Tag: InternationalNews

{Designers of “viral bag with Arabic text” aim to tackle social misunderstandings in humorous way.}

Two Palestinian graphic designers saw one of their tote bag designs go viral after it was photographed on a train in Germany’s capital, Berlin.

In simple bold Arabic script, the text on the bag translates to “This text has no meaning except to scare people who don’t understand it”.

The picture of the bag has been widely shared and praised on social media and the two designers, Sana Jammalieh and Haitham Haddad, have been flooded with praise and inquiries about their product.

The pair founded Rock Paper Scissors design studio in Haifa, Israel, in May 2016.

Friends since their college days, they create T-shirts, bags and mugs that deal with social and gender issues in a humorous way.

Al Jazeera: Where did the idea for the tote bag design come from?

Haitham Haddad: When we first opened the studio we wanted to make some sort of tote bag design that was very simple in the way it looks but conveys a very straightforward message.

It came from our reality because we are Arabs – Palestinians living in Israel. There’s sort of a common fear or misunderstanding of the Arabic language here. So it was an in-your-face message to make fun of people who are scared of the Arabic language … and are afraid of it. Because people who don’t think much connect it directly to, you know what [terrorism].

In the studio, the entire way of expressing ourselves in design is based on humour and sarcasm and trying to point out that most people think in a very shallow way.

People holding the tote on their shoulders are somehow testing other people and mocking them because they don’t understand Arabic and they’re just afraid of the language, or the font, or the curviness of the Arabic.

Al Jazeera: What other challenges has the Arabic language faced in Israel?

Haddad: In the past five years, especially in cities like Haifa, people are trying to reclaim their Arab knowledge, or the language, or the use of the typography as a means to express themselves.

Sana Jammalieh: It wasn’t really bad before but there was a time when the Arabic language wasn’t cool. It kind of disappeared when the whole chatting programmes came 15 years ago – you couldn’t type in Arabic.

“Arabeasy” was invented, which is Arabic words written in English letters, which is really sad because Arabic started to disappear. But now you can type in Arabic and more people are aware of it, and hopefully Arabeasy will disappear again.

Al Jazeera: What is it like to have the picture of your design going viral?

Haddad: We’ve answered more than 500 messages on Facebook in the last day asking where they can buy the tote bag. And we are also trying to find out who’s trying to copy the print because a friend keeps sending us screenshots of people trying to steal the design or the text. It has already been happening.

It’s not a common saying or slang – it’s just a sentence that Sana and I made up, and that’s why when people put it on a T-shirt they are actually stealing or copying our work.

Since yesterday, we’ve been sending messages saying “please stop what you’re doing”. It’s just individuals trying to make the money that we don’t have!

Al Jazeera: Why do you think people have responded to the design in Europe?

Jammalieh: We make art and, like a painting, everyone sees it or connects to it the way they want to, so the same thing happened with this bag.

In Europe now there are bad conditions with the fear of Arabs and terrorism, and Arabic is obviously connected to that in their eyes. So it’s kind of the same thing Arabic language is being victimised and the whole Arab nation is being victimised and automatically related to terrorism, which is wrong.

Al Jazeera: What kind of response has the studio received directly?

Jammalieh: We’ve not had any bad feedback, not even one negative comment. Most people are asking where they can buy it, so that’s why we opened an online shop today. Due to all the requests and people copying our design we made sure that we sell our design because we don’t want people to copy it.

We came back from Berlin yesterday in the morning and we turned on our mobile phones and found out what’s happening. Five hours later we were in the studio working. We haven’t had much sleep!

{Moscow says use of airbase does not violate a UN resolution that prohibits supplying fighter jets to Tehran.}

Russia has said its use of an Iranian airbase to carry out bombing missions in Syria does not violate a UN resolution that forbids supplying fighter jets to Tehran.

“There has been no supply, sale or transfer of combat jets to Iran,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday in comments reported by the Russian state news agency TASS.

