Tag: InternationalNews

{Up to 1.7 million people gather in Seoul in what is called the largest-ever mass protest in South Korea’s history.}

More than two million South Koreans hit the streets demanding the ouster of President Park Geun-hye – the largest-ever mass gathering in the country’s history.

It was the sixth straight weekend that massive crowds gathered in the capital Seoul to force Park out of office, as the country’s three opposition parties introduced an impeachment bill in parliament.

Protest organisers told Al Jazeera the number of demonstrators swelled to 1.7 million as of 13:00 GMT on Saturday, surpassing last weekend’s 1.5 million people.

Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, quoted officials as saying as many as 500,000 more people also protested in other parts of the country.

Police estimated the turnout in Seoul at 320,000, though the crowd appeared to be much larger, according to The Associated Press news agency.

Fawcett said the protesters “don’t seem satisfied” by Park’s offer on Tuesday to voluntarily leave office by April, and hold an early presidential election in June.

Opposition parliament members have criticised Park’s overture, saying it was a stalling ploy aimed at luring back members of her party who supported her impeachment.

Opposition parties registered an impeachment motion, which could be voted on as early as next Friday.

The motion, which had the support of 171 opposition and independent lawmakers, accuses Park of violating the constitution and undermining democracy by allowing her longtime friend, Choi Soon-sil, to interfere in state affairs, and letting senior presidential aides help Choi extort from companies.

It also accuses Park of other crimes, including abuse of authority, coercion and bribery.

{{Squabbling in parliament}}

The scandal has sparked mass protests each Saturday in downtown Seoul.

Demonstrators advanced to a narrow alley about 100 metres away from the presidential palace grounds, an area police did not previously permit them to enter.

Some of the protesters, led by the relatives of a 2014 ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people, mostly teenagers on a school trip, jammed the alley near the presidential office, shouting for hours for Park’s arrest, not just her resignation.

Others angrily threw flowers at police who had created tight perimeters around the street, and demanded the officers get out of the way.

Protesters are also trying to pressure parliament members, including Park’s conservative ruling party, to vote for her impeachment next week.

Opposition parties controlling South Korea’s parliament had earlier planned to call for a vote this past week, but were thrown off after Park made a conditional offer on Tuesday to resign, leaving lawmakers squabbling over timing.

Some anti-Park parliament members from her own ruling party have called for her to announce by Wednesday, that she will step down voluntarily in April.

It remains uncertain whether those parliament members, numbering between 30 to 40, will back the impeachment bill if she makes the commitment to resign, Al Jazeera’s Fawcett said.

Without their support, there would not be enough number, to pass the impeachment motion.

Park’s confidante Choi now faces charges for meddling on government affairs, and in a first for a sitting South Korean president, Park had earlier been named a “suspect” by prosecutors.

As president, Park cannot be charged with a criminal offence except insurrection or treason, but she would lose that immunity once she steps down.

{Capture of Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood means government now controls about half of eastern Aleppo.}

Syrian government forces and their allies have advanced in Aleppo overnight, seizing another neighbourhood from rebels as they press an offensive to recapture all of the city, a monitor group and rebel sources said.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that the capture of Tariq al-Bab means the government has now retaken the majority of the east of the city.

“We are told that around 50 percent of the rebel-held eastern Aleppo is now held by the government forces and its allies,” Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border, said.

“This is the first time that we see this happening in four years. Aleppo has been in a stalemate between the government forces and rebels,” she said.

“It is extremely concerning for those who still believe in this revolution,” she added. “Activists say that Aleppo is the heartland of this revolution and if they lose this city, they would lose their civilisation, they would lose everything.”

The rebels overran the east of Aleppo in mid-2012.

The latest advance also restored control of a road leading from government-controlled western neighbourhoods to Aleppo airport, which the regime also holds.

The government’s capture of Tariq al-Bab came after ferocious clashes that sent civilians flooding out of the adjacent neighbourhood of al-Shaar.

More than 300 civilians have been killed in east Aleppo since the government resumed its offensive to remove the rebels from there on November 15, according to activists.

The Syrian Observatory says nearly 65 civilians have been killed in the same period by rebel fire on government-held west Aleppo, including nine on Friday.

The UN has warned that eastern Aleppo risks becoming a “giant graveyard” for the 250,000-plus civilians who were trapped there just last week. Tens of thousands have since fled.

