Tag: InternationalNews

{Resolution urges inquiry into state of democracy and ‘serious deterioration’ in country’s human rights and democracy.}

The European Parliament has voted on a resolution that demands action against Hungary, a member state, amid deep concerns about the deterioration in human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The European Parliament’s resolution, backed by 393 deputies to 221 against, sends a strong signal to Hungary that its actions are being closely monitored.

Wednesday’s condemnation of “serious deterioration” in the rule of law and fundamental rights in Hungary could start a process that could theoretically lead to Hungary losing its EU voting rights.

“Recent developments in Hungary have led to a serious deterioration in the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights which is testing the EU’s ability to defend its founding values,” the parliament said in a statement.

But the EU’s rule of unanimity means the nationalist-minded government of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, is unlikely to be stripped of its voting rights as its ally Poland could veto such a move.

Since taking office in 2010, Orban has eliminated checks on his power by taking control of much of Hungary’s news media, curbing the powers of the constitutional court and placing loyalists in top positions at public institutions.

The resolution specifically talks about the right of expression, academic freedom, rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees as well as the right to peaceful gatherings.

It also demands creation of a procedure to examine whether the laws are in “serious breach of EU values”.

{{‘Shame on leftists’}}

One key aspect that concerns the EU legislative is the independence of the judiciary and “worrying alleged cases of corruption”, said the statement.

Hungary’s ruling party Fidesz reacted to Wednesday’s vote by saying it was “a shame that Hungarian leftist MPs also voted for the resolution” under alleged orders from US billionaire George Soros.

Soros, the Hungarian born investor and philanthropist, is accused by Orban for alleged destabilisation of the state via NGOs that receive financing from his foundation.

Hungary’s ruling party was the target of heavy criticism in Europe because of a law that threatens to close the Central European University in Budapest that was founded by Soros and is considered one of the country’s leading universities.

Source:

{Rights groups accuse Mexican authorities of failing to prosecute those who kill journalists covering drug gangs.}

Media and rights groups have demanded the Mexican government catch the killers of the fifth and most high-profile journalist murdered this year in the country.

Javier Valdez, 50, who was shot dead in broad daylight on Monday in northwestern Sinaloa state. The awarding-winning journalist was one of the most prominent reporters on Mexico’s deadly “drug war”.

On Tuesday, the front pages of the country’s major newspapers carried pictures of Valdez as journalists demonstrated in the centre of the capital, Mexico City.

President Enrique Pena Nieto said he had ordered “an investigation of this outrageous crime”. He vowed to defend press freedom, “fundamental for our democracy”.

Press rights group Articulo 19 said that was the first time Pena Nieto had reacted publicly to one of the recent wave of journalists’ killings, which they consider a sign of rising pressure on the president.

But the killing fanned a wave of anger at the authorities, with rights groups saying corrupt officials are preventing journalists’ killers from being punished.

“How long will there be killings without pity and with impunity?” said Valdez’s own weekly publication, Riodoce.

“Murderous impunity,” ran the headline of an editorial in La Jornada, the national daily for which Valdez worked as Sinaloa correspondent.

Just hours after Valdez’s assassination on Monday, in Autlan, gunmen opened fire on Sonia Cordova, an executive at the Semanario Costeno weekly magazine, and her son.

Cordova was wounded and taken to hospital and her adult son was killed in the attack, the state prosecutor’s office said.

A state police source said her son, Jonathan Rodriguez Cordova, worked as a reporter at the family-run magazine, which publishes local news that includes some crime reporting, Reuters news agency reported.

In a 2017 report titled “No Excuse”, journalist Adela Navarro Bello wrote for the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists that “covering corruption in Mexico means living with impunity”.

“Between 2006 and 2016, 21 journalists were murdered with complete impunity in Mexico, putting the country sixth on CPJ’s annual index that measures cases where perpetrators remain unpunished,” Bello wrote.

“The system seems to be corrupt down to its very foundation; either that or it’s simply incapable of achieving justice.”

Valdez was due to be cremated on Tuesday, his family said.

Journalists’ unions said they planned demonstrations in homage to Valdez, including one outside government headquarters in Mexico City and one in his home town of Culiacan, where he was shot.

Some media in Sinaloa canceled their Tuesday editions in protest.

“This wave of violence shows the state of emergency in which Mexican journalists are living,” said Emmanuel Colombie, Latin American director of Reporters Without Borders.

“The Mexican government must take action proportionate to the seriousness of the situation and strengthen protection for journalists as soon as possible.”

Numerous media and human rights organisations including Amnesty International have called for an impartial investigation.