“These jets are being used by Russian Air forces with Iranian consent within an anti-terrorist operation in Syria on the request of the legal Syrian government.”

Lavrov was responding to comments by US State Department spokesman Mark Toner, who said on Tuesday that Russia might be violating UN Security Council Resolution 2231 by using Iranian territory to launch air raids in Syria.

The resolution bans the supply, sale or transfer of combat aircraft to Iran unless approved in advance by the UN Security Council.

Toner also described Russia’s move as “unfortunate but not surprising or unexpected”, saying the air strikes that Russia says target the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant in Syria actually “predominately target moderate Syrian opposition forces”.

The defence ministry in Moscow said on Wednesday that Russian Su-34 warplanes took off from an airbase in Iran and conducted a raid against ISIL in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zour.

The attack hit two ISIL command points and large training camps, “eliminating more than 150 militants”, the ministry said in comments carried by TASS.

Al Jazeera’s Reza Sayah, reporting from Gazientep on the Turkey-Syria border, said recent rebel victories, including the breaking of the siege of rebel-held Aleppo, may have been behind Russia’s decision to use the air base.

“In recent weeks, the rebels have gained some momentum, including the breaking of the government’s siege of Aleppo. The recent battlefield victories are another reason why some expect the Russian air campaign to intensify with the help from the air base in Iran.”

On Tuesday, Russian fighter jets used an Iranian airbase for the first time for military actions in Syria, TASS reported.

Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi, an opposition leader and spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo told Al Jazeera that the Russian move was “not a surprise.”

“Russia and Iran are partners in the killing of the Syrian people and partners in support of Assad. There is no reason to be surprised. This has become a game. First it was the Americans, then the Russians and now the Iranians. The only losers are the Syrian people who are being killed in the name of fighting terrorism.”

The airbase, in Iran’s western Hamadan region, is much closer to ISIL targets than the Khmeimim airbase, which Russia had previously been using, in coastal northern Syria.

Russia and Iran are longtime allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Moscow and Washington support opposing sides in Syria.

{Three people, including a child, killed in a car bomb blast near a police station in Turkey’s eastern province of Van.}

A large explosion rocked an area near a police station in the eastern Turkish town of Elazig and several people were wounded, Turkish media reported, hours after a car bomb killed three people and wounded 40 elsewhere in the region.

Video footage obtained by the private Dogan news agency showed a large plume of smoke rising from the area of the blast, the cause of which was not clear.

Mahmut Varol, the deputy mayor of Elazig, said vehicles in front of the building had been burned due to the detonation of a car bomb, although he did not provide any information on casualties.

“The first video coming from the scene shows that there are people injured, there are ambulances at the scene, taking the injured away,” said Al Jazeera’s Reza Sayah, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish-Syrian border.

“Based on the images, this was a powerful explosion. Much of the building is destroyed. We see smoke in the air and a lot of people surrounding the scene looking very distraught.”

Only hours earlier, three people, including a child, were killed and more than 70 wounded in a car bomb attack in Turkey’s eastern city of Van carried out by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters, Turkish officials said.

The PKK attack targeted a police headquarters in the central Ipekyolu district of Van city, Mehmet Parlak, the deputy governor of Van, was quoted as saying by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency on Thursday.

Speaking to Anadolu, Zahir Soganda, the ruling AK Party’s provincial head, said that 71 people were injured.

“Among the 71 injured, three of them are in a serious condition and 17 are police officers,” Soganda said, adding that a child and a police officer were among the dead.

“People of Van will not be discouraged by this incident,” Soganda said.

“These are the last stands by the terror organisation. They are trying to break the resistance of the people of Van, which they will never achieve.”

The suspect, identified only as MO by the Turkish media, was caught in an air operation that was launched after the attack, according to authorities. He had been wounded and was taken to the main police headquarters in Van city for questioning.

MO was prevented from getting close to the police station because of barricades and parked an explosives-laden vehicle approximately 40 metres away from the facility, according to national daily Hurriyet.

