Tag: InternationalNews

{Beijing regards the islands as its sovereign territory and says it is entitled to necessary defensive installations.}

China defended its right on Thursday to put “necessary military installations” on artificial islands in the South China Sea, after a US think-tank said Beijing appeared to have deployed weapons such as anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems.

The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said its findings, made available first to Reuters news agency on Wednesday, were based on an analysis of satellite images of islands in the strategic trade route, where territory is claimed by several countries.

US destroyer sails through the South China Sea

The United States has conducted four freedom of navigation patrols – seen as a challenge to China’s extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea – in the past year or so, most recently in October.

“As for necessary military installations, they are mainly for defence and self-protection and are legitimate and lawful,” China’s Defence Ministry said in a statement on its website.

“If someone makes a show of force at your front door, would you not ready your slingshot?”

The United States has previously criticised what it called China’s militarisation of its maritime outposts, and stressed the need for freedom of navigation by conducting periodic air and naval patrols near them that have angered Beijing.

The statement said the construction it had carried out on islands and reefs in the disputed Spratlys chain was “mainly for civilian use”.

AMTI said satellite images of islands China has built in the Spratlys showed what appeared to be anti-aircraft guns and what were likely to be close-in weapons systems (CIWS) to protect against cruise missile strikes.

Other images showed towers that likely contained targeting radar, it said.

Beijing regards the islands as its sovereign territory, and has often said it is entitled to limited and necessary defensive installations.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing in Beijing he “did not understand” the situation referred to in the AMTI report.

South China Sea: Weapons systems installed on islands

“The Nansha islands are China’s inherent territory. China’s building of facilities and necessary territorial defensive facilities on its own territory is completely normal,” he said, using China’s name for the Spratlys.

“If China’s building of normal facilities and deploying necessary territorial defensive facilities on its own islands is considered militarisation, then what is the sailing of fleets into the South China Sea?”

US president-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20, has criticised Chinese behaviour in the South China Sea, while signalling he may adopt a tougher approach to China’s assertive behaviour.

The State Department said it would not comment on intelligence matters, but spokesman John Kirby added: “We consistently call on China – as well as other claimants – to commit to peacefully managing and resolving disputes, to refrain from further land reclamation and construction of new facilities, and the militarisation of disputed features.”

{First measures unveiled in over a year as pensioners take to Athens’ streets to protest paltry planned handout.}

Athens, Greece – Greece’s left-wing government announced its first counter-austerity measures in more than a year, only to incur the wrath of creditors and beneficiaries.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was hard at work convincing his eurozone partners at Wednesday’s European Union summit that his measures are affordable.

They are now his biggest creditors, owning $220bn of Greek debt, and said on Tuesday that they were suspending debt relief worth $47bn until Greece assures them it is toeing the line on agreed spending limits.

Meanwhile, in the capital Athens pensioners were furious that the government’s planned handout to them is a relatively small amount – Tsipras said he will spend $650m on 1.6 million pensioners earning under $30 a day.

With pensions cut by between 20 and 50 percent since austerity began in 2010, most of them earn less than the poverty level of $23 a day.

“I worked in construction for 42 years. I built Athens. It was a ruin after the Germans and the Civil War,” said Thanos Tzobanos, who travelled from Karditsa, in northern Greece, to be at the pensioners’ rally.

“We thought we were building a better world. Our reward is to go to hospital to die instead of having a reward of the sweat we put in for our children and grandchildren.”

With official unemployment still running at 22.6 percent, some studies find that about half of all households rely in whole or in part on income from pensions. Tzobanos’ pension was cut from $35 a day to $20 – an amount he shares with an unemployed son.

Despite the objections, parliament approved the handout by a two-thirds majority – far greater than the 153-seat government majority in the 300-seat chamber.

The package also includes delaying an income tax hike on eastern Aegean islands, which have borne the brunt of the crisis.

The government says its handouts do not cost more than $750m and it can afford them because tax revenues this year are more than $4bn above the target.

That puts Greece in line to achieve a primary surplus of $7.8bn, far above the targeted $3.6bn. The government sees this handout – along with 2,500 new jobs in health and education on the islands – as a much-needed stimulus to the economy.

On December 5, the eurozone lengthened Greece’s repayment on some of its debt and adjusted its interest.