No progress in Turkey talks

On the diplomatic front, tension between Syrian opposition groups and Russia escalated on Friday, with weeks of secret meetings in Turkey making little apparent progress on lifting the siege of eastern Aleppo.

Russia is a key backer of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and has been bombing opposition-held areas since September last year.

Turkey backs the Syrian anti-government fighters and has been acting as a mediator in the meetings.

Syrian opposition officials told the Reuters news agency on Friday that Russia is not serious about the talks over a pause in the fighting.

Russia’s proposals include expelling 200 fighters from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the armed group which changed its named from al-Nusra Front earlier this year when it said it cut ties with al-Qaeda.

Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is one of the largest and most powerful groups fighting the Syrian government, and is considered by both the US and Russia to be a “terrorist” organisation.

Russia is also suggesting the creation of four “humanitarian corridors” to allow aid into besieged areas of eastern Aleppo.

Although Turkey has called for an immediate ceasefire, analysts contend that its priorities have shifted from Assad’s removal to containing Kurdish groups seeking more territory on its border.

{Trade group revokes Venezuela’s membership over its failure to comply with Mercosur’s democratic principles.}

South American regional economic group Mercosur has notified Caracas that Venezuela’s membership has been suspended for violating the bloc’s democratic principles.

Founding members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay reached the decision to revoke the Mercosur membership of Venezuela, which is in the midst of an economic collapse despite holding the world’s largest oil reserves.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez described Friday’s suspension as a coup attempt.

She rejected the notion that Venezuela had failed to conform to the trade group’s rules.

“Venezuela does not recognise the null action carried out under the law of the jungle taken by the officials who are destroying Mercosur,” she said.

Venezuela had been a full member since 2012 in Mercosur, which calls itself the common market of the South.

In September, Mercosur issued a three-month deadline for Socialist President Nicolas Maduro to restore human rights and press freedoms in Venezuela.

Venezuela is mired in a political and economic crisis as a newly empowered opposition tries to wrest power from Maduro amid widespread shortages of food and medicine.

Earlier in the week, Venezuela’s opposition coalition threatened to walk away from ongoing dialogue with the government.

The Vatican-mediated talks were intended to head off a growing political crisis as critics of Maduro allege he has become a dictator and call for him to resign.

Venezuela has arrested hundreds of opposition activists in recent years and stifled opposition media. A local human rights group counts 100 political prisoners still in jail. This autumn, the government killed an effort to stage a recall referendum against Maduro.

{{Soaring inflation}}

In a separate development Maduro said on Friday that Venezuela would issue higher denomination bills “very soon” as soaring inflation and a crumbling currency leave the crisis-stricken country’s largest note worth just 2 US cents on the black market.

Still, the long-awaited entry of 500 and 5,000 bolivar notes will only bring a brief respite amid rapid money printing and a weakening currency.

Today 5,000 bolivars buy just over $1 on the black market, which exists because Venezuela introduced currency controls in 2003 but does not offer enough dollars to meet demand.

Venezuela is believed to have the world’s highest inflation, although no data has been published for 2016.

Money supply rose 12 percent in the last two weeks while the bolivar weakened 65 percent in the last month.

As a result, Venezuelans often carry backpacks full of bills and cash machines frequently run dry due to long queues.

“Several million bills of 500 bolivars and then several million bills of 5,000 bolivars will enter circulation very soon,” Maduro said in a televised address, noting that the central bank would provide details on Sunday and Monday.

{Legal actions seek to block or halt recounts requested by Green Party candidate in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.}

Supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump have moved the courts to prevent or halt election recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Friday’s legal actions came less than two weeks before the states would have to complete the tasks to meet a federal deadline to certify their election results.

The moves seeking to block or halt the recounts in the states the Republican candidate narrowly won could cause delays that would make them extremely difficult or impossible to complete on time.

The presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, or a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the popular national vote.

READ MORE: Wisconsin starts US presidential election recount

Federal law requires states to resolve disputes over the appointment of electors by December 13.

Trump far surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, with 306 electoral votes, and the recount would have to flip the result to Democrat Hillary Clinton in all three states to change the overall result.

In the popular vote, Clinton won over 2.5 million more votes than Trump, according to the Cook Political Report.

The recounts were requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who says they are necessary to ensure that voting machines were not hacked, even though there is no evidence that they were.

