Afghanistan's brightest look for a way out as murders rise


Issued on: 05/02/2021 

A roadside mural in Kabul pays homage to former Afghan Tolo 

TV presenter Yama Siawash, who was killed in a bomb attack

 on November 7, 2020 WAKIL KOHSAR AFP

Kabul (AFP)

Days before he was gunned down on a Kabul street, democracy activist Mohammad Yousuf Rasheed had made up his mind to move his family to Turkey, joining scores of other high-profile Afghans fleeing the country.

Rasheed was killed in December on his way to work, one of at least 180 assassinations carried out by the Taliban since September across the country, according to Afghan officials.

"They first shot him in the heart, and then -- to make sure he was dead -- they shot him again and again in the head," his brother Abdul Baqi Rasheed told AFP at the family home in Kabul.

Journalists, religious scholars, activists and judges have all been targeted in a recent wave of political assassinations that has spread panic across Afghanistan and forced many into hiding -- with some even fleeing the country.

The killings have increased since peace talks were launched last year between the warring Afghan government and the Taliban -- the latest attempt to end decades of conflict.

The assassinations reflect a calculated effort to sow chaos and expose the government's inability to safeguard prominent targets, said veteran political analyst Davood Moradian.

"By weakening the Afghan state, the enemy will get closer to its ultimate objective, which is toppling the current constitutional system," he told AFP.

And he predicted that Afghanistan's "brightest" will be increasingly targeted in the months ahead.

- Women's voices 'gone quiet' -

The assassinations have been acutely felt by women, whose rights were crushed under the Taliban's five-year rule, including being banned from working.

Since the Taliban's fall in 2001, women's participation in the labour force has slowly increased, but they must contend with great risks.

After multiple sources told popular journalist Farahnaz Foroton that her name was on a hit list, she also decided to leave the country.

"I had no choice... every day we see (assassinations) increasing," she told AFP.

Another female reporter -- now in hiding -- said she was under pressure to stop working after the murder of Malalai Maiwand, one of five journalists killed since November.

"I have not seen my children for months, and given these threats and killings, my family wants me to quit," she told AFP.

Two female judges working for the country's Supreme Court and two female doctors have also been killed recently while on their way to work.

Intelligence officials linked the renewed threat against female professionals to demands at the peace talks for their rights to be protected.

"Lots of women activists and professionals then started getting threats -- some were killed. Now that voice has gone quiet," an intelligence official said.

One Afghan journalist who asked not to be named fled his hometown after militants threatened him for investigating how a local madrassa was radicalising children in the area.

After a cleric issued a religious decree -- known as a fatwa -- ordering his murder, some men were seen planting a bomb near his home.

"That's when I realised I had to either flee or risk getting killed," he said.

On Monday, the founder of a leading online Afghan news agency escaped unhurt when a bomb attached to his car blew up in Kabul.

- Sophisticated assassinations -

US officials have blamed the Taliban for the wave of assassinations and attacks, and the new administration under President Joe Biden has called for a review of last year's deal that paved the way for the withdrawal of foreign forces by May.

But the Taliban deny carrying out the assassinations, many of which have been claimed by the rival jihadist Islamic State group.

"The (Taliban) has absolutely no hand in civilian killings," the group said Monday, adding that the charges were "unsubstantiated".

Afghan intelligence officers suspect a violent branch of the Taliban known as the Haqqani network.

"It is the Haqqani network (carrying out the assassinations) for the Taliban. There is a clear understanding between all of them," an intelligence officer said.

Another officer told AFP that dozens of suspects arrested over the killings were Taliban prisoners released recently as part of the peace process.

The assassinations sometimes take months of careful planning -- to catch officials off guard -- and are increasingly more sophisticated than the formerly favoured suicide bomb.

Citing the recent murder of an Afghan air force pilot, a foreign security official said the attackers had "mapped his every moment" using a camera mounted on a drone.

The pilot had been looking for a new home and was lured to his death by assassins posing as property agents, local media reported.

Rasheed, the activist who had hoped to move his family to Turkey, was also closely monitored in the months before his murder, his brother said.

Shaharzad Akbar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said every week someone she knows was leaving Afghanistan.

"There is no future for them here -- not any time soon," she said.

© 2021 AFP

Toxic mine leaves poisoned legacy in French town

Issued on: 05/02/2021 - 

An employee walks in a mining gallery of the Stocamine project

 in Wittelsheim, eastern France. SEBASTIEN BOZON AFP/File


Wittelsheim (France) (AFP)

Jean-Pierre Hecht, a miner in eastern France, remembers how attractive the idea sounded when he first heard about it: a dying pit could be turned into something useful and environmentally friendly.

