Tag: InternationalNews

{Rebels capture at least 14 villages in four days, according to monitor, prompting heavy government air strikes.}

Areas of Syria’s Hama province captured by rebel fighters came under heavy air attack on Thursday as pro-government forces sought to counter a major rebel assault in an area of strategic importance to President Bashar al-Assad.

The offensive that began on Tuesday is the biggest coordinated rebel assault in Hama province since 2014, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

The UK-based Observatory said at least 25 people, including six children, had been killed in overnight air strikes on Wednesday.

Syrian state television said on Thursday that the air force had carried out “concentrated strikes” against what it described as “terrorists” in the area, saying tens of them had been killed.

The rebel push in Hama marks a new challenge for Assad and his allies in a part of Syria where the embattled leader has tried to consolidate his grip on power against a five-year-long push to depose him.

An official in one of the rebel factions waging the attack, Jaish al-Nasr, told Reuters news agency that both Syrian and Russian jets were involved in what he described as heavy air strikes. Russia has been bombing anti-Assad forces for almost a year.

{{Sweeping advance}}

The rebel alliance, which includes elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jund Al-Aqsa group, aims to take control of the airport in Hama, from which regime helicopters fly regular sorties against opposition fighters.

“They are about 10 kilometres from the airport” in Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on a broad network of sources inside Syria.

The rebels are also probably seeking to ease pressure on opposition fighters in the battleground northern city of Aleppo by distracting regime forces.

In four days, the rebel alliance has seized control of 14 villages, mainly in the north of Hama province, including the towns of Halfaya and Suran.

They were also threatening to capture the historic Christian town of Mahrada, just west of the major north-south highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo.

The targeted areas are populated by Christians and Alawites loyal to the government and are close to the mountain heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect.

“We will target those who open fire on us,” Jamil Saleh, a rebel commander in Hama, told Al Jazeera. “We won’t target civilians at all… we are fighting for our land. Our enemy is the army.”

The Observatory said the air strikes that killed 25 people hit a road between the town of Latamenah and Idlib province, an area of northwestern Syria mostly under rebel control.

A Syrian military source told Reuters that the air force had destroyed dozens of rebel vehicles and the militants riding in them on a road from Latamenah to Idlib.

Hama province is of vital strategic importance to Assad, as it separates opposition forces in rebel-controlled Idlib from Damascus to the south and the government-controlled coast to the west.

In 2013, a major push by rebel groups to capture Hama was repelled by government forces after reinforcements were sent to the area.

Major demonstrations erupted in Hama in 2011 during the outbreak of Syria’s civil conflict, but were quickly suppressed in a deadly government crackdown.

Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez al-Assad brutally put down a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama city in 1982, killing thousands of people.

{US presidential nominee Trump says immigration from countries such as Syria should be suspended in major speech.}

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has addressed supporters in a major speech on immigration in the border state of Arizona, just hours after he met Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City.

He opened his speech on Wednesday evening by detailing stories of undocumented immigrants who committed violent crimes, telling thousands in the convention centre in downtown Phoenix that he had “met with many of the great parents who lost their children to sanctuary cities and open borders”.

Later, he pledged to impose “ideological certification” for immigrants seeking to enter the US, to include questions about so-called honour killings, women, gays and “radical Islam”. He said immigration would be suspended from countries like Syria and Libya.

“We have no idea where they’re coming from, we have no idea who they are,” he said of Syrian refugees.

He raged against what he called low-skilled undocumented immigrants who he said competed with US citizens for jobs and pledged to “remove criminal aliens immediately”.

Trump also reaffirmed his pledge to build a wall on the country’s southern border with Mexico, as supporters chanted, “Build a wall”.

“They don’t know it yet, but they will pay for the wall,” he said of Mexico.

Earlier on Wednesday, protesters gathered in Mexico City as the presidential hopeful visited the country which he has derided as a source of rapists and criminals coming to the US.

Immigration has been a defining issue of Trump’s presidential campaign, with inflammatory comments about Latinos, Muslims and other minorities.

{ {{Analysis from Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher in Phoenix}}

For all the talk of “pivots” and “softening”, Donald Trump is back where he started on the question of immigration. It’s hardly surprising.

It’s been a cornerstone of his presidential bid and was a significant factor of his win in the primary campaign. It’s estimated there are 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States.

Donald Trump believes 2 million have a criminal past. These people, he insists, will be removed from the US on his first day in office.

