Tag: InternationalNews

{$1bn THAAD defence system in South Korea guarding against threats from North Korea will be operational ‘within days’.}

South Korea’s government has brushed aside US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that it should pay for a $1bn missile defence system the two allies are installing in South Korea to guard against threats from North Korea.

The first components of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system have already been delivered and set up at a former golf course in South Korea – infuriating China – at a time of heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.

Top US officials have said THAAD will be operational “within days”.

“I informed South Korea it would be appropriate if they paid. It’s a billion-dollar system,” Trump said in an interview with the Reuters news agency.

“It’s phenomenal. It’s the most incredible equipment you’ve ever seen – shoots missiles right out of the sky,” said Trump. “And it protects them and I want to protect them. We’re going to protect them. But they should pay for that, and they understand that.”

The two countries have been in a security alliance since the 1950-53 Korean war, and more than 28,000 US troops are stationed in South Korea.

Seoul retorted that under the Status of Forces Agreement that governs the US military presence in the country, South Korea would provide the THAAD site and infrastructure while the US would pay to deploy and operate it.

“There is no change to this basic position,” South Korea’s defence ministry said in a statement.

The row comes with tensions high on the Korean peninsula following a series of missile launches by North Korea and warnings from the Trump administration that military action was an “option on the table”.

But earlier this week it said it would seek stronger sanctions against Pyongyang and held open the possibility of negotiations, with US Pacific Command chief Admiral Harry Harris saying it wanted to bring leader Kim Jong-un “to his senses, not to his knees”.

The White House also wants China to do more to rein in North Korea, but Beijing has been infuriated by the THAAD deployment which, it fears, weakens its own ballistic capabilities and upsets the regional security balance.

Social media commentators were derisive. “So he wants to start a war with North Korea and he wants South Korea to pay for it,” wrote one Twitter poster.

Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay, reporting from Seoul, said that the THAAD system was controversial from the start but that Trump’s comments have “come out of the blue”.

“This is US equipment, it is being run by United States personnel, it is on South Korean land that has effectively been given to the United States,” said Hay. “So it is difficult to see how Donald Trump can get this one through.”

Hay said there had also been a negative response to Trump stating that he wants to renogiate or terminate a five-year-old free trade pact with South Korea because of the deep trade deficit with Seoul.

South Korean car manufacturers expressed concern about Trump’s comments.

“Generally, the free trade agreement has worked well – trade has increased between the two countries when we’ve seen trade decreasing generally around the world,” said Hay.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Palestinians take on ‘Salt Water Challenge’ to draw attention to plight of more than 1,500 prisoners on hunger strike.}

A social media campaign highlighting the plight of more than 1,500 hunger striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has gone viral, with people from across the world posting videos of themselves on social media drinking salt water in solidarity.

Similar to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral in 2014, the Salt Water Challenge sees supporters of the hunger striking prisoners drink a mixture of salt and water. The participants then challenge others to do the same.

Since April 17 , Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, many prisoners in Israeli jails have been on an indefinite hunger strike protesting prolonged imprisonment without charge, medical negligence, administrative detention and limited family visits among other charges.

The prisoners have refused to eat food until their demands are met and they are only consuming salt water as a means to steady their health.

The salt water campaign was launched with a video by Aarab Marwan Barghouti, the son of imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently serving five life sentences over his role in the second Intifada against the Israeli occupation.

Barghouti has spent nearly two decades of his life in Israeli jails, and spent almost three years in solitary confinement. According to a 2013 interview, his tiny windowless cell denied him aeration or direct sunlight and was infested with cockroaches and rats.

“My father, along with 1,700 other political prisoners started the Hunger Strike for Freedom and Dignity in demand for human rights and humane living conditions in the prisons,” Aarab Marwan Barghouti said in the video.

The clip then ends with Barghouti nominating ‘Arab Idol’ winner Mohammed Assaf and others to take part in the challenge.