Back in the 1990s, the local state mining group MDPA approached the community in the town of Wittelsheim in Alsace with an idea for stocking hazardous waste in a nearby potash mine.

"The pitch was all about how we were going to store the waste, hoping to see some research institute one day come up with a way to neutralise it permanently," Hecht told AFP.

But the project, known as Stocamine, ended up poisoning local community relations, led to court cases, convictions and fears that it has resulted in the creation of a toxic timebomb beneath the surface.

It serves as a warning about what can go wrong when countries decide to repurpose mines to bury their most undesirable and hazardous waste for which no recycling or treatment technology exists.

Hecht, now retired, regrets accepting a job supervising work there due to the legacy for future generations.

"It's a question not only of being able to look at yourself in the mirror, but also being able to look at your children in the eyes," he said, grimacing in a cold wind near the perimeter of the site.

He, along with the local mayor and many of the 10,000 residents, were left bitterly disappointed at the end of January when the Paris government decided to seal the contents of Stocamine in the ground.

"They've handed us the title permanently of 'the least glamourous town in the whole of Alsace," lamented mayor Yves Goepfert.

- Misleading claim -

Stocamine has been a fiasco for the people of Wittelsheim, a mining town surrounded by defunct pits and grassed over slag heaps, signs of a industry that once sustained 15,000 jobs at its height.

Potash is the local mineral, which was first found in the early 1900s when it was in demand for fertilizers.

This boom was a distant memory by the time brochures for Stocamine began circulating in the 1990s, promising jobs and a "mine at the service of the environment" which would use the thick layers of salt locally like protective blankets around the waste.

The facility won authorisation in 1997 for 30 years on the condition that it was "reversible" -- which most people took to mean that the 320,000 tonnes of permitted non-radioactive waste might one day be taken out.

"Acceptance of the project by the population was based in a significant way on the commitment by the state to a reversible storage facility," a 2018 parliamentary inquiry report concluded.

Over the three years after its opening in 1999, a total of 44,000 tonnes of waste were brought down in barrels and reinforced bags which were piled up in freshly dug galleries 550 metres (1,800 feet) below the surface.

- 'Safest environment' -

The foul-smelling containers were filled with discharge from incineration plants, byproducts from scientific laboratories, chroming and galvanization plants, as well as waste containing asbestos and mercury.

Yann Flory, spokesman for Destocamine, a local environmental group, believes underground storage facilities are a way for society to hide from the problem of this so-called "final waste".

"We found a quick solution: we put it in holes in the ground," he told AFP.

But, as would later emerge in court, the company in charge of the site -- a joint venture between MDPA and private waste group Seche Environnement -- committed criminal errors.

Waste was not checked or filtered properly and in 2002 a fire broke out underground, which took firefighters two months to extinguish.

The chief executive of Stocamine and the company were convicted in 2007 of endangering lives by deliberately breaking the terms of the project's authorisation.

As the project ground to a halt, local lawmakers and activists lobbied for a complete clean-up, arguing that toxic sludge could make its way into the Alsace aquifer, one of the largest in Europe.

Although the mine is far below the watercourse, they remain worried about infiltration and flooding in the galleries.

"We should get everything out," Flory told AFP.

From 2014, around 2,000 tonnes of mercury-laced waste, considered particularly high-risk, were removed, but environment minister Barbara Pompelii recently dashed hopes of more extraction.

She has dismissed risks of groundwater pollution as "infinitesimal" and on January 18 she ended decades of delay by announcing that the remaining waste would be buried permanently.

The mine will be sealed, a pollution surveillance system put in place, and 50 million euros (60 million dollars) will be spent in the next five years to clean up other sources of water pollution in Alsace.

She has called permanent burial "the safest for the environment and workers".

- 'Different awareness -

Since the fire at Stocamine, France has nowhere to store its "final waste", meaning it is sent over the border to be deposited in German mines, said Marcos Buser, a Swiss geologist and waste expert.

Germany has around a dozen such facilities, mostly disused potash and salt mines, according to Buser, a former member of Switzerland's Nuclear Safety Commission and a dissenting technical expert consulted about Stocamine.

He says several German facilities are a pollution worry, notably a former salt mine filled with radioactive waste in Asse, central Germany, and another in Heilbronn, north of Stuttgart.

Using mines can be safe providing the highest standards are respected, he says, but he believes they pose questions about our responsibilities towards future generations.

"If you go back in the past, in the 1940s-60s, our final waste was simply dumped in the sea. No one thought it would be a problem," he said.

