Tag: InternationalNews

{Thailand’s southernmost provinces have seen a long-running separatist insurgency in the Muslim-dominated region.}

Two insurgents were killed in Thailand’s violence-plagued south after a bomb they were transporting prematurely exploded, the military said on Thursday.

Their deaths came during a night of violence across 11 districts in three of Thailand’s southernmost provinces near the border with Malaysia. More than a dozen grenade and bomb attacks also wounded eight civilians and officials.

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, which targeted police stations and checkpoints.

“This is the work of people who want to cause chaos. It looks like their intention wasn’t to kill but rather to cause disorder,” Colonel Yutthanam Petchmuang told Reuters news agency.

Military spokesman Pramote Prom-in identified the dead as “insurgent operation leaders”.

Thailand is mostly Buddhist but parts of the south are majority Muslim. The region has been plagued by a long-running separatist insurgency as ethnic Malay rebels battle Thai troops for more autonomy from the Buddhist-majority state.

Bombings and drive-by shootings are common in Thailand’s south, where more than 6,800 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since 2004.

The country’s southernmost border provinces, former Muslim sultanates, were annexed by Bangkok more than a century ago.

The military, which seized power in a 2014 coup, has held several rounds of negotiations with one group that claims to represent the insurgents, the Mara Patani.

But the talks have failed to make headway and many doubt the rebel negotiators have clout over fighters on the ground.

The biggest faction spearheading the insurgency, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), issued a rare statement earlier this month restating its opposition to the current Thai army-led peace talks.

The military refuses to talk to the BRN even though most analysts say Mara Patani has little sway over those doing the actual fighting.

BRN has said it will only come to the table if a third-party mediates the talks and international observers are allowed, demands Thailand’s military has repeatedly refused to accept.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Foreigners will now have to undergo an ‘Australian values’ test and take a stricter exam for English competency.}

The Australian government has announced plans to make it tougher for foreigners to obtain citizenship with applicants now having to undergo an “Australian values” test and take a higher level English-language exam.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnball made the announcement on Thursday, a week after he cancelled a work visa popular with foreigners and said he would replace it with an immigration policy that put “Australia First”.

“Australian citizenship should be honoured, cherished,” Turnbull told reporters in the capital, Canberra.

“I reckon if we went out today and said to Australians, ‘Do you think you could become an Australian citizen without being able to speak English?’ They’d say, ‘You’re kidding. Surely you’d have to be able to speak English.’”

Turnbull’s center-right government has seen its approval rating take a nosedive in recent months with nationalist and anti-Islam parties seeing a surge in support.

The right-wing One Nation party, which has pledged to ban Muslim immigration and install surveillance cameras in mosques and religious schools, has made significant gains at the expense of the coalition government.

Turnbull said the applicants would need a minimum level 6.0 equivalent of the International English Language Testing System, and a person will only become eligible for citizenship after four years as a permanent resident, up from one year.

The current citizenship multiple-choice questionnaire tests a person’s knowledge of Australian laws, national symbols, and colours of the Aboriginal flag. But Turnbull said it was not adequate to judge whether a person would accept “Australian values”.

“If we believe that respect for women and children and saying no to violence … is an Australian value, and it is, then why should that not be made a key part, a fundamental part, a very prominent part, of our process to be an Australian citizen? Why should the test simply be a checklist of civic questions?”

The new citizenship test will include questions about whether applicants have sent their kids to school, whether they go to work – if they are of working age – and whether becoming part of unruly gangs in cities reflected Australian values.

“The announcement has alarmed many multicultural advocates and migrant and ethnic groups will feel targeted,” said Al Jazeera’s Yaara Bou Melhem, reporting from Sydney.

“The opposition party has also spoken about the proposed changes and said that it’s designed to appease [the government’s] conservative base and perhaps nationalist groups.”

