Tag: InternationalNews

{At security summit, Beijing vows to ignore pending international court ruling while US steps up military patrols.}

Singapore – Asia’s largest defence summit concluded on Sunday amid growing fears of a legal and military showdown in the South China Sea over China’s rapid construction of artificial islands with ports, airstrips and helipads in one of the world’s most bitterly contested waterways.

At the weekend-long Shangri-La Dialogue, Chinese military officials vowed to ignore a legal ruling expected in the next few weeks by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on a Philippines’ challenge to China’s growing assertiveness in the key sea route between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

“We do not make trouble, but we have no fear of trouble,” saidAdmiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, who led the Chinese delegation at the summit.

Sun added: “China will not bear with the arbitration award, nor will it allow any infringement of its sovereignty.”

The Hague court is expected to rule on the legality of the so-called “nine-dash line”, China’s cartographic marker that it uses to claim territorial rights over most of the resource-rich sea. China’s claimed sovereignty stretches hundreds of kilometres to the south and east of its most southerly province of Hainan, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs.

The nine-dash line, first shown on a 1947 Chinese map, carves out an area that runs deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, and overlaps claims from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

China has boycotted The Hague tribunal’s proceedings and instead wants bilateral talks with rival claimants, all of which lack China’s economic and military prowess.

Meanwhile, the US has stepped up military patrols and exercises in the South China Sea, and pledges to ensure freedom of navigation and flight – acts that China considers provocative and targeted at its sovereignty and security interests.

The increased patrols of US littoral combat ships, jet fighters, and surveillance planes near Chinese-held islands come as China is reportedly close to imposing an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), which would require civilian aircraft to identify themselves to military controllers in the region. Beijing made a similar declaration two years ago in the East China Sea over several islands contested by Japan.

On Saturday, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter told the summitthat China’s militarisation of the South China Sea is destabilising the region, and urged it to abide by the pending international tribunal legal ruling.

“Countries across the region have been taking action and voicing concerns publicly and privately, at the highest levels, in regional meetings, and global fora,” Carter said.

“As a result, China’s actions in the South China Sea are isolating it at a time when the entire region is coming together and networking. Unfortunately, if these actions continue, China could end up erecting a Great Wall of self-isolation.”

While calling for diplomatic and legal solutions to the territorial disputes, Carter warned the US will continue to “fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows”.

Carter also warned that Chinese construction on a South China Sea islet claimed by the Philippines would lead to “actions being taken” by the United States and other nations, but he did not further elaborate.

People’s Liberation Army Major-General Yao Yunzhu, speaking at the summit on Saturday, said the US military’s presence in the disputed waters are unwarranted and could be interpreted as “battlefield preparations”.

“China has said many times that freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is not in trouble at all,” said Yao, who is also a senior researcher at the PLA’s Academy of Military Science.

She added, “I don’t think any state has the right to impose its own understanding of freedom of navigation as a universal rule and label those who do not agree as a default violator of freedom of navigation or even a violator of the rule-based international maritime order.”

Duterte vows to settle South China Sea dispute

Yao also defended China’s nine-dash line, which critics say is legally ambiguous. She said it allows “China and other claimants to have more room to manoeuvre and to have more room to compromise.”

US, not China, militarising the South China Sea: FM

The US and China traded harsh accusations in May after what the Pentagon said was an “unsafe” encounter between two Chinese fighter jets and a US military reconnaissance aircraft flying over the South China Sea.

While territorial disputes in the waters date back in some cases for centuries, China has created islands and installed military hardware at a rapid pace and now asserts sovereignty over most of the 3.5 million-square-kilometre waterway.

Last month, a Pentagon report claimed China has added more than 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) of land over two years in the Spratly Islands archipelago.

“China often uses a progression of small, incremental steps to increase its effective control over disputed territories and avoid escalation to military conflict,” the report stated.

Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun, quoted by the Associated Press following the report’s release, called it “hyped up” and expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with its findings.

Tensions in the South China Sea are expected to drive up Asia-Pacific defence spending by nearly 25 percent from 2015 to US$533bn in 2020, according security think-tank IHS Jane’s.

