Tag: InternationalNews

{More protests planned as assault on 22-year-old arrested in Paris suburb is deemed accidental by French investigators.}

Tensions between police and protesters have flared again in the French capital after a police investigation concluded that the anal rape of a young black man by an officer using a truncheon was an accident.

The conclusion on Thursday came a week after the arrest in the northern Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois of the 22-year-old victim, who has been identified only as Theo.

According to AFP news agency, a police source said that having taken into account CCTV recordings and witness accounts, “there are insufficient elements to show that this was a rape”.

A video of the scene shows a policeman “applying a truncheon blow horizontally across the buttocks with a truncheon” and Theo’s trousers “slipped down on their own”, the source said.

However, an investigating magistrate had charged one of the police officers with rape and three others with aggravated assault and is still examining the case.

Protesters planned to gather on Saturday in front of the Bobigny court, which is where a judge will decide on February 20 whether the accused policemen will face trial.

Video that apparently showed Theo’s arrest circulated on the internet, showing the youth worker on the ground against a wall being beaten by four men.

Theo, whose family say he was not known to police, required surgery for severe anal injuries after he was assaulted with a truncheon, and also suffered head trauma.

‘Police harass us’

The case has revived the contentious issue of policing in France’s deprived suburbs.

Fury over the incident has culminated in days of peaceful protests and riots, with fireworks thrown at police as cars and rubbish bins were set on fire leading to dozens of arrests.

Theo, who said that police raped him with a baton, called for calm while being treated. Francois Hollande, the French president, visited him in hospital.

Bruno Le Roux, interior minister, said on Friday that police equipped with body cameras would patrol “sensitive areas” to film arrests and searches.

Yasser Louati, a French human rights and civil liberties activist, told Al Jazeera: “The police is now seen as an occupying force, not a force of protection for the weak and against crime.

“There is an atmosphere of open defiance to the state … the fear is that this might spark riots before the election, [which] may be a blessing for the right and far right.”

Dorian Chacon, a football coach who lives in Aulnay-sous-Bois, told Al Jazeera: “They’re supposed to protect us. They don’t, they harass us. We don’t feel safe here. They claim this is an accident: they take us for idiots. It’s a total lack of respect.”

Billel Kerzazi, Theo’s friend, told Al Jazeera: “It’s someone we know, so it’s painful to think of what happened to him.”

Rezmond Bukri, who also lives in the suburb, said: “The police are denying it, but they have to take responsibility, it’s not right.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{Reported abduction of Xiao Jianhua by Chinese agents unnerves businessmen with links to semi-autonomous territory.}

The disappearance from Hong Kong of Xiao Jianhua, a China-born billionaire businessman, has sent a chill through mainland business circles linked to the city, and some are looking to move their assets, according to financiers, lawyers and Chinese businessmen.

Hong Kong, a global financial centre and a “special administrative region” of China, has served as a major hub for mainland capital since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

But reports that Xiao was abducted by Chinese agents from the luxury Four Seasons hotel have helped undermine confidence in the legal autonomy that has underpinned the economy.

Hong Kong police have said Xiao crossed the border into China on January 27 through a checkpoint and are still investigating the case.

{{Unspecified location}}

A source close to Xiao, who holds a Canadian passport, said he is now in an unspecified location in China, and that Xiao’s wife and brother had “fled” Hong Kong to Canada.

The Canadian consulate in Hong Kong said they had no further information on the family.

A second source close to Xiao said on Thursday he was still able to get in touch with the tycoon, with “some difficulties”.

Shortly after his disappearance, a local newspaper ad purporting to be from Xiao himself said he had not been abducted, but was seeking medical treatment “outside the country”.

The uncertainty is unnerving businessmen with links to the city.

“I don’t dare go to Hong Kong,” said Guo Wengui, a Chinese property and investment tycoon who said he knows Xiao and used to visit Hong Kong regularly.

Now, he says he would not consider Hong Kong a safe place for his assets.

{{Life in exile}}

Guo has lived in exile for several years, having been investigated by Chinese authorities several times, including in connection with a fraud case.

No charges have ever been laid and Guo said he had done nothing wrong.

A senior corporate lawyer with a global law firm said some of his mainland Chinese clients living in Hong Kong had asked him for advice on moving assets out in the two weeks since news Xiao’s case broke, possibly to Japan, Singapore or South Korea.

“They want to change location. They freaked out,” he said.

