Tag: InternationalNews

{Labour ministry urges patience with reforms, but Amnesty International says changes are insufficient.}

The Qatari government has introduced a new labour law which it says will bring “tangible benefits” to workers in the country.

The new regulations, aimed at making it easier for migrant workers to change jobs and leave the country, came into effect on Tuesday.

“The new law is the latest step towards improving and protecting the rights of every expatriate worker in Qatar,” Issa al-Nuaimi, labour minister, said in a statement.

The Arab Gulf state is one of the wealthiest in the world, but its treatment of foreign workers from countries such as India, Nepal and Bangladesh has come under scrutiny as it spends billions of dollars on building new infrastructure in the run-up to hosting the 2022 football World Cup.

A work-sponsorship system, known as Kefala, currently requires all foreign workers to obtain their employer’s consent to travel abroad or switch jobs, a measure that rights groups say leaves workers prone to exploitation and forced labour.

The reforms will establish the creation of state-run “grievance committees” to which workers can appeal if employers deny them permission.

They will also allow workers who have completed contracts to change jobs freely and imposes fines of up to 25,000 riyals ($6,860) on businesses that confiscate employees’ passports.

Ashish [not his real name], a steel worker in Doha since 2007, said it was too soon for him to know if the new law would improve the situation.

Although he is in possession of his passport, the 36-year-old from India’s Uttar Pradesh state said overtime pay was an issue, and that his overtime pay was often late by as much as six months.

“Sub-contractors are rubbish; they don’t pay on time. They withhold salaries up to six months,” he said.

Still, Ashish is optimistic about one aspect of the new law.

“Even if it’s difficult to seek a no-objection letter from my employer, as long as the new company I’m applying to is ready to give me a visa, I can exit Doha and come back in five to 10 days,” he said.

Amnesty International said in a statement that the new law would “barely scratch the surface of an abusive system”.

The UK-based rights group called on Qatar to abolish exit permits altogether and ban passport confiscation, as leaving those mechanisms in place leaves workers “at serious risk of human rights abuses”.

Amnesty International has been among the vocal critics of the country’s labour laws, calling for improvements that would specifically target working and living conditions of construction workers.

“We urge the international community not to draw any definitive conclusions until there has been time to see the new law in action,” minister Nuaimi said.

Qatar is building hotels, a port, a financial district and several football stadiums linked by desert highways as part of a $200bn construction boom funded by natural gas revenues that have declined since global oil prices fell in mid-2014.

A workforce of 2.1 million foreigners outnumbers Qatari citizens by about 10 to one. Unions and labour protests are banned.

The UN’s International Labour Organization will issue a report in March 2017, determining whether Qatar is taking sufficient steps to prevent forced labour.

{Syrian government supporters in the city’s west celebrate as rebel lines fall amid reports of summary executions.}

The Syrian army and its allied militias are pushing deeper into east Aleppo as rebel lines collapse and their last urban stronghold looks closer than ever to falling.

The fighters withdrew from at least six more east Aleppo neighbourhoods on Monday in the face of government advances, including al-Salheen, al-Firdous and Bustan al-Qasr, once one of the most fortified districts under opposition control.

Residents told Al Jazeera that government forces summarily executed dozens of civilians over alleged connections to opposition fighters. The figure could not be independently verified by Al Jazeera.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 60 people were killed by gunfire or shelling on Monday as government forces pushed into Aleppo’s remaining opposition-held districts.

“The battle of Aleppo has reached its end. It is just a matter of a small period of time, no more, no less … it’s a total collapse,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, the UK-based monitoring network’s director.

Syrian refugees in the Turkish border city of Gaziantep and the capital, Istanbul, held solidarity protests on Monday night in support of the people in east Aleppo, as the government stepped up its bombardment.

Syrian state TV reported that pro-government forces were in control of 99 percent of what once was opposition-held Aleppo.

The pro-government TV network Alikbariyah Syria broadcast footage of celebrations in the streets of west Aleppo, as people handed out chocolates and congratulated each other on “the victory”.

“The joy of the people and the army are one,” said one driver, wearing military fatigues.

READ MORE: Hundreds of men from east Aleppo go ‘missing’

Earlier in the day, Lieutenant-General Zaid al-Saleh, head of the Aleppo security committee, announced in the recently recaptured neighbourhood of Sheikh Saeed that the government push to retake the entire city was in its final stages.