{{Stein’s defence}}

Stein got about one percent of the vote in all three states. Her critics say she is simply trying to raise money and her political profile while building a donor database.

“Our goal is not to change the result of the election,” Stein said in an opinion piece released on Thursday. “It is to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the vote.”

Wisconsin is the only state where a recount is under way. It began on Thursday, and one of the state’s 72 counties had already completed its task by Friday, with Clinton gaining a single a vote on Trump.

Clinton lost to Trump in Wisconsin by about 22,000 votes, or less than one percentage point.

Two pro-Trump groups, the Great America PAC and the Stop Hillary PAC, along with Wisconsin voter Ronald R Johnson went to federal court late on Thursday to try and stop the recount.

They requested a temporary restraining order in US District Court to immediately halt the recount while the court considers their lawsuit.

The lawsuit says Wisconsin is violating the US Supreme Court’s 2000 Bush v Gore ruling because it does not have uniform standards to determine which votes should be counted in a recount.

They also argue that it threatens due process rights because it may not get done by the federal deadline to certify the vote, putting Wisconsin’s electoral votes in jeopardy.

{{Michigan’s case}}

Michigan’s elections board were in a deadlock on Friday on a Trump campaign request to deny Stein’s recount request and on how a recount would be conducted.

Both Republican members voted to prevent the recount while both Democrats voted to allow it, meaning it would begin Tuesday or Wednesday unless the courts intervene.

It also would be conducted by hand, as Stein requested.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, said on Friday he had filed a lawsuit to halt the requested recount in his state.

Recounting all of the state’s votes “threatens to silence all Michigan votes for president” because of an impending federal deadline to finalise the state’s results, he said in a statement.

The Michigan courts appeared unlikely to rule immediately, with one asking for a response from state elections officials by Tuesday.

Schuette also criticised Stein for the potential expense of a recount, although she said last week that she had raised $3.5m to cover some costs.

A Schuette spokeswoman said on Friday that Stein had contributed $787,500 but that it would cost about $5m.

In Pennsylvania, a hearing is scheduled for Monday on Stein’s push to secure a court-ordered statewide recount there.

{Tens of thousands of Muslims gather in capital demanding Basuki Tjahaja Purnama be jailed for insulting the Quran.}

Tens of thousands of Muslims are rallying in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, against the city’s Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who is accused of insulting the Quran.

Protesters chanting, praying and carrying banners gathered at the National Monument in central Jakarta on Friday demanding that Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian popularly known as Ahok, be jailed on blasphemy charges.

Purnama, a long-term ally of President Joko Widodo, is being investigated over comments he made about his opponents’ use of the Quran in campaigning. He denies wrongdoing but has apologised for the remarks.

Police on Thursday handed over a dossier from their investigation of Purnama’s comments to prosecutors, who are expected to take the case of alleged blasphemy to court in coming weeks.

Police officials estimated that at least 150,000 people, including many who travelled to Jakarta from towns and cities across the island of Java, gathered on Friday under drizzling rain.

Some reports put the number of protesters at several hundreds of thousands.

National news agency Antara said 22,000 police personnel would be deployed to avoid a repeat of violence that flared during a protest last month when more than 100 people were injured in clashes with police.

Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, described the protest as “an extremely big show of force by Islamist groups who have been gaining importance in Indonesia over the years.

“It is basically a threat to the secular state here in the long run, with conservative Muslims getting more and more power on the ground”.

Widodo addressed the rally and praised the peaceful protest, before urging the crowd to leave safely.

“Thank you and safe travels on your return from where you came from. God bless you,” said Widodo, who has blamed “political actors” for exploiting the popular fury over Purnama to destabilise his government.

Our correspondent said Widodo, who lives right across from the protest site, in a surprise development walked towards the National Monument park to attend Friday prayers along with hundreds of thousands of protesters.

“Widodo wants to give a strong signal that he now understands that the protests have gone way beyond some radical groups. In fact, it’s a lot bigger now,” she said.

Political tension

Purnama is running for re-election in February against two Muslim candidates.

The contest has generated high political tension for weeks, with rumours of plots to undermine Widodo and scupper his chances of winning a second term in 2019.

“Many people really feel hurt by what the governor said, but also religious sentiments are being creatively used by politicians to gain support ahead of regional elections,” Al Jazeera’s Vaessen said.

Police have warned against attempts to destabilise the government.

