had fled Myanmar’s Rakhine to seek refuge in camps in Bangladesh since the harsh crackdown against them.

The UNHCR spokeswoman, Vivian Tan, said the figure could go up further as thousands were still crossing the border.

...

World's largest stateless community

The Rohingya are the world's largest stateless community and one of its most persecuted minorities.

Using a dialect similar to that spoken in Chittagong in southeast Bangladesh, the Sunni Muslims are loathed by many in majority-Buddhist Myanmar who see them as illegal immigrants and call them "Bengali" - even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

They are not officially recognised as an ethnic group, partly due to a 1982 law stipulating that minorities must prove they lived in Myanmar prior to 1823 - before the first Anglo-Burmese war - to obtain nationality.

Most live in the impoverished western state of Rakhine but are denied citizenship and harassed by restrictions on movement and work.

More than half a million also live in Bangladeshi camps, although Dhaka only recognises a small portion as refugees.

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine state set up shelters at a refugee camp at Unchiprang near the Bangladeshi border town of Teknaf. (AFP Photo)

    Over 250,000 refugees enter Bangladesh from Myanmar

Sectarian violence between the Rohingya and local Buddhist communities broke out in 2012, leaving more than 100 dead and the state segregated along religious lines.

Then last October things got much worse.

...
Who are the Rohingya?

Described as the world’s most persecuted people, 1.1 million Rohingya people live in Myanmar. They live predominately in Rakhine state, where they have co-existed uneasily alongside Buddhists for decades.

Rohingya people say they are descendants of Muslims, perhaps Persian and Arab traders, who came to Myanmar generations ago. Unlike the Buddhist community, they speak a language similar to the Bengali dialect of Chittagong in Bangladesh.

The Rohingya are reviled by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants and they suffer from systematic discrimination. The Myanmar government treats them as stateless people, denying them citizenship. Stringent restrictions have been placed on Rohingya people’s freedom of movement, access to medical assistance, education and other basic services.

After centuries in Myanmar, it's estimated that half their population has fled to Bangladesh with horror stories of rapes, killings and house burnings.
 ...


Read also, Who are the Rohingya and why are they fleeing Myanmar?




Desmond Tutu condemns Aung San Suu Kyi: 'Silence is too high a price'

UN report on yemen humanitarian crisis: “Either stop the war or fund the crisis. Option three is, do both of them”

UN report on yemen humanitarian crisis: “Either stop the war or fund the crisis. Option three is, do both of them”

    Tuesday, September 05, 2017   No comments

WFP’s Executive Director David Beasley: “Saudi Arabia should fund 100 percent of the needs of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen... Either stop the war or fund the crisis. Option three is, do both of them.”

The United Nations human rights chief has called for an independent, international investigation into the allegations of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Yemen, in a new report published today.

“An international investigation would go a long way in putting on notice the parties to the conflict that the international community is watching and determined to hold to account perpetrators of violations and abuses,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein in a news release on the report.

“I appeal to all the parties to the conflict, those supporting them and those with influence over them to have mercy on the people of Yemen, and to take immediate measures to ensure humanitarian relief for civilians and justice for the victims of violations,” he added.

    
According to the report, which records violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law since September 2014, such acts continue unabated in Yemen, with civilians suffering deeply the consequences of an “entirely man-made catastrophe.”

Between March 2015, when the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) began reporting on civilian casualties, and 30 August, at least 5,144 civilians have been documented as killed and more than 8,749 injured.

Children accounted for 1,184 of those who were killed and 1,592 of those injured. Coalition airstrikes continued to be the leading cause of child casualties as well as overall civilian casualties. Some 3,233 of the civilians killed were reportedly killed by Coalition forces.

The report states that the past year witnessed airstrikes against funeral gatherings and small civilian boats, in addition to markets, hospitals, schools, residential areas, and other public and private infrastructure.

The Popular Committees affiliated with the Houthis and the army units loyal to former President Abdullah Saleh (the Houthi/Saleh forces) were responsible for some 67 per cent of the 1,702 cases of recruitment of children for use in hostilities.

The report stresses that “the minimal efforts towards accountability in the past year are wholly insufficient to respond to the gravity of violations and abuses continuing every day in Yemen,” adding that the National Commission established to investigate human rights violations in Yemen is not perceived to be impartial.

The report also found that the governorates most affected by the conflict were Aden, Al-Hudaydah, Sana'a and Taizz.

The humanitarian crisis – with nearly 18.8 million people in need of humanitarian aid and 7.3 million on the brink of famine – is a direct result of the behaviour of parties to the conflict, including indiscriminate attacks, attacks against civilians and protected objects, sieges, blockades and restrictions on movement, the report states.

“In many cases, information obtained…suggested that civilians may have been directly targeted, or that operations were conducted heedless of their impact on civilians without regard to the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack. In some cases, information suggested that no actions were taken to mitigate the impact of operations on civilians,” the report states. Source