Xiao, who runs financial group Tomorrow Holdings and has close ties with some of China’s top leaders and businessmen, is ranked 32nd on the 2016 Hurun China rich list, China’s equivalent of the Forbes list, with a net worth of $6bn.

Until his disappearance, Xiao had for some years resided at the Four Seasons Place serviced apartments in the heart of the city, a favourite haunt of wealthy mainland Chinese businessmen.

{{‘Significant decline’}}

A person with knowledge of the matter at the hotel said there had been a “significant decline” in Chinese occupancy since the news broke.

“Many mainlanders checked out,” the person said.

The hotel, including its three Michelin-starred restaurant Lung King Heen, was quieter now, said a Hong Kong regular who often meets mainland Chinese clients there.

The corporate lawyer source, who also frequents the Four Seasons, said several of his mainland Chinese clients had moved out of the property recently, citing concerns from the incident involving Xiao.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Ramallah-based writer stranded abroad after controversial novel banned and an arrest warrant issued.}

A Palestinian author says he is unable to go home to the occupied West Bank after authorities there confiscated copies of his latest novel and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Abbad Yahya, 29, who is currently on a visit to Qatar, says he learned of the warrant and the banning of his novel, Crime in Ramallah, through the official Palestinian news agency while abroad.

He fears he will be jailed if he returns.

Speaking to the AFP news agency, Yahya said: “I don’t know what to do. If I go back, I will be arrested, and if I stay here … I can’t stay far from my home and family.”

Yahya, who lives in Ramallah, has been accused of including “sexual terms” in a provocative work that tackles issues considered taboo in Palestinian society.

Themes explored in the book include politics, religion and homosexuality.

{{Morality and public decency}}

Ahmed Barak, Palestine’s attorney general, said Crime in Ramallah contained “indecent texts and terms that threaten morality and public decency, which could affect the population, in particular, minors”.

The decision “does not violate freedom of opinion and expression”, Barak said.

The novel, Yahya’s fourth, was released two months ago and charts the lives of three young men who work in a bar where a young woman is murdered.

The book goes on to show how the incident affects each man’s life.

Incidents portrayed in the book seek to symbolise the Palestinian national movement and what Yahya sees as its failure to secure independence from Israeli occupation.

It also criticises Palestinian leaders and touches on the complexities of modern Palestinian culture.

“Like all societies in the region, our society is seeing the growth of fanaticism and extremism and is reproducing social conservatism,” said Yahya.

“These trends appear in the society in a mixture of religious and national slogans.”

Yahya’s book, and the reaction to it, has set off a wide-ranging public debate in Palestine.

The writer said on Tuesday that the decision to ban his novel was an “unprecedented” attack on freedom of expression, and that he doubts that authorities have fully read it.

{{‘Reader should judge’}}

According to Yahya, his editor and distributor, Fuad al-Akleek, was arrested on Monday and released on Tuesday morning after interrogation.

“The police seized all copies in bookshops from Jenin to Hebron,” he said.

Speaking to local news media, Yahya challenged the effectiveness of the ban, saying that people who wanted to find a way to read the book would be easily able to.

He said that Palestine had a long line of intellectuals, writers, poets and artists, and that the ban could destroy what they had accomplished for Palestinian society.

Had the person who ordered his novel banned read them, perhaps their work would have been banned, too, Yahya said.

Adel Osta, a professor of literature, has joined several writers in criticising Yahya, saying he “went too far in crossing the red lines of Palestinian society”.

{{‘Job of the writer’}}

Murad Sudani, the head of the Palestinian Writers Union, said he wrote a “silly novel that violates the national and religious values of the society in order to appease the West and win prizes”.

“The job of the writer in our occupied country is to raise the hope and enlighten people – not to break the national and religious symbols,” Sudani said.

“My freedom as a writer ends when the freedom of the country begins.”

While Yahya’s Facebook page has been inundated with messages of support, he said several people had left threatening messages conveying their intention to harm him and his family.

Some in government, though, commended both Yahya and his novel.

Ehab Bseiso, Palestinian culture minister, said in a Facebook post that he was interested in reading the book.

He also urged the attorney general to repeal the book ban and Yahya’s arrest warrant.

{{‘Brutal censorship’
}}

The cultural department of the Palestine Liberation Organisation has condemned what it calls an “unjustified” decision that opened the door “to abuses of brutal censorship”.

“To use the term public decency is a form of manipulation and unacceptable justification because it has no legal or logical definition. It opens the doors for an endless censorship, which violates freedom of expression and right to creative writing,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Human rights organisations in the West Bank have called on the attorney general to reverse the ban and withdraw the charges against Yahya, saying that the actions violated international law.

“It is not a crime to distribute a book,” Akleek, a novel distributor, said. “The one who judges a novel and author is the reader.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{Al Jazeera reveals how Shai Masot courted senior Scottish politician, raising questions over political interference.}

A now disgraced senior diplomat at the Israeli embassy in London spent several hours courting the Scottish National Party’s deputy leader ahead of his official trip to Israel, raising further questions over Israel’s interference in British politics, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit can reveal.

In undercover footage recorded as part of Al Jazeera’s investigation The Lobby, Shai Masot – a senior political officer at the embassy who was forced to quit after the film exposed his attempts to manipulate British politics – is seen boasting of his relationship with Angus Robertson to our undercover reporter “Robin Harrow” (alias).

“I had hours and hours with him, like I think nine hours in total of sitting around in the embassy … we had a lot of meetings and he told us a lot of stories,” Masot told Robin and their companion, Maria Strizzolo, a British civil servant.

“[Robertson’s] feeling really close, you know, to the Jewish people,” Masot explained, adding that the SNP deputy leader “has a great trip” to Israel lined up.

Over dinner at a Kensington brasserie, Masot recalled Robertson’s story about his German heritage.

Robertson’s grandfather, a politician in the Reichstag, was persecuted by the Nazis, Masot said.

After his arrest, Robertson’s grandfather had his birth certificate changed to identify him as Jewish, which made him a de facto enemy of the state, Masot added.

He said that Robertson had also told him a story from Scotland’s history of a 14th-century manuscript that laid claim to the Scottish nation by declaring that the Scots were in fact one of the lost tribes of Israel.

Strizzolo, who was active with the Conservative Friends of Israel parliamentary group, was clearly won over.

“I actually really like him,” she said.

“Mmm … I love Angus,” Masot replied, apparently keen to let his companions know that Robertson was someone Israel could work with at a political level.

Strizzolo also resigned when The Lobby was first broadcast.

She was filmed plotting alongside Masot to “take down” Sir Alan Duncan, Britain’s pro-Palestinian deputy foreign secretary.

Duncan has previously shown strong sympathies towards Palestinians who suffered under Israel’s illegal occupation.

The SNP, too, has been a long-standing advocate for a Palestinian state.

READ MORE: Israel funding spin trips as it smears critics

Many in the party’s grassroots draw parallels with their own struggle for an independent Scotland, and decry the British government’s policy towards Israel.

In the 2015 general election, the SNP’s ranks swelled in Westminster. The party recorded a historic landslide victory in Scotland, winning 56 of 59 seats.

In a separate meeting, Masot told our undercover reporter that he wants grassroots pro-Israel movements to fill a “vacuum” in the SNP.

Trip to Israel

Robertson, along with fellow MPs Kirsten Oswald and Paul Monaghan, made their visit in November at the invitation of the Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors to London.

During the one-week trip, they met with Israeli and Palestinian government officials, Israeli businesses and human rights groups such as B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence.

They also visited the Palestinian Shu’fat refugee camp, UN positions in the occupied Golan Heights and the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem on a programme Robertson described as “extremely balanced”.

An SNP spokesperson told Al Jazeera that while the SNP Westminster Group funded the official trip, Israeli government officials were among those who provided assistance in terms of logistical support and in-country travel.

The Palestinian Authority, the UN and the Council for Arab-British Understanding provided similar assistance, the spokesperson said.

According to parliamentary rules, MPs do not have to declare overseas trips “wholly” funded by their own parties, but members must declare any hospitality and travel costs amounting to more than £300 ($375).

The nature and value of this assistance remains unclear.

{{Israel a successful ‘start-up nation’}}

Speaking to The Jewish Chronicle on his return in November, Robertson praised Israel’s success as a “start-up nation” and looked forward to the “huge potential” for trade and tourism with Scotland.

He also cited Israel’s relationship with Jews living in the diaspora as something Scotland could learn from.

But in January, in a meeting with the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic representative to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, Robertson was critical of Israel.

According to a statement from the Palestinian embassy, Robertson said that seeing the facts on the ground had been a “sobering and depressing experience”.

He also condemned plans by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand illegal construction in the occupied West Bank.