“By 2020, the centre of gravity of the global defence spending landscape is expected to have continued its gradual shift away from the developed economies of Western Europe and North America, and towards emerging markets, particularly in Asia,” said IHS Jane’s director Paul Burton.

The South China Sea territorial dispute has spilled over into presidential campaigns in at least two countries.

Incoming Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte made headlines during his campaign by saying he would ride a jet ski to plant a Philippine flag on China’s man-made islands.

In the US, presumptive Republican Party nominee Donald Trump accused China of building “a military fortress the likes of which perhaps the world has not seen”.

{Prosecutor among those killed in third attack on court facilities since six Taliban members were executed last month.}

At least five people, including a newly appointed chief prosecutor, in Afghanistan’s southeastern Logar province, have been killed when three assailants attacked the court, an official said.

Nineteen other people were wounded in the attack on Sunday in Puli Alim, the provincial capital, the head of security for Logar police said.

“The new head of the court was being introduced today and the assailants used the rush hour opportunity to attack the court,” Nesar Ahmad Abdul Rahimzai said.

He added that the attack is now over, with all three assailants killed by Afghan security forces.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The group frequently targets government officials, and has taken aim at the judiciary since the government executed six of its members last month.

Sunday’s attack is the third such attack on court facilities since the group’s members were executed.

At least 10 people were killed and four others were injured when a suicide bomber hit a bus carrying judiciary staff members from Kabul to central Wardak province in late May.

{Government troops backed by Russian air strikes cross into Raqqa province for the first time since August 2014.}

The Syrian army has crossed the boundary of Raqqa province after advancing in a major Russian-backed offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

Heavy Russian air strikes hit ISIL-held territory in eastern areas of Hama province, near the boundary of Raqqa, on Friday to facilitate the Syrian army’s advance, the UK-based SOHR said on Saturday.

ISIL, which controls large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, is fighting Syrian troops, US-backed fighters and other rebel groups in northern Syria and is facing an offensive by Iraqi government forces and its on their stronghold of Fallujah.

“Regime troops backed by Russian air strikes and Russian-trained militia entered Raqqa province on Saturday morning,” Rami Abdel Rahman, SOHR’s director, told the AFP news agency.

SOHR said at least 26 ISIL fighters and nine Syrian government and allied troops were killed in the fighting.

It was the first time that government troops had entered Raqqa province since they were ousted by ISIL fighters in August 2014.

The Syrian army was making its advances from the Athriya area of eastern Hama province, close to the provincial border with Raqqa.

The offensive brought troops to within less than 40km of Tabqa, which is the site of an airbase and a big reservoir, SOHR said.

The Tabqa dam on the Euphrates River, 40km upstream from Raqqa city, is also the target of a separate offensive launched by US-backed Kurdish-led forces advancing from the north late last month.

Raqqa city, further east, is ISIL’s de facto capital in Syria and also, along with Mosul in Iraq, the ultimate target of the international anti-ISIL coalition seeking to destroy the group’s self-declared caliphate.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep, on the Turkish side of the Turkey-Syria border, said the push into Raqqa from was a “significant development” but there was a still “a long way to go”.

“Raqqa is besieged by government troops from the west and Syrian factions from the north and from the east – the south is linked to the bordering province of Deir az-Zor which is still an ISIL stronghold,” Ahelbarra said.

“Now, whoever controls Raqqa will face a mammoth challenge, which is basically securing a vast territory,” he added, noting that both the Syrian government and the Kurdish factions cannot maintain a significant presence of troops in the province as they are also involved in heavy fighting in different battlefields elsewhere in Syria.

{Demonstators protested against increasing deportations of West Balkan asylum applicants, many of whom are Roma.}

Berlin, Germany – About a hundred demonstrators protesting against Germany’s asylum policy marched to the memorial for Roma-Sinti victims of Nazism to raise awareness of the plight of today’s Roma asylum seekers.

The protest, which took place on Friday evening, was in response to recent changes to German asylum laws and to the increasing deportations of West Balkan asylum applicants, many of whom are Roma.

Last October, the German government amended its asylum law by adding Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia to its list of “safe countries of origin”, legislation that makes it extremely difficult for citizens of these countries to be granted asylum.

