Tag: InternationalNews

{At least eight people killed in air attack on rebel-held al-Waer neighbourhood of Homs, according to monitoring group.}

Syrian government jets have bombed a rebel-held district of Homs city in the west of the country, killing several people, according to rescue workers and a monitoring group.

A pro-government media outlet said Syrian planes targeted rebels in al-Waer neighbourhood after the fighters fired at civilian areas in government-held Homs.

Al-Waer has for months been spared the intense bombardment by Syrian and Russian air forces suffered by other areas including Idlib province, controlled by President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said at least eight people were killed in the government bombardment.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue service operating in rebel-held territory, did not give a figure, but said on its Facebook page that its centre in al-Waer was hit, wounding a staff member, and that there were fatalities elsewhere including women and children.

An opposition media activist in al-Waer, who gave his name as Osama Abu-Zeid, said that it had been months since the last significant bombardment of the area.

“Yesterday it suddenly escalated,” he told Reuters news agency.

A military media unit run by Assad’s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, said the army had fired rockets and that planes had carried out three strikes against rebels in al-Waer, who it said had violated a shaky ceasefire across parts of western Syria.

The SOHR reported at least one person wounded by rockets that landed in the government-controlled Abbasiya neighbourhood in Homs.

The Syrian government has tried to conclude a deal in al-Waer that would see rebel fighters and their families evacuate the district and the government take over.

Under similar local agreements in other parts of western Syria, rebels have left with light weapons and headed mostly for Idlib.

Assad said on Wednesday that local reconciliation agreements were the “most effective way to end the war and move towards a political solution”, state news agency SANA reported.

Government strategy

The opposition says such agreements are part of a government strategy to forcibly displace populations from opposition-held areas after years of siege and bombardment.

In September, some 120 opposition fighters and their families left al-Waer in agreement with the government, but there have been no further reports of rebels leaving the area.

The SOHR estimates several thousand rebels remain in the district.

The ceasefire brokered by Russia, which backs Assad, and Turkey, which supports rebels fighting to unseat him, took effect on December 30.

It has been fragile since the start, with the government side and rebels accusing the other of violations. The truce does not include the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group or al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

On Wednesday, shells fired by rebels into Aleppo city in northern Syria killed at least two people, SANA reported.

The Syrian Red Crescent said four of its volunteers were wounded, one critically, as they distributed aid in the Hamdaniya district.

Government forces drove rebels from their last remaining districts in Aleppo in December in a major victory for Assad. Shell fire has hit the city on several occasions since then.

Also on Wednesday, the Turkish news agency, Anadolu, reported that two Turkish soldiers died in a battle with ISIL, also known as ISIS, in northern Syria, citing the Turkish military.

{{ISIL fighters ‘neutralised’}}

The Turkish general staff had earlier confirmed that two other Turkish soldiers had been killed and 58 ISIL fighters “neutralised” during Operation Euphrates Shield.

Turkish authorities use the word “neutralised”, meaning either surrendered, captured or killed.

An operation was launched late on Tuesday to take control of Al-Bab. As a result of the operation, Free Syrian Army fighters supported by the Turkish military seized a number of strategic hills, the Turkish general staff statement said.

Operation Euphrates Shield began in late August 2016.

Source;Al Jazeera

{Law that retroactively legalises settler homes on private Palestinian land widely condemned as legitimising theft.}

An Israeli land grab law that retroactively legalises thousands of settlement homes in the occupied West Bank legitimises theft, violates international law and ends the prospect of a two-state solution, according to politicians, legal experts and human rights groups.

The so-called “Regulation Bill” drew immediate condemnation after it was voted in by members of the Knesset late on Monday with a 60 to 52 majority.

The law applies to about 4,000 settlement homes in the West Bank for which settlers could prove ignorance that they had built on privately owned Palestinian land and had received encouragement from the Israeli state to do so.

Three Israeli NGOs – Peace Now, Yesh Din and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel – and numerous Palestinians said they intended to petition the Supreme Court to cancel the law.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday in a statement: “This bill is in contravention of international law and will have far-reaching legal consequences for Israel.”

The EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement that the bloc “condemns” the law and urges against its implementation “to avoid measures that further raise tensions and endanger the prospects for a peaceful solution to the conflict”.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the law was an aggression against the Palestinian people.

“That bill is contrary to international law,” Abbas said after a meeting with French President Francois Hollande in Paris. “This is an aggression against our people that we will be opposing in international organisations.

“What we want is peace … but what Israel does is to work toward one state based on apartheid.”