“The battle in east Aleppo should end quickly. They [opposition fighters] don’t have much time. They either have to surrender or die,” he said.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government’s takeover of the entire city would mark its greatest victory since the war began in 2011.

{{Dire conditions}}

Opposition fighters and tens of thousands of civilians are now confined to just a handful of neighbourhoods in the city’s southeast, including the Sukkari and Mashhad districts.

Salim Abu al-Nassar, a dentist from Bustan al-Qasr in east Aleppo, put out a video appeal on social media after fleeing to al-Ansari neighbourhood, calling for a ceasefire and describing the dire conditions in the small portion of the city left in opposition control.

“Within eight kilometres square, we have over 80,000 human beings … everyone is piled on top of each other … This area may witness a real massacre if [the army] decides to move here,” he said.

“This may be my last call. I hope someone will listen somewhere around the world and relate that to their government so they can stop the shelling, the war, this madness. We hope to live. We love life. I hope we can meet again.”

Lina al-Shami, an architect and well-known social media activist from east Aleppo, also put out a “last message” on Twitter.

Syria’s state TV said on Sunday that more than 70,000 of eastern Aleppo’s estimated 275,000 residents had fled in recent days, mostly to government-held western Aleppo districts.

Scores of men who fled from the east to the west have been detained by the Syrian authorities and forced into military conscription, reports say.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday that 728 Syrian fighters had laid down their weapons over the past 24 hours and relocated to western Aleppo.

The Russia-backed ground offensive, which began on November 26, followed an intensive aerial bombing campaign that knocked out most of the medical facilities, targeted civil defence and municipal vehicles and blocked roads with rubble.

The eastern Aleppo area has also been cut off from outside assistance since July by a government siege.

Opposition fighters captured the eastern half of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial capital, in 2012.

{{Delayed ceasefire}}

The US state department said on Monday that Russia told the US it wanted a ceasefire in east Aleppo delayed for several days, a proposal the agency said was unacceptable in view of the continued attacks on civilians.

“Rather than accepting the US proposal for an immediate cessation, the Russians informed us that a cessation could not start for several days, meaning that the assault by the regime and its supporters will continue until any agreement will go into effect,” John Kirby, state department spokesman, said in response to a question about weekend talks in Geneva.

“Given the dire situation in Aleppo and the reports of continued attacks on civilians and infrastructure, this was just simply not acceptable.”

Kirby said US and Russian officials were continuing their talks in the Swiss city, although there was for now an unbridgeable gap between their positions.

“Our teams are still trying to work this out,” he said. “While we would still like to get there … I think we’re certainly at an impasse right now.”

{Former French finance minister cites “state’s interest” in approving $425m payment to businessman Bernard Tapie in 2008.}

Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief, has gone on trial in France for negligence over a large state payment to a businessman in 2008 while she served as the country’s finance minister.

Lagarde has denied the charges of negligence, and has argued she was acting “in the state’s interest” in approving a $425m payout to Bernard Tapie, the former owner Adidas, following the sale of the sportswear company.

Lagarde told a judge presiding over the case on Monday that she “didn’t plan to keep quiet”, when she was advised of her right to remain silent. Her defence team is expected to push for an adjournment.

Tapie, now 73, owned Adidas between 1990 and 1993 but lost control of the firm when he went bankrupt.

He sold it to state-owned bank Credit Lyonnais for 315.5 million euros ($335m) in February 1993.

{{Long-running battle}}

The bank sold it again the year after at 701 million euros ($746m), leading Tapie to claim he had been cheated.

Lagarde, upon becoming finance minister in 2007 under then president Nicolas Sarkozy, ordered that Tapie’s long-running battle with the state be resolved by arbitration.

Investigators suspect that the whole process was rigged in favour of Tapie, who had close connections with political circles, including Sarkozy.

Civil courts have since quashed the unusually generous award, declared the arbitration process and deal fraudulent and ordered Tapie to pay the back the money.

Investigating judges say Lagarde committed a series of serious errors when she made the arbitration choice and also, later on, when she refused to challenge the deal, suggesting that she may have been influenced by the political connections between Tapie and Sarkozy, according to court documents.

“Ms Lagarde’s behaviour proceeds not only from a questionable carelessness and precipitation, but also from a conjunction of faults which, by their nature, number and seriousness, exceed the level of mere negligence,” the judges wrote at the end of their investigation.