"I think the same thing will happen with dumps in salt mines. Nowadays no one is interested, but wait another 50 years. Or maybe before."

© 2021 AFP

Doctors and nurses join civil disobedience movement in Myanmar post coup

Issued on: 03/02/2021 

FILE PHOTO: Protesters from Myanmar residing in Japan hold a portrait of leader Aung San Suu Kyi at a rally against Myanmar's military after it seized power from a democratically elected civilian government and arrested Suu Kyi, at United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan February 1, 2021. © REUTERS/Issei Kato

Text by:NEWS WIRES|

Video by:FRANCE 24


Calls for a civil disobedience campaign in Myanmar were gathering pace on Wednesday as the United States formally declared the military's takeover a coup and vowed further penalties for the generals behind the putsch.

Myanmar was plunged back into direct military rule when soldiers detained Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders in a series of dawn raids on Monday, ending the country's brief experiment with democracy.

Suu Kyi, who has not been seen in public since the coup, won a huge landslide with her National League for Democracy (NLD) last November but the military – whose favoured parties received a drubbing – declared the polls were fraudulent.

With soldiers back on the streets of major cities, the takeover has not been met by any major protests.

But signs of public anger and plans to resist have begun to surface, especially online.

The clatter of pots and pans – and the honking of car horns – rang out across the country's biggest city Yangon on Tuesday evening after calls for protest went out on social media.

Activists also launched a "Civil Disobedience Movement" Facebook group to declare opposition and share ideas. By Wednesday morning, some 24 hours after its launch, it had nearly 150,000 followers.\]

Army chief Min Aung Hlaing appointed himself head of a new cabinet stacked with former and current generals, justifying his coup on Tuesday as the "inevitable" result of civilian leaders failure to heed the army's fraud warnings.

The military declared a one-year state of emergency and said it would hold new elections once their allegations of voter irregularities were addressed and investigated.

The move stunned Myanmar, a country left impoverished by decades of junta misrule before it began taking steps towards a more democratic and civilian-led government ten years ago.

Military's deadly legacy

Doctors and nurses were among professionals making early declarations of their intent to go on strike.

"We will only follow and obey the orders from our democratically elected government," a statement from medics posted overnight on the Civil Disobedience Movement page read.

But protesting against Myanmar's military is fraught with risk.

>> Junta holds all the cards in Myanmar’s future, but can it end Suu Kyi’s political career?

During junta rule, dissent was quashed with thousands of activists – including Suu Kyi – detained for years on end.

Censorship was pervasive and the military frequently deployed lethal force during periods of political turmoil, most notably during huge protests in 1988 and 2007.

On Wednesday morning the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper published a warning from the Ministry of Information against opposing the coup.

"Some of the media organizations and people are posting rumours on social media, releasing statements to occur riot and unstable situation," the English language statement read.

It called on people "not to make such moves and to cooperate with the government in accordance with existing laws".

International censure

The army's actions have been met with a growing chorus of international condemnation although the options are limited for those nations hoping Myanmar's generals might reverse course.

On Tuesday the State Department formally designated the takeover as a coup, meaning the US cannot assist the Myanmar government.

Any impact will be mainly symbolic, as almost all assistance goes to non-government entities and Myanmar's military was already under US sanctions over its brutal campaign against the Rohingya minority.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the European Union and several other nations have also spoken out.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting Tuesday but failed to agree on a statement condemning the coup.

To be adopted, it requires the support of China, which wields veto power as a permanent Security Council member and is Myanmar's main supporter at the UN.

"China and Russia have asked for more time", said a diplomat requesting anonymity at the end of the meeting, which lasted just over two hours.

Both countries repeatedly shielded Myanmar from censure at the UN over the military's crackdown on the Rohingya, a campaign that UN investigators said amounted to genocide.

The coup is the first major foreign policy test for President Joe Biden, who has vowed to stand up for wobbly democracies and defend human rights.

In a forceful statement on Monday he said the US would consider imposing fresh sanctions on Myanmar.

But Washington is also wary of pushing Myanmar further into China's orbit.

"China is only too happy to step in with material and political support for the Burmese military as part of its ongoing effort to maximize its influence in Southeast Asia," said Daniel Russel, from the Asia Society Policy Institute.

(AFP)

Top Suu Kyi aide arrested as protests grow against Myanmar coup

Issued on: 05/02/2021 - 

Win Htein (left), who was detained on Friday, is regarded 

as Aung San Suu Kyi's right-hand man. © AFP

A key aide to ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi became the latest senior official to be arrested on Friday, days after a military coup that has sparked outrage and calls by US President Joe Biden for the generals to relinquish power.

