Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

{Social media users express solidarity after attack on a Quebec City mosque leaves six Muslims dead and eight wounded.}

Soon after news broke that six Muslims had been killed in a shooting attack at a mosque in Canada’s Quebec City during evening prayers, people of all backgrounds took to social media to express their solidarity.

Gunmen fired on about 50 people inside the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre on Sunday at 8pm local time (01:00 GMT). At least eight people were also wounded in the incident.

In a series of posts, Twitter users denounced the attack against Muslims and offered condolences to the families of the victims.

Twitter user Gregory Brown described Sunday as a “sad day for Canada & the victims of this hateful act”.

“We must stand against racism and ‘other’ing, especially now,” he said in a post.

Mag Gardner, another Twitter user, urged her fellow citizens to stand together:

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, condemned the shooting as a “terrorist attack on Muslims in a centre of worship and refuge”.

“Muslim Canadians are an important part of our national fabric, and these senseless acts have no place in our communities, cities and country,” he said in a statement .

While many in the North American country shared words of strength to each other via social media, others expressed concerns about Islamophobia in the country.

The incident took place a few days after US President Donald Trump barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries – Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen – from entering the United States.

Trump’s move led to the detention of incoming refugees at US airports, sparking protests, legal challenges and widespread condemnation from international leaders, rights groups and activists.

And on Twitter, some users said Trump’s executive order – referred to by many on social media as “#MuslimBan” – prompted “xenophobia” beyond US borders.

Twitter users also celebrated the Canadian Muslims in government, posting images and profiles of civil servants.

{Sally Yates quickly dismissed after ordering government lawyers to stop defending US president’s immigration ban.}

US President Donald Trump has sacked the country’s acting attorney general after she took the rare step of defying the White House by refusing to enforce his sweeping immigration ban.

Sally Yates had early on Monday ordered Justice Department lawyers to stop defending Trump’s executive order, resulting in her dismissal just hours later.

“The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” the White House press secretary’s office said in an unusually caustic statement.

“Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.”

Yates had agreed to serve in an acting capacity until Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick, was confirmed by the Senate. The White House said that Dana Boente, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, would now be acting US attorney general until Sessions is approved.

Boente said in an interview with the Washington Post that he would enforce the immigration order.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, political analyst Michael Shure said there is a political precedent in Trump’s decision, and that the president was “well within his legal rights” to dismiss Yates.

But Shure said that the firing could pose a “stumbling block” for Sessions confirmation, with Democrats and some Republicans expressing their opposition to Trump’s order.

The decision came as Trump pressed into his second week in office defending his sweeping immigration ban in what has become a quickly escalating political crisis.

Trump’s order suspends the US refugee programme for 120 days and bars all immigration for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for at least 90 days. The intake of refugees from Syria – ravaged by a brutal war in which some estimates say 400,000 people have been killed – has been suspended indefinitely.

{{Chaos at airports}}

Trump has argued tougher vetting of immigrants is needed to protect the US from attacks but critics complain that his order unfairly singles out Muslims and tramples on the nation’s historic reputation as a welcoming place for immigrants.

Reaction to the order was swift, with protests erupting at major airports and other major cities, including the capital Washington DC, as customs officials struggled to put the ban into practise.

Trump denied that his order was to blame for weekend chaos at the nation’s airports, instead pointing to computer glitches, the demonstrations and even the “fake tears” of a senior opposition senator, Democrat Charles Schumer.

The president publicly shifted his focus on Tuesday, signing an executive action aimed at cutting regulations for small businesses and teasing plans to unveil his Supreme Court pick.

But the immigration ban remained at the forefront of his first fortnight in the White House – and officials were reported to be pondering more actions moving forward.

According to a draft document obtained by The Associated Press news agency, Trump is now considering an executive order that would target some immigrants for deportation if they become dependent on government assistance.

The draft order calls for the identification and removal “as expeditiously as possible” of any foreigner who takes certain kinds of public welfare benefits.

Such immigrants have been barred from the US for the better part of a century and they can already be deported. But the proposed order appears to signal a Trump administration effort to actively crack down on such welfare cases.

Obama wades in

Another draft order under consideration would make changes to several of the government’s foreign worker visa programs.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comments on the draft orders.

The furore has prompted Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama to wade back into politics for the first time since leaving office and just 11 days into the new administration.

A spokesman for the former president said on Monday that Obama “fundamentally disagrees” with discrimination that targets people based on their religion. Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis alluded to but did not specifically mention Trump’s order but added that Obama was “heartened” by the protests.

The former president had said he would give Trump room to govern but that he would speak out if he believed his successor was violating basic US values.

There have been only a handful of instances in US history of top Justice Department officials publicly breaking with the White House.

The most famous example was in 1973, when then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than obey President Richard Nixon’s order to fire a special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal.