A year earlier, in November 2014, Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro were added to the same list. Meanwhile, deportations of people from these six West Balkan countries tripled last year in comparison to 2014, and the pace of deportations has continued to intensify this year.

One of the people facing the threat of deportation is 15-year-old Victoria Zenkulovic Veselovic, a Roma who fled from Serbia to Germany in 2011 with her mother and brother. She has been going to school in Berlin and she learned to speak German, but the family’s asylum application was rejected and they could be deported any day.

She joined the demonstration because she’s afraid of going back to Serbia.

“I hope I stay here because I don’t have a future in Serbia. If we go there I will face discrimination and attacks,” Veselovic told Al Jazeera. “I hope I can have a right to stay in Germany so I can finish my school and later find a job.”

Roma people face discrimination and segregation in each of the six West Balkan countries that Germany designated as “Safe Countries”, according to the most recent annual reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the US State Department.

The spokesman for UNHCR-Germany, Martin Rentch, explained minorities such as Roma people could become victims of discrimination in some of the Balkan countries.

“Depending on the individual case, we think that the social, economic and cultural disadvantage of Roma people in some Western Balkan societies can be a form of persecution under the UN Refugee Convention,” Rentch told Al Jazeera.

But throughout the European Union, the recognition rates for Western Balkan asylum applicants have remained low.

Tobias Plate, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior, said each asylum application is reviewed individually, and every applicant has a chance to provide evidence to back up his or her claim for protected status.

“The federal government is well aware of the fact that minorities are discriminated against in Western Balkan countries,” Plate said. “However, discrimination does not necessarily mean that people are also persecuted or mistreated.”

Plate added that Germany provides protection only to people who face a level of discrimination that makes life impossible or creates such a hopeless situation that the person is forced to leave a country.

{Two killed in France after River Seine reaches highest water level in 35 years, while Germany reports 10 deaths.}

Torrential rain and flooding have killed at least 14 people in parts of Europe, with France declaring a natural disaster after the River Seine in Paris burst its banks in some places displacing thousands of people.

French President Francois Hollande made the announcement on Friday, saying compensation would be paid to those affected by the worst flooding to hit the French capital in 35 years.

“When there are climate phenomena of such seriousness, we must all be conscious that it’s on a world scale and that we must act,” Hollande said.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has ordered some parks to close, and gymnasiums to open to homeless people amid the flooding, which city authorities said could take weeks to recede.

The French interior ministry said the homes of some 20,000 people have been evacuated.

Another 20,000 homes in the south of Paris have lost power.

“Authorities are bracing themselves for a couple of more weeks of possible flooding. There’s a lot a panic in Paris,” Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall reported from the city.

French environment officials said the Seine will reach its maximum level late on Friday as rainfall across the country begins to taper off.

The flooding has also forced many museums in the French capital, including the Louvre, to shut down, as a protective measure.

Fatalities in three countries

As the flooding continues, French authorities said on Friday that a second person had died in the flooding. The 74-year-old man fell into a river in the Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris. He was riding a horse at the time of the accident on Thursday evening.

Earlier in the week, an 86-year-old woman died in her flooded home in Souppes-sur-Loing, southeast of Paris.

In Germany, 10 people have been killed, including four in Baden-Wuerttemberg, to Bavaria’s west, in flooding that hit Sunday and Monday.

The German Insurance Association estimated that this week’s flooding has caused some $500m in damage in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg alone.

Two other people were reported to have been killed in eastern Romania.

{Former heavyweight world champion had retired from boxing in 1981 with a record 56 wins and only five losses.}

Muhammad Ali, the boxing legend, has died in a hospital in the US state of Arizona.

The 74-year-old former heavyweight world champion had been hospitalised on Thursday with respiratory problems.

US media reported that the problems were complicated by his Parkinson’s disease.

Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1942, as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, a name shared with a 19th century slavery abolitionist. He later changed his name after his conversion to Islam.

Nicknamed The Greatest, Ali retired from boxing in 1981 with a record 56 wins and only five losses.
Ali was known globally not only for his ring career but also for his civil rights activism.

He had been hospitalised multiple times in recent years. Ali spent time in hospital in 2014 after suffering a mild case of pneumonia and again in 2015 for a urinary tract infection.