The measures fall far short of a 50 percent debt restructuring recommended by the IMF, but they would achieve an estimated 20 percent reduction of Greece’s debt burden by 2060.

All this has now been suspended pending a review of the latest measures.

{Truce confirmed by Hezbollah comes day after a similar deal collapsed, leading to more violence in the war-torn city.}

Syrian rebel groups have said a ceasefire agreement has been reached in war-torn Aleppo, while a pro-government militia has said the evacuation of opposition fighters will take place in “coming hours”.

On Thursday morning, a media outlet run by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, reported that a ceasefire had been reached and that opposition fighters will be allowed to evacuate besieged rebel-held pockets of eastern Aleppo.

Hezbollah had previously denied reports of an agreement, citing “big complications” during negotiations.

Speaking to AFP, a Syrian military source confirmed the truce. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it will help evacuate the wounded from eastern Aleppo.

Deadly fighting broke out on Wednesday after a similar truce deal collapsed.

Under the initial plan, thousands of civilians and rebel fighters were due early on Wednesday to evacuate the east of Syria’s second city, scene of some of the worst violence in more than five years of war across the country.

The delay came on Wednesday morning when pro-government Shia militias demanded that civilians in Kafraya and al-Fua – two towns besieged by armed opposition groups – be evacuated, as well.

‘Dead lying in the street’

But cold and hungry civilians who had gathered before dawn to leave were turned away by pro-government militias.

“Bombing is ongoing, no one can move. Everyone is hiding and terrified,” activist Mohammad al-Khatib told AFP from inside east Aleppo.

“The wounded and dead are lying in the street. No one dares to try and retrieve the bodies.”

Syrian state television said rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas also had killed at least seven people.

Former al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham said on Wednesday that one of its suicide bombers detonated a car bomb at a regime position in southern Aleppo.

READ MORE: Battle for Aleppo – ‘The sound of bullets doesn’t stop’

Turkey said it would meet with Russia and Iran in Moscow on December 27 to discuss a political solution to the conflict in Syria.

Syria’s army has pressed a month-long assault that has seen it take more than 90 percent of the former rebel stronghold in east Aleppo.

Turkey has said those leaving would be taken to Idlib province, which is controlled by a powerful rebel alliance that includes Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

Sharif Nashashibi, a writer and Middle East analyst, said the Syrian government’s advances in Aleppo had created “a sense of emboldenment, that they can do what they want”.

“However, at least part of the impetus of this was the fence-mending process between Turkey and Russia, which brokered the ceasefire,” he told Al Jazeera. “If the ceasefire works it will contribute to that process, but if it fails it will strain it.”

{{Summary executions }}

The UN said on Tuesday that it had credible reports of at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, being executed in recent days.

And the UN’s Commission of Inquiry for Syria said it had received reports opposition fighters were blocking civilians from fleeing Aleppo and using them as human shields.

Aleppo, a cultural and economic hub second only to Damascus in importance, had been split between a rebel-controlled east and government-held west since 2012.

It was unclear how many civilians remained in rebel territory, after an estimated 130,000 fled to other parts of Aleppo during the government advance since mid-November.

Syria’s conflict has evolved from largely unarmed protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into a full-scale civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than half of the country’s prewar population.

Marwan Kabalan, a Syria analyst and associate political analyst at the Doha Institute, said he expects the Syrian government to focus its attacks on the Damascus suburbs after the fall of Aleppo.

“I think the regime will turn next to targeting the Damascus suburbs,” he told Al Jazeera. “Idlib is becoming a point of exile for fighters … I think it will remain like this till the very end [of the conflict].

“For now, the top priority for the international community and the opposition is to get the civilians evacuated from [eastern Aleppo].”

{Masked fighters and children among tens of thousands taking to the streets to mark armed group’s 29th year.}

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of gunmen and children waving mock weapons, rallied in Gaza celebrating the 29th anniversary of the founding of the Islamic group Hamas that rules the territory.

Loudspeakers blasted Hamas’ slogans through the streets on Wednesday as rockets mounted on pickup trucks rolled by. Hundreds of masked men marched and dozens of children wielding imitation assault rifles attended with their families.

Khalil al-Hayya, a Hamas official, delivered a fiery speech at the rally full of rhetoric against Israel. He also called for reconciliation with the Fatah party, led by Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas, but only under Hamas’ terms.

Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 after routing troops loyal to Abbas in bloody street battles. Palestinians have since been divided between Gaza under Hamas and Abbas governing parts of the West Bank. Several rounds of reconciliation talks have been held between the two groups, but these failed to achieve any breakthroughs.

Adnan Abu Amer, a professor of political science at Ummah University in Kenya, said he believes reconciliation with Fatah is the primary challenge facing Hamas. He told Anadolu Agency the situation was “a running wound” that contributed to Hamas’ isolation.

“Reconciliation [with Fatah] will give Hamas a historical and political role while improving the group’s external prospects as well,” said Abu Amer.

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza after it was taken over by Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since then, including a 50-day clash in 2014 that left more than 2,000 Palestinians – mostly civilians – dead.

Israel says the blockade was necessary to prevent Hamas from getting weapons. Critics argue it amounts to collective punishment. The group is struggling to pay salaries to its members because of the blockade.

Hamas has also succeeded in capturing a number of Israeli soldiers, including army sergeant Gilad Shalit in 2006, who was later traded for 1,050 Palestinian prisoners in a 2011 swap deal.

OPINION: Hamas is firmly in power, but it has yet to deliver

In Gaza, Hamas runs an expansive network of civil society and humanitarian organisations. This, say observers, is one of the reasons for the group’s continued popularity.

The current head of Hamas is Khaled Meshaal, who remains based in Qatar’s capital of Doha. His deputy is Ismail Haniyeh, who resides in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

In 2006, Hamas won a majority in Palestinian legislative elections. The results of the polls, however, were not recognised by either Israel or the US.

Some Palestinian factions, including Fatah, refused to participate in the subsequent Hamas-led government, accusing it of failing to table a viable political programme.

{Employees protest at dress code rules in Knesset building after colleagues blocked because dresses deemed too short.}

Skirt-wearing Israeli parliament staff protested at dress code rules in the building’s entrance after several colleagues were denied entry because their dresses were deemed too short.

Staff members say that security officers at the Knesset, or parliament, had in recent days started to strictly enforce rules on the length of skirts, without giving a reason.

At one point on Wednesday morning, about 50 staff members and some parliamentarians gathered at the Knesset entrance in support of those refused entry.

Many wore skirts above the knee with stockings underneath on a cold and rainy day in Jerusalem.

One older parliamentarian, Manuel Trajtenberg, stripped down to his undershirt in protest and at one point yelled, “You’ll all have to wear burqas!” Israeli media reported.

The Jerusalem Post quoted Trajtenberg as saying he supports a respectable dress code, but called the restrictions “discrimination against women”.

“We need to respect and not humiliate these amazing women who work with all their hearts,” he said.

About 10 to 15 women were denied entry for dress code reasons on Wednesday, but some were later allowed in, staff said.

“I’ve worn this same dress many times,” said Kesem Rozenblat, 30, an adviser to parliament member Ilan Gilon of the left-wing Meretz party who was refused entry.

“Maybe they’re scared of women’s legs, I don’t know,” she told AFP news agency as she stood in the security hall to enter parliament along with supporters.

Rozenblat said security officers did not measure her skirt, but a woman guard “simply looked me up and down and said it wasn’t appropriate”.

The issue emerged on Sunday when an aide to MP Merav Michaeli of the opposition Zionist Union was denied entry because of her skirt length.

Photos showed the aide, Shaked Hasson, wearing a blue dress that stopped above her knees, with stockings underneath.

{{‘Iran is here, in the Knesset’}}

Speaking to Israeli radio, Michaeli called the sudden strict enforcement an “attempt to impose fundamentalist standards”, referring to dress rules followed by ultra-Orthodox Jewish women requiring them to cover their arms and legs as well as their heads with a scarf.

“We don’t know what’s the reason for it but we won’t accept it – because we just want to work,” Michaeli’s spokeswoman Naama Shahar said.

On Twitter Michaeli posted a picture showing a number of female “counsellors” left at the entrance of the parliament building after being denied entry. “Iran is here, in the Knesset,” she wrote.