The arrest of Win Htein, considered Suu Kyi's right-hand man, came after the streets of Myanmar's biggest city filled for a third night with people banging pots and honking car horns in opposition to Monday's coup.

On Friday dozens of teachers at Yangon's Dagon University staged a rally where displayed a three-finger salute borrowed from Hong Kong and Thailand's democracy movements, and sang a popular revolution song.

The military detained de facto leader Suu Kyi and president Win Myint early Monday, ending the country's 10-year dalliance with democracy that had followed decades of oppressive junta rule.

Win Htein, a veteran of Suu Kyi's National League of Democracy (NLD), was arrested at his daughter's house, said Kyi Toe, a party press officer.

The 79-year-old NLD stalwart has spent long stretches in and out for detention for campaigning against military rule.

Win Htein told the Myanmar-language service of Britain's BBC radio in a call early Friday that he was being detained for sedition, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

"They don’t like what I’ve been talking about. They are afraid of what I’m saying,” he told the BBC.

Prior to his arrest, Win Htein told local media that the military putsch was "not wise" and that its leaders had taken the country "in the wrong direction".

"They are seeking to take us back to zero by destroying our government," he told Frontier Myanmar in the coup's aftermath, urging the public to "oppose [the coup] as much as they can".

Civil disobedience

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Yangon-based group that monitors political arrests in Myanmar, more than 130 officials and lawmakers have been detained in relation to the coup.

Suu Kyi has not been seen in public since Monday.

At least 14 activists and prominent pro-democracy figures have also been arrested, AAPP said.

On Thursday, the nephew of filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi – who has previously been jailed for criticising the military – confirmed his outspoken uncle had been picked up on the morning of the coup.

"I think they arrested all dissidents who could share the right information to the public," said Kaung Satt Naing.

Telecom providers in the country have been ordered to cut access to Facebook, the main means of communication and accessing the internet for millions of people in Myanmar.

With Facebook stifled, more Myanmar people have moved to Twitter in recent days or started using VPN services to bypass the blockade.

Hashtags opposing the coup – including #HearTheVoiceofMyanmar and #RespectOurVotes – were trending on Friday with more than seven million posts citing them.

>> Junta holds all the cards in Myanmar’s future, but can it end Suu Kyi’s political career?

A so-called Civil Disobedience Movement has gathered steam online, calling on the public to voice opposition every night by banging pots and clanging cymbals to show their anger.

At 8 pm Thursday, a cacophony erupted from Yangon neighbourhoods, with cars honking to join the chorus of dissent.

"I haven't been able to sleep or eat since the coup," Yangon resident Win Bo told AFP, adding that he was "a frontliner" during the 1988 uprising.

That pro-democracy movement ended in a bloody crackdown that killed thousands of protesters and monks campaigning against the junta.

"Now I am facing it again," he said. "I can't accept this coup. I want to do an armed revolution if possible."

So far, no large-scale protests have been seen, although small pockets of dissent have popped up, with doctors sporting red ribbons, the NLD's colour.

About 70 NLD MPs on Thursday convened a symbolic parliament at their compound in Naypyidaw, signing a pledge that they would serve the people.

'Relinquish power'

The putsch has drawn condemnation globally, though not from neighbouring heavyweight China.

On Thursday, President Biden reiterated his call for the generals to reverse course.

"The Burmese military should relinquish power they have seized, release the advocates and activists and officials they have detained, lift the restrictions in telecommunications, and refrain from violence," Biden said.

He spoke hours after his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the White House was "looking at specific targeted sanctions both on individuals and on entities controlled by the military that enrich the military".

He did not give further details.

The United Nations Security Council took a softer tack, voicing "deep concern" – a step down from a draft Tuesday that had condemned the coup.

Diplomats said veto-wielding China and Russia, Myanmar's main supporters at the UN, had asked for more time Tuesday to finesse the council's response.

There have been calls on multinational companies working with Myanmar's military-linked businesses to cut ties as a way to pressure the generals.

Japanese beer giant Kirin said Friday it was terminating its joint venture with a military-owned conglomerate. Kirin has been under scrutiny for some time over its ties to Myanmar's army-owned breweries.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Egypt frees Jazeera journalist after 4 years in jail: WITH NO TRIAL!!


Issued on: 05/02/2021 

Egypt has released from jail Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein, seen in this February 2020 picture, who had been detained for more than four years without formal charges or a trial Khaled DESOUKI AFP/File


Cairo (AFP)

Egypt has released Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein after more than four years in detention on accusations of publishing false news, a security source said Friday.

Hussein, an Egyptian national held under preventive detention since December 2016, was released from jail Thursday night, the source said, without giving further details.