Separately, a criminal investigation into the case is still ongoing. In that case, Tapie, his lawyer, one of the arbitrators and Lagarde’s chief of staff at the ministry, Stephane Richard, now the chief executive of the telecom company Orange, were given criminal charges of gang-related fraud, and police searched Lagarde’s Paris home.

Tapie later got another charge of misappropriation of funds.

If found guilty, Lagarde could receive a maximum one-year prison sentence and a $15,900 fine.

‘Unintentional offence’

In a documentary broadcast on French television on Sunday, Lagarde said she was “confident and determined”.

“I tried to do my work the best I could within the limits of what I knew,” she told France 2.

“Negligence is an unintentional offence. I think all of us have been a little bit negligent at some stage of our lives.”

Lagarde’s trial and possible conviction may raise concern about her ability to remain the head of the IMF.

The Washington-based institution’s credibility was already shaken when her predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also a French citizen, was forced to resign amid sexual assault allegations in 2011.

The IMF’s board has so far supported Lagarde at all stages of the French legal proceedings, which began the month after her appointment in July 2011.

{National Action, which praised killer of MP Jo Cox and runs a Miss Hitler pageant, added to list of banned groups.}

The British government has announced plans to ban a Neo-Nazi group that praised the killer of MP Jo Cox and calls for a “White Jihad”.

An order to proscribe National Action as a terrorist group was confirmed by Amber Rudd, the UK home secretary, on Monday.

“I am taking action to proscribe the neo-Nazi group National Action,” Rudd said, adding that involvement in the group would now be a criminal offence.

“National Action is a racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic organisation which stirs up hatred, glorifies violence and promotes a vile ideology, and I will not stand for it,” she said.

The self-declared National Socialist group posted several messages on Twitter backing Thomas Mair, the white supremacist who murdered Cox at her constituency a week before the vote to leave the European Union.

“Vote Leave, don’t let this man’s sacrifice go in vain. Jo Cox would have filled Yorkshire with more subhumans,” the tweet posted shortly after the incident read.

Mair was handed a life sentence in November for the killing, which the judge presiding over the case described as an act of “White Supremacist terrorism”.

The group says on its website that it does not sanction or endorse acts considered terrorism, but individuals linked to organisation have been linked to racist violence before.

In 2015, neo-Nazi and National Action member Zack Davies was convicted of attempted murder after trying to kill an Asian man at a supermarket in Wales.

Another of its members, Joshua Bonehill-Paine, has received multiple convictions for harassing Jewish individuals, including the MP Luciana Berger, with anti-Semitic tweets.

{{Neo-Nazi roots}}

Unlike other far-right groups, National Action makes no attempt to disguise its Neo-Nazi leanings.

At its demonstrations, black-clad, mask-wearing supporters raise fascist salutes and carry banners that read “Hitler was right”.

In an essay on its website that cites tracts from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the group calls on British youths to launch a ‘White Jihad’ instead of wallowing “in their own nihilism”.

The organisation also runs a Miss Hitler competition, where female supporters are interviewed about a number of Neo-Nazi concerns, including which public figure they would like to “hypothetically” kill.

Those mentioned included Nigel Farage, the populist UK Independence Party politician; Boris Johnson, British foreign secretary; and an unidentified woman described as a “rat-faced b****”.

“I would kill politics [sic] and their supporters,” read one reply to the question, while one contestant struggled to answer as she said Britain and Europe were “infested with so many traitors”.

The group welcomed US President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory in November and has posted pictures of its activists posing with a White Power poster bearing the Republican politician’s image.

Another picture referring to Trump’s victory shows activists holding the Confederate flag with the caption “Hate won, get over it”.

{{‘Clear message’}}

Paul Jackson, an expert at Northampton University on far-right groups, said the move to ban National Action was a sign that the government was getting tough on the far right.

“There seems to be a clear message being sent out by this development that the government is trying to do more to tackle extreme right-wing activity,” Jackson said, before cautioning that proscribing such groups was not the most effective way of tackling the issue.

“I am not sure that a ban is the best way to achieve this.

“What is really needed is more efforts being put into training for people in the state sector who may encounter the extreme right in one way or another, from teachers to doctors to the police themselves,” Jackson said.

“Secondly, it is important that the current extreme right groups are effectively monitored.”

Jackson said June’s Brexit referendum vote and Trump’s victory in the United States had empowered the far right but their rise has been brewing for years.

“More resources are needed to help tackle this issue, before newer organisations start to pose a more significant threat to public safety,” he said.