The suspect left his vehicle and activated the bomb from a safe distance using a remote control, the newspaper said.

The Turkish security forces have been hit by near daily attacks from the PKK since a two-and-a-half year ceasefire collapsed in 2015, leaving hundreds of police and soldiers dead.

Five police officers and three civilians, including a child, were killed on Monday in a powerful car bomb explosion outside a police station near Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

The government has vowed to press on with its campaign to eradicate the PKK from eastern Turkey, despite the ongoing purge in the army to rid it of those connected to last month’s failed coup attempt.

More than 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, although it now focuses more on rights and demands for greater autonomy.

Turkey, the European Union and the United States have labelled the PKK a “terrorist” group.

{Philippine president says many of the Filipino drug addicts are “no longer viable as human beings”.}

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has hit out at “very stupid” United Nations criticism of his controversial war against illegal drugs that has claimed an estimated 1,000 lives, warning the global body not to interfere.

“Here comes the UN, easily swayed, and coming with a very stupid proposition,” Duterte said in a speech on Wednesday at an event for police officers also attended by foreign diplomats.

“Why would the United Nations be so easily swayed into interfering in the affairs of this republic?”

Duterte said that while the UN was quick to criticise his administration, the world body “is keeping silent” on the violence in the Middle East.

Referring to conflicts in the region, Duterte said he had not yet heard any public outcry targeted at “countries who are bombing villages and communities, killing everybody there, including the goats and the cows and the dogs”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime had earlier condemned Duterte’s “apparent endorsement of extrajudicial killings” in his fight against illegal drugs and crime.

According to police figures, more than 600 suspected drug users, pushers and traffickers have been killed since July 1 – although some local media have put the death toll at 1,000.

{{‘No longer viable as human beings’}}

But Duterte argued that the numbers were low compared with violence elsewhere in the world.

“What’s the problem? You inject politics. Only one thousand died and you put my country in peril, in jeopardy,” he said.

“For those who are killed by drug syndicates, we can only investigate. But do not attribute the acts of other criminals upon my government.”

The 71-year-old president noted that millions in the Philippines are being “devastated by drugs” including drug addicts “no longer viable as human beings on this planet”.

Duterte won the May election on a promise to wage a war on illegal drugs and other crime that would claim tens of thousands of lives.

He has ordered police not to hesitate to kill and even urged ordinary citizens and communist rebels to join in the war against drugs.

On Wednesday, at least 18 police officers were dismissed after testing positive of illegal drugs, according to the Manila-based news website, Rappler.

He has repeatedly scoffed at human rights groups opposed to the killings, saying, “I don’t care about human rights”.

He has also threatened to declare martial law if the judiciary interferes with his policies.

{Malaysian authorities say ship carrying 900,000 litres of diesel has been hijacked and taken into Indonesian waters.}

A Malaysian oil tanker carrying 900,000 litres of diesel has been hijacked and taken into Indonesian waters, according to authorities in Malaysia.

The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) said in a statement on Wednesday that the ship, Vier Harmoni, had been located in the waters off Batam, Indonesia.

The MMEA said they had yet to confirm the identity of the hijackers.

The ship had sailed from the Tanjung Pelepas port, in Malaysia, on Monday.

Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, said it was unclear if the ship had been actually hijacked.

“Sources have told Al Jazeera that the crew may have taken the tanker to Indonesia,” she said.

“Normally a piracy attack, which happens quite often in the Malacca Strait, follows a different pattern: strangers or pirates will enter the tanker carrying knives and machetes and will siphon off the oil in the middle of the sea and leave the tanker behind.

“It’s a different story as far as we can tell at this stage.”

Vaessen said the tanker was near the Indonesian island of Batam.

“But the Indonesian authorities are also confused about the situation and say they are in touch with the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency.”