Assaf helped the campaign go viral (Arabic) which has now seen thousands of people take part in the challenge, including the the 2017 winner of Arab Idol, Yacoub Shaheen.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, since the start of Israel’s occupation 50 years ago, more than 750,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israeli forces.

About 6,500 Palestinians are currently in Israeli jails, 300 are children.

Palestinian leaders have denounced Israel’s refusal to negotiate with the hunger strikers, warning of a “new Intifada” if any of them die.

Demonstrations have been held in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to support the prisoners, with Israeli forces firing tear-gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition at protesters.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Witness says Kenneth Williams’ body lurched and convulsed 20 times when he was put to death by lethal injection.}

A lawyer for an Arkansas inmate who was put to death on Thursday is calling for an investigation into the execution after a witness reported that he lurched and convulsed 20 times before he died.

Kenneth Williams, 38, received a lethal injection on Thursday night at the Cummins Unit prison at Varner, an hour after the Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal to stay his execution.

An AP news agency reporter who witnessed Williams’ death said his body jerked 15 times in quick succession, then the rate slowed for a final five movements.

J.R. Davis, a spokesman for Governor Asa Hutchinson who did not witness the execution, called it “an involuntary muscular reaction” that he said was a widely known effect of the sedative midazolam, the first of three drugs administered.

One of Williams’ lawyers, Shawn Nolan, described the accounts of Williams’ execution as “horrifying”.

“We tried over and over again to get the state to comport with their own protocol to avoid torturing our client to death, and yet reports from the execution witnesses indicate that Mr. Williams suffered during this execution,” Nolan told the AP.

Williams’ lawyers said he had sickle cell trait, lupus and brain damage, and argued the combined maladies could subject him to an exceptionally painful execution in violation of the US Constitution.

Arkansas’ “one size fits all” execution protocol could leave him in pain after a paralytic agent renders him unable to move, they’d argued to state and federal courts, which all rejected his claims.

Williams was sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of Cecil Boren, deputy prison warden, one of two men he killed after escaping prison where he was serving a life sentence for murdering a cheerleader.

“Any amount of movement he might have had was far less than any of his victims,” said Jodie Efird, the Boren’s daughters, who witnessed the execution.

He was the fourth inmate to be executed in eight days in Arkansas.

“I extend my sincerest of apologies to the families I have senselessly wronged and deprived of their loved ones,” Williams said in a final statement he read from the death chamber. “… I was more than wrong. The crimes I perpetrated against you all was senseless, extremely hurtful and inexcusable.”

The inmate breathed heavily through his nose until just after three minutes into his execution, when his chest leaped forward in a series of what seemed like involuntary movements. His right hand never clenched and his face remained what one media witness called “serene”.

After the jerking, Williams breathed through his mouth and moaned or groaned once — during a consciousness check — until falling still seven minutes into the lethal injection.

Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over an 11-day period before its stash of midazolam expires at the end of April – the nation’s fastest pace since the Supreme Court reauthorised the death penalty in 1976.

Courts issued stays for four of the inmates.

The Arkansas Department of Correction has said it has no new source for the drug – though it has made similar remarks previously, yet still found a new stash.

Among the four lethal injections was Monday’s first double execution in the United States since 2000.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Intelligence and Security Committee says government did not disclose key documents over killing of Reyaad Khan in Syria.}

British politicians who examined the details of a drone strike which killed a British man in Syria said they were disappointed by the government’s lack of transparency during investigations.

On August 21, 2015, the UK conducted a drone strike in Raqqa for the first time outside the traditional theatre of war, killing 21-year-old British national Reyaad Khan, a suspected fighter with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), and two other people.

“We are in no doubt that Reyaad Khan posed a very serious threat to the UK,” the Intelligence and Security Committee in the UK said in a report on Wednesday.

“There is nevertheless a question as to how the threat is quantified and in this instance whether the actions of Khan and his associates amounted to an ‘armed attack’ against the UK or Iraq – which is clearly a subjective assessment,” the committee said.

“The [government’s] failure to provide what we consider to be relevant documents is profoundly disappointing,” the report added.

{{Cameron’s self-defence justification}}

Despite not having a parliamentary mandate to take military action in Syria, then Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs at the time that Khan was “seeking to orchestrate specific and barbaric attacks against the west, including directing a number of planned terrorist attacks right here in Britain, such as plots to attack high profile public commemorations”.

Cameron described the attack in ISIL’s defacto capital as an act of self defence.

“The strike against Khan was also thought to have killed two other individuals travelling in the same vehicle: Rahul Amin and another passenger,” the committee said, adding that it was possible the deaths of the pair was “collateral damage”.

“We have … been prevented from looking at this issue in as much detail as we consider it requires. On the basis of the information that was made available to us, there would appear to be questions around the assessment of the possibility of collateral damage which would benefit from further scrutiny,” the report explained.

For the strike to be justified under the UN Charter, an assault must be a necessary and proportionate response to an armed attack which is deemed imminent.

{{‘Government should be more transparent’}}

However, the investigating MPs said they were unable to assess if this was the case, as the government failed to disclose vital documents.

“The government should be more transparent about these matters and permit proper scrutiny of them,” said Dominic Grieve, chair of the committee.

The group had initially sought to investigate two other drone strikes which killed UK nationals Junaid Hussain and Mohammed Emwazi in August and November 2015, Yasmine Ahmed, Rights Watch director, told Al Jazeera.

But the group was unable to do so because US-operated drones were used on both occasions.

This curtailed the scope of the committee’s probe, despite the UK being complicit and perhaps even facilitating the attack, Ahmed claimed.

“It appears that there is no oversight or accountability on strikes of this nature,” Ahmed said.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Arms depot near Damascus International airport goes up in flames after series of overnight strikes blamed on Israel.}

Israeli air strikes have hit an arms depot operated by the Lebanese Hezbollah group near Damascus airport, Syrian opposition sources told Al Jazeera.

Witnesses said a total of five strikes occurred near the Damascus airport road about 25km from the capital early on Thursday.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the Turkish city of Gaziantep near Syria’s border, said opposition activists posted pictures online showing a huge fire near the area.

“There is no official comment from the Syrian government,” Ahelbarra said.

“We do understand that the Israelis have been carrying out air strikes in the past. The last one was in January targeting the Mezze military base.

“In 2015 they also launched attacks near the capital Damascus and in the Golan Heights, killing two prominent Hezbollah commanders, including Jihad Mughniya who is the son of the top military commander of Hezbollah I mad Mughniya who was also killed in Damascus in 2008,” Ahelbarra said.

{{‘We will act’}}

Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, speaking from the United States where he has been meeting US officials, told Israeli Army Radio: “I can confirm that the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel’s policy to act to prevent Iran’s smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah in Iran. Naturally, I don’t want to elaborate on this.

“The prime minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicated an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act.,” Katz added.

An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment.

Reuters news agency, citing an intelligence source, said the depot that was targeted handles a significant amount of weapons that Tehran, a major regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, sends regularly by air.

The source said the arms depot gets a major part of the weapons supplied to an array of Iranian backed armed groups, led by Hezbollah, which have thousands of fighters engaged in battle against Syrian rebels.

Rami Abdurrahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the blasts were heard across the capital, jolting residents awake.

Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the explosions near the airport road were followed by flames rising above the area.

{{Previous Israeli strikes}}

In May 2013 Israel targeted three areas in Damascus suburbs, allegedly to destroy Iranian rockets being delivered to Hezbollah. Damascus airport was also hit by Israel in May 2013.

The Syrian army said on January 13, 2016 that Israel had targeted the Mezze military airbase. Mezze airbase is just a few kilometers from the presidential palace.

Israel has in the past targeted Hezbollah positions inside Syria where Iranian backed groups are heavily involved in the fighting.

The Syrian government has warned in January that it would retaliate any attack in Syria targeting its own areas.

Hezbollah-linked Al-Manar TV channel said the dawn raid struck fuel tanks and a warehouse near Damascus International Airport and that it was probably the result of an Israeli strike.

It added that initial indications were that the blasts caused only material damage and not deaths.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Soldier recounts ambush by Maoist fighters that left 25 colleagues dead in flash point Chhattisgarh state.}

Raipur, India – “Grenades and bullets were raining down” on paramilitary policemen in a Maoist attack that killed 25 Indian personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), a surviving constable told Al Jazeera.

The policemen were guarding road workers in the Sukma district, nearly 400km from Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state, when they came under fire on Monday.

Constable Sher Mohammed was part of the more than 100 personnel from the 74th battalion of CRPF deployed in the jungles.

About 300 Maoists – a large number of them women – attacked from all sides while the soldiers were on their lunch break.

“We were sitting under the trees for lunch when we heard shots. Before we knew it, bullets were flying around us. Some of our companions were falling like trees crashing down,” said Mohammed, who is recovering in a hospital in Raipur.

“It seemed as if hand grenades and bullets were raining down on us.”

The pain of losing his colleagues was clearly visible on his face as he lay on the hospital bed.

“They used weapons like AK-47 and fired from all sides. That made it difficult for us but we kept firing back,” Mohammed said.

“The distance between us and the Maoists was hardly 100 metres. As I tried to rescue a fellow soldier, seven or eight bullets hit my chest but my bulletproof jacket saved me.”

Monday’s attack was the latest in a long-running conflict between Maoist fighters and Indian forces in the rural areas of mainly central and eastern India.

At least 76 CRPF personnel were killed in a Maoist attack in the same district in 2010.

Extra-judicial killings

Tens of thousands of Indian troops have been deployed in the Maoist-affected areas of the country, euphemistically characterized as the ‘red corridor’, to fight the rebels, who want mining in the mineral-rich region to stop.

More than 20,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed since 1980. The violence escalated after the government launched an armed operation in 2009, dubbed “Operation Green Hunt” by the media.

Human rights activists and local journalists, who have accused government forces of abuse and extra judicial killings, have been attacked and in many cases even jailed.

The Maoists, believed to be present in at least 13 Indian states, say they are fighting for the rights of the adivasi tribal people and the landless farmers against mining in the region.

In a recent statement in parliament, Rajnath Singh, home minister, said the Maoists were frustrated because of the success of recent security operations against them.

Last year, 135 Maoists were killed, 700 were arrested and another 1,198 surrendered to government forces, Singh said, citing figures from NDTV.

READ MORE: India making inroads in Maoist stronghold

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, sent his condolences to the families of the soldiers killed in the attack. Singh, for his part, dubbed it a “cold blooded murder”.

Bhupesh Baghel, from the opposition Congress party, blamed the attack on the lack of coordination between the CRPF and state police.

However, Ramsewak Paikra, Chhattisgarh home minister, denied the claim, saying the development work done by the previous Congress government was the real reason behind the attack.

“The Maoists know that development is limiting the space for them. Maoist use tribals as their shield to prevent development,” Paikra told Al Jazeera.

Retaliation feared

Last month Maoist rebels killed 11 paramilitary policemen in the same state after ambushing their convoy.

Civil rights groups have criticised the attack but fear that security forces would “retaliate” by targeting ordinary civilians.

“Consequent arrests, beatings and killings will only intensify the cycles of violence and counter-violence,” said Dr Lakhan Singh, president of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties.

“A situation of civil war still prevails in Bastar [district in Chhattisgarh state] but the Indian government refuses to declare this an “internal armed conflict” perhaps to avoid monitoring by the UN.”

The government has deployed more than 100,000 troops, one-third of them paramilitary forces, to root out the five-decade old armed rebellion. More than 2,000 people have been killed in the state since 1995.