The new citizenship requirements are expected to be passed by parliament with the backing of right-wing senators.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Canada is on track to see the highest number of asylum claims in six years following the election of US President Trump.}

Canadian authorities caught 887 asylum seekers crossing unlawfully into Canada from the United States in March, nearly triple the number in January.

This brings the total number of asylum seekers caught walking across the border to 1,860 so far this year. The new statistics suggest those numbers could rise further as the weather warms.

Canada is on track to see the highest number of asylum claims in six years, given the pace of claims filed so far, as increasing numbers of people cross into Canada to make refugee claims in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s election and his crackdown on refugees and migrants.

“The majority of irregular migrants are holders of visas for the United States,” according to a statement released Wednesday from the office of Canada’s Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

“Canadian authorities are managing the increase in asylum seekers in a sound and measured way… To be clear – trying to slip across the border in an irregular manner is not a ‘free’ ticket to Canada.”

Almost three-quarters of the asylum seekers caught crossing so far this year were taken into custody in Quebec, government data showed. Roxham Road, which straddles Champlain, New York and Hemmingford, Quebec, has become such a common spot that photographers cluster there and would-be refugees refer to it by name.

Most of the others were taken into custody in Manitoba and British Columbia – 331 and 201, respectively.

Police said on Wednesday they have charged 43-year-old Michelle Omoruyi with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling.

Police allege they found Omoruyi driving nine West African asylum seekers across the US border into the prairie province of Saskatchewan on Friday night. The nine asylum seekers have filed refugee claims and are not in custody.

Source:Al Jazeera

{The reciprocal evacuations from two pro-government villages and two opposition-held towns resumed under tight security.}

The evacuation and transfer of thousands of Syrians from four besieged areas resumed on Wednesday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The reciprocal evacuations from two pro-government villages and two opposition-held towns was disrupted by a bombing on Saturday that killed more than 120 people.

A large convoy of buses from the government-held towns of Foua and Kefraya reached the edge of the rebel-held transit point of Rashidin outside the city of Aleppo.

“The process has resumed with 3,000 people leaving Foua and Kefraya at dawn and nearly 300 leaving Zabadani and two other rebel-held areas,” the head of the SOHR, Rami Abdel Rahman, told the AFP news agency.

The Syrian government’s Central Military Media also confirmed the resumption of evacuations.

Rashidin was the scene of Saturday’s deadly car bombing. At least 109 of the 126 dead were evacuees, among them 68 children. The rest were aid workers and rebels guarding the convoy.

Security was tightened up for Wednesday’s departures. Several dozen armed rebel fighters stood guard over the marshalling area where the buses were parked.

When Wednesday’s evacuations are complete, a total of 8,000 people should have left Foua and Kefraya, including pro-government fighters as well as civilians.

In exchange, 2,500 civilians and rebel fighters should have left rebel-held areas, including the towns of Zabadani and Madaya near Damascus that are surrounded by pro-government forces.

The deal to evacuate the towns was the latest in a string of such agreements, touted by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as the best way to end the fighting. Rebels say they have been forced out by siege and bombardment.

The population exchange has been criticised by rights groups, which say it rewards siege tactics and amounts to forced displacement.

The deal, currently in its first stage, has been repeatedly delayed.

A second phase is due to begin in two months’ time which should see the two government-held towns entirely emptied and all fighters, and civilians who choose to, leave the two rebel-held towns.

In total, that will amount to more than 30,000 people.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday’s bombing.

The Syrian government blamed “terrorists” – a catch-all term for its opponents. Ahrar al-Sham, a key rebel group in Syria’s north, condemned the “cowardly” attack, saying that many of its members were killed in the blast. The group said it was willing to cooperate with an international probe to determine the culprits.

The United Nations says 4.72 million Syrians are in hard-to-reach areas, including 600,000 people under siege, mostly by the Syrian army, but also by rebels or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

There has been a series of evacuations in recent months, mostly around the capital Damascus but also from the last rebel-held district of Syria’s third city Homs.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Spring warmth is on hold across Europe as cold weather brings snow to parts of Germany, Austria and the Balkans.}

Parts of central Europe have had a late taste of winter over the last few days.