{Intense bombardment rocks Syrian city as rebel-held Sheikh Saeed neighbourhood is seized by government forces.}

Syrian government forces seized the eastern Aleppo neighbourhood of Sheikh Saeed from rebels in overnight fighting as government warplanes continued to mount heavy air strikes on remaining rebel-held areas.

Free Syrian Army sources confirmed to Al Jazeera that Sheikh Saeed, in the eastern corner of the shrinking area that rebels control, had fallen on Monday – just a day after another neighbourhood, al-Madi, was also captured by government forces.

“The concern rebels have now is that we are seeing some kind of a domino effect, more neighbourhoods may be following as days go by,” Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab reported from Gaziantep on the Turkish border.

Rebels now control an estimated 10 square kilometres of the city, where tens of thousands of civilians and fighters are holed up.

“People on the ground tell us they don’t have access to food, they don’t have access to water, they don’t have access to medical treatments, yet the bombs keep falling, the fighting keeps continuing and more and more territory is falling to the regime,” our correspondent reported.

The opposition in Aleppo has now lost 90 percent of the area they once held in the city, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syria’s state TV said on Sunday that more than 70,000 of eastern Aleppo’s estimated 275,000 residents had fled in recent days, mostly to government-held western Aleppo districts.

Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday that 728 Syrian rebels had laid down their weapons over the past 24 hours and relocated to western Aleppo.

Earlier, the Russian deputy foreign minister refuted claims that they reached an agreement with the US on safe exit for Aleppo fighters, after rebel officials claimed a proposal had been presented by the two countries.

“The issue of withdrawing militants is the subject of separate agreements. This agreement has not yet been reached, largely because the United States insists on unacceptable terms,” Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency on Sunday.

Ryabkov said talks between Russian and US experts would continue in Geneva, RIA reported.

Rebel officials told Reuters earlier on Sunday that a proposal had been put forth for fighters to leave the embattled city with their families and other civilians.

Russia and the US have been meeting in Geneva to seek a solution to the fighting and the humanitarian crisis it has caused.

The Russia-backed ground offensive, which began on November 26, followed an intensive aerial bombing campaign that knocked out most of the medical facilities, targeted civil defence and municipal vehicles and blocked roads with rubble.

The eastern Aleppo area has also been cut off from outside assistance since July by a government siege.

Fighters captured the eastern half of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial capital, in 2012.

The government’s recapture of the city would mark its greatest victory since the war began in 2011.

{Proposed changes seek to give president extended powers as head of executive while abolishing the prime ministry.}

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has submitted to parliament a bill granting extended powers to the presidency and abolishing the prime ministry, among other major changes.

The 21-article constitutional change, if adopted, would take Turkey away from its current parliamentary system, and introduce an executive presidency, a move that worries critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Saturday’s proposed constitutional changes are expected to be discussed at the relevant parliamentary commission first, before the bill is brought to a parliamentary hearing and, if passed there, put to a referendum. Government officials have pointed at the spring of 2017 for a possible referendum.

Erdogan became Turkey’s first president to be elected by popular vote in 2014, after serving three terms as prime minister.

He said numerous times that the popular vote had transformed his presidency compared to the past presidencies, which were seen as largely ceremonial.

According to Ahmet Iyimaya, the chairman of the parliament’s Constitutional Commission where the bill will be debated, Turkey already has a “partial executive presidency”, and therefore constitutional changes in this direction are necessary.

“Turkey has moved away from the parliamentary system towards a presidential system following the constitutional changes in 2007 and 2010. So, this is necessary move,” Iyimaya, who is also an AK Party MP, told Al Jazeera.

“The coalition governments in the Turkish parliamentary system took so much from this country, wasting so much time. They could not solve any of the issues this country faced,” he said.

Erdogan has repeatedly blamed coalition governments for what he calls Turkey’s political instability and economic downfall, which was the situation when his party came to power the first time in 2002.

“This will be the start of a new era,” he said of the bill, in an address in Istanbul on Saturday.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim recently called Turkey a “de facto” executive presidential system.

Saturday’s bill is backed by the far-right National Movement Party (MHP), but opposed by the centre-right main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP).

The AK Party and MHP were engaged in talks over the draft legislation for months before they could finalise it.

The MHP is the fourth largest party in parliament with the lowest number of seats, but the AK Party, which holds 317 MPs in the 550-seat assembly, needs the party’s support to get 330 MP votes to take constitutional changes to a referendum.