Rikwanto, police spokesperson, said 10 people who he identified only by their initials had been detained before dawn on Friday, citing articles of the criminal code that cover conspiracy and acts of treason.

Two of them were charged under the law of information technology for hate speech.

“They have now been detained and are undergoing investigation,” said Rikwanto, who goes by only one name.

Indonesia is home to the world’s biggest Muslim population but recognises six religions and is home to dozens of ethnic groups, some of which follow traditional beliefs.

National unity plea

Religious and ethnic tension last month prompted Widodo to rally top military, political and religious figures in a sign of unity amid fears of attempts to undermine the stability of his government.

The Jakarta government has put up signboards on major roads calling for national unity and displaying pictures of independence heroes who fought against colonial rule.

Purnama is popular with many for pushing through tough reforms to modernise the traffic-plagued capital.

But opinion polls have shown him slipping into second place in the race for re-election as governor, a position that Widodo himself, who is popularly known as Jokowi, used as a stepping stone to the presidency.

{US president-elect says he will appoint a retired general renowned for his tough talk as defense secretary.}

President-elect Donald Trump has said he will nominate retired General Marine Corps James Mattis to be his defense secretary.

Mattis, who is known as “Mad Dog” and renowned for his tough talk, retired in 2013 after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are going to appoint ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as our secretary of defense,” Trump announced during a post-election victory rally in Cincinnati on Thursday. He said the formal announcement would be made on Monday.

His appointment would be another indication that Trump, a Republican, intends to steer US foreign policy away from Democratic President Barack Obama’s increased reliance on US allies to fight armed groups and to help deter Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia.

“Mattis has often been very critical of Washington, especially when it comes to the strategy in the Middle East, saying the US simply has no strategy,” Al Jazeera’s Kimberley Halkett reported from Cincinnati.

Halkett said Mattis is “known to have rather aggressive stance against former adversaries, particularly Iran” and is not supportive of the Iran nuclear agreement.

“He says it [Iran deal] may slow but certainly not stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” she said.

Mattis, whose past assignments include leading Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East and South Asia, is known for his colourful expressions that unashamedly embrace the job of the US armed forces: fighting wars.

“It will be difficult to get Mattis approved [by Congress] given the fact there is currently a law that says any secretary of defense should not have been in active duty in the past seven years,” Halkett added.

“Certainly Trump feels that this is something that can be overlooked.”

Congress can make an exception for Mattis, as it did for George C Marshall in 1950.

{Despite global criticism and UN warning Aleppo risks becoming a “giant graveyard”, Syrian government forces press on.}

Elite Syrian troops have moved into east Aleppo ahead of a push into the most densely populated areas, as ally Russia called for corridors to bring in aid and evacuate wounded.

Despite global criticism including the UN warning Aleppo risked becoming a “giant graveyard”, government forces have pressed an assault to retake control of the divided city.

The offensive – backed by heavy artillery – has spurred an exodus of tens of thousands of residents from the rebel-held east.

It has left Aleppo’s streets strewn with the bodies of men, women and children, many lying next to the suitcases they had packed to escape.

Artillery fire continued on Thursday but subsided as heavy rainfall hit the city.

The assault has seen President Bashar al-Assad’s forces make significant gains in the last week.

After overrunning the city’s northeast, they were in control of 40 percent of the territory once held by opposition forces in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the UK-based war monitor.

“The regime is tightening the noose on the remaining section of east Aleppo under rebel control,” Syrian Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told the AFP news agency.

He said hundreds of fighters from the elite Republican Guard and Fourth Division arrived in Aleppo on Thursday “in preparation for street battles” in the densely populated southeast.

“They are moving in on the ground, but they are afraid of ambushes because of the density of residents and fighters,” he said.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria appealed to all sides fighting in Aleppo to protect the civilian population.

“The people who’re fleeing take a lot of risks. There is shelling, explosions, and sniper fire. People have left behind virtually everything,” ICRC’s Marianne Gasser, in Aleppo, said.

The violence in Aleppo has sparked widespread outrage at the Syrian government, but also at its steadfast supporter, Moscow.

On Thursday, Russia proposed setting up four humanitarian corridors into east Aleppo to bring in aid and evacuate severely wounded people.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pledged military operations would continue until the city is “cleared of terrorists”.

Russia announced “they want to sit down in Aleppo with our people there to discuss how we can use the four [humanitarian] corridors to evacuate people out”, Jan Egeland, head of the UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, told reporters in Geneva.