They accused the authorities of failing to prosecute those who kill journalists covering the drug gangs in broad daylight, sometimes in front of their families.

Articulo 19 says 105 journalists have been murdered and a further 23 have disappeared since 2000.

Of those cases, 99.7 percent remain unsolved, meaning the culprits have gone unpunished, it says.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Children among those killed in separate unclaimed bombings in Kapisa and Kandahar provinces.}

One of the explosions took place in Dar-e-Tapa village in the Nijrab district of Kapisa province, in an area where children were walking, provincial police chief Mohammad Razaq Yaqoubi told Al Jazeera.

The roadside mine killed two children and wounded another two.

“The wounded children were taken to hospital and now they are in stable condition,” Yaqoubi said.

In a separate incident, one civilian was killed and 10 people wounded, including three policemen, in a double bombing in Kandahar city, capital of the synonymous province.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either bombing.

Afghan army advances in Kunduz

Separately, the Afghan military on Tuesday regained control of a district in northern Kunduz province that had fallen to Taliban fighters earlier this month as part of their so-called spring offensive, security officials said.

The army’s advance came after Afghan forces launched a major operation against Taliban positions to retake the Qala-e-Zal district.

“The governor’s building, police headquarters and several key areas are cleared of terrorists, but the operation is still ongoing in other insecure areas of the district,” the interior ministry said in a statement.

Speaking to AFP news agency, Assadullah Sadat, a member of the Kunduz provincial council, said: “Around 2,000 families have been displaced with most relocating in Kunduz city. Some have fled to other nearby districts.”

The Taliban had taken full control of the district on May 6.

The group’s so-called spring offensive normally marks the start of the fighting season, though the Taliban had continued to battle government forces through this past winter. An attack on a military base in the nearby city of Mazar-i-Sharif last month killed at least 135 security forces.

Kunduz is among the most violence-wracked provinces in northern Afghanistan. Although the city centre itself is in government hands, the Taliban control most of the surrounding districts.

Security forces have been struggling to open the main highway into the city after it was blocked with mines and improvised roadside bombs.

Thousands of residents are reported to have fled their homes to avoid the fighting.

According to US estimates, the Afghan government controls only about 60 percent of the country, with the rest under Taliban control or contested by armed groups.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Questions swirl whether Tel Aviv was involved in peddling aviation-threat intelligence on ISIL – and motives behind it.}

US news reports say Israel was the source of intelligence that President Donald Trump disclosed to the Russians during a White House meeting last week, igniting further controversy for the beleaguered administration.

According to a New York Times report on Tuesday, Israel shared with US spy agencies sensitive intelligence about an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) bomb plot targeting airliners using laptop computers.

National Security Advisor HR McMaster denied that Trump had disclosed any sources or methods to the Russians, saying the Washington Post report that first broke the story was “false”.

Trump confirmed later he shared information with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Several US media organisations confirmed with their own sources the Times’ report that Israel was the source of the information.

In a statement, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer said Israel has “full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States”.

But he did not comment specifically on the veracity of the Times’ report.

The purported Israeli intelligence in question reportedly concerns ISIL’s newly acquired capability to hide sophisticated bombs inside laptop computers.

This information is said to have led the US government declaring the ban last March on all large electronic devices on board airlines coming to the US from eight Muslim-majority nations.

READ MORE: Trump disclosed secrets to Russia: Washington Post

The ban affects nine companies: Royal Jordanian Airlines, EgyptAir, Turkish Airlines, Saudi Airlines, Kuwait Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Qatar Airways, Emirates, and Etihad Airways.

All of these airlines have direct flights to the United States and pose strong competition to American aviation companies, especially during the busy summer season.

Former CIA case officer John Kiriakou expressed scepticism about Israel’s ability to obtain highly sensitive intelligence of this nature about ISIL.

“If it was the Jordanians or the Turkish intelligences services who have done that, it might make more sense because these organisations have a long history of dealing with groups like ISIL,” Kiriakou told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

“I won’t be surprised if it turned out that Israel acted in its own interests to disrupt the Middle Eastern airlines business by throwing its own wrench into the whole thing,” he said.

CNN reported on Tuesday it withheld reporting on the intelligence that led to the laptop ban after US intelligence officials made urgent requests to hold off for a March 31 story, citing national security concerns.

“What US officials told CNN in late March was that publishing certain information – including a city where some of the intelligence was collected – could tip off adversaries about the sources and methods used to gather the intelligence,” the American network said.

Other pundits challenged the entire narrative of Trump’s discussions with the Russians.