This comes after a spell of warm weather saw spring blossom burst through in many parts of the continent as the days start to lengthen throughout the northern hemisphere.

Just 10 days ago the temperature in central London touched 25C. Highs were back down around the seasonal average of 13C on Tuesday.

There was a similar contrast in Brussels with a top temperature on 23C on April 9. The high was nearer 10C by Tuesday.

That was actually four degrees below the April of 14C.

The warmth in Belgium prompted the apple and pear blossom to come out around 10 days early this year.

Recent nights have seen the temperature fall close to freezing.

Efforts have been made to protect the blossom but some damage is inevitable. The trees are usually sprayed with water ahead of the frost.

They then freeze over so when the temperature drops further the young buds remain protected. This technique has been used in Italy for some time now.

However, the current water scarcity in Trento, northern Italy, means that they have not been able to protect their delicate fruit this time around.

Those areas in northern Italy, across the Alps and into the Balkans have been cold enough for some significant and even heavy snowfalls. Some parts of the higher ground have recorded up to a metre of fresh snow over the last few days.

Temperatures have been as much as 10 to 15 degrees below average across the region. Vienna has been particularly cold, with temperatures struggling to reach 3 or 4C. The April average is 15C.

It will be the weekend before those temperatures get anywhere near double figures. We can expect highs nearer 19C by Tuesday.

The current spell of thundery downpours, rain, sleet and snow still extends from the Alps to the Balkans.

The wintry mix is forecast to drift across the Hungarian Plain over the next few days, allowing that return to spring warmth.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Quick counts show Purnama, on trial for blasphemy, losing to ex-cabinet minister after religiously divisive campaign.}

Unofficial results show that the Christian governor of the Indonesian capital Jakarta has been resoundingly defeated after a campaign that opened religious and racial divides in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

So-called quick counts by 10 research companies on Wednesday showed Anies Baswedan, a former cabinet minister, winning between 55 and 60 percent of votes in the head-to-head vote, with about 80 percent of ballots counted.

Incumbent Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, is on trial for blasphemy. In recent months, hundreds of thousands of Indonesians have protested against him in Jakarta, deriding his Chinese ancestry and calling for him to be imprisoned or killed.

On Thursday, prosecutors will make their sentencing demand in Purnama’s trial.

Blasphemy is a criminal offence in Indonesia and punishable by up to five years in prison.

Baswedan, a highly educated Muslim politician, capitalised on the backlash against Ahok by courting the support of conservative religious leaders and figures on the radical fringe who opposed electing a non-Muslim.

The polarising campaign has given Indonesia’s conservative Muslim groups a national stage.

Purnama won the first round in February but not by a big enough margin to avoid a runoff.

Purnama, who was Jakarta’s first Christian governor in half a century and first ever ethnically Chinese governor, had been popular with middle-class Jakartans for his efforts to stamp out corruption and make the overflowing polluted city more livable.

But his brash manner and evictions of slum communities alienated many in the city of 10 million.

{{Runoff favourite}}

Baswedan had been seen as the favourite in the runoff because the votes from a third Muslim candidate who was knocked out were expected to go to him.

Baswedan was supported by the political and business elite that Jokowi unexpectedly defeated in the 2014 presidential election and who will be seeking to unseat him in 2019.

Opponents seized their moment last year when a video surfaced of Purnama telling voters they were being deceived if they believed a specific verse in the Quran prohibited Muslims from electing a non-Muslim as leader.

Conservative Muslim groups drew huge crowds to protests in Jakarta, shaking Jokowi’s centrist government.

Purnama’s runoff defeat would be a setback for his political patron, President Joko Widodo, who on Thursday hosts Vice President Mike Pence on the Indonesian leg of an Asian tour.

Ian Wilson, an expert on Indonesia from Murdoch University in western Australia, told Al Jazeera that Purnama’s defeat would be a significant result as he had previosuly been a largely popular figure.