In June last year, pirates hijacked the Orkim Victory, a Malaysian tanker, and pumped the oil from it into another tanker before releasing it.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

{A court temporarily closes down Ozgur Gundem accusing it of “continuously conducting propaganda” for Kurdish fighters.}

A court in Turkey has ordered the interim closure of a newspaper for allegedly having links with Kurdish fighters waging a war against the state and spreading “terrorist propaganda” on behalf of them.

The judgment on Tuesday by the Istanbul court accused the Ozgur Gundem paper of “continuously conducting propaganda for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)” and “acting as if it is a publication of the armed terror organisation”.

The PKK, designated a “terrorist” group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

At least seven people, including three civilians, were killed on Monday in an attack on a police station blamed on PKK in the southeast of the country, which has seen some of the most intense fighting in decades after a ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK collapsed in July 2015.

{{‘Press freedom violation’}}

On Tuesday, Turkish media showed photos and footage of police raiding Ozgur Gundem’s offices in Istanbul and arresting several journalists, reportedly including the newspaper’s management.

The pro-Kurdish Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP), an opposition party in the parliament, called the decision to close the newspaper a violation of press freedom.

“This court order has been issued in order to breach people’s freedom to information and their global human rights,”
Saruhan Oruc, the HDP’s deputy leader said.

Ozgur Gundem has previously been subjected to raids and legal action. Its offices have also come under attack, with dozens of its employees arrested and killed since the 1990s.

Between 1994 and 2011, the paper remained closed due to a court order.

‘Decision can be appealed’

Turkey has been in a state of emergency since a faction of soldiers in the Turkish army tried to take down the government on July 15.

Since then, there has been a massive overhaul in the Turkish bureaucracy – from police to judges to academics – as the government seeks to remove state employees who support Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim religious leader, who it claims is behind the coup attempt.

Scores of media organisations have also been closed in line with the government decrees under the emergency rule.

A senior Turkish official told Al Jazeera, however, that the closure of Ozgur Gundem had nothing to do with the country’s current state of emergency.

“This is a court order as opposed to a decree and therefore is not related to the state of emergency,” the official said.

“The defendants can appeal this decision.”

On Wednesday, Turkey issued two new decrees, dismissing thousands of police officers, army members and bureaucrats, Turkish media said.

{An institute in Saarbruecken is providing intensive, short-term practical therapy sessions for young asylum seekers.}

Saarbruecken, Germany – Like most who have fled conflict, Ali’s path to asylum in Germany from Afghanistan has not been easy.

The 17-year-old orphan slept in public toilets for two years and has been working for a living since the age of five.

The trauma of war and the long journey to asylum still haunts the teenager. Evidence of his childhood ordeal is on display in the form of paintings on the walls of his room.

“My life has been marked by very negative events until now,” Ali told Al Jazeera. “Nobody helped me in Iran or the other countries I was in.

“These events haunt me, so I am trying to express this in my paintings.”

To help unaccompanied minors like Ali adjust to life in Germany, an institute in the city of Saarbruecken is providing an intensive short-term practical therapy called START.

The emotion management scheme is tailored to the needs of young refugees, letting them realise and express their feelings openly.

The professor who designed it says it is simple and effective.

“It helps rapidly and this is what they need to experience, because these patients are sometimes very distrustful of psychiatry,” psychotherapist Eva Moehler said.

“So if they experience fast help and think after one session, ‘Wow I can do this and this really helps and I can stop cutting myself or can stop pulling my hair out’, it really helps.”

Just five weeks ago, Ali would repress emotions and thoughts related to his traumatic past, but now he expresses them on paper.

Hundreds of thousands of child refugees were admitted into Germany last year as part of the government’s humanitarian open-door policy.

Although many suffer from trauma, most do not receive the sort of care on offer in Saarbruecken.

Psychotherapist Andrea Dixius believes the environment at the institute is integral to the therapy’s success.

“These children need surroundings that will help validate them,” Dixius said. “They shouldn’t all be looked at as potential perpetrators of violent acts.

“The important thing is to integrate them and help them to do so.”