Al Jazeera -- which has run a daily campaign for his liberation -- did not immediately confirm his release but had repeatedly said he was being held without formal charges, a trial or conviction.

Gamal Eid, head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, confirmed to AFP that a decision was taken by authorities to release Hussein, adding however "he has still not returned home".

The Egyptian Observatory for Journalism and Media, a non-governmental organisation, said on its Facebook page that a Cairo criminal court had decided on Monday to free Hussein.

There had been repeated calls for his release, including from human rights watchdog Amnesty International, after a Cairo prosecutor in May 2019 ordered he be freed from jail.

But a week later Egypt's Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) slapped him with another set of charges and re-ordered his detention.

Hussein's reported release from jail comes weeks after Egypt said it had agreed to restore ties with Qatar, shortly after the end of a three-year Saudi-led freeze on relations with Doha.

Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, cut ties and transport links with Qatar in June 2017, alleging it backed radical Islamist groups and was too close to Riyadh's rival Iran -- claims Doha denied.

Ties were restored following a Gulf regional summit in early January.

Al Jazeera was caught up in a political rift between Cairo and Doha following the 2013 military ouster of Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who was backed by Qatar.

Cairo considered Al Jazeera a mouthpiece for Morsi's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, and access to its website has been blocked in Egypt since 2017.

Shortly after Morsi's ouster, authorities arrested three Al Jazeera journalists, including an Egyptian-Canadian and an Australian, provoking wide international condemnation.

The three journalists, who faced accusations similar to those levelled against Hussein, were freed in 2015.

Australian journalist Peter Greste was deported and the two others were released after receiving pardons from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Rights groups regularly accuse Sisi's regime of crushing all forms of dissent and repressing political opponents.

Under his rule, authorities have jailed thousands of Morsi's Islamist supporters as well as liberal and secular activists, including popular bloggers, actors, singers and journalists.

© 2021 AFP

'This war has to end': Biden pulls US support for Saudi-led offensive in Yemen

Issued on: 04/02/2021 - 

US President Joe Biden speaks about foreign policy at the State Department in Washington, DC, on February 4, 2021 AFP - SAUL LOEB

President Joe Biden announced Thursday the United States was ending support for a grinding five-year Saudi-led military offensive in Yemen that has deepened suffering in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, calling the move part of restoring a U.S. emphasis on diplomacy, democracy and human rights.


“The war has created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe,” Biden told diplomats in his first visit to the State Department as president. ”This war has to end.”

The Yemen reversal is one of a series of changes Biden laid out Thursday that he said would be part of a course correction for U.S. foreign policy. That’s after President Donald Trump — and some Republican and Democratic administrations before his — often aided authoritarian leaders abroad in the name of stability.

The announcement on Yemen fulfills a campaign pledge. But it also shows Biden putting the spotlight on a major humanitarian crisis that the United States has helped aggravate. The reversing of policy also comes as a rebuke to Saudi Arabia, a global oil giant and U.S. strategic partner.

The ending of U.S. support for the offensive will not affect any U.S. operations against the Yemen-based al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, group, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

Biden also announced an end to “relevant” U.S. arms sales but gave no immediate details on what that would mean. The administration already has said it was pausing some of the billions of dollars in arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s main partner in its Yemeni offensive.

FRANCE 24 in Washington: 'The messaging is clear'



While withdrawing support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, the Biden administration said it intends to help the kingdom boost its defenses against any further attacks from Yemen’s Houthis or outside adversaries. The assurance is seen as part of an effort to persuade Saudi Arabia and other combatants to end the conflict overall.

Saudi Arabia’s top officials made no immediate public response. They have offered a series of conciliatory gestures and remarks since Biden’s election, seeking to soothe the 75-year-old relationship with the United States.

Yemen, the biblical kingdom of Sheba, has one of the world’s oldest constantly occupied cities — the more than 2,000-year-old Sanaa — along with mud brick skyscrapers and hauntingly beautiful landscapes of steep, arid mountains. But decades of Yemeni misgovernment have worsened factional divisions and halted development, and years of conflict have now drawn in intervention by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, which officials say has lent increasing support to the Houthis.

The Obama administration in 2015 gave its approval to Saudi Arabia leading a cross-border air campaign targeting the Houthi rebels, who had seized Sanaa and other territory and were sporadically launching missiles into Saudi Arabia.

U.S. targeting assistance to Saudi Arabia’s command-and-control was supposed to minimize civilian casualties in airstrikes. But Saudi-led strikes since then have killed numerous Yemeni civilians, including schoolboys on a bus and fishermen in their boats. Survivors display fragments showing the bombs to be American-made.