“I think it shows the instrumental value of invoking identity as a political weapon,” said Wilson.

{{General tolerance}}

Wilson said the poll outcome could also be a setback for religous tolerance in terms of politics but that – in a large, diverse city like Jakarta – he did not think general tolerance was going to be under much threat.

“I think in everyday life in a city like Jakarta I don’t think there’s necessarily going to be a significant change,” he said.

More than seven million people were eligible to vote and thousands of police and military personnel were deployed to secure the 13,000-plus polling places.

However, there was no sign of unrest and police said the election had run smoothly.

Voting closed at 06:00 GMT on Wednesday.

Source:Al Jazeera

{US President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order that seeks to make changes to a visa programme that brings in high-skilled workers.}

The time-limited H-1B visas for skilled workers, which are sought by Silicon Valley heavyweights, are meant for scientists, engineers and computer programmers, and are an important gateway for many attracted by tech hubs across the country.

But the White House said the programme is undercutting American workers by bringing in cheaper labour and that some tech companies are using it to hire large numbers of workers and drive down wages.

Trump is going to Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday where he plans to sign an order dubbed “Buy American, Hire American,” ordering the Labour, Justice and Homeland Security Departments to propose reforms to the visa programme to prevent immigration fraud and abuse.

Those departments would also be asked to offer changes so that H-1B visas are awarded to the “most-skilled or highest-paid applicants”, anonymous officials told the Associated Press news agency.

There are, however, limits to the scope of Trump’s action in the absence of a broader legislative plan.

Administration officials said that the order seeks to strengthen requirements that American-made products be used in certain federal construction projects, as well as in various federal transportation grant-funded projects.

The officials said the commerce secretary will review how to close loopholes in enforcing the existing rules and provide recommendations to the president.

The order specifically asks the secretary to review waivers of these rules that exist in free-trade agreements.

{{‘Largely symbolic’}}

The Trump administration said that if the waivers are not benefiting the US they will be “renegotiated or revoked”.

During his campaign, Trump said he supported high-skilled visas but later came out against them.

At one debate, he called for fully ending the programme, saying: “It’s very bad for our workers and it’s unfair for our workers. And we should end it”.

“I think what we’re looking at here is largely symbolic,” New York-based lawyer Danielle Mclaughlin told Al Jazeera.

“On April 29, Trump will be 100 days in office, and one of the promises he made was … that he would make sure that Americans were hiring Americans and that they were buying American.”

About 85,000 H-1B visas are distributed annually by lottery. Many go to technology companies, which argue that the US has a shortage of skilled technology workers.

The US president cannot, by a simple decree, change the number of visas allocated.

{{‘Transitional step’}}

But the White House hopes, that signing the decree will build momentum before a possible legislative reform.

“This is a transitional step to get towards a more skilled-based and merit-based version,” a White House official told AFP news agency.

“There is a lot we can do administratively, and the rest will be done hopefully legislatively.”

Critics say the programme has been hijacked by staffing companies that use the visas to import foreigners who will work for less than Americans.

The staffing companies then sell their services to corporate clients who use them to outsource tech work.

Employers from Walt Disney World to the University of California in San Francisco have laid off their tech employees and replaced them with H-1B visa holders.

The tech industry has argued that the H-1B programme is needed because it encourages students to stay in the US after getting degrees in high-tech specialties, and that they can not always find enough American workers with the skills they need.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners start hunger strike to demand basic rights as Israeli jails’ conditions hit ‘new low’.}

Some 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel launched a mass hunger strike on Monday to press for basic rights and shed light on the difficult humanitarian conditions inside Israeli prisons.

The open-ended hunger strike, one of the largest in recent years, coincides with Palestinian Prisoners Day, annually commemorated on April 17. Led by jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, the strike will see Palestinian prisoners from across the political spectrum participate from within six prisons inside Israel.