Washington DC-based analyst Peter Roff blamed the media for hyping Trump’s sharing of intelligence with Lavrov and Kislyak in stories based solely on “anonymous sources”.

“There is nothing wrong with the president sharing intelligence with the Russians as a goodwill gesture, given that both nations are fighting ISIL,” Roff told Al Jazeera.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Officials allege Comey memo shows US president pressed former FBI director to shut down probe into Russia ties.}

US President Donald Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to end the agency’s investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia, according to a source who has seen a memo written by Comey.

The explosive new development on Tuesday followed a week of tumult at the White House after Trump fired Comey and then discussed sensitive national security information about Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The Comey memo, first reported by the New York Times, is likely to raise questions about whether Trump tried to interfere with a federal investigation.

Comey wrote the memo after he met in the Oval Office with Trump, the day after the president fired Flynn on February 14 for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the extent of his conversations last year with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

“I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey, according to a source familiar with the contents of the memo.

The White House denied the report. “The president has never asked Mr Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” it said in a statement.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington DC, noted the significance of the information being written down in a memorandum, which would be admissible in a court of law.

“This is a very serious matter indeed. Why this is so serious – if indeed it is proved to be true – is that this is a clearly illegal act – attempting to halt or obstruct an FBI investigation,” said Hanna.

“What we are going to see in the coming days from the House and the Senate is growing momentum for James Comey to clarify whether or not President Trump actively attempted to interfere with the investigation into Michael Flynn. This could have massive ramifications.”

The New York Times said during the Oval Office meeting, Trump condemned a series of government leaks to the news media and said the FBI director should consider prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information.

The White House added it was “not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr Comey”.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Separatists in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region vow to retaliate after Azerbaijan destroys air defence missile system.}

Azerbaijan says it has destroyed an Armenian air defence missile system in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, drawing a sharp response from the separatists who vowed retaliation.

Azerbaijan and Armenia – part of the former Soviet Union until 1991 – are locked in a protracted conflict over the disputed region, and almost went to war in April 2016 following deadly border clashes.

“Azerbaijani forces destroyed on Monday an Armenian Osa air defence system and its crew in the Fisuli-Khojavend sector of Karabakh’s frontline in order to avert the threat it posed to Azerbaijan’s aircraft,” an official from the press service of Azerbaijan’s defence ministry told the AFP news agency on Tuesday.

The Nagorno-Karabakh separatist authorities confirmed that an Azerbaijani attack damaged its equipment, but said there were no casualties. It warned in a statement that the Azerbaijani “provocation won’t be left unanswered”.

“Azerbaijani forces’ provocation will not be left unanswered,” it said.

The incident comes months after several Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in February in with Karabakh troops.

In April 2016, at least 110 people from both sides were killed as simmering violence flared into the worst fighting in decades.

A Russian-brokered ceasefire ended the four days of fierce clashes but attempts to relaunch the stalled peace process since then have failed.

Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians – Azerbaijan claims they include regular Armenian military.

That war in the early 1990s claimed some 30,000 lives, and the two sides have never signed a firm peace deal.

Russia wields influence in the region and has sponsored mediation to end past clashes. It has stationed thousands of its troops and military hardware in Armenia, a close ally.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Regulator says it expects website to comply with court orders for removal of content deemed to threaten security.}

Facebook users in Thailand can still access their accounts despite worries that authorities would shut the social media site down if it did not remove “inappropriate” content, including pages containing alleged insults against the royal family.

Thailand’s telecoms regulator said last week it would give Facebook Thailand until Tuesday to take down 131 web addresses with content that violated its strict lese majeste (violating majesty, or insulting the ruler) laws or was deemed threatening to national security.

The threat prompted a flurry of concern in the Southeast Asian country – one of the most Facebook-active countries in Asia – that the social network would be blocked.

However, there would be no immediate measures to block Facebook, Takorn Tantasith, Secretary General of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission of Thailand, told reporters after the deadline, adding that bureaucracy had held up the process of removing the 131 impugned content items.

“We have the necessary documents from the court to block 34 URLs now,” Takorn said, following a visit to the head office of a grouping of internet providers in Thailand to check if Facebook had complied with the authorities’ removal request.

“Facebook has cooperated well in terms of taking steps to block the URLs that we asked them to in the past,” he added.

“If they cooperate, then there will be 97 URLs left which we have asked the court to issue warrants to block.”

Thailand’s military-run government has ramped up online censorship, particularly on perceived insults to the monarchy, since seizing power in a 2014 coup.

Last month, Thailand also banned its citizens from making any online contact with three vocal critics of the monarchy.

