Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

Separatists in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region vow to retaliate after Azerbaijan destroys air defence missile system.

Azerbaijan says it has destroyed an Armenian air defence missile system in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, drawing a sharp response from the separatists who vowed retaliation.

Azerbaijan and Armenia – part of the former Soviet Union until 1991 – are locked in a protracted conflict over the disputed region, and almost went to war in April 2016 following deadly border clashes.

“Azerbaijani forces destroyed on Monday an Armenian Osa air defence system and its crew in the Fisuli-Khojavend sector of Karabakh’s frontline in order to avert the threat it posed to Azerbaijan’s aircraft,” an official from the press service of Azerbaijan’s defence ministry told the AFP news agency on Tuesday.

The Nagorno-Karabakh separatist authorities confirmed that an Azerbaijani attack damaged its equipment, but said there were no casualties. It warned in a statement that the Azerbaijani “provocation won’t be left unanswered”.

“Azerbaijani forces’ provocation will not be left unanswered,” it said.

The incident comes months after several Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in February in with Karabakh troops.

In April 2016, at least 110 people from both sides were killed as simmering violence flared into the worst fighting in decades.

A Russian-brokered ceasefire ended the four days of fierce clashes but attempts to relaunch the stalled peace process since then have failed.

Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians – Azerbaijan claims they include regular Armenian military.

That war in the early 1990s claimed some 30,000 lives, and the two sides have never signed a firm peace deal.

Russia wields influence in the region and has sponsored mediation to end past clashes. It has stationed thousands of its troops and military hardware in Armenia, a close ally.

Source:Al Jazeera

Regulator says it expects website to comply with court orders for removal of content deemed to threaten security.

Facebook users in Thailand can still access their accounts despite worries that authorities would shut the social media site down if it did not remove “inappropriate” content, including pages containing alleged insults against the royal family.

Thailand’s telecoms regulator said last week it would give Facebook Thailand until Tuesday to take down 131 web addresses with content that violated its strict lese majeste (violating majesty, or insulting the ruler) laws or was deemed threatening to national security.

The threat prompted a flurry of concern in the Southeast Asian country – one of the most Facebook-active countries in Asia – that the social network would be blocked.

However, there would be no immediate measures to block Facebook, Takorn Tantasith, Secretary General of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission of Thailand, told reporters after the deadline, adding that bureaucracy had held up the process of removing the 131 impugned content items.

“We have the necessary documents from the court to block 34 URLs now,” Takorn said, following a visit to the head office of a grouping of internet providers in Thailand to check if Facebook had complied with the authorities’ removal request.

“Facebook has cooperated well in terms of taking steps to block the URLs that we asked them to in the past,” he added.

“If they cooperate, then there will be 97 URLs left which we have asked the court to issue warrants to block.”

Thailand’s military-run government has ramped up online censorship, particularly on perceived insults to the monarchy, since seizing power in a 2014 coup.

Last month, Thailand also banned its citizens from making any online contact with three vocal critics of the monarchy.

Under Thailand’s lese majeste law, criticism of the royal family is an offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Last week, Takorn had said that the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society would file a complaint with police this week to press charges against Facebook Thailand under the Computer Crime Act and commerce ministry regulations.

Thailand’s criminal court has ordered nearly 7,000 “inappropriate” web pages be shut down since 2015, according to the government figures.

Internet service providers are able to block access to most pages, but said some 600 could not be shut down because of encryption. More than half of these were on Facebook.

The UN Human Rights Council declared access to the internet to be a human right in July 2016.

David Kaye, the UN’s rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression has also encouraged companies to “push back” when states request a block on web pages.

“They should ask questions so they don’t just do it right off the bat,” he said in a recent interview with Al Jazeera. “They need to make the countries explain themselves at the very least, to mitigate the risk.”

Kaye has previously criticised the Thai authorities for using lese majeste laws “as a political tool to stifle critical speech”.

Source:Al Jazeera

Opponents of President Nicolas Maduro stage sit-ins and roadblocks across Venezuela on Monday to press for elections.

At least one person has died in renewed violence in Venezuela, as thousands of opponents of President Nicolas Maduro staged sit-ins and roadblocks across the country in a seventh week of anti-government rallies.

Luis Alviarez, 18, was killed during protests in the western state of Tachira after being shot by gunfire in the thorax, prosecutors said, without giving further details. That brought the death toll since the start of the protests to at least 39 people.

Demonstrators have been on the streets daily since early April to press for elections, blaming Maduro for an economic crisis that has caused severe shortages of food and medicine.

The president accuses protesters of seeking a violent coup, and says he is the victim of an international right-wing conspiracy that has already brought down leftist governments in Brazil, Argentina and Peru in recent years.