He said Russia has pledged to respect the corridors, and that “we [the UN] now feel confident that the armed opposition groups will do the same”.

Moscow has announced several humanitarian pauses in Aleppo to allow civilians to flee, but until the recent military escalation, only a handful did so.

Since Saturday, more than 50,000 people have poured out of east Aleppo into territory controlled by government forces or local Kurdish authorities, according to the Syrian Observatory.

Thousands more have sought refuge in the remaining rebel-held neighbourhoods in southeastern Aleppo, arriving with overpacked suitcases or sometimes just the clothes on their backs.

The loss of east Aleppo – a rebel stronghold since 2012 – would be the biggest blow to Syria’s opposition in more than five years.

Syrian aircraft have been pounding east Aleppo with air strikes for months – often using crude munitions such as barrel bombs – but as the ground advance has gathered pace the army has instead turned to more precise artillery.

On Thursday, four children from a single family were killed in artillery fire by regime forces on the rebel-held Maadi neighbourhood of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory.

The government offensive has left 42 children dead, among a total of more than 830 people killed since November 15.

Retaliatory rocket fire by the rebels on government-held areas has killed 48 civilians, according to Syrian Observatory, which has a wide network of sources on the ground.

Meanwhile, rebels in Aleppo agreed to form a new military alliance to better organise the defence of parts of the city they control from the assault by the government and its allies, officials in two of the rebel groups said on Thursday.

Rivalry among rebel groups has been seen as one of their major flaws throughout the nearly six-year-old war.

The two officials, speaking from Turkey, said the new alliance would be called the “Aleppo Army” and led by the commander of the Jabha Shamiya rebel faction, one of the major groups fighting in northern Syria under the Free Syrian Army banner.

An official with a second rebel group confirmed that the Jabha Shamiya’s Abu Abdelrahman Nour had been selected as the leader. In an interview with Reuters news agency last week, Nour urged greater support from foreign states that back the opposition.

The Jabha Shamiya group, known in English as the Levant Front, has received support from Turkey and other states that want Assad removed from power.

{Foreign ministry notes UN Security Council member states have conducted thousands of nuclear tests and rocket launches.}

North Korea warned of “tougher countermeasures for self-defence” after the UN Security Council unanimously imposed its strongest-ever sanctions on Pyongyang.

The country’s foreign ministry issued a statement on Thursday calling the UNSC’s move “another excess of authority and violation of the DPRK’s sovereignty”, referring to its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Many countries – including all the permanent member states of the UNSC – have so far conducted thousands of nuclear tests and rocket launches, but the UNSC has never prevented them from doing so,” said the ministry’s statement carried on state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The new sanctions resolution on Wednesday, which was spearheaded by the US and came after three months of tough negotiations with fellow veto-wielding council member China, passed by a 15-0 vote.

“[US President Barack] Obama and his lackeys are sadly mistaken if they calculate that they can force the DPRK to abandon its line of nuclear weaponisation and undermine its status as a nuclear power through base sanctions to pressurise it,” it said.

North Korea insists its nuclear weapons are a deterrent to US “aggression” and has brushed aside earlier sanctions, which have notably targeted its weapons exports and access to financial markets.

The resolution demands that North Korea “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes” and takes aim at the state’s exports of coal – its top external revenue source.

UN slaps North Korea with toughest-ever sanctions

Under the resolution, North Korea will be restricted from exporting beyond 7.5 million tonnes of coal in 2017, a reduction of 62 percent from 2015.

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said the resolution would strip the regime of more than $700m in hard currency, dramatically reducing the money it can spend on nuclear and ballistic weapons.

Power, speaking to reporters with her counterparts from US allies South Korea and Japan, called the resolution “the strongest sanctions regime the Security Council has imposed on any country in more than a generation”.

“So long as the DPRK makes the choice it has made, which is to pursue the path of violations instead of the path of dialogue, we will continue to work to increase the pressure and defend ourselves and allies from this threat,” said Power.

China is North Korea’s primary ally and one of the few markets for its coal.

China has traditionally protected North Korea diplomatically, believing that Kim Jong-un’s regime is preferable to its collapse, but has increasingly grown frustrated by the neighbouring state’s defiance.

China’s UN ambassador, Liu Jieyi, reiterated that Beijing “strongly opposes” the North Korean nuclear tests – but also made a veiled criticism of joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea.