Tag: InternationalNews

{Klaas Haytema sentenced to three months in jail after unplugging Buddhist centre loudspeaker because he wanted to sleep.}

A Myanmar court has sentenced a Dutch tourist to three months in prison for interfering with a religious observance by unplugging an amplifier blasting a late-night Buddhist sermon near his hotel in Mandalay, the country’s cultural capital.

Klaas Haytema, 30, was also sentenced on Thursday to an additional six-month prison term for violating immigration rules requiring respect for the local culture, but has opted to pay the equivalent fine of $80, according to the Myanmar Times.

Haytema and his girlfriend embraced and wept as he left the courtroom after his sentence was announced, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Haytema was arrested in late September after a crowd gathered around his hotel in protest when the loudspeakers at a nearby religious hall were turned off.

The man who was reciting the sermon pressed charges against Haytema.

Insulting religion in the predominantly Buddhist country could have landed Haytema up to two years in prison.

At the hearing of his case Haytema was quoted as telling the judge, “I did not do it with intention. I didn’t know it was a religious building. So, I am not guilty.”

According to the Myanmar Times report, three witnesses also told the judge that it was Haytema’s first trip to Asia, and that he was unaware of the rules and Buddhist practices.

{{‘Ignorance of law not an excuse’}}

Earlier, Haytema had said that he was “too tired” and “wanted to sleep desperately” on the night of the incident.

When he went outside the hotel to check the source of the noise, Haytema said that he saw children and had assumed that they were playing with the loudspeaker.

“I did not notice that it was a religious building. I am really sorry and I really apologise.”

The report also said that Haytema entered the Buddhist centre without first removing his shoes.

In response, Prosecutor U Sithu Swe Tun said that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” for Haytema.

However, another lawyer interviewed by The New York Times said that it was the Buddhist centre that violated the law, which prohibits the playing of loudspeaker between 9pm and 6am.

Dutch Broadcast Foundation, also known as NOS in Dutch, reported that Haytema was “disappointed at the sentence and hoped to get off with a fine.

“He has gone back to his cell and the conditions are fairly reasonable if you think about their reputation,” NOS correspondent Michel Maas was quoted as saying.

“He shares a cell with other prisoners, has a mattress and mosquito net and gets good food and enough to drink.”

In late 2014, a New Zealand man and two locals were charged and later sentenced to two years in prison after posting on social media an image of the Buddha wearing headphones to promote a Western bar. Phillip Blackwood was released this year after he was granted amnesty.

{Tough-talking leader says the country won’t beg for foreign assistance after criticism over his deadly drug campaign.}

President Rodrigo Duterte has told the United States and the European Union to “go ahead” and withdraw financial aid to the Philippines if they’re unhappy with his bloody anti-drug war.

“Go away, bring your money to somewhere else. We will survive as a nation,” Duterte said in a speech to police officers on Thursday in the southern city of Butuan.

“How do you look at us, mendicants? We will survive. Even if we’ll go through hardships, we will survive. But we will never, never compromise our dignity.

“If you think it is high time for you guys to withdraw your assistance, go ahead, we will not beg for it,” Duterte said, adding he doesn’t expect the US, EU, and human rights group to understand his policy.

More than 3,680 people have been killed by police and unidentified attackers in the Philippines since June 30, when Duterte took office.

Last week, two US senators raised alarms about the mounting death toll linked to the anti-drug war, and called for a review of American foreign aid to the Philippines.

Senator Ben Cardin said what Duterte is advocating and endorsing “amounts to mass murder”.

Senator Patrick Leahy said: “No amount of killing will result in reforms that improve the judiciary, end corruption and impunity in law enforcement, or rehabilitate those caught in the vicious cycle of addiction.”

According to US data, the Philippines is expected to receive a total of $188m in 2017. In 2015, the country received $236m in US aid.

Meanwhile, the annual EU assistance to the Philippines is estimated at $65m.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Phelim Kine of Human Rights Watch warned that foreign aid to the Philippines could go into funding “mass unlawful violence” by authorities.

But in defending his police on Thursday, Duterte said foreign governments “will never understand the pain that we are suffering.

“We have a problem here trying to preserve our society,” the president, nicknamed “The Punisher”, said.

{{‘America has failed us’}}

Duterte’s statements follow a Facebook post by his foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, who wrote that the president wants to liberate the Philippines from a “shackling dependency” on the US.

In the post titled AMERICA HAS FAILED US, Yasay said Duterte was “compelled to realign” Philippine foreign policy and not submit to US demands and interests.

“Breaking away from the shackling dependency of the Philippines to effectively address both internal and external security threats has become imperative in putting an end to our nation’s subservience to United States interests,” Yasay wrote.

{The powerful hurricane lashes the Caribbean leaving a trail of devastation in Haiti, where at least 22 people killed.}

Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, made landfall in the Bahamas on Wednesday after battering Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic with torrential rains, killing at least 26 people.

The hurricane, which the United Nations said has caused the worst humanitarian crisis to hit struggling Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake, whipped the country, and also Cuba, with 230km-per-hour winds on Tuesday, pummelling towns, farmland and resorts.

In the United States, more than 1.5 million people were urged to evacuate the southeastern coast and Florida Governor Rick Scott warned residents to prepare for a possible devastating direct hit.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from the path of the storm, which caused severe flooding and killed four people in the Dominican Republic, as well as at least 22 in Haiti.

The storm carved a path of devastation through western Haiti, destroying houses, dumping boats and debris on coastal roads, and heavily flooding residential areas.

Some 80 percent of homes were damaged in Haiti’s Sud Department, which has a population of more than 700,000, a government official said in a meeting with UN officials. About 11,000 people were in shelters in the province.

In the town of Jeremie, people were cooking and sleeping outside because most houses were either knocked down or severely damaged. Similar scenes were reported across the coastal towns of the south.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, had been set to hold a repeatedly postponed presidential election on Sunday, but the country’s electoral council delayed it again in the aftermath of Matthew. No new date has yet been set.

“They are telling us that they have lost everything, including their crops, ” Al Jazeera’s Theresa Bo, reporting from Ganthier in Haiti, said.

“UNICEF is saying four million children are at risk of going hungry because of the amount of crops that have been lost, and the death toll is expected to increase in the coming hours.”

The US government said it was ready to help the afflicted and about 300 US Marines set off on the USS Mesa Verde to provide disaster relief in Haiti.

“The UN representative here says this is the worst natural disaster to hit Haiti since the earthquake in 2010,” our correspondent said.

“In a country as fragile as Haiti, when a natural disaster like this hits, it tends to be deadly.”

There were no immediate reports of deaths or casualties in Cuba, where the government had emphasised hurricane preparation. But Matthew did thrash the tourist town of Baracoa in the province of Guantanamo, gutting many houses.

The storm passed close to the disputed US naval base and military prison there.

{{Downgraded to Category Three}}

Matthew was a Category Four hurricane through Tuesday but was downgraded to Category Three on Wednesday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said .

Maximum sustained winds eased to about 193kph but NHC said the hurricane was likely to strengthen again slightly in the coming days.

The storm is expected to near the US east coast of Florida on Thursday.

“Everyone in our state must prepare now for a direct hit,” Scott said at a news conference. “If Matthew directly impacts Florida, the destruction could be catastrophic and you need to be prepared.”

Hurricane and tropical storm warnings were extended along the east coast of Florida as the storm moved north.

Tropical storm or hurricane conditions could affect parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina later this week, even if the centre of Matthew remains offshore, NHC said.

{All-female activist boat carrying aid from Spain to the Gaza Strip is taken into Israeli custody.}

Israel’s navy intercepted an activist boat seeking to break the country’s decade-long blockade of the Gaza Strip, saying it was boarded without incident and was being directed to shore.

The navy said in a statement on Wednesday its forces had “redirected” the sailboat in order to prevent a “breach of the lawful maritime blockade” of the Palestinian enclave.

It said this was done “in accordance with government directives and after exhausting all diplomatic channels”.

Thirteen women, including 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire, were travelling aboard the Zaytouna-Oliva sailboat in the Mediterranean towards Gaza, which is run by Hamas.

The Zaytouna-Oliva set sail from Barcelona in September and was carrying women of various nationalities in addition to Maguire, a Northern Ireland activist.

Dubbed the “Women’s Boat to Gaza”, it is part of the wider Freedom Flotilla Coalition that consists of pro-Palestinian boats that regularly seek to go to Gaza to try to break the blockade.

One such operation turned to tragedy in 2010 when Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists in a raid on a flotilla.

In Wednesday’s operation, the Israeli navy said it intercepted the sailboat after advising it “numerous times to change course prior to the action”.

It said its forces had boarded and searched the vessel, describing the operation as “uneventful”.

The boat was now believed to be headed towards the Israeli port of Ashdod. Organisers said they had lost communication with the activists.

Hamas denounced the move as “state terrorism”.

Israel and Palestinian fighters in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008.

Israel maintains a blockade to keep material it claims could be used for military purposes from entering the impoverished enclave of 1.9 million people.

United Nations officials have called for the blockade to be lifted, saying conditions are deteriorating in Gaza.

Earlier on Wednesday, Israel’s military struck several Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip after a rocket launched from the Palestinian enclave hit the nearby Israeli city of Sderot, with no casualties reported on either side.

A small Salafist Sunni group, which opposes Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israel holds Hamas responsible for all such rocket fire and often responds with air and tank strikes, but recent responses have been stronger than in the past.

A delegation from the International Criminal Court is visiting Israel and Palestine this week, its chief prosecutor said on Wednesday, against the backdrop of an investigation into the last Gaza war.

{One woman wounded in alleged unprovoked attack from India’s side, followed by tit-for-tat artillery barrages.}

Artillery fire continued between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India across the de facto border in Kashmir as tensions ratchet up after a deadly attack on Indian soldiers last month.

Pakistan’s military alleged that Indian forces fired without provocation on Wednesday, an attack that wounded one woman but did not cause substantial damage on Pakistan’s side of the divided Himalayan territory.

Forces from Pakistan then retaliated.

“Around 5pm there was heavy firing going on continually. Everyone was scared and harassed and came out of their homes,” Mirza Hamid, a resident in Bhimber district, told Al Jazeera.

“The firing is still ongoing … we still can hear it.”

Mehmood, 35, from the Kotli district, described “extreme” shelling and mortar fire that calmed down after 7pm local time.

“People are very scared. There are no cars on the road. We have seen this kind of shelling so many times before … People had to leave those homes,” he said.

Calls to Indian military officials in the region seeking comment rang unanswered.

Pakistani sources say there has been frequent movement in recent days of military equipment towards the Line of Control – the de facto border separating Indian and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

Mirza Arshad, a police deputy commissioner, told Al Jazeera that 100 to 150 people had been evacuated on Wednesday after the shelling and were sheltering in schools in Bhimber district.

“There was firing for about 1-1.5 hours … but there’s no report of any human losses,” he said.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan. The two countries have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 – two over Kashmir.

The latest tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours follow the killing of 18 Indian soldiers in a cross-border attack by suspected Kashmiri rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

In response, India’s military said it had conducted “surgical strikes” against “terrorist units” on Pakistan’s side of the border. Pakistan rejected the claims as an “illusion”.

{Security Council flags Antonio Guterres as its unanimous choice for the next United Nations secretary general.}

Former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres has been tipped as the next United Nations secretary-general after none of the five Security Council veto-wielding powers voted against him in a sixth secret ballot on Wednesday.

The 15-member Security Council cast ballots for each of the 10 candidates with the choices of “encourage, discourage, or no opinion”. Guterres received 13 encourage votes and two no opinion votes.

“Today, after our sixth straw poll, we have a clear favourite and his name is Antonio Guterres,” Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters with his 14 council colleagues standing behind him.

“We have decided to go to a formal vote tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock, and we hope it can be done by acclamation,” said Churkin, who is council president for October.

For Guterres to be formally recommended to the 193-member General Assembly for election, the Security Council still needs to adopt a resolution behind closed doors. The resolution needs at least nine votes in favour and no vetoes to pass.

“After five straw polls taking place previously with Antonio Guterres coming out in front, this was the first straw poll where there were coloured ballot papers to represent the five permanent members of the Security Council,” Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from the UN, said.

“So in the first poll you could tell whether any of those five powers who have veto power were going to be prepared to veto any of the candidates – and which candidates they were going to veto.

“The fact that [Guterres] had no ‘discourage’ meant that no one was against him, including no vetoes from any of those coloured ballots of the five members of the Security Council, and that meant that he is now the settled choice of the Security Council.”

Guterres is a former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and was prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002.

During his tenure as refugee commissioner, from 2005 to 2015, Guterres oversaw the most profound structural reform process in the UNHCR’s history and built up the organisation’s ability to respond to the largest displacement crises since the end of World War II.

He led the UN response to the Syrian civil war, the European migration crisis, the 2014 conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Gaza conflict of 2009, and the aftermath of natural disasters such as the 2004 Asian tsunami.

“This is an important day for the Security Council coming together, uniting behind Antonio Guterres, who will make a very strong, effective secretary-general of the United Nations at a crucial time for the world and for this organisation,” said Matthew Rycroft, British ambassador to the UN.

{Russian-backed offensive to retake Aleppo’s rebel-held east intensifies as Moscow sends advance missile system to Syria.}

Syrian government tanks crossed the frontline in the battleground city of Aleppo for the first time in four years, as a Russian-backed offensive to retake the rebel-held east escalated on the ground.

Pro-government forces were “gradually advancing” after street battles on Tuesday in the divided city’s rebel-controlled neighbourhoods, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Tuesday’s offensive came as Russia said it has sent an advance missile system to the Syrian port city of Tartus on the Mediterranean coast. The S-300 was a defensive system and did not pose a threat to anyone, a Russian defence ministry spokesman said, adding that it was unclear why its placement had “caused such a stir among our Western colleagues”.

A day earlier, Washington suspended direct US-Russia talks on a Syria ceasefire – a move US Secretary of State John Kerry blamed on Russia’s rejection of diplomacy in favour of helping the forces of President Bashar al-Assad achieve military gains over opposition fighters.

“Today there was very heavy bombing. More than 16 civilians were killed and more than 32 people were injured,” Ibrahim Abu Leith, spokesman for the Syrian Civil Defence in Aleppo, told Al Jazeera.

“The regime is trying to enter the east from several different points. So far, they’ve only been able to take territory in the northeast, taking the Handarat camp and the Shuqayif area.”

The Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, is a volunteer rescue group that operates in rebel-held areas across the country.

Government troops, with Russian air support and Iranian and militia ground forces, launched an assault to retake all of Aleppo last month after a week-old ceasefire agreed to by Washington and Moscow steadily fell apart.

Last week, government forces captured the Handarat Palestinian refugee camp north of Aleppo and the nearby Kindi Hospital, which overlooks a key intersection of vital roads. Government troops also took the central neighborhood of Farafra after pushing forward from the Old City.

“Tanks will not be able to advance easily in the streets,” Aleppo-based activist Baraa al-Halabi told The Associated Press news agency, adding the Handarat camp was only taken because it is in an open area.

The US and other Western countries say Moscow and Damascus are guilty of war crimes for deliberately targeting civilians, hospitals, and aid deliveries to crush the will of more than 275,000 people trapped under the siege of Aleppo. The Syrian and Russian governments say they target only “terrorists”.

Rebels said they inflicted losses on pro-government fighters after hours of clashes on the fringe of Sheikh Saeed district on the southern edge of the city’s rebel-held sector.

“We repelled their attempt to advance in Sheikh Saeed and killed 10 regime fighters and destroyed several vehicles,” said a fighter from the Failaq al-Sham rebel group, who gave his name as Abdullah al-Halabi.

But pro-government media said the Syrian army was pressing ahead.

In the 15 days since the collapse of the ceasefire, the Syrian Observatory said it had documented the deaths of 293 civilians in east Aleppo as a result of air strikes and shelling, including 20 on Tuesday.

It has documented 25 deaths in government-held west Aleppo from rebel shelling during the 15 days.

The White Helmets said the death toll in rebel-held areas was more than 500 in a bombing campaign described as “unprecedented” in its ferocity.

Many hundreds of wounded people have been brought to a handful of functioning hospitals, which are short of supplies and have themselves come under attack.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said four of the last eight functioning hospitals in eastern Aleppo had been damaged by air strikes in the past four days.

“Doctors are performing brain and abdominal surgeries … on the floors of the emergency rooms, for lack of available operating theatres,” said Pablo Marco, MSF’s Middle East operations manager.

{{‘Irresponsible and profoundly ill-advised’}}

Turkey, a long-time foe of Assad, but which has recently repaired damaged ties with Russia, said on Tuesday that it planned to make a proposal to Moscow and Washington to resurrect last month’s collapsed ceasefire.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could speak by telephone to President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin about a proposal to revive the failed ceasefire, according to a spokesman who spoke to Reuters news agency.

The spokesman did not give details of the proposal, but a German official said US, British, French, German and Italian officials would meet in Berlin on Wednesday to discuss the next steps.

At a speech in Brussels on Tuesday, Kerry vowed to continue pushing for peace.

“We are not giving up on the Syrian people and we are not abandoning the pursuit of peace,” he said.

He accused Moscow of turning a blind eye to Syria’s use of poison gas and barrel bombs – oil drums packed with explosives – to kill civilians.

The top US diplomat called Russia’s decision to “associate its interests and its reputation with that of Assad” as “irresponsible and profoundly ill-advised”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that Moscow would make efforts to resolve the crisis despite the US suspension of talks.