Hollande called on Israel to go back on the law, saying it would “pave the way for an annexation, de facto, of the occupied territories, which would be contrary to the two-state solution”.

Hours before Abbas’ meeting with Hollande, Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, told the Associated Press news agency that the law put “the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution”.

Calling it “theft”, Erekat said the ruling showed “the Israeli government trying to legalise looting Palestinian land”.

The Arab League accused Israel of “stealing the land” from Palestinians.

“The law in question is only a cover for stealing the land and appropriating the property of Palestinians,” the head of the Cairo-based organisation, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said.

Palestinian owners will be compensated financially or with other land, but cannot negotiate their terms.

The law is a continuation of “Israeli policies aimed at eliminating any possibility of a two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state”, Aboul Gheit said.

Jordan, one of the few Arab states to have diplomatic ties with Israel, also denounced what it called “a provocative law likely to kill any hope of a two-state solution”.

According to the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, the law crosses a “very thick red line” towards annexation of the occupied West Bank, and sets a “very dangerous precedent”.

Speaking to the AFP news agency, he said: “This is the first time the Israeli Knesset legislates in the occupied Palestinian lands and particularly on property issues.”

He also raised the possibility the law could open Israel up to potential prosecution at the International Criminal Court, a threat Israel’s own top government lawyer, attorney general Avichai Mandelblit, has warned of.

Mladenov called for strong international condemnation of the legislation, but declined to criticise the US after President Donald Trump’s administration refused to comment on it.

Trump is more sympathetic to Israel’s settlement policies than previous US presidents. The Israeli government has approved plans to build thousands of new homes on occupied territory since the new US president took office.

“I think that is a very preliminary statement,” Mladenov said. “Obviously, they do need to consult, this is a new administration that has just come into office and they should be given the time and the space to find their policies.”

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the US was likely to discuss the law with Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister visits on February 15, but did not comment further in a press briefing on Tuesday.

David Harris, head of AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organisation, said that “Israel’s High Court can and should reverse this misguided legislation” before Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump in February.

That was also the message from Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said last week: “The chance that it will be struck down by the Supreme Court is 100 percent.”

Tobias Ellwood, Britain’s Middle East minister, also condemned the land grab bill, saying it “is of great concern that the bill paves the way for significant growth in settlements deep in the West Bank”.

Yuval Shany, an international law professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the law violated basic rights, interferes with property rights and is discriminatory because it regulates only the transfer of land from Palestinians to Jews

{{‘Against all international laws’}}

International law considers all settlements to be illegal, but Israel distinguishes between those it sanctions and those it does not, which are dubbed outposts.

A Palestinian cabinet minister also called on the international community for support.

“Nobody can legalise the theft of the Palestinian lands. Building settlements is a crime, building settlements is against all international laws,” said Palestinian Tourism and Antiquities Minister Rula Maayaa. “I think it is time now for the international community to act concretely to stop the Israelis from these crimes.”

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called the law “unacceptable” and urged the international community to act immediately.

“This is an escalation that would only lead to more instability and chaos,” Rdeneh said.

Palestinians want the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip – territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war – for their future state.

The international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to reaching peace.

Shortly before leaving office, former US President Barack Obama allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution declaring settlements illegal.

Source:Al Jazeera

{New London exhibition features more than 100 objects to create world’s most significant collection of robots ever shown.}

Step into the latest exhibition at London’s Science Museum, and you will be instantly welcomed by an animatronic baby.

With his moving arms and blinking eyes, this incredibly realistic mechanical human is a bewildering – if not unsettling – sight.

And that’s one of the goals of the museum’s new show looking at 500 years of humanoid robots: to chart their evolution and explore our reaction towards them throughout history.

“Robots trouble us,” curator Ben Russell tells Al Jazeera.

“When you see a robot you’re reading a lot into it as a human. If they are very lifelike, you don’t really know what is the source of their being,” he continues.

“It troubles us, but it fascinates us, as well.”

With more than 100 creations on display, the exhibition is the most significant collection of humanoid robots ever shown, according to the Science Museum in the UK capital.

Among the highlights are a 16th-century automaton monk designed to pray – the oldest object in the show – and a silver swan, built in 1773 by a Belgian clockmaker who also invented roller skates.

Others, such as the loom, which brought industrialised weaving to the 19th century and put thousands out of work, enable guests to discover the social and technological context of robots – just as many jobs in modern factories have been replaced by machines

“Five hundred years of history makes you realise that there has always been uneasiness around robots,” Al Jazeera’s Jessica Baldwin, reporting from the show, said.