{The fighter jets took off from western Iran and conducted air strikes in Aleppo, Idlib and Deir el-Zor provinces.}

Russian jets based in Iran on Tuesday struck targets inside Syria, the Russian defence ministry said, after Moscow deployed aircraft to an Iranian air force base to widen its campaign in Syria.

The ministry said the strikes, by Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers, were launched from the Hamadan airbase in western Iran.

It is thought to be the first time Russia has struck targets inside Syria from Iran since it launched a bombing campaign to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September last year.

The ministry said the strikes had targeted the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and fighters affiliated with the group previously known as the al-Nusra Front in the Aleppo, Idlib and Deir el-Zor provinces.

Both groups have been designated as “terrorists” by the United Nations. Last month, al-Nusra Front changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and said it had severed a relationship with al-Qaeda.

The United States said it was still assessing the extent of Russian-Iranian cooperation but described the new development as “unfortunate”.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the US was looking into whether the move violated UN Security Council resolution 2231, which prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran.

“It’s unfortunate but not surprising,” Toner told reporters. “It speaks to a continuation of a pattern we’ve seen of Russia continuing to carry out air strikes, now with Iran’s direct assistance, … that predominantly target moderate Syrian opposition forces.”

{{‘A sizeable military presence’}}

Earlier on Tuesday, Russia’s state-backed Rossiya 24 channel said the deployment would allow the Russian air force to cut flight times by 60 percent and increase bombing payloads.

Russian media said the Tupolev-22M3 bombers, which had already conducted many strikes on fighters in Syria from southern Russia, were too large to be accommodated at Russia’s airbase inside Syria.

The Tupolev-22M3 is “a fairly large, supersonic, long-range, strategic bomber. It needs a bigger air field than Russia already has in Syria. The previous sorties that this plane has been on have been flown from an airfield in southern Russia, but the problem with that is that it’s 2,000km away from the targets that its striking in Syria. This airfield in Iran is only 900km away,” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said.

“The advantage in reducing flight-time, costs, and what the Russians say is the effectiveness of the strikes, makes this a pretty clear tactical decision to make.”

The Iranian airbase near Hamadan, sometimes also called Hamedan, is located in north-west Iran and the Russian bombers would have to over fly Iraq to conduct strikes in Syria.

Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer called Moscow’s transfer of heavy bomber planes to Iran a “major move”.

“It’s not just Russian planes touching down in Iran. To establish an operational base, they’d have to move hundreds of servicemen as well. Thousands of tonnes of munitions, fuel, [and] other equipment to operate heavy bombers from an Iranian base. So this is actually Russia establishing a rather sizeable military presence inside Iran,” he told Al Jazeera from Moscow.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday that Iraq, which lies between Iran and Syria, had granted Russia permission to use its air space, on the condition the planes use corridors along Iraq’s borders and refrain from flying over Iraqi cities.

Abadi told a press conference the same permission has been given to air forces of a separate U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State flying to Syria from Kuwait.

Russia also gave advance notice to the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, complying with the terms of a safety agreement meant to avoid an accidental clash in the skies, said U.S.
Army Colonel Christopher Garver, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S-led coalition.

{{Incendiary weapons}}

Separately on Tuesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Syrian government forces and their Russian allies of using incendiary weapons, which burn their victims and start fires, in rebel-held civilian areas of north and north-western Syria.

“Incendiary weapons have been used at least 18 times over the past six weeks, including attacks on the opposition-held areas in the cities of Aleppo and Idlib on August 7, 2016,” the rights group said.

Photographs and videos recorded by Human Rights Watch at the time of the attacks indicated there were incendiary weapon attacks on opposition-held areas in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces between June 5 and August 10.

“Countries meeting at the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva on August 29 should condemn the use of air-dropped incendiary weapons … and press Syria and Russia to immediately stop using incendiary weapons in civilian areas,” HRW said.

Fighting in Aleppo intensified in early July when government forces captured the last supply route to the rebel-held eastern sector of the city, raising fears that its estimated 250,000 to 300,000 remaining residents could suffer a lengthy siege.