Tag: InternationalNews

{Officials say construction of UK-funded four-metre high, 1km-long wall in the French port will start this month.}

Politicians, aid groups and activists have condemned Britain’s plan to build a wall in the northern French port of Calais in a bid to stop migrants and refugees from entering the UK.

The four-metre high, 1km-long barrier will be built on a port approach road starting this month, and should be completed by the end of the year, French interior ministry officials said on Wednesday.

“The decision to build a wall in Calais is the latest wrong move in what is the ongoing scandal of the handling of the plight of refugees in northern France,” Jean Lambert, a member of the European parliament and migration spokesperson for Britain’s Green Party, said on Wednesday.

“The UK government must get its act together,” he said in a statement.

The wall, which will be funded by the British government under an agreement struck with France at a summit in March, will complement a security fence already put up around the port and entrance to the Channel Tunnel, officials said.

“We are going to start building this big new wall very soon. We’ve done the fence, now we are doing a wall,” Robert Goodwill, the British minister of state for immigration, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.

Save the Children, a British charity, responded to the plan saying the government should focus on protecting the hundreds of vulnerable children trapped in the dangerous conditions in Calais, “instead of building a wall”.

“The British Government has promised to bring vulnerable lone children trapped in Calais to the UK. It’s time now to make that promise a reality,” Steven McIntosh, head of the charity’s government relations, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Plans for the Calais “refugee wall” also caused a backlash on social media, with hundreds of people criticising the project and comparing it to a plan by Donald Trump, the US Republican presidential nominee, to build a wall along the border with Mexico if he is elected.

Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, which represents lorry drivers who say they are affected by migrants and refugees attempting to board their vehicles in Calais, also criticised the plan, calling it a “poor use of taxpayers’ money”.

Funds for a wall, which is expected to cost $3m, “would be much better spent on increasing security along the approach roads”, he said.

Amber Rudd, Britain’s home secretary, said the wall was “not a new initiative”, but what mattered was making sure the French had the right amount of security to prevent “illegals” trying to get to the UK.

She later published a statement on social media marking the first anniversary of Britain’s commitment to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees, saying “We’re on track to meet our commitment to help the most vulnerable Syrian refugees”.

The wall will be the latest barrier to go up around Europe as the continent struggles with its biggest refugee influx in decades.

Hungary has built a reinforced fence on its frontier with Serbia, and Austria has announced plans for a massive new barrier along its border with Hungary in a bid to shut down the route through the Balkans taken by migrants and refugees.

The wall in Calais was agreed following tens of thousands of attempted Channel crossings last year by migrants, officials said.

On Monday, French lorry drivers and farmers blocked the main routes in and out of Calais on Monday to call for the closure of the sprawling “Jungle” camp where thousands of refugees and migrants live in makeshift shelters.

An estimated 7,000 people are believed to be living in the camp, but charities say the number might be as high as 10,000 after an influx this summer.

Migrants from the camp sometimes use tree branches to create roadblocks to slow trucks heading for Britain. When the trucks slow down, migrants try to clamber on to trailers and stow themselves away for the journey to the UK.

Drivers say migrants and people trafficking gangs have also attacked their vehicles with metal bars in an effort to make them stop.

Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, promised during a visit to the Jungle last week to close the camp down “as quickly as possible”.

Refugees and advocacy groups have urged the French and British governments to offer a durable solution for those who have fled war and persecution in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

{Petra Laszlo charged with disorderly conduct after she was filmed kicking and tripping refugees fleeing police.}

Hungarian prosecutors have filed charges against a camerawoman who was filmed kicking and tripping refugees fleeing police near the country’s southern border with Serbia last year.

Petra Laszlo was charged on Wednesday for disorderly conduct after “she kicked a young man in the shin with a swift kick of the sole of her right foot, and also kicked young girl around the knee with her right foot”, prosecutors said in a statement, according to Reuters news agency.

Prosecutors also said Laszlo had “kicked toward a man carrying a child in his hands, but the kick did not reach the man”, in one of the accusations she had faced during last year’s online furore.

“The man carrying the child still fell, because… one of the policemen tried to catch and restrain him, and he lost his balance as he broke free.”

According to prosecutors, there was no evidence of a racially motivated hate crime.

The incident, which occurred in September 2015, caused international outrage after footage of her actions went viral on social media.