And for the others? Well, there’s no chance of them gaining citizenship, or any sort of legal status. There will be no amnesty in any form.

But it’s not just illegal immigration that will be a target for the Trump White House. Anyone who wants to move to the US will have to bring a benefit to the country. And they will have to pass an ideological test. They will be questioned on American values and their attitude to Americans in general. They will be asked about their views on issues like so-called honour killings or radical Islam. And only after this “extreme vetting” will they be put on the path to being allowed into the country.

Trump believes the immigration issue is a vote winner. Watch him concentrate on this issue for the 60+ days left in the presidential campaign. }

{MPs reject the acting PM’s bid to form a government, bringing the country closer to a potential third vote in a year.}

Spain’s acting Prime Minister has failed to secure enough votes in parliament to form a new government, bringing the country closer to a potential third election in a year.

Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), lost Wednesday’s vote of confidence after received 170 of the 176 votes needed for an absolute majority in the 350-member body.

He was backed only by his own party, the centrist Ciudadanos and a lone MP from the Canary Islands.

Spaniards voted for the second time within a six months span at the end of June, after the four main political parties failed to agree on a coalition when December’s general election resulted in a hung parliament.

The PP, in power since 2011, won the most seats in December and June’s elections but fell short of an absolute majority both times as voters angry over corruption and austerity supported new formations.

Another confidence vote will be held on Friday, in which Rajoy will only need more votes in favour than against.

The Socialists, who came second in the polls, have steadfastly refused to back Rajoy, with leader Pedro Sanchez telling the assembly that the acting prime minister had “no credibility”.

If there is no breakthrough, voters will be asked to return to the polls on December 25, the date determined by timings laid out in Spanish election law.

Socialists and other parties have already proposed shortening the campaign so a repeat election could be held on December 18.

{New figures released by India’s crime records bureau show that vast majority of victims knew their attackers.}

At least 34,651 cases of rape were reported across India last year, statistics released by the country’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) have revealed.

The figures, released on Tuesday, showed that victims ranged from female children younger than six years old to women over 60 years, with those aged between 18 and 30 reporting the largest number of rape attacks – totalling almost 17,000.

Victims knew their alleged rapists in 33,098 of the 34,651 reported rape cases, or 95.5 percent, according to the figures, which also showed a slight decrease compared with the 36,735 rape cases reported in 2014.

There were also 4,437 cases of reported attempted rape last year.

But rights workers say that the figures are likely not an accurate representation of the scale of the problem, as stigma surrounding sex crimes means many attacks are not reported.

Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, warned that the figures should be analysed with caution.

“Rape is highly under-reported,” she said, but added that there were cases where “consensual elopement is being reported as rape by the parents of the girl.

“The heart of the issue is structures in India that continue to restrict women’s autonomy, and especially sexual autonomy, often justified in the name of culture.”

Sexual violence against women in India rose to the forefront internationally after the December 2012 death of a young woman who was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi.

The brutal attack triggered domestic and global condemnation and widespread protests across India over the high levels of violence against Indian women and children.

Sexual harassment and child abuse is definitely a cause for concern in India, said Shreya Jani, who runs a peace education NGO in New Delhi.

In the past, reporting and discussing such crimes was considered “taboo”, Jani told Al Jazerra.

“It’s heartening to see that now more women are reporting these crimes and speaking up. As Indian women, we are a paradox of strength and silence. I am glad the silence is being broken by many now,” she said.

Still, Jani said she feared walking on deserted streets at “any time of the day or night”.

She also follows personal security precautions, including making sure someone always knows her movements, and her mobile phone is always charged.

In June, the Indian parliament passed a law to install panic buttons and other emergency devices on buses to inform the police in the case of potential sexual violence.

The country also issued another regulation requiring all mobile phones sold in the country from 2017 to include a panic button. From 2018, phones are set to include GPS navigation systems.

The total number of crimes against women, including rape, recorded by the crime bureau stood at 327,394, and related to sexual harassment, attempts to undress, importation of girls from foreign countries, cruelty by husbands or other relatives, kidnapping and abductions, among others.

{Shootings in US city have peaked in August, with gunshot victims flooding hospital wards each weekend.}

Chicago, United States – It was a typical August, summer weekend in Chicago: dozens of people were shot, several were killed.

But outside of the city’s ultra-violent South and West Sides, almost no one noticed.

On the west side, five men shot dead a 38-year-old man parking his car, leaving a puddle of blood behind. A few blocks away, more crime tape signalled another murder – a familiar scene to locals here.