Under Thailand’s lese majeste law, criticism of the royal family is an offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Last week, Takorn had said that the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society would file a complaint with police this week to press charges against Facebook Thailand under the Computer Crime Act and commerce ministry regulations.

Thailand’s criminal court has ordered nearly 7,000 “inappropriate” web pages be shut down since 2015, according to the government figures.

Internet service providers are able to block access to most pages, but said some 600 could not be shut down because of encryption. More than half of these were on Facebook.

The UN Human Rights Council declared access to the internet to be a human right in July 2016.

David Kaye, the UN’s rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression has also encouraged companies to “push back” when states request a block on web pages.

“They should ask questions so they don’t just do it right off the bat,” he said in a recent interview with Al Jazeera. “They need to make the countries explain themselves at the very least, to mitigate the risk.”

Kaye has previously criticised the Thai authorities for using lese majeste laws “as a political tool to stifle critical speech”.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Opponents of President Nicolas Maduro stage sit-ins and roadblocks across Venezuela on Monday to press for elections.}

At least one person has died in renewed violence in Venezuela, as thousands of opponents of President Nicolas Maduro staged sit-ins and roadblocks across the country in a seventh week of anti-government rallies.

Luis Alviarez, 18, was killed during protests in the western state of Tachira after being shot by gunfire in the thorax, prosecutors said, without giving further details. That brought the death toll since the start of the protests to at least 39 people.

Demonstrators have been on the streets daily since early April to press for elections, blaming Maduro for an economic crisis that has caused severe shortages of food and medicine.

The president accuses protesters of seeking a violent coup, and says he is the victim of an international right-wing conspiracy that has already brought down leftist governments in Brazil, Argentina and Peru in recent years.

The government and the opposition have blamed each other of sending armed groups to sow violence in the protests. Police have blocked marches with tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons, while protesters have hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails, vandalised property and started fires in a near-daily series of clashes.

{{Sit-ins and roadblocks}}

On Monday, protesters stayed on Caracas’ main roads for six hours, then began to disperse under a heavy rain in late afternoon. Others vowed to stay rain or shine for the full 12 hours of the sit-in.

“I’m here for the full 12 hours. And I’ll be back every day there’s a protest, for as long as is necessary,” Anelin Rojas, a 30-year-old human resources worker, told the Reuters news agency.

“Unfortunately, we are up against a dictatorship. Nothing is going to change unless we force them,” Rojas added, surrounded by placards saying “Resistance!” and “Maduro, Your Time Is Up!”

In Tachira, some farmers were striking in solidarity with the protesters, while on Margarita island, opposition politician Yanet Fermin was detained while mediating between security forces and protesters, her party said.

In Valencia, three policemen were injured, authorities said, with one mistakenly reported by the local Socialist Party governor as having been shot dead earlier in the day.

The opposition, which commands majority support after years in the shadow of the ruling socialists, is more united than during the last wave of anti-Maduro protests in 2014.

Escalating crisis

The protests that erupted after the government-stacked Supreme Court issued a ruling March 29 nullifying the opposition-controlled National Assembly, a decision it later reversed amid a storm of domestic and international criticism.

The government is also setting up a controversial body called a constituent assembly, with authority to rewrite the constitution and shake up public powers.

Maduro says that is needed to bring peace to Venezuela, but opponents view it as a cynical tactic to buy time and create a biased body that could perpetuate the socialists’ rule.

“There’s a real situation of crisis in the country, and the opposition says they will not give up until elections are called,” Al Jazeera’s John Holman, reporting from Cucuta, in Venezuela’s border with Colombia, said.

Source:Al Jazeera

{India urges top UN court to order Pakistan to stay the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav convicted to death by army court.}

Lawyers and officials from India and Pakistan have faced off at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague over the impending execution of an alleged Indian spy by Islamabad.

Pakistan’s military sentenced Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, a retired Indian naval officer, to death last month on charges of espionage and sabotage. No date was set for the execution, and Pakistan has said his conviction and sentence remain open to appeal.

India argued in a preliminary hearing at the top UN court on Monday that Pakistan violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by denying Jadhav access to legal assistance.

New Delhi, which denies Jadhav is a spy, has asked the ICJ to declare the verdict illegal and order Pakistan to release him.

“It is clear that Mr Jadhav has been denied the right to be defended by a legal counsel of his choice. He has not been informed of his right to seek consular access,” India’s representative at the hearing, Deepak Mittal, said.

Dubbing India’s complaint as a “political theatre”, Mohammad Faisal, Pakistan’s representative, accused India of “time-wasting and political grandstanding”, adding that the court should decline jurisdiction in the case.