“Today’s fear about driverless cars or mechanical nurses are nothing new.”

The exhibition runs until September 3.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Syrian government executed thousands of prisoners in mass hangings at Saydnaya prison, says rights watchdog.}

As many as 13,000 people were hanged in five years at a notorious Syrian prison near Damascus, Amnesty International has said, accusing the government of a “policy of extermination”.

Titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass hanging and extermination at Saydnaya prison,” Amnesty’s damning report, released on Tuesday, is based on interviews with 84 witnesses, including guards, detainees, and judges.

It found that at least once a week between 2011 and 2015, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their prison cells for arbitrary trials, beaten, then hanged “in the middle of the night and in total secrecy.”

The report said: “Throughout this process, they remain blindfolded. They do not know when or how they will die until the noose was placed around their necks.”

Most of the victims were civilians believed to be opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“They kept them [hanging] there for 10 to 15 minutes,” a former judge who witnessed the executions said.

“For the young ones, their weight wouldn’t kill them. The officers’ assistants would pull them down and break their necks,” he said.

Amnesty said the practice amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and were probaby still taking place.

Thousands of prisoners are held in the military-run Saydnaya prison, one of the country’s largest detention centres located 30km north of Damascus.

Amnesty accused the Syrian government of carrying out a “policy of extermination”, repeatedly torturing detainees and withholding food, water, and medical care.

Prisoners were also raped or forced to rape each other, and guards would feed detainees by tossing meals on to the cell floor, which was often covered in dirt and blood, the report said.

{{‘Hidden, monstrous campaign’ }}

A twisted set of “special rules” governed the facility: detainees were not allowed to speak and must assume certain positions when guards entered their cells.

“Every day there would be two or three dead people in our wing … I remember the guard would ask how many we had. He would say, ‘Room No 1 – how many? Room No 2 – how many?’ and on and on,” said Nader, a former detainee whose name has been changed.

After one fierce day of beating, Nader said, 13 people died in a single wing of the prison.

One former military officer said he could hear “gurgling” as people were hanged in an execution room below.

“If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling,” said Hamid, who was arrested in 2011.

“We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then,” he told Amnesty.

According to the report, the bodies were taken away by the truckload to be secretly buried in mass graves. Their families were given no information about their fate.

Amnesty has previously said that more than 17,700 people were estimated to have died in government custody across Syria since the country’s conflict erupted in 2011.

The figure of 13,000 deaths in a single prison, therefore, is a marked increase.

“The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty’s Beirut office.

“The cold-blooded killing of thousands of defenceless prisoners, along with the carefully crafted and systematic programmes of psychological and physical torture that are in place inside Saydnaya prison cannot be allowed to continue,” she said.

An investigation by the United Nations last year accused Assad’s government of a policy of “extermination” in its jails.

The UN estimates that more than 400,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes since the conflict began with anti-Assad protests.

Source:Al Jazeera

{More than six in 10 Roma families forcibly evicted as persecution against community rises, civil rights groups report.}

More than 10,000 Roma were forcibly evicted by French authorities last year, with most ejections taking place during the cold winter months, according to a new report.

The European Roma Rights Centre and the Ligue des droits de L’Homme (Human Rights League of France) said on Tuesday that at least 60 percent of Romani families in the country were forced to leave their dwellings.

The majority of the recorded evictions took place without a court decision and, in most cases, adequate alternative accommodation was not offered to those made homeless, the groups said in a joint report.

“France’s policy of ethnically targeted evictions creates cycles of repeat evictions and forced removals,” the report said.

“It is also a significant squandering of financial and administrative resources. It is not only a morally bankrupt strategy, but one that is not in the best interests of taxpayers, whose contributions could far better be deployed to invest in social assessments and sustainable solutions for housing.”

Almost 3,000 Roma were forced from their camps between October and December, a 17 percent increase from the previous quarter.

“Many Roma were evicted multiple times in 2016,” the report said. “This unsustainable practice only worsens deep poverty and neglects the underlying housing problems.”

Between 15,000 and 17,000 Roma live in poor conditions with little access to water and electricity in makeshift, illegal camps across France, according to the country’s national census and NGOs.

Authorities often cite sanitary reasons for dismantling the camps.

Catrinel Motoc, anti-discrimination campaigner for Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera: “We have repeatedly called on the French authorities … to put an end to forced evictions and take a series of measures that would enable Roma to benefit from their right to adequate housing and not to be discriminated [against], as guaranteed by numerous international and regional human rights obligations that France ratified.”