The Saudi-led campaign, joined primarily by the United Arab Emirates, another Gulf country, has only “perpetuated a civil war in Yemen” and “led to a humanitarian crisis,” Sullivan said. U.S. officials have already notified senior officials for those two countries to explain the rationale for the withdrawal of support, he said.

The stalled war has failed to dislodge the Houthis and is helping deepen hunger and poverty. International rights experts say both the Gulf countries and Houthis have committed severe rights abuses.

Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Yemen’s unsuccessful Arab Spring popular uprising, urged Biden to stay involved in Yemen peace efforts.

“Deeper U.S. engagement — and a refusal to side with dictators who have chosen bloodshed over democratic change — is vital so that the Yemeni people can return to the project of democracy” that warring parties inside and outside of Yemen interrupted, Karman said in a statement.

Biden called Thursday for a cease-fire, an opening of humanitarian channels to allow more delivery of aid, and a return to long-stalled peace talks.

The weeks-old Biden administration has made clear that shifting its stance toward the Yemen war, and toward Saudi Arabia over the Yemen offensive and other rights abuses, was a priority. Other measures have included a review of the Trump administration’s categorization of the Houthis as a terror group. Critics say the designation hinders delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemenis.

Biden also announced the choice of Timothy Lenderking as special envoy to Yemen.

Lenderking has been a deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Middle East section. A career foreign service member, he has served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

(AP)

Indonesian bans mandatory Islamic 'hijab' scarves for schoolgirls

Issued on: 05/02/2021 -

Indonesia says public schools can no longer force girls

 to wear the "hijab" headscarf
ADEK BERRY AFP/File

Jakarta (AFP)

Indonesia has banned schools from forcing girls to wear Islamic "hijab" headscarves after the case of a Christian pupil pressured to cover up sparked outrage in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

The move was applauded Friday by rights activists, who say non-Muslim girls have been forced for years to wear a hijab in conservative parts of the country.

State schools across the Southeast Asian archipelago of nearly 270 million will face sanctions if they fail to comply with the edict from education minister Nadiem Makarim.

On Wednesday he said religious attire was an individual choice, and said schools "cannot make it compulsory".

Schools that violate the rules could see their government funding cut, he added.

"The decree is a positive step to protect women's rights in Indonesia," said Andreas Harsono, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Jakarta.

He said public schools had forced millions of girls and women teachers to wear a hijab, prompting "bullying, intimidation, social pressures -- and in some cases, expulsion and forced resignation" if they didn't.

There have been concerns about growing religious intolerance in a nation where nearly 90 percent of the population follows Islam.

The headscarf issue grabbed headlines after a Christian student in West Sumatra's Padang City was pressured to wear a hijab.

She refused, and her parents later secretly recorded a meeting with an official who insisted that school rules required all girls to wear a hijab, regardless of their religion.

The school later issued an apology after the video went viral.

Religious affairs minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas described the Sumatra case as the "tip of the iceberg".

"Religion is not supposed to be a reason for conflict or a justification to act unfairly towards those with different beliefs," he said.

The new regulations will not apply to conservative Aceh province, which follows religious law under a longstanding autonomy deal.

© 2021 AFP

Immigrants in sanctuary in churches hope Biden offers relief




BEDFORD, Mass. — For over three years, Maria Macario has been too afraid to leave the white steepled First Parish church just outside Boston.

The 55-year-old Guatemala native moved in to avoid deportation, living in a converted Sunday school classroom with a kitchenette.

Her isolation has only been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Gone are the regular church gatherings and volunteers stationed around the clock in case immigration officials come. To keep her spirits up, singers gather outside to serenade her.


She hopes things change with Joe Biden in the White House. He set out to pause most deportations for 100 days and pitched a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people without legal status — an ambitious and dramatic reversal from former President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies.

“It’s a relief,” Macario said. “It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”

She's among dozens of people from Colorado to North Carolina who have taken sanctuary as a last resort to stay in the country. Their actions have been extreme, particularly those who have declared their whereabouts. Many immigrants without legal status, who were increasingly fearful and anxious during the Trump years, upended their daily routines to evade detection, including avoiding driving.

Newly hopeful, they're trying to capitalize on the moment, even with setbacks like a ruling blocking the Biden administration from enforcing its deportation moratorium and uncertainty over whether Congress will tackle immigration reform.

Those who have taken sanctuary have enlisted lawmakers to ask Biden for relief, pushing to cancel deportation orders and reviving the use of private bills — measures to protect a person or group. Sanctuary activists also have sued the federal government.