Laszlo, who later apologised, was fired from her job at N1TV, a private right-wing television station in Hungary.

Laszlo was not immediately available for comment.

In a letter last year to Magyar Nemzet, a Hungarian daily, she had said she was acting out of panic and felt under attack.

“I am practically in shock from what I did, and what was done to me,” Laszlo said.

“I am not heartless (or) racist … I am a woman, a mother of small children, who has since lost her job,
and who made a bad decision in panic.”

Laszlo’s trial will be held in the southern city of Szeged.

Political tensions in Europe have been simmering over the region’s refugee crisis.

Hungary will be holding a referendum on whether to accept European Union migrant quotas on October 2.

{Annan to meet government officials and Rakhine leaders as part of bid to bring together Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya.}

Kofi Annan, the former UN chief, will meet members of Myanmar’s federal government in Yangon to try to mend ties between Buddhists and the minority Rohingya.

Annan has been appointed to lead a commission to investigate a communal conflict pitting the ethnic Rakhine Buddhists against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

He has pledged to stay impartial as he leads the advisory commission.

“To build the future, the two major communities have to move beyond decades of mistrust and find ways to embrace shared values of justice, fairness and equity,” Annan said as he arrived in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine.

“Ultimately, the people of Rakhine state must chart their own way forward. We are here to help. We are here to provide ideas and advice.”

However, local Buddhists gave Annan a hostile welcome in Rakhine.

Hundreds arrived at Sittwe airport as Annan landed to protest against his visit.

Many booed and shouted “No Kofi-led commission” as his convoy left the state capital airport.

Others held signs reading “No to foreigners’ biased intervention in our Rakhine State’s affairs”.

{{Healing wounds}}

Annan has been entrusted by Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s new government, with the task of finding ways to heal wounds in the impoverished region.

“It is not a PR stunt taken by Aung San Suu Kyi; there are pros and cons considering the high-profile personality of Kofi Annan,” Maung Zarni, a human rights campaigner, told Al Jazeera.

“It is a significant step within the military, the ex-ruling political party within the Buddhist majority, in one sense it is very significant because it represent or indicates that the Rohingya crisis is not longer internal, it has an international aspect.”

Annan is meeting Rakhine leaders as well as visiting camps where tens of thousands of Rohingya languish in punishing poverty.

However, the region’s largest political group, the Arakan National Party, has already ruled out meeting Annan.

Members of the nearly million-strong Rohingya community are largely denied citizenship and the government does not recognise them as an official ethnic minority.

Their appalling living conditions, including heavy restrictions on movement, have led tens of thousands to flee, many via treacherous sea journey south towards Malaysia.

Last week, Ban Ki-moon, the sitting UN chief, called on Myanmar to grant citizenship to the the group and respect their right to self-identify as Rohingya.

More than 100 people have been killed – the majority Muslims – while tens of thousands of the stateless Rohingya group have spent the past four years trapped in displacement camps with limited access to health care and other basic services.

{Al Jazeera investigation exposes a $1.5bn money-laundering plot, bribery, theft and fraud in paradise.}

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has exposed massive corruption at the top of the Maldives government, including theft, bribery and money laundering. President Abdulla Yameen is accused of receiving cash in bags filled with up to $1m – so much that it was “difficult to carry”, according to one of the men who delivered the money.

A new documentary, Stealing Paradise, provides an unprecedented insight into how international corruption is carried out. The story is told through data obtained from three of former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb’s smartphones and dozens of confidential documents. It also features secretly recorded confessions of three men who embezzled millions and delivered the stolen cash on the orders of the president and his deputy.

The programme finds that the president’s ministers and aides have plotted to launder up to $1.5bn through the South Asian nation’s central bank, with the help of secretive businessmen from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. They planned to fly in cash at up to $100m at a time, pass it through the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) and transfer it back out.

An undercover Al Jazeera reporter met with one of the businessmen involved in the plan: Faidzan Hassan from Malaysia. The reporter told Hassan he represented wealthy clients with political connections who dealt in cash and wanted absolute secrecy.

Hassan said he could help, asking, “How many palettes [of cash] do you have?”

He added, “I don’t deal with arms and drugs. That’s it.”