Knesset officials denounced the protest in a statement as an “organised provocation” and said security staff were just “doing their work to enforce a dress code that has been in place for years”.

Israeli media reported that te code prohibits T-shirts, shorts, sandals and short dresses or skirts.

However, women protesting outside on Wednesday said they were not told how short is too short.

“They just said we cannot go in like this today,” said Shira Amiel, a 27-year-old aide to Karin Elharar, a member of the opposition Yesh Atid party.

One person tweeted a photo of US First Lady Michelle Obama and Sara Netanyahu, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wearing dresses above the knee and said they would also not be allowed inside the Israeli parliament.

“This is not Iran,” said parliament member Gilon, who was outside in support of his aide who had been denied entrance.

“It’s crazy. I have a lot of very important things to do, but I spend my time with idiocy and stupidity.”

{King Salman says his kingdom will not tolerate any external “interference” in war-torn neighbouring Yemen.}

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has warned against external “interference in the internal affairs” of neighbouring war-torn Yemen.

The monarch also said on Wednesday his country would never accept that Yemen “becomes a base or a point of passage for whatever state or party to menace the security or the stability of the kingdom and of the region”.

Salman did not explicitly refer to the kingdom’s regional rival Iran, but Saudi officials have accused Tehran and the Lebanese Shia armed group Hezbollah of aiding Houthi rebels in Yemen.

International investigators last month said they had found a suspected “weapon pipeline” from Iran through Somalia to Yemen.

British-based Conflict Armament Research, which is primarily funded by the European Union, analysed photographs of weapons including assault rifles and rocket launchers to draw its conclusions.

Iran has repeatedly denied sending arms to Yemeni rebels.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has itself led an Arab coalition conducting air strikes against the Shia rebels and providing other assistance to local forces in support of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The rebels have killed at least 110 civilians and soldiers in rocket fire and skirmishes along the Saudi frontier. They have also fired longer-range ballistic missiles over the border at Saudi Arabia.

The Arab coalition, for its part, has faced repeated allegations of killing civilians. On Tuesday the United States blocked the transfer of precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia.

Salman’s son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 31, has had overall responsibility for the Yemen campaign as he holds the post of defence minister.

The Yemen intervention has cost Saudi Arabia billions of dollars despite austerity at home to cope with fallen oil revenues.

{Ceasefire reportedly holding in Syria’s Aleppo, but evacuation of civilians and rebels delayed for unknown reasons.}

An agreed evacuation of rebels and civilians from the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo has been delayed, according to activists in besieged parts of the city and a monitor.

Busloads of people were due to begin leaving on Wednesday morning as part of a deal with the government, whose forces have effectively taken control of the entire city after weeks of heavy fighting.

No rebel or civilian had left eastern Aleppo as of 5am (03:00 GMT), according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group that relies on a network of sources in the country to monitor the war.

The group did not give a reason for the delay of the evacuation. One Syrian rebel official told the Reuters news agency that pro-government Shia militias were obstructing the departure of people from opposition-held districts in a claim that could not be independently verified.

Zouhir Al Shimale, a journalist in east Aleppo, confirmed the delay, adding that the streets were mostly empty in the morning.

“People here are shocked [by the delay],” he told Al Jazeera. “We didn’t sleep last night waiting to leave.”

Explaining that civilians are fearful that the evacuation could be yet delayed further, Shimale said: “No one knows what the regime will do.”

Outside the scope of the evacuation agreement, the Russian government said at least 6,000 civilians were evacuated from eastern Aleppo and 366 rebels laid down their weapons and surrendured within the last 24 hours.

Russia’s UN ambassador announced late on Tuesday that all military action in east Aleppo had come to a halt and that the Syrian government was in control of the area.

“Over the last hour we have received information that the military activities in east Aleppo have stopped, it has stopped,” Vitaly Churkin told a heated emergency UN Security Council meeting.

“The Syrian government has established control over east Aleppo.”

Fears have been growing for thousands of trapped civilians as the opposition fighters make a desperate last stand in their remaining pocket of territory in their former stronghold.

“An agreement has been reached for the evacuation of the residents of Aleppo, civilians and fighters with their light weapons, from the besieged districts of east Aleppo,” Yasser al-Youssef, from the political office of the Nureddin al-Zinki rebel group, told AFP news agency.