“These past four years have been a collective holding of our breath and just waiting for the next horrible thing to happen,” said Myrna Orozco-Gallos with Church World Service, a co-operative ministry that helps prepare churches to house immigrants.

The organization estimates at least 38 immigrants are taking sanctuary. At one point under Trump, the group estimated there were more than 70.

The modern sanctuary movement began in the 1980s as Central Americans fleeing war and poverty came to the U.S. and churches stepped in to offer protection. It was revived in 2006 when Elvira Arellano, a Mexican immigrant, moved into a Chicago church, where her portrait still hangs near the altar.

It was long an unwritten rule that churches, playgrounds and schools were off-limits to immigration agents. The Obama administration put it to paper in 2011, largely prohibiting arrests and searches there.

The Trump administration was more hardline, taking an Indonesian immigrant into custody on church grounds last year. The administration also fined several people taking sanctuary up to $500,000, citing violations for failing to depart the U.S.

Emboldened by Trump's departure, four sanctuary activists in Texas, Ohio, Utah and Virginia sued the Department of Homeland Security over the fines, alleging they were “selectively targeted” because of their activism. The fines were reduced to about $60,000 each, but the women say they can't pay.

Several others in sanctuary appeared with Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas at a recent event urging Biden to lift their deportation orders and bolster the use of private bills, a last-ditch effort for legal status.

Alex Garcia, a native of Honduras who's lived at a suburban St. Louis church for over three years, was one of the few with a private bill before it died in the last Congress. Growing up in violence and poverty, he crossed illegally before being detained in 2015 while accompanying his sister to an immigration office so she could seek asylum.

“We all need protection to be able to stay here with our families without the threat of deportation," Garcia said.

Francisca Lino thought that threat was over when Biden's deportation moratorium took effect Jan. 22.

After spending more than three years in sanctuary at a storefront Chicago church, the Mexican mother of five U.S. citizen children packed up and left for her family’s suburban home the next day.

Lino was there just three nights when a judge temporarily blocked the moratorium. She cried. She had already missed the birth of her grandson, graduations and her son’s surgery while living above Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church.

She went back into sanctuary.

“My kids deserve their mom in the house,” Lino said in Spanish. “I’m not a criminal. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just want to find a better life for my family.”

While the ruling was a setback for her and others, Biden has ordered a review of deportation criteria and told authorities in the meantime to focus on people with serious criminal records or who are national security or public safety threats.

So people in sanctuary are biding their time.

At First Parish outside Boston, Macario takes English lessons from church volunteers on Zoom nearly every morning. She's started to learn the piano and has become a proficient knitter. Beside her armchair is a large bag filled with winter hats and other accessories she's made for charity.

“It’s hard," said Macario, who crossed the border illegally in the 1990s with a wave of migrants during Guatemala’s yearslong civil war. “It’s different than a jail, but in some ways, it’s also very similar.”

She often wonders whether she failed her three U.S.-born sons by going into hiding.

Her youngest, Saul, says he doesn’t resent her choice. The 19-year-old dropped out of high school during the family’s upheaval, which included the deportation of his father and oldest brother after their family's asylum case was denied.

He moved into the church during the pandemic to keep his mother company and get his life back on track. He's since earned his GED and found a job at Whole Foods.

“She’s my rock,” Saul Macario says of his mom. “That’s what I needed, her by my side.”

Maria Macario hopes her family will be reunited — including her deported husband and son. Her lawyer has filed paperwork to have her asylum case reopened.

But she says she knows better than to put too much hope in a new president. After all, her family was ordered to leave when Biden was vice-president.

“My lawyer says I could leave the church today, but I just don’t trust things,” Macario said. “It feels too fresh. I don’t want to take the risk.”

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Tareen reported from Chicago, and Salter from St. Louis.

Philip Marcelo, Sophia Tareen And Jim Salter, The Associated Press

Biden delays Trump rule that weakened wild bird protections

BILLINGS, Mont. — The Biden administration said Thursday it was delaying a rule finalized in former President Donald Trump's last days in office that would have drastically weakened the government's power to enforce a century-old law protecting most wild birds.© Provided by The Canadian Press

The rule could mean more birds die, including those that land in oil pits or collide with power lines or other structures, government studies say. But under Trump, the Interior Department sided with industry groups that had long sought to end criminal prosecutions of accidental but preventable bird deaths.

© Provided by The Canadian Press


While the new rule had been set to take effect Monday, Interior Department officials said they were putting it off at President Joe Biden's direction and will reopen the issue to public comment.