Aisha Jones, who lives in the area, told Al Jazeera that the city’s violence is so rampant that her daughter and two sons are scared to leave the house.

“There was a shooting. We were standing on my friend’s porch about two weeks ago, and a guy came up just started shooting … all the kids just scattered.”

In a recent episode, shortly after midnight on Friday, police received reports of shots being fired on Monroe Street, on Chicago’s West Side.

They arrived to find a 30-year-old man with a bullet wound to the head and pronounced him dead. An 18-year-old woman was also shot in the leg. A 25-year-old man later arrived at the hospital with wounds he said were from the same incident.

‘Institutionalised racism’

In many aspects, Chicago’s story is a tale of two cities.

“It is the most segregated city, black-white, in the United States. People with middle-class values and wherewithal have moved out, so what you have left are the poorest of the poor, the most hopeless of the hopeless, the most destitute of the destitute,” Arthur Lurigio, professor of criminal justice and psychology at Loyola University, told Al Jazeera.

Lurigio said that violence in Chicago is much worse than in other cities “because of institutionalised racism … African Americans have been walled off from the rest of Chicago for 50 or more years”.

Although only one in three Chicago residents is black, the black community accounts for three out of four shooting victims.

Violence peaked in the 1990s as gangs fought over turf to sell crack cocaine, then a new drug, leading police to arrest gang leaders en masse.

Derek Brown, an ex-gang member turned youth boxing trainer, said: “The discipline code of the streets has left … when there are no leader, there is no structure. So now crime is coming from children. You have 16-year-old children who are killers now.”

Chicago has received renewed attention after the cousin of a famous sportsman was killed. On Friday, Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of Chicago Bulls basketball star Dwyane Wade, was killed while pushing a pram, police said.

Two brothers out of jail on parole, apparently aiming for the man walking next to her, were responsible, police said.

Though the details of that killing were discovered, nine out of 10 shootings are never solved.

“This tragedy isn’t just noteworthy because Ms Aldridge has a famous family member,” said Eddie Johnson, Chicago police superintendent.

“It’s noteworthy because these two offenders are the prime example of the challenge we face here in Chicago, repeat gun offenders that don’t care who they shoot, don’t care whose life they take and clearly don’t fear the consequences of their action.”

Chicago has recovered an illegal handgun for every hour of the year of 2016, he added.

The Stroger-Cook County hospital treats an average of 20 victims of such violence each weekday, around 40 on each day of the weekend, with the toll rising during summer and warm months.

This year has witnessed a spike of around 40 percent.

During the July 4 weekend, more than 60 people were killed in the city.

“In the midst of this greatness, of all this grandeur, you have ‘Chiraq’ – part Chicago, part Iraq, in the sense of the number of killings that go on every year,” said John Fountain, a Chicago-based columnist and professor.

Chicago’s increased woes come as the US deals with increasing police brutality, with black Americans often suffering at the hands of officer-led violence.

“The truth is in the streets of Chicago and the streets of America, it doesn’t matter if I have never been to jail, if I am a professor or a journalist, when I am stopped by a cop in the street, I have fear coursing through my veins and my one goal is to survive the encounter,” added Fountain, who is black.

Tio Hardiman, head of CeaseFire Violence Interrupters – an organisation that intervenes in gang violence – said: “You have to watch yourself every minute of the day, and that’s what is sad. You have got to watch the police, you have got to watch the brothers in the community … Being black could cost you your life.”

{Russia questions evidence from independent inspectors who hold both government forces and ISIL responsible for attacks.}

Calls have been made for sanctions against Syria following findings by a UN team that government forces twice used chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war.

The UN investigators also found evidence that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group used mustard gas at least once in the conflict.

However, the UN Security Council failed during a closed-door session on Tuesday to agree on any action, with Russia questioning the evidence from the independent commission.

The international team of inspectors has determined that both the Syrian government and ISIL were responsible for chemical attacks carried out in 2014 and 2015.

Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador, said it was too early to consider implementing a September 2013 Security Council resolution authorising sanctions that can be militarily enforced for any use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Russia has been a close ally of the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad since the crisis began there in 2011.

“Clearly there is a smoking gun. We know that chlorine most likely has been used – that was already the finding of the fact finding mission before – but there are no fingerprints on the gun,” Churkin said following the closed-door session.

“There is nobody to sanction in the report which has been issued,” he said. “It contains no names, it contains no specifics … If we are to be professional we need to question all the conclusions.”