Later, Hassan denied the allegations of a money-laundering plot in the Maldives and told Al Jazeera that the comments made to the reporter were mistaken and taken out of context.

The documentary includes undercover footage of three men describing how they delivered cash in bags to the president, the first lady, senior judges and numerous other politicians and officials.

“The whole system is corrupted,” one of the men said.

“For the president,” laughs the former vice president’s driver, the money is “difficult to carry”. He then tells a story of how he delivered $100,000 to the president, only to be told he wanted $1m. He made a return journey to deliver the rest.

The former vice president’s phone messages expose serious abuses of power. Ahmed Adeeb ordered the police commissioner to “blast” a TV station that had already been burned down in 2013. He also conspired with police to “light up” a government office housing 200 members of staff. The target of the attack was Niyaz Ibrahim, then auditor-general investigating the vice president’s corruption.

He branded it “state-sponsored terrorism by the government against its own people”.

The testimony also suggests the length of former President Mohamed Nasheed’s 13-year terrorism sentence was determined directly by the president. One of the men who delivered bribes tells how he was summoned to court to collect Nasheed’s sentence sheet, which was then shown to the president, who ordered an amendment.

“The day Nasheed was sentenced, they called me and told me to pick up a letter … Nasheed’s sentence,” said the source. “The president told [the vice president] there is something that has to be changed. That night, they sentenced Nasheed.”

{{Corrupt judges}}

Sources and text message conversations reveal the Maldives judiciary is far from independent. Senior judges have received money and luxury flats and meet regularly with the president and his deputy, who meddle in high-profile cases and judicial appointments.

In one text message, the former prosecutor-general declares absolute loyalty to Vice President Ahmed Adeeb and promises “no one can touch” him. In another, a supreme court judge, Ali Hameed, assures the vice president:

“We will remain soldiets till the mossion is over in 2018 ! Or 2023 ? Hah! hah ! Hah !” (sic)

The text messages show the president and his deputy spent six months working to save Judge Hameed from being debarred after he was embroiled in a sex scandal. After they succeeded, the judge wrote:

“My dear brother you and HEP did more than enough to me and my family . I will be always greateful sir !” (sic)

Former President Nasheed, who ruled from 2008 until he stepped down under pressure in 2012, described the judiciary as “the most corrupt institution in the country” and described the president’s interference in his sentencing as “sad”.

“All of these politically motivated sentences are being driven, directed by President Yameen,” said Nasheed. “I mean, I’ve been told the same, but you’ve of course proven it beyond doubt.”

The Maldives’ supreme court declined to comment. The Maldives government failed to respond to a request for comment at the time this article was written.

{Island’s court defies ruling of highest administrative court suspending ban on full-body swimsuit by dozens of towns.}

An administrative court on the French island of Corsica has refused to lift a burkini ban that was introduced following a mass brawl on a beach, saying it was justified on public order grounds.

France’s highest administrative court last month suspended bans brought in by about 30 towns, ruling that the measure was permitted only if wearing the Islamic full-body swimsuit was likely to cause a public disturbance.

Nice, Cannes and several other towns on France’s Mediterranean coast have lifted bans following the Council of State’s ruling.

But the mayor of the Corsican village of Sisco brought in his ban after a confrontation between Moroccans and local residents in mid-August, which reportedly happened when someone took a photograph of a woman swimming in the sea wearing a veil.

More than 100 police officers had to intervene to break up the fight.

{{‘Strong emotions’}}

The burkini debate comes after a number of deadly attacks in France claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

The court in Corsica ruled on Tuesday that the ban should be maintained because “strong emotions persist”.

“The presence on a beach in Sisco of a woman wearing a swimming costume of the type targeted [by the ban] … could cause risks to public order which it is the town hall’s duty to prevent,” the court in Bastia said, dismissing a challenge from the Human Rights League.

Sisco’s Mayor Ange-Pierre Vivoni said the ruling was “a relief for me and local people”.

He has told AFP news agency that he brought in the ban because he “risked having deaths on my hands”.

The tensions between the local community and Muslims in Corsica were demonstrated on Monday when two Muslim mothers wearing headscarves were accosted and prevented from entering a nursery school by two other parents.

The burkini bans have caused outrage abroad, but opinion polls in France show they have the support of a majority of the public.

In France, which counts a population of five million Muslims, burkinis are extremely rare and only a minority of Muslim women remain covered on beaches.