Ronny Abraham, the court’s president, said the tribunal would publicly deliver its decision on whether to grant an emergency stay of execution “as soon as possible”.

According to Islamabad, Jadhav confessed to being tasked by India’s intelligence service with planning, coordinating and organising espionage and sabotage activities in Balochistan province “aiming to destabilise and wage war against Pakistan”.

Mittal, the Indian official, said the charges against Jadhav were “concocted” and his trial “farcical”.

He insisted Pakistan has failed to respond to all Indian demands for information about the case, snubbing requests for documents, including the charge sheet.

But Faisal, the Pakistani representative, argued that consular access is not an absolute right under the Vienna treaty.

Pakistani lawyer Khawar Qureshi also told the court that a 2008 bilateral agreement between Pakistan and India allows either country to decide on consular access in cases involving “political or security” issues.

Jadhav was arrested in Balochistan in March last year, according to Pakistan, but New Delhi insists he was kidnapped from Iran, where he was running his business.

Faisal also showed the court a picture of a passport which he said was found in Jadhav’s possession bearing a completely different “and Muslim” name.

“India has been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to provide an explanation for this passport which is the most obvious indication of covert and illegal activity,” added Faisal.

The case has highlighted the recent sharp uptick in tensions between the neighbouring nuclear-armed rivals, with the two sides outlining starkly different accounts.

The ICJ is the United Nations court for resolving disputes between nations, and its decisions are final and binding. However, it has no means to enforce its rulings and they have occasionally been ignored.

In a similar dispute over the Vienna Convention in 1999, the ICJ ordered the United States not to execute a German national who did not get proper consular assistance – but the man was put to death regardless.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Embattled US President Donald Trump faced explosive allegations that he divulged top secret intelligence to Russian diplomats in the Oval Office, a charge the White House scrambled to rebut Monday.}

The Washington Post reported that Trump revealed highly classified information on the Islamic State group during a meeting last week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Moscow’s man in Washington Sergey Kislyak.

In a shock twist, the intelligence reportedly came from a US ally who did not authorize Washington to share it with Moscow. That development could shatter trust that is essential to intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation.

National Security Advisor HR McMaster denied the president had revealed “intelligence sources or methods,” but acknowledged that Trump and Lavrov “reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation.”

The Post, citing unnamed officials, said that Trump went off script during the meeting, describing details about an Islamic State terror threat related to the use of laptop computers on airplanes, revealing the city where the information was gathered.

The Trump administration recently barred the use of laptops in the passenger cabin from several countries in the Middle East and is mulling the expansion of that ban to cover jets originating in Europe.

“There’s nothing that the president takes more seriously than the security of the American people. The story that came out tonight as reported is false,” McMaster said without elaborating on which elements were wrong.

“Two other senior officials who were present, including the secretary of state, remember the meeting the same way and have said so. Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources. I was in the room. It didn’t happen.”

McMaster earlier refused to answer questions to a group of journalists gathered in the West Wing, saying “this is the last place I wanted to be” before leaving.

The revelations are the latest in a wave of crises to hit the White House, which late Monday was in a state of shock, with aides frantically trying to put out the fire and determine the source of such damaging leaks.

{{CRISIS TO CRISIS}}

Since coming to office in January, Trump has lurched from crisis to crisis, lampooning the intelligence services, law enforcement and the media along the way.

Last week, Trump threw his administration into turmoil by taking the virtually unprecedented step of firing his FBI director James Comey.

Comey had been overseeing investigations into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia to skew the 2016 election.

The meeting came a day after that firing, and was already controversial in itself, a red carpet welcome for top aides of Vladimir Putin just months after being hit with US sanctions for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s administration was left red-faced after Moscow surprised them by releasing pictures of what was meant to be a closed-door meeting.

{{RYAN WANTS ‘FULL EXPLANATION’}}

For Trump’s already weary allies in Congress, the latest crisis brought more headaches and demanded yet more explanation from an administration that is struggling to leave its legislative mark.

“We have no way to know what was said, but protecting our nation’s secrets is paramount,” said Doug Andres, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“The speaker hopes for a full explanation of the facts from the administration.”

Senior Republican Senator John McCain told CNN that “if it’s true, it’s obviously disturbing.” But he cautioned: “Let’s wait and see what this was all about first.”

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer accused Trump of potentially putting American lives at risk.

“If the report is true, it is very disturbing. Revealing classified information at this level is extremely dangerous and puts at risk the lives of Americans and those who gather intelligence for our country,” he said.

“The president owes the intelligence community, the American people and Congress a full explanation.”

Source:AFP