{{Limited speaking}}

His Parkinson’s, thought to be linked to the punches he took during his career that spanned three decades, had limited his public speaking for years.

However, he had continued to make appearances and offer opinions through his family members and spokespersons.

In April, he attended a Celebrity Fight Night Dinner in Phoenix that raised funds for treatment of Parkinson’s.

In December, he issued a statement rebuking US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

Ali lived with his wife, the former Lonnie Williams, who knew him when she was a child in Louisville, along with his nine children.

{Diplomats say airdrops to besieged areas is a last resort, accusing government of obstructing aid delivery by land.}

The United Nations has said it will ask permission from the Syrian government on Sunday to airdrop or airlift humanitarian aid to besieged areas.

During a closed-door meeting of the Security Council on Friday, diplomats described airdrops as a “last resort” to reach thousands of civilians in need of aid.

Nearly 600,000 people are besieged in 19 different areas in Syria, according to the UN, with two-thirds trapped by government forces and the rest besieged by armed opposition groups and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) group.

UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said that out of 34 requests for June to deliver aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas by land convoys, the Syrian government had turned down five.

“We continue to insist that we have absolutely, as a matter of law, a need to get to those people without hindrance,” he told Al Jazeera.

The US, UK and France have long been calling for air operations, given the reluctance of Damascus to allow relief into rebel-held areas.

Syria announced on Thursday that it gave the UN and the Red Cross approval to send humanitarian aid convoys into at least 11 of the 19 besieged areas during June, as a response to the call for humanitarian airdrops.

But, several Western diplomats said the Syrian announcement is simply a ploy to deflect discussions on airdrops, noting that President Bashar al-Assad’s government did not agree to permit full access to all besieged areas.

READ MORE: ‘Catalogue of horror’ reported in besieged Syrian towns

“A very high number of humanitarian access requests made by the UN have been denied by the Syrian authorities,” the French ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, told reporters after the Security Council.

“For the month of June Syrian authorities did not accept all the access requests made by the UN.

“So, on Sunday, the UN, in accordance with the ICRC’s request, will ask Damascus to authorise humanitarian airdrops to reach localities for which the land access was denied by the Syrian regime,” he said. “And of course we call for the complete lifting of all sieges.”

Matthew Rycroft, the UK’s ambassador to the UN, said the Syrian government has done “too little too late” regarding the humanitarian crisis in the country and the international community will no longer tolerate stalling tactics.

“Airdrops are complex, costly, risky, but we have now all agreed that they are the last resort and we must use them to relieve the human suffering in so many besieged areas in Syria,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor, James Bays, said the important development is that the UN has said that it is going to make a formal request for airdrops to the Syrian government.

He explained that the UN has airdropped humanitarian aid to several besieged rural areas in Syria in the past by plane, but such high altitude airdrops are not suitable for urban areas .

“So instead they are going to send the aid in by helicopter. For this, they need the permission of the Syrian government,” he said, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York.

“They don’t want those planes and helicopters to be shot down.”

Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s ambassador to the UN, rejected accusations that the government was preventing aid deliveries.

“Humanitarian assistance or the humanitarian aid has never been denied by the Syrian government to any part of the country.”

Syrian opposition activists have circulated a list of the UN aid that has gone into rebel-held Daraya, a town besieged by government forces. They said the aid included mosquito nets, lice shampoo, wheel chairs and a small number of medical and nutritional packages for infants.

The head of the Media Council in Daraya, Hosan Ahmad, said more cars were guarding and protecting the aid convoy than were actually delivering supplies.

He said people felt angry, humiliated and let down by the UN.

“These are luxury goods, not basic necessities for people that are desperate and eating grass.”

The UN said the aid convoy that reached Daraya earlier this week was part one of a two-part delivery and the second part, which has food on it, is being delayed by Damascus.

Bays said he does not expect Damascus to change its attitude towards humanitarian aid to besieged areas, just because the UN is now talking about aid delivery by air.

“Towards the end of Bashar Jaafari’s speech, I asked him repeatedly, ‘yes or no, are you going to give permission?’ He didn’t answer the question.”