He said the deal was “sponsored by Russia and Turkey” and would be implemented “within hours”.

Huseyin Muftuoglu, a Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that civilians would first be evacuated from Aleppo, followed by rebels.

“They would move towards Idlib, according to the plan,” he said. “There is no plan to take them into Turkey.”

Later on Tuesday, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek announced his government was planning to set up a new tent city to host “80,000 people fleeing eastern Aleppo”. He did not specify whether the “tent city” would be in Turkey or Syria.

News of the deal broke just minutes before the Security Council meeting on Aleppo began at UN headquarters in New York.

When asked by reporters shortly after the meeting if the fall of Aleppo was the end of the peace process, Staffan de Mistura, UN Syria envoy, said it “should be just the opposite”.

“We should be looking at this as a tragic opportunity to restart the political process.”

The UN earlier said that they received reports about pro-government forces executing scores of civilians in Aleppo, including women and children.

Eighty-two people were reportedly killed when Syrian forces took over rebel-held areas, it said.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have in some cases entered homes and killed those inside, and in others “caught and killed on the spot” fleeing civilians, Rupert Colville, the UN rights office spokesman, said on Tuesday.

“The reports that civilians – including children – are being massacred in cold blood in their homes by Syrian government forces are deeply shocking but not unexpected given their conduct to date. Such extrajudicial executions would amount to war crimes,” Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s Beirut regional office, said.

‘A surrender, not a ceasefire’

Haid Haid, a Syrian researcher and associate fellow at Chatham House, said the evacuation deal was more of “a surrender, not a ceasefire”.

“This situation will be similar to previous situations: rebels and civilians … would be allowed out, most likely to rural Aleppo or Idlib, and the Syrian regime will take over the rest of Aleppo,” he told Al Jazeera.

But with the Syrian government and its allies making steady progress on the battlefield, many were unsure that any deal would take place, Haid said.

“Negotiations have been ongoing for days now, and now the regime is sure that [it] is winning. So unless there is serious pressure from the international community on Russia on the regime, I think this deal might not even happen because they think they’re winning … why allow [the rebels] out if we can kill the rest of them there and now.”

{Mass arrests in various countries have pushed number to 259 so far, says annual census of imprisoned journalists by CPJ.}

More journalists have been jailed this year by governments around the world than at any time in nearly three decades, according to a media rights watchdog.

The report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonprofit group that works to defend press freedoms, says a total of 259 journalists have been jailed in 2016, compared with 199 at the same time last year.

That is the highest number since the group began keeping detailed records in 1990.

The numbers do not include journalists who have disappeared or are held captive by non-state groups.

After Turkey and China, Egypt, with 25 journalists incarcerated, is listed in third place by the report – the CPJ’s annual census of imprisoned journalists.

This year marked the first time since 2008 that Iran was not among the top five worst offenders.

The report says this is because many of those sentenced in a post-election crackdown in 2009 have served their sentences and been released.

{{Turkey in focus
}}

The CPJ says that at least 81 journalists were imprisoned in Turkey as of December 1, all facing anti-state charges.

A state of emergency is still in force in Turkey following a July 15 coup attempt, with a resulting government action against alleged coup sympathisers landing thousands in jail and forcing tens of thousands of people from their jobs.

“In Turkey, media freedom was already under siege in early 2016, with authorities arresting, harassing and expelling journalists and shutting down or taking over news outlets,” the report says.

Responding to the CPJ’s charges, Saban Disli, deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, told Al Jazeera the suspects in question were actually detained for committing crimes, not for doing their jobs.

“Arrest of even one journalist doing his job is a high number for us and it should not happen,” Disli said.

“These people, who are employed as journalists, commit crimes or praise outlawed terrorists in their articles, such as a suicide bomber who killed scores of people. Anywhere in the world they would be arrested.

“We don’t support these people to be under arrest during their trials, but some ran away, so the judiciary keeps them detained. I believe these things will be evaluated in a less biased manner when the state of emergency comes to an end.”

The CPJ report says that after Turkey, the worst offender in 2016 was China, where 38 journalists were in custody on December 1.

China had jailed the most journalists worldwide in the previous two years.

“In recent weeks, Beijing deepened its crackdown on journalists who cover protests and human rights abuses,” the report said.