The incident, which became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” was a public relations disaster and is seen as a turning point in Nixon’s administration.

{Four of the biggest mosques in the Netherlands to shut doors during prayers after attack on mosque in Quebec.}

Four of the largest mosques in the Netherlands said on Monday they will shut their doors during major prayer meetings after six people were killed in an attack on a Canadian mosque .

The Blue Mosque in Amsterdam, The Hague’s as-Sunnah Mosque, Rotterdam’s Essalam Mosque and the Omar Al Farouq Mosque in Utrecht said in a statement: “We feel compelled to close mosque doors during prayers”.

Additional safety cameras have also been set up at the Blue Mosque, which is in the southwestern suburbs of the Dutch capital.

Several thousand people attend prayers at the four mosques daily.

“Merciless acts such as in Quebec contribute to the growing global hatred of Muslims,” Said Bouharrou of the Dutch Moroccan Council of Mosques (RMMN) told the AFP news agency.

Six people died and eight were wounded late on Sunday when gunmen opened fire at a Quebec City mosque, in a shooting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “terrorist attack”.

“A mosque is an open building that should be accessible at any time of day to all people looking for peace and calm. But we have to be alert against these terror attacks. It’s disappointing that these stringent safety measures should be put in place,” Bouharrou said, adding mosque leaders were in close contact with the Dutch National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism.

The Netherlands will hold parliamentary elections in March with Islamophobic politician Geert Wilders leading in opinion polls.

Wilders has advocated closing all mosques and Islamic schools and banning the Quran, the Islamic holy book, if he becomes the country’s next prime minister.

Although no specific threats have been made against mosques in the Netherlands, Bouharrou said the RMMN was keeping a close eye on political developments, ahead of next month’s vote.

“There is considerable anxiety ahead of these elections. A politician like Mr Wilders has had clear viewpoints (about Islam) over the last few years,” he said.

In December, a court in the Netherlands found Wilders guilty of discrimination for leading a chant against Moroccans at a 2014 campaign rally.

He was convicted of discrimination but sentenced to no punishment on Friday for comments he made at a March 2014 local government election rally in The Hague.

When he asked supporters whether they wanted “fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands”, the crowd shouted back “Fewer! Fewer!” and a smiling Wilders answered: “We’re going to organise that”.

In 2015, Islamophobic harassment in the Netherlands rose sharply and at least 446 incidents of violent or verbal attacks were recorded, according to Dutch police. In 2014, police recorded 142 such incidents.

{At least three people die in a week in the overcrowded Moria refugee camp on Greece’s Lesbos island.}

A third person has died in a week in the Moria refugee camp on Greece’s Lesbos island, raising alarm about the grim winter conditions in overcrowded facilities that critics have denounced as deplorable.

The dead man is believed to be about 20 years old and from Pakistan, a police official on the island said. Another man who shared his tent was critically ill and taken to hospital.

The death at the island’s Moria camp follows those of a 22-year-old Egyptian and a 46-year-old Syrian who shared a tent and died days apart. Greek media reported they had inhaled fumes from a heater, but authorities would not confirm or deny that.

Greece’s migration minister Yannis Mouzalas ordered an investigation into the deaths, the causes of which remain unclear.

Steps would be taken “to make the situation more manageable,” he was quoted by the Athens News Agency as saying.

“We wonder how many deaths it will take for the government to wake up,” said Stavros Theodorakis, leader of the small centrist party To Potami.

At least 3,000 refugees and migrants are living in Moria, a hilltop former military base where conditions have deteriorated as they await for months for word on their future.

The United Nations refugee agency and other international organisations have urged Greece to improve conditions at its overcrowded facilities.

{{‘Wanton loss of life’}}

“Something has got to give. We cannot tolerate this wanton loss of life,” said International Rescue Committee Greece director Panos Navrozidis, acknowledging that conditions in Moria did not meet humanitarian standards.

As a mid-winter freeze gripped parts of the country earlier this month, thousands of asylum-seekers endured sub-zero temperatures. Summer tents on Lesbos were weighed down by snow.

Across Greece, more than 60,000 refugees and migrants, most from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been stranded since last March in formal or makeshift camps which US-based group Human Rights Watch has described as “deplorable and volatile.”

“We don’t know yet how they died but we do know the thousands stuck on the Greek islands have been suffering horrendous conditions in the cold, trapped by the failure of the EU to offer protection and dignity,” said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s Europe director.

Earlier this month, Germany announced its intent to start deporting newly-arrived asylum seekers back to Greece, despite a five-year suspension of such returns due to the poor conditions in Greek camps.

That decision came just a month after the European Commission recommended that member countries return refugees and migrants who first entered the EU in Greece back to that country.

The announcements have been widely condemned by rights groups and humanitarian organisations.