Robertson added that he believed the term “settlement” was inappropriate because “it is a word that connotes something temporary whereas sadly they have been built and planned to be permanent”.

Downplaying Masot’s role

When The Lobby was broadcast in January, the Israeli embassy in London played down Masot’s position, saying he was a “junior employee”.

However Masot, a former major in the Israeli Navy, was not inexperienced.

At one point, Masot told undercover reporter Robin that he had applied for a job as the “head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Intelligence Department in Israel”.

An SNP spokesperson confirmed that Robertson met Masot during meetings with the Israeli ambassador in his capacity as the “ambassador’s assistant”.

Masot was not among the 20 diplomats and support staff named on the embassy’s official list. However, Al Jazeera has learned that Masot was instead granted a visa as one of the embassy’s “technical and administrative staff”.

While most embassies of a similar size usually have around two visas granted for these kind of roles, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office recently confirmed that Israel has 17.

While the British government has been quick to sweep the sensitive, counterintelligence matter under the carpet, the parliament’s foreign affairs committee is taking a closer look.

Its chairman, Crispin Blunt, singled out by Masot as a supposed “Arabist” during undercover filming, has announced an inquiry into “the way that foreign states and interested parties seek to influence UK policy”.

Source:Al Jazeera

{More troops and vehicles to be sent to Espirito Santo following deaths of over 100 people in week of police strike.}

The Brazilian army has said that it will deploy more troops, armoured vehicles and military aviation to a southeastern state to fill a security vacuum where the police force has been on strike for a week.

A wave of violence and crime in Espirito Santo has claimed more than 100 lives so far, which is a major rise from the four murders recorded in all of January.

The announcement on Thursday came a day after Cesar Colnago, the state governor, said that the 1,200 soldiers who arrived earlier this week were not enough to help end the rampant unrest, which started after police left their posts on Friday in protest over wages and work conditions.

“From now on I have decided to reinforce ES with paratroopers, armoured vehicles and army aviation. The mission will be accomplished,” General Villas Boas, Brazil’s army commander, said via Twitter on Thursday.

{{Wave of muggings}}

Brazil’s Globo television network quoted the police union in Espirito Santo saying that more than 100 people have now been killed in a wave of muggings, carjackings and looting in the capital city Vitoria and elsewhere.

Relatives and sympathisers of striking officers are blockading police stations, and officers inside are deliberately making no effort to come out – leaving the city unguarded.

The website of the Colnago’s office said talks had been held with the police but with no result.

It also issued an appeal on Thursday for blood donors, saying stocks “have been reduced to a minimum in the last few days”.

The police want better conditions and higher salaries. A court declared the action an illegal strike and the state police chief has been replaced.

Meanwhile, there were continuing fears and rumours in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second most populous city, that police could start a copycat strike on Friday.

Officials have said they are working on paying officers late salaries and that no strike is planned. However, persistent rumors on social media have struck a nerve.

State Governor Luis Fernando Pezao told Radio Gaucha in an interview early Thursday that he had asked the federal authorities to put the army and elite National Force on standby in case the situation deteriorates, Globo television reported.

Rio has recently faced violent protests against austerity reforms, stretching police resources.

The crisis reflects nationwide budget crises in Brazil blamed on corruption, which has faced a crippling recession for two years and is struggling to return to growth.

The country is also one of the most violent in the world, with heavily armed criminals battling both on the streets and in prisons.

Last month clashes inside a prison near the northern city of Natal left 26 people dead, prompting the deployment of army troops.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Vessel carrying 2,300 tonnes of aid for persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority met by Buddhist protesters.}

A Malaysian ship carrying 2,300 tonnes of aid for tens of thousands of persecuted Rohingya Muslims arrived in Yangon where it was met by Buddhist protesters.

Health workers and activists crowded onto the deck of the Nautical Aliya as it docked at Thilawa port near Myanmar’s commercial capital on Thursday carrying food, medical aid, and clothing.

Organisers of the aid shipment said they trust the Myanmar government to deliver the supplies as promised despite its record of discrimination.

“We have to respect Myanmar’s sovereignty,” said Razali Ramli, from the 1Putera Club Malaysia, which helped organise the shipment along with a coalition of non-government organisations. “We hand over the aid in good faith.”

Myanmar’s social welfare minister was among a delegation meeting the ship, which has been at the centre of a rare diplomatic spat with fellow ASEAN member Malaysia.

Outside the docking area, dozens of Buddhist monks and demonstrators waited waving national flags and signs reading: “No Rohingya”.