As diplomats met at the UN on Friday, volunteer rescuers said Syrian government air strikes killed dozens of civilians in and around the northern city of Aleppo.

{Force blamed for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in 2015 for inclusion in list which also features Houthis.}

The UN has blacklisted the Arab coalition in Yemen for causing deaths and injuries to hundreds of children.

The coalition of 10 Arab countries, assembled by Saudi Arabia last year, was blamed for 60 percent of the child deaths and injuries in 2015 in air strikes that killed 510 and wounded 667.

In Friday’s report, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, called the situation on the ground “worrisome”, adding that Yemen had witnessed “six times more children killed and maimed [in 2015] compared to 2014”.

“Owing to the very large number of violations … the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals,” Ban said.

The report also noted a “five-fold increase in the number of children recruited [by armed groups]”.

Of a list of 762 verified cases of recruitment of child soldiers, 72 percent were attributed to the Houthis, 15 percent to pro-government forces and 9 percent to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Life-threatening malnutrition

The Houthis have been on the UN blacklist for at least five years and are considered “persistent perpetrators”.

The 15-month conflict in Yemen has taken a horrifying toll on the country’s youth, with UNICEF warning that an estimated 320,000 children face life-threatening malnutrition.

It also estimates that 82 percent of the population is now in desperate need of humanitarian aid, with nearly half of Yemen’s 22 provinces on the verge of famine.

The coalition launched its air campaign to push back the Houthis in March 2015, but the rebels still control the capital and many parts of the country.

The Houthis, who hail from the northern highlands and champion the interests of the Zaidi Shia community, insist they are fighting to defend themselves against government aggression and marginalisation.

There has been mounting international pressure to end the Yemen war, which the UN estimates has killed more than 6,400 people and displaced 2.8 million.

Other countries

The UN report blacklists groups that “engage in the recruitment and use of children, sexual violence against children, the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and/or hospitals and attacks or threats of attacks against protected personnel, and the abduction of children”.

Along with warring parties in Yemen, the UN named armed groups in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR), Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Colombia, Nigeria and the Philippines.

The report cited a deadly US air strike on a hospital run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan, although it said the attack was carried out by “international forces” and did not blacklist the United States.

Government forces in Afghanistan, DRC, Somalia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria were named on the blacklist.

{Bodies pulled from sea as more than 300 others are rescued from latest shipwreck south of Greek island of Crete.}

At least nine bodies have been recovered and 340 people rescued from a sinking boat carrying a “significant number” of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea south of the Greek island of Crete, authorities say.

The coastguard on Friday said the roughly 25-metre vessel, which resembled a large fishing boat, had been carrying an undetermined number of people when it was located half-sunk about 75 nautical miles (140km) from Crete in international waters, and within Egypt’s search and rescue area of operation.

Greece was sending two patrol vessels, a military airplane and three helicopters, while five passing ships were participating in the rescue operation and one more was on its way. The coastguard said the operation was continuing to locate any potentially missing passengers from the boat.

It was not immediately clear where the boat’s passengers were from, or where the vessel had set off from or was heading to.

“The information we have on the number of people on board the vessel is still unclear – we’ve heard that there were 400 or 500 people on board, but we cannot confirm that number,” coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said. “There is a huge rescue effort under way.”

It was not immediately clear where the survivors will be taken. Authorities in southern Crete said temporary shelter space – possibly sports facilities – was being sought on the island to house people if they are taken there.

Dangerous alternative routes

Smugglers have opted for more dangerous routes after a March agreement. The short crossing from the Turkish coast to Greek islands was the preferred route for those heading to Europe until Balkan countries closed their borders and the European Union reached an agreement with Turkey to stem the flow of people.

Under that deal, those arriving on Greek islands from March 20 onwards face deportation back to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece, a financially troubled country few want to stay in.

The deal has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of people arriving on Greek islands from Turkey. However, the agreement has led refugees to seek alternative routes, with many attempting the much longer and more dangerous crossing from North Africa towards Italy.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 1,000 people have died in the past few weeks when overcrowded boats attempting the crossing sank.

More than one million refugees arrived in Europe last year. With 3,771 deaths, 2015 was the deadliest year on record for crossing the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, the IOM has said.