The government and the opposition have blamed each other of sending armed groups to sow violence in the protests. Police have blocked marches with tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons, while protesters have hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails, vandalised property and started fires in a near-daily series of clashes.

Sit-ins and roadblocks

On Monday, protesters stayed on Caracas’ main roads for six hours, then began to disperse under a heavy rain in late afternoon. Others vowed to stay rain or shine for the full 12 hours of the sit-in.

“I’m here for the full 12 hours. And I’ll be back every day there’s a protest, for as long as is necessary,” Anelin Rojas, a 30-year-old human resources worker, told the Reuters news agency.

“Unfortunately, we are up against a dictatorship. Nothing is going to change unless we force them,” Rojas added, surrounded by placards saying “Resistance!” and “Maduro, Your Time Is Up!”

In Tachira, some farmers were striking in solidarity with the protesters, while on Margarita island, opposition politician Yanet Fermin was detained while mediating between security forces and protesters, her party said.

In Valencia, three policemen were injured, authorities said, with one mistakenly reported by the local Socialist Party governor as having been shot dead earlier in the day.

The opposition, which commands majority support after years in the shadow of the ruling socialists, is more united than during the last wave of anti-Maduro protests in 2014.

Escalating crisis

The protests that erupted after the government-stacked Supreme Court issued a ruling March 29 nullifying the opposition-controlled National Assembly, a decision it later reversed amid a storm of domestic and international criticism.

The government is also setting up a controversial body called a constituent assembly, with authority to rewrite the constitution and shake up public powers.

Maduro says that is needed to bring peace to Venezuela, but opponents view it as a cynical tactic to buy time and create a biased body that could perpetuate the socialists’ rule.

“There’s a real situation of crisis in the country, and the opposition says they will not give up until elections are called,” Al Jazeera’s John Holman, reporting from Cucuta, in Venezuela’s border with Colombia, said.

Source:Al Jazeera

India urges top UN court to order Pakistan to stay the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav convicted to death by army court.

Lawyers and officials from India and Pakistan have faced off at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague over the impending execution of an alleged Indian spy by Islamabad.

Pakistan’s military sentenced Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, a retired Indian naval officer, to death last month on charges of espionage and sabotage. No date was set for the execution, and Pakistan has said his conviction and sentence remain open to appeal.

India argued in a preliminary hearing at the top UN court on Monday that Pakistan violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by denying Jadhav access to legal assistance.

New Delhi, which denies Jadhav is a spy, has asked the ICJ to declare the verdict illegal and order Pakistan to release him.

“It is clear that Mr Jadhav has been denied the right to be defended by a legal counsel of his choice. He has not been informed of his right to seek consular access,” India’s representative at the hearing, Deepak Mittal, said.

Dubbing India’s complaint as a “political theatre”, Mohammad Faisal, Pakistan’s representative, accused India of “time-wasting and political grandstanding”, adding that the court should decline jurisdiction in the case.

Ronny Abraham, the court’s president, said the tribunal would publicly deliver its decision on whether to grant an emergency stay of execution “as soon as possible”.

According to Islamabad, Jadhav confessed to being tasked by India’s intelligence service with planning, coordinating and organising espionage and sabotage activities in Balochistan province “aiming to destabilise and wage war against Pakistan”.

Mittal, the Indian official, said the charges against Jadhav were “concocted” and his trial “farcical”.

He insisted Pakistan has failed to respond to all Indian demands for information about the case, snubbing requests for documents, including the charge sheet.

But Faisal, the Pakistani representative, argued that consular access is not an absolute right under the Vienna treaty.

Pakistani lawyer Khawar Qureshi also told the court that a 2008 bilateral agreement between Pakistan and India allows either country to decide on consular access in cases involving “political or security” issues.

Jadhav was arrested in Balochistan in March last year, according to Pakistan, but New Delhi insists he was kidnapped from Iran, where he was running his business.

Faisal also showed the court a picture of a passport which he said was found in Jadhav’s possession bearing a completely different “and Muslim” name.

“India has been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to provide an explanation for this passport which is the most obvious indication of covert and illegal activity,” added Faisal.

The case has highlighted the recent sharp uptick in tensions between the neighbouring nuclear-armed rivals, with the two sides outlining starkly different accounts.

The ICJ is the United Nations court for resolving disputes between nations, and its decisions are final and binding. However, it has no means to enforce its rulings and they have occasionally been ignored.

In a similar dispute over the Vienna Convention in 1999, the ICJ ordered the United States not to execute a German national who did not get proper consular assistance – but the man was put to death regardless.

Source:Al Jazeera