“We want to let them know that we have no Rohingya here,” a Buddhist monk named Thuseitta, from the Yangon chapter of the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, told AFP news agency.

Myanmar denies citizenship to the million-strong Rohingya, despite many of them living on its soil for generations.

Buddhist nationalist groups are especially strong in their vitriol, rejecting Rohingya as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Hundreds of Rohingya have reportedly been killed in a brutal campaign launched by security forces in October, which the United Nations says may amount to ethnic cleansing.

The violence started after a series of attacks by armed men on border posts killed nine policemen.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, bringing harrowing tales of murder and sexual assault.

“We’ve document atrocities, serious crimes that have been committed by Myanmar’s security forces,” Matthew Smith, executive director of the group Fortify Rights, told Al Jazeera.

“We’re documenting killings, we’re documenting mass rape … throats being slit, bodies being thrown into fires, villages burned to the ground.”

Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya has sparked criticism from Muslim-majority Malaysia in a rare spat between the Southeast Asian neighbours.

Myanmar initially refused to allow the aid ship into its waters and has barred it from sailing to Rakhine’s state capital, Sittwe.

Al Jazeera’s Yaara Bou Melhem, reporting from Yangon, said the aid will be unloaded and distributed by the government from there.

“What we know is that a plane from here in Yangon will take the aid to Sittwe, which is nearest to the conflict zone … to distribute the aid among both Rohingya and Buddists,” she said.

“There’s no clear indication the aid will reach the Rohingya, because the area has been in lockdown since the renewed fighting began in October.”

The delivery comes days after a blistering report from the UN accused Myanmar’s security forces of carrying out a campaign of rape, torture, and mass killings against the Rohingya.

Based on interviews with hundreds of escapees in Bangladesh, investigators said the military’s “calculated policy of terror” likely amounted to ethnic cleansing.

For months, Myanmar has dismissed similar testimonies gathered by foreign media and rights groups as “fake news” and curtailed access to the region.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Trump’s choice, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, confirmed after accusations of racism and strong resistance.}

The US Senate has confirmed Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general despite fierce debate over his civil rights record and a push by Democrats to block him.

President Donald Trump’s choice was given the greenlight on Wednesday by a vote of 52-47.

Sessions had faced accusations of racism, and a Senate panel rejected him for a federal judgeship in 1986 amid concerns over allegedly racist comments he had made.

“This caricature of me from 1986 was not correct,” Sessions said after his confirmation hearing last month.

“I deeply understand the history of civil rights … and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters”.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the political left, was silenced in the Senate for reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, that criticised Sessions for his civil rights record.

Democrats, civil rights and immigration groups have voiced alarm about Sessions’ record of controversial positions on race, immigration and criminal justice reform.

A known immigration hardliner, he will take over the Justice Department as its lawyers are defending Trump’s temporary entry ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries and all refugees, the most controversial executive order of the young administration.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is due to rule this week on whether to overrule a district court judge in Seattle who suspended the ban last week.

READ MORE: Who are Donald Trump’s cabinet picks?

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, praised Sessions as honest and fair.

“This is a well-qualified colleague with a deep reverence for the law. He believes strongly in the equal application of it to everyone,” he said.

Sessions, who is originally from Alabama, will serve as the 84th US attorney general. The 70-year-old was an early Trump supporter who became a pivotal figure in his campaign and transition team. He served as a prosecutor from 1981 to 1993, and won a seat in the Senate in 1996.

{{‘Uniquely ill-fitted’}}

Senate Democrat Chris Murphy said he was “scared” about changes Sessions could bring.

“[His ] history of opposing civil rights, anti-gun violence measures and immigration reform makes him uniquely ill-fitted to serve [as attorney general],” Murphy said.

“I want a chief law enforcement official that will be a champion of the disenfranchised and dispossessed, not a defender of discrimination and nativism.”

Former vice presidential candidate Timothy Kaine, also a Senate Democrat, said Sessions’ record raised doubts.

“Any attorney general must be able to stand firm for the rule of law even against the powerful executive that nominated him or her,” Kaine said. “In this administration I believe that independence is even more necessary.”

Trump was quick to congratulate Sessions on Twitter:

Sessions will assume office a week after acting Attorney General Sally Yates was removed by Trump for refusing to defend his travel ban.

With the attorney general in place, eight of Trump’s 22 Cabinet nominees have been confirmed.

Source:Al Jazeera