“They have central demands and will continue to fast until they achieve them. The prisoners see hunger striking as the only door they can knock on to attain their rights,” Amina al-Taweel, spokesperson for the Hebron-based Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies, told Al Jazeera.

“Even though it is one of the most dangerous and difficult decisions, they are only making this choice because conditions [inside the prisons] have reached a new low,” said al-Taweel.

There are currently 6,500 Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel, including more than 500 administrative detainees, according to Jerusalem-based prisoner rights group Addameer.

Prisoners’ demands include installation of a public telephone in all prisons to allow communication with relatives, resuming bi-monthly family visits, allowing second-degree relatives to visit, increasing duration of the visits and allowing prisoners to take photographs with their families.

Many prisoners suffer from medical negligence in jails. Prisoners must pay for their own medical treatment, and are not provided with the adequate health care. Sick prisoners have also reported being denied water.

Since 1967, more than 50 Palestinian prisoners have died due to medical negligence inside Israeli jails, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. “Some people wait four years to get surgery,” said al-Taweel. “They’re calling for an end to this deliberate medical negligence.”

Additionally, prisoners are demanding better treatment when being transferred between prisons or between courts and prisons. Detainees are transported in a vehicle with blacked-out windows, known as the Bosta.

The vehicle is divided into tight metal cells, whereby the prisoner is chained from their arms and legs to a chair in a confined space, for long periods of time in the dark.

Other demands include installing air conditions in prisons, restoring kitchens, allowing detainees to keep books, newspapers and clothes, as well as ending the policies of administrative detention and solitary confinement.

Administrative detainees are arrested on “secret evidence”, unaware of the accusations against them and are not allowed to defend themselves in court. Their detention periods can be indefinitely renewed.

“The Israeli government will be responsible for any and all of the consequences of this hunger strike – if a prisoner dies, or becomes extremely ill – they are the ones that will have to handle the outcome. Palestinian prisoners have been demanding these basic rights for years,” said al-Taweel.

Al-Taweel said there are high expectations that the Israeli Prison Service will carry out a campaign of prisoner transferals, which she said would be an attempt to “try and break the will and determination of the prisoners”.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Israel Prison Service for comment but did not receive a response.

Under international humanitarian law, prisoners from occupied territories must be held in the occupied territory, not in the territory of the occupying power. Though most Palestinian political prisoners hail from the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, they are placed in prisons inside Israel, in direct contravention of international law.

Families of Palestinian prisoners must apply for permits to visit them and are regularly denied entry into Israel on security pretexts.

“One of the most significant concerns is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Al Jazeera.

“Palestinian prisoners are placed inside Israel as opposed to the West Bank and Gaza strip. This is a crippling restriction on access to family and loved ones,” explained Shakir.

A recent report from UK-based rights group Amnesty International also condemned Israel’s policy of holding Palestinian prisoners inside Israel, describing it as “unlawful and cruel”.

“Instead of unlawfully transferring prisoners outside the occupied territories, Israel must ensure all Palestinians arrested there are held in prisons and detention centres in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Until then, the Israeli authorities must stop imposing excessive restrictions on visitation rights as a means of punishing prisoners and their families, and ensure that conditions fully meet international standards,” the report read, quoting Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy regional director at Amnesty International.

Hunger striking as a method for pressuring Israel has become increasingly prevalent among Palestinian prisoners in recent years. In 2012, approximately 1,500 Palestinian prisoners launched a similar hunger strike for close to a month before managing to obtain their rights.

And, in 2014, 800 prisoners staged a strike against administrative detention for 63 days before a reaching a deal with the Israeli prison authorities and deciding to end their strike.

According to Shakir, a mass hunger strike is an attempt by Palestinian prisoners to shed light on such practices that raise serious questions about Israel’s policies under international law.

“It can help return the issue of Palestinian prisoners on top of the international community’s agenda. It’s about the plight of Palestinians behind bars,” said Shakir.

Source:Al Jazeera