{{‘Unacceptable image’}}

In a related development on Monday, Manuel Valls, French prime minister, criticised a New York Times article in which French Muslim women complained of discrimination and even “persecution”.

The US daily solicited the views of European Muslim women on the burkini debate, distilling more than 1,000 comments for the article.

The article, which appeared on Friday, painted an “unacceptable image of France because it is false”, Valls wrote in the French-language online edition of the Huffington Post.

He said France was “proud that Islam is the country’s second religion. Millions of citizens of the Muslim faith or culture respect their duties perfectly and fully enjoy their duties”.

One respondent told the New York Times she was “afraid of having to wear a yellow crescent on my clothes one day, like the Star of David for Jews not so long ago”.

Another said: “French Muslim women would be justified to request asylum in the United States … given how many persecutions we are subjected to.”

However, Valls saw an “incredible reversal” in comments that he said presented the burkini as “an instrument of women’s liberation”, citing one respondent who said her sister “could finally play with her children on the beach instead of sitting in the shadow”.

{Response follows outcry over alleged government use of chlorine gas, causing one death and injuries to more than 100.}

The Syrian government has denied claims that it dropped barrels of chemical weapons on an opposition-held neighbourhood in Aleppo city that has caused at least one death and dozens of cases of suffocation.

A video obtained by Al Jazeera shows what activists say is the aftermath of an attack in the rebel-held al-Sukkari neighbourhood in eastern Aleppo.

The activists say that the Syrian government used a helicopter to drop two barrel bombs loaded with gas on residents, killing at least one person and injuring more than 100.

Rescue workers also said government helicopters dropped suspected chlorine bombs on the neighbourhood on Tuesday.

The Syrian Civil Defence and the Syrian American Medical Society posted videos and photos on social media showing children doused in water using oxygen masks to breathe.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks daily developments in the Syrian war, said that more than 70 people in Sukkari were left choking and needing treatment after the dropping of barrel bombs by Syrian government helicopters.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the Syria-Turkey border, said: “Activists on the ground are saying that victims that were rushed to the hospitals are experiencing breathing difficulties.

“They say that symptoms are the same that they have experienced in the past and this led them to believe that this is a chlorine gas attack.”

The opposition Aleppo Media Centre also charged on its Twitter account that Sukkari was the target of a chlorine attack.

The Syrian government has vigorously denied using chemical bombs.

Last month, an inquiry by the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that Syrian government forces were responsible for two toxic gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 involving the use of chlorine.

The Syrian Civil Defence had accused the government of another chlorine attack in August.

The UN says it is investigating that allegation.

“Accusations by the opposition that the Syrian government dropped chlorine gas in a barrel bomb on Aleppo are likely to further increase tension in the city that is now besieged by government troops,” our correspondent said.

“The UN said that they have been investigating reports of what they believed to be chlorine gas dropped on Aleppo; they say if those accusations are confirmed that would amount to war crimes.”

Against this background, rebel factions launched a new offensive in Aleppo on Tuesday to regain some of the areas they have recently lost.

Government forces put eastern Aleppo under siege on Sunday for a second time since July after advancing against rebels on the city’s outskirts.

The city has long been divided between government-held areas in the west and opposition-controlled neighbourhoods in the east.

Last month, opposition forces managed to break the crippling blockade on several districts of Aleppo.

Al Jazeera’s Ahelbarra said: “The rebel push to break the siege in Aleppo failed in the past because of divisions among the different factions operating in the area and the growing Russian involvement in the Syrian conflict.

“Many are now calling for a merger of all rebel factions … for the purpose of taking over the city of Aleppo.”

Aleppo has been one of the areas hardest hit by escalating violence in recent months after a partial truce brokered by the US and Russia in February crumbled.

It is estimated that about 300,000 civilians are currently trapped in the city.

{Summit gets under way in Laos as Philippines releases photos purportedly showing Chinese boats near disputed areas.}

The Philippines has released pictures purportedly showing Chinese boats near a disputed shoal, a triangle shaped chain of reefs and rocks, in the South China Sea.

The photos were shown only hours before leaders of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations met China’s premier at a summit in Vientiane, Laos, on Wednesday.