Churkin said, however, that he was pleased the report had confirmed the use of chemical weapons by ISIL, also known as ISIS.

{{Syrian rejection}}

For his part, Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s UN ambassador, also dismissed the report’s findings as biased.

“The conclusions contained in the report were totally based on statements made by witnesses presented by the terrorist armed groups,” he said.

“Therefore, these conclusions lack any physical evidence.”

Heading into the meeting, Samantha Power, the US ambassador, called the report “a landmark” and said she expected a Security Council resolution “soon”.

“It is the first official independent confirmation of what many of us … have presented substantial evidence of for a long time, and that is a pattern of chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime,” she said.

“It is incumbent on the council to act swiftly to show … we were serious about there being meaningful accountability.”

In September 2013, Syria accepted a Russian proposal to relinquish its chemical-weapons stockpile and join the Chemical Weapons Convention.

That averted a US military strike in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

Possible punishment

Russia has blocked sanctions and other council action against Assad’s government.

However, it did support the establishment of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, charged with determining who was responsible for the attacks and paving the way for possible punishment.

The inspectors investigated nine cases in seven towns and determined the Syrian government was responsible for two attacks involving chlorine gas and the ISIL, which is already under UN sanctions, for one attack involving mustard gas.

They said three more attacks pointed towards government involvement but were not conclusive, and described three others as inconclusive.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday, said the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism ends on September 23 and its work is not yet complete.

{Ten years after the war, relatives of nearly 1,400 disappeared see little hope of finding loved ones or seeing justice.}

Bardiya and Kathmandu – Lautan Kumari Chaudhary remembers the knock on her door. It was 3am on April 11, 2002, and people had come looking for her husband in Mangalpur, their village in Bardiya district’s Rajapur.

“We were sleeping. Somebody called, ‘Comrade! Open the door!’ I opened the door. Three people – two were in army uniform – entered,” says Lautan, who, like her husband, belongs to the historically persecuted indigenous Tharu ethnic group.

Located on a dense delta created by the River Karnali and extending to the border with India in the south, Rajapur is predominantly populated by ethnic Tharu people. Until a year ago, the region could only be accessed by boat, but the government has now built a bridge.

Landlessness has long been common among the Tharus and, before the war, many worked as bonded labourers for upper-caste landlords.

“The Maoist war changed the landlord-labour relations. Tharus began to assert as Maoists raised their issues. Many of the Zamindars [landlords] who exploited them fled the areas, selling their land,” explains local activist Bhagiram Chaudhary.

“They tied both hands of my husband and took him away,” Lautan remembers. “My [four-year-old] son woke up and started to cry.”

She never saw her husband again, and says he wasn’t a Maoist.

Two other men were also picked up from the neighbourhood that night. They, too, never returned.

At least 15 members of the Tharu community – including Bhagiram’s brother and sister-in-law – “disappeared” from the villages of Rajapur. Bhagiram says the Tharus were “systematically targeted”.

{{Justice for “disappeared”}}

Nationwide, nearly 1,400 people were “disappeared” during the war. According to the UN, more than 250 cases of enforced disappearances were reported in Bardiya district alone – the highest number in a single district.

Nearly 85 percent of those who “disappeared” in Bardiya were Tharus. Lautan, like many other war widows, was forced to fend for herself and her son after her husband, until then the only breadwinner in their family, “disappeared”. She took up tailoring. Her son is now training to be a paramedic.

The security forces assured Lautan, then 19, that her husband would be returned after a “normal inquiry”, but 14 years on, she has found no trace of him.

“Nothing has been found,” she says, nervously scratching at the wooden base of her sewing machine. Lautan says she just wants closure.

“If my husband is alive they should bring him here. If he’s dead, they should show me where he is buried. They should show us his bones,” she says, wiping away her tears.

Ram Kumar Bhandari, whose father was “disappeared”, has travelled across the country, bringing together families of victims of atrocities committed by both sides in the war. He says 90 percent of “disappearances” were carried out by the police and army.

Last year, the government established the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), beginning a long-delayed process of providing transitional justice.

The two commissions have received more than 50,000 complaints, but the UN has refused to support the process, saying it lacks international standard.

But in April this year, when the two commissions finally began registering complaints from victims, Ram Kumar says some of those who had filed cases were threatened by the accused.

He believes the Maoists have “betrayed” the victims of war crimes by promoting security personnel suspected of involvement in enforced disappearances once they were in government.