In June 2016, several organisations and agencies – including the Council of Europe and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights – warned local authorities across the continent to provide Roma with “sustainable” housing, saying that children were at particular risk of trauma and social isolation because of evictions.

{{Racist attacks}}

In addition to being made homeless, Roma often face discrimination.

“Many incidents of hate speech and cases of discrimination against Romani people were reported,” the groups said, which confirmed the need for policy “to address the plight of a stigmatised and deeply impoverished population to ensure … equal access to basic services”.

Tuesday’s report highlighted several racist attacks, including one in December against Jewish and Roma at the Anne Frank nursery school in an eastern suburb of Paris, Montreuil.

In an act of vandalism, “Juden verboten” (Jews forbidden) and “Sales Juifs et Roms” (Filthy Jewish and Romani people), were found painted on the front gate of the Anne Frank nursery, the report noted.

Between 10 and 12 million Roma are estimated to live in Europe, with most in eastern parts of the continent.

With ancestral roots in India, the Roma migrated to eastern Europe in the 10th century and have been persecuted throughout history.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-up of Yugoslavia, many travelled west, seeking to escape poverty and discrimination.

In 2010, the European Union criticised France over a crackdown on illegal Roma camps launched by then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In the same year, thousands of Roma were deported to Romania and Bulgaria from France.

Source:Al Jazeera

{ISIL is now surrounded by Syrian army from the south and by Turkish-backed rebels from the north, monitoring group says.}

Syrian government forces have advanced on the ISIL-held city of al-Bab, cutting off the last supply route that connects it to the armed group’s strongholds further east towards Iraq, according to a monitoring group.

ISIL fighters in the area are now effectively surrounded by the Syrian army from the south and by Turkish-backed rebels from the north, as Damascus and Ankara race to capture the largest stronghold of the armed group in Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

The British-based war monitor, which tracks developments in Syria’s conflict, added that the army and allied militia had made gains southeast of al-Bab overnight and fought ISIL there on Monday.

Backed by air strikes, they severed a road that links the city to other ISIL-held territory in Raqqa and Deir Az Zor provinces, it said.

A military commander in the alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad said ISIL, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and is also known as ISIS, was now encircled.

“There is one narrow passage left out of al-Bab,” the commander told the Reuters news agency. Government forces now had most of it “within close firing range”, he said.

Key city

The Syrian army’s advance towards al-Bab risks triggering a confrontation with the Turkish military and its allies – rebel groups fighting under the Free Syria Army (FSA) banner – which have been waging their own campaign to take the city.

In three weeks, Syrian army units moved to within 6km of al-Bab, as Damascus seeks to stop Turkey from penetrating deeper into a strategic area of northern Syria.

“It’s clear the regime is in a hurry to reach al-Bab,” Mustafa Sejari, a senior rebel official in the FSA group Liwa al-Mutasem, told Reuters. The Turkish-backed rebels, who have also had the city in their sights for months, would fight government forces if they got in the way, he said.

Turkey launched its campaign in Syria, “Euphrates Shield”, in August to secure its frontier from ISIL and halt the advance of the powerful Kurdish YPG militia.

Backed by Turkey’s air force, Turkish troops and FSA rebels on Monday clashed with ISIL fighters around the town of Bazaa, northeast of al-Bab, the Observatory said. Turkish-backed forces had briefly captured the town before suicide bombers pushed them out on Saturday.

Al-Bab is 40km northeast of Aleppo, where the government defeated rebels in December – its most important gain in the nearly six-year-old war.

Northern Syria is one of the most complicated battlefields of the multi-sided Syrian war, with ISIL now being fought there by the Syrian army, Turkey and its rebel allies, and an alliance of US-backed Syrian militias.

If a clash does occur, it would be the first time Syrian government forces have confronted the Turkish army on the ground in northern Syria since Turkey launched its operation.

Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally, has carried out air strikes targeting ISIL in the al-Bab area in support of both sides, underlining big shifts in the diplomatic landscape.

As relations between Russia and Turkey have improved, the two countries brokered a shaky ceasefire in December between the Syrian government and rebel groups fighting to unseat Assad.

An official from one of the Turkmen rebel brigades backed by Turkey said the presence of Russian forces could help prevent a confrontation.

“There are Russian soldiers along with the regime forces who are leading the way and that is an element that could satisfy Turkey,” the rebel official told Reuters. “I don’t expect clashes.”

Source:Al Jazeera