About 35,000 central paramilitary forces and more than 20,000 state police are deployed in Bastar, which is considered a stronghold of the Maoist fighters.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Review could upend protections and restrictions on millions of acres of land designated as ‘national monuments’.}

After moving to roll back climate change protections, US President Donald Trump is turning his sights on America’s vast nature preserves, with a view to possibly lifting federal protections brought in over the past two decades.

Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Wednesday reviewing the designation of tens of millions of acres of land as “national monuments” under a 1906 law known as the Antiquities Act, which was brought in by president Theodore Roosevelt to conserve America’s natural heritage.

The review could upend protections and restrictions on how the lands are used.

“National monument” land has come to be synonomous with a bar to drilling for fossil fuels on public land, or other commercial activities.

The aim of Trump’s review is to “give states and local communities a meaningful voice in the process”, said Ryan Zinke, interior secretary, whose department oversees federal land use under the motto “Protecting America’s Great Outdoors and Powering Our Future”.

Zinke said the outcome of the review was not preordained. His department is to provide an interim report in 45 days, then a fuller one in 120 days.

But the review could set the scene for fierce legal challenges.

While Republicans in Utah and other states are keen to lift protections they see as too expansive and undermining economic opportunities, environmental groups and Native Americans are deeply opposed.

{{National monuments}}

In the past, areas tagged as “national monuments” were later transformed by Congress into fully fledged National Parks – the Grand Canyon and Death Valley among them.

Since the Act came into force more than a century ago, only three presidents – all Republicans – did not use its powers: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.

Barack Obama had millions of hectares classified under the act during his presidency, including maritime zones, especially in the Pacific.

Under Trump’s review, only “monuments” of 40,000 hectares or more will be examined.

A key area will be the Bears Ears National Monument, a 530,000-hectare zone in Utah that Obama designated as a national monument in 2016.

Another will be the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, also in Utah – a spectacular tract of canyons, ridges and a river – designated by Bill Clinton in 1996.

The Republican senator for Utah, Orrin Hatch, has railed against the national monument decisions made in Washington, saying his state should have more say over how the land is protected.

In a Washington Post opinion piece, Hatch said Obama “ignored the best interests of Utah and cast aside the will of the people – all in favour of a unilateral approach meant to satisfy the demands of far-left interest groups”.

Other presidents, too, went too far, Hatch opined, adding that Trump “stands ready to undo the harm brought about by their overreach”.

Trump will also sign an executive order on Friday to instigate a review of the locations available for offshore oil and gas exploration. It will also order a review of certain regulations governing offshore operations, reported the AP news agency.

Last month Trump had also declared the end of a “war on coal” as he signed an “energy independence” executive order to review some of Obama’s climate legacy, declaring an end to “job-killing regulations”.

In a maiden trip to the Environmental Protection Agency in March, he ordered a review of emission limits for coal-fired power plants and eased restrictions on federal leasing for coal production.

A coalition of 23 US states and local governments vowed to fight the order in court.

{{Public resistance}}

But Martin Heinrich, a Democratic Party senator for New Mexico, said that if Trump truly wants to “make America great again”, he should use the Antiquities Act to protect and conserve America’s public lands.

In New Mexico, Obama’s designation of Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument have preserved important lands while boosting the economy, Heinrich said, a story that has been repeated across the country.

“If this sweeping review is an excuse to cut out the public and scale back protections, I think this president is going to find a very resistant public,” Heinrich told AP news agency.

Recent polls have shown strong support for national parks and monuments, said Christy Goldfuss, who directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality under Obama.

Kristina Waggoner, vice president of the Boulder-Escalante Chamber of Commerce in Utah, said businesses near the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in southern Utah are booming, driven by sharp increases in tourism since the area was designated in 1996 by President Bill Clinton.

“I’m here today to support the monument and my three-year-old son,” Waggoner said in a conference call with reporters organised by a pro-Obama group. “Once our land is gone, it’s gone for ever.”

Source:Al Jazeera