China this week insisted that it had not launched any efforts to begin construction at the shoal, which has huge strategic importance for its ambitions to control the sea and weaken US military influence in the region.

But the Philippines said the images showed Chinese ships at the shoal last weekend that were capable of dredging sand and other activities required to build an artificial island.

“We have reason to believe that their presence is a precursor to building activities on the shoal,” Arsenio Andolong, defence department spokesman, told AFP news agency.

“We are continuing our surveillance and monitoring of their presence and activities, which are disturbing.”

{{China’s claims}}

China claims nearly all of the sea, through which $5 trillion in shipping trade passes each year, even waters approaching the coasts of the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations.

However, a UN-backed tribunal ruled in July that China’s claims to almost all of the sea had no legal basis and its construction of artificial islands in disputed waters was illegal.

China has pledged to ignore the ruling.

Duterte had said he did not want to anger China by highlighting the territorial row at the Asean summit.

Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen reporting from Vientiane, said harsh words were indeed avoided at Wednesday’s meeting.

“Duterte said the international dispute should inspire us to work together within the boundaries of the law. Basically, he was avoiding mentioning July’s arbitration ruling about the South China Sea which was in favour of the Philippines,” she said.

The competing territorial claims have long been a major source of tension in the region, with China using deadly force twice to seize control of islands from Vietnam.

{{Spratlys dispute}}

Concerns have escalated sharply in recent years as China has built artificial islands on reefs and islets in the Spratlys archipelago – another strategically important location – that are capable of supporting military operations.

An artificial island at Scarborough Shoal would potentially give China a military base close to where US forces regularly operate on the Philippine main island of Luzon, which is only 230km away.

Incidentally, US President Barack Obama is also in Laos for the regional meetings, which will conclude on Thursday with an East Asia summit.

{At least 48 killed, dozens wounded in five blasts in mostly government-held areas, including in Homs and Damascus.}

At least 48 people have been killed and dozens wounded in five explosions across mostly government-controlled areas of Syria, according to state media reports.

Monday morning’s blasts were later claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

The explosions hit the coastal city of Tartous, the central city of Homs and the suburbs of the capital Damascus, as well as the northeastern city of Hasaka, which is mostly controlled by Kurdish forces but where the government maintains a presence.

State media said at least 35 people were killed and 43 others wounded in a double bomb attack just outside Tartous, in the coastal province of the same name, which is a base of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

“Two terrorist blasts on Arzuna bridge, the first a car bomb and the second a suicide bomber who detonated his explosive belt when people gathered to help the wounded,” Syrian state television said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based monitoring group, put the death toll of the Tartous blasts at 38, adding that 14 of those killed were civilians including two women and one child.

The SOHR also said the blast hit a checkpoint belonging to the Kurdish Asayesh security forces.

In another attack in Hasaka, in the northeast of the country, state media reported eight people were killed and two wounded in an attack caused by an “explosives-packed motorcycle”.

State media also reported a car bomb at Homs’s Bab Tadmur roundabout at the entrance to the al-Zahra neighbourhood, which is under government control.

It said at least four people were killed and 10 wounded in the bombing, the latest in a series of attacks targeting al-Zahra.

State media also reported another bomb attack on the al-Sabboura road west of the capital Damascus, in which one person was killed, and three others wounded.

“The attacks seem to have taken place at the same time, which leaves many to wonder whether this was a coordinated attack,” said Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gazientep on the Turkish side of the border with Syria.

{{Renewed Aleppo siege
}}

Monday’s bombings came just hours after diplomats from the US and Russia once again failed to reach a deal to ease the fighting.

A senior US State Department official said fresh crisis talks between John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the margins of the G20 summit in China had ended without agreement.

A deal to provide aid to Aleppo’s civilians and at least partially halt Russian and Syrian bombardments had looked possible on Sunday, before the talks collapsed.

US officials accused Russia of backtracking on already agreed issues which they refused to revisit, but the talks seemed to have been overtaken by developments on the ground.

Syrian government troops renewed their siege of Aleppo on Sunday.

“The blasts happened almost a day after the Syrian government re-took Ramosa which is a vast military complex taken over by the rebels last month,” Al Jazeera’s Ahelbarra said.

State media said they had taken an area south of the city, severing the last opposition-held route into Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods.

Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been devastated by the civil war that began with protests against Assad’s government in March 2011.