That impression was further compounded when, in May 2016, the Maoists, led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who is popularly known as Prachanda, prevailed upon the then government to provide amnesty to alleged perpetrators. The move has been criticised by human rights organisations.

“If the existing law is not amended, if there is no significant pressure from all sides, including the international community, then I am personally not very hopeful that justice will be served to conflict victims,” explains Rameshwar Nepal, the national director of Amnesty International Nepal.

So far, the government has provided compensation of $500,000 Nepali rupees (around $4,705) to the affected families and scholarships to the children of the “disappeared”.

Continued tensions

But today, relations between Tharus and people from the hills of Nepal, known as Pahadis, who have traditionally been better represented by the ruling elite, remain fraught.

In 2015, protests by Tharus who were dissatisfied with the country’s new constitution, in the district of Kailali, resulted in the deaths of eight police officers. In response, a Pahadi mob burned down dozens of Tharu houses, as security forces looked on. Thousands of Tharu men fled their villages, fearing retaliation.

Ram Kumar says taking on the powerful has not been easy, and that he has faced intimidation from the security forces and the Maoists.

“I openly challenged them. I am not afraid to die. We have died many times,” he says.

“I know the perpetrator of my father’s disappearance. Even the National Human Rights Commission named him. My father did not take up arms and was not an active member of the Maoists.”

Tara Bahadur Karki, a spokesperson for Nepal’s army, says: “The army has provided all the material it has concerning disappearances to the TRC through the defence ministry. The army has helped fully to support the TRC and the investigation of the disappeared from its side and will continue to do so.”

{Delegates gather in Naypyidaw for meeting aimed at ending separatist insurgencies that have claimed thousands of lives.}

Hundreds of representatives of Myanmar’s ethnic tribes have gathered in the country’s capital for peace talks with the government aimed at ending decades of separatist insurgencies that have claimed thousands of lives.

The delegates, dressed in traditional garb and headgear, entered the conference hall in Naypyidaw on Wednesday for the five-day talks called by the new government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Although her title is state counsellor, she is seen as the country’s real leader.

Inside Story – Will Suu Kyi lead Myanmar from behind the scenes?
Aung San Suu Kyi, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s armed forces, are scheduled to give speeches at the opening of the talks to determine the fate of the country’s various ethnic minorities, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“All our people around the country want peace. So I do believe we will be successful in getting it at the conference,” said Khun Than Myint, the facilitator of the meeting which is titled Union Peace Conference – 21st Century Panglong.

This is a reference to the Panglong Agreement brokered in 1947 by Aung San Suu Kyi’s late father, independence hero General Aung San, in a town called Panglong.

The 1947 deal granted ethnic minorities autonomy and the right to secede if they worked with the federal government to break away from Britain together.

Aung San was assassinated the following year and the deal fell apart. Since then, ethnic groups have accused successive, mostly military, governments of failing to honour the 1947 pact, just before Myanmar gained independence from Britain the next year.

This week’s conference is being attended by 17 of the 20 main armed groups, including the Karen, Kachin, Shan and Wa, along with other stakeholders.

A representative of Kachin state told Al Jazeera the most important thing was that everybody will be treated equally at the table during the five-day peace conference.

Khua Uk Lian, assistant general secretary with the Chin National Front, said he was optimistic about the talks but warned that fighting would continue until a myriad of local issues – from drug addiction epidemics to resource tussles – were settled on the ground.

“You have local commanders fighting about local problems,” he told AFP news agency. “It’s been like this since we have been fighting.”

The first uprising – launched by the ethnic Karen – began shortly after independence.

Since then, other ethnic groups have also taken up arms. Skirmishes, particularly in northern zones, have displaced more than 100,000 civilians since 2011.

At least 100,000 more have sought refuge in squalid camps in neighbouring Thailand, and are unlikely to return home until true peace takes hold.

The rebel armies control a patchwork of remote territories rich in jade and timber that are located mostly in the north and east along the borders with China and Thailand.

Aung San Suu Kyi promised that bringing peace would be her top priority when her government assumed power earlier this year after decades of military rule.

The previous military-backed government brokered individual truces with various insurgent groups and oversaw a cease-fire covering eight minor insurgencies last year that fell short of a nationwide deal.

Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler, reporting from Naypidaw said after several decades of conflict in the country, it will take a lot of back and forth on certain issues before the states can move forward with a peace accord.