{{‘Dangerous’}}

Opposition CHP MP Mustafa Sezgin Tanrikulu told Al Jazeera that the constitutional changes aim to “pool power in one person at a dangerous level and pave the way for an authoritarian regime.

“This text gives one person the state’s whole executive power, some legislative powers through decrees and judicial powers – through appointments. This is a bill that will move Turkey away from the principles of democracy and the rule of law,” Tanrikulu, who is also a human rights lawyer, said.

He added that his party would challenge the bill in the legislative process, and, if it is passed, will campaign against it before the referendum.

The proposed constitutional changes allow the president, who is currently constitutionally neutral, to be a member of a political party.

The bill also seeks to remove the prime ministry, and make the president the head of the executive, allowing him or her to appoint the government ministers and vice-presidents.

Under the draft legislation, the president would be able to appoint half of the 12 members of HSYK, Turkey’s highest judiciary board, and would hold comprehensive powers to govern the country by decree.

If the changes are approved, Turkey would head to general and presidential elections together in November 2019, and proposed powers would be granted to the president elected.

The bill indicates that a person can be elected president for two five-year terms. Erdogan’s existing time as president will not be counted.

{TAK, a PKK splinter group, say two fighters died in Saturday’s deadly blasts which targeted the police in Turkish city.}

Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, an armed group known by the Kurdish-language acronym TAK, has claimed responsibility for two explosions that have killed at least 38 people outside an Istanbul football stadium.

In a statement posted on its website on Sunday, the group, seen as a faction of the armed Kurdish group PKK, said two of its fighters also died in the attack that targeted police officers on Saturday evening outside Besiktas football stadium.

The attack left 160 people injured, including 19 who are in intensive care.

Turkey was observing a day of mourning on Sunday, with flags flown at half mast.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a security meeting on Sunday after declaring at the funeral in Istanbul of five of the slain 30 police officers that Turkey would “fight terrorism to the end” .

Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s prime minister, who was at the funeral with Erdogan, earlier blamed the PKK for carrying out the blasts.

In June, TAK claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 11 people in Istanbul. Dozens of people were also killed by the group in the capital Ankara in February and March.

The group’s founders are believed to have broken away several years ago from the PKK, which has waged an armed campaign against the Turkish state for more than three decades.

{{Vengeance promised}}

Suleyman Soylu, the Turkish interior minister, said on Sunday at least 13 people were detained while government prosecutors arrested three others for social media posts that “attempted to praise terrorism.

“Sooner or later, we will have our vengeance. This blood will not be left on the ground, no matter what the price, what the cost,” Soylu, who also attended the Istanbul funeral, said.

Outside the Besikstas football stadium, people gathered to lay flowers, many holding Turkish flags and shouting: “Our homeland is indivisible.”

Numan Kurtulmus, deputy prime minister, said at least 300-400kg of explosives had been used to target the police officers.

Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, an armed group known by the Kurdish-language acronym TAK, has claimed responsibility for two explosions that have killed at least 38 people outside an Istanbul football stadium.

In a statement posted on its website on Sunday, the group, seen as a faction of the armed Kurdish group PKK, said two of its fighters also died in the attack that targeted police officers on Saturday evening outside Besiktas football stadium.

The attack left 160 people injured, including 19 who are in intensive care.

Turkey was observing a day of mourning on Sunday, with flags flown at half mast.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a security meeting on Sunday after declaring at the funeral in Istanbul of five of the slain 30 police officers that Turkey would “fight terrorism to the end” .

Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s prime minister, who was at the funeral with Erdogan, earlier blamed the PKK for carrying out the blasts.

In June, TAK claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 11 people in Istanbul. Dozens of people were also killed by the group in the capital Ankara in February and March.

The group’s founders are believed to have broken away several years ago from the PKK, which has waged an armed campaign against the Turkish state for more than three decades.

{{Vengeance promised}}

Suleyman Soylu, the Turkish interior minister, said on Sunday at least 13 people were detained while government prosecutors arrested three others for social media posts that “attempted to praise terrorism.

“Sooner or later, we will have our vengeance. This blood will not be left on the ground, no matter what the price, what the cost,” Soylu, who also attended the Istanbul funeral, said.

Outside the Besikstas football stadium, people gathered to lay flowers, many holding Turkish flags and shouting: “Our homeland is indivisible.”

Numan Kurtulmus, deputy prime minister, said at least 300-400kg of explosives had been used to target the police officers.