The migratory bird rule was among dozens of Trump-era environmental policies that Biden ordered to be reconsidered on his first day in office. Former federal officials, environmental groups and Democrats in Congress contend many of the Trump rules were meant to benefit private industry at the expense of conservation.

“The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a bedrock environmental law critical to protecting migratory birds and restoring declining bird populations," Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said. “The Trump administration sought to overturn decades of bipartisan and international precedent in order to protect corporate polluters.”

A federal judge in August had blocked a prior attempt by the Trump administration to change how the bird treaty was enforced. But the administration remained adamant that the law had been wielded inappropriately for decades to penalize companies and other entities that kill birds accidentally.

The highest-profile case brought under the law resulted in a $100 million settlement by energy company BP after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill killed about 100,000 birds.

Hundreds of other enforcement cases — including against utilities, oil companies and wind energy developers — resulted in criminal fines and civil penalties totalling $5.8 million between 2010 and 2018. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said relatively few cases end in criminal prosecutions.

More than 1,000 North American species are covered by the law — from the fast-flying peregrine falcon to numerous tiny songbirds and more than 20 species of owls. Non-native species and some game birds like turkeys are not on the list.

In 2017, the government stopped enforcing the law against companies and others in accidental bird deaths.

The move drew backlash from organizations advocating for an estimated 46 million U.S. birdwatchers. It came as species across North America already were in steep decline, with some 3 billion fewer birds compared with 1970, according to researchers.

A Trump administration analysis of the rule change didn't put a number on how many more birds could die. But it said some vulnerable species could decline to the point they would require protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Former federal officials and some scientists had said billions more birds could have died in coming decades under Trump's new rule. Advocacy groups, including the Audubon Society, had lobbied the Biden transition team to block it. They want the administration to set up a permitting system instead, so that wildlife officials can more closely regulate bird deaths.

“All indications are the birds need more protections and that the public strongly supports protections and loves birds,” said Steve Holmer with the American Bird Conservancy. “There has been great progress in finding solutions to bird mortality, and we're hopeful the administration will create a process to start implementing those solutions."

Industry sources and other human activities — from oil pits and wind turbines, to vehicle strikes and glass building collisions — kill an estimated 460 million to 1.4 billion birds annually, out of an overall 7.2 billion birds in North America, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and recent studies. Researchers say cats kill the most birds; more than 2 billion a year.

Virginia’s Democratic governor blamed the Trump administration decision to end enforcement of the migratory bird law for the 2019 destruction of a nesting ground for 25,000 shorebirds to make way for a road and tunnel.

Many companies have sought to reduce bird deaths in recent decades by working with wildlife officials, but the incentive drops without the threat of criminal liability.

Industry groups that supported the Trump rule declined to say if they will fight to keep it.

“Our focus remains on working with the Biden administration in support of policies that support environmental protection while providing regulatory certainty,” said Amy Emmert, a senior policy adviser with the American Petroleum Institute.

Brian Reil with the Edison Electric Institute said utility companies that the trade group represents have a record of taking steps to protect wildlife and plan to work with the Biden administration.

The 1918 migratory bird treaty came after many U.S. bird populations had been decimated by hunting and poaching — much of it for feathers for women’s hats.

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Follow Brown on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewBrownAP.

Matthew Brown, The Associated Press

A year after Wet'suwet'en blockades, Coastal GasLink pipeline pushes on through pandemic

© Coastal GasLink Coastal GasLink lays pipe along its 670-kilometre route from northeastern B.C.'s gas fields to an LNG export terminal in Kitimat, on the province's North Coast.

In the year since a high-profile conflict over Indigenous land rights led to RCMP raids on a pipeline construction route and sparked rail blockades across the country, the Coastal GasLink project has pushed ahead, with more than 140 kilometres of pipe now laid in contested ground in northern B.C.

The $6.6-billion pipeline is designed to carry natural gas, obtained by hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — in northeastern B.C., to a $40-billion LNG terminal on the province's North Coast for export to Asia.

The project moving energy resources to tidewater represents one of the largest private sector investments in Canadian history, according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

But construction temporarily stalled in early 2020, when several Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs opposed the pipeline's route through disputed land — sparking a nationwide discussion about who gets a say in resource development on land claimed as traditional territory

One year later, the hereditary chiefs still oppose the pipeline — but their priorities have shifted to caring for their elders during the pandemic.

"We haven't forgotten [about land rights], but I don't want to be burying any more of our people. I don't want to bury anyone from our village," Wet'suwet'en hereditary Chief Na'moks told CBC News.

In B.C.'s north, First Nations people have been disproportionately hit with COVID-19, with double the confirmed cases as the rest of the population. Data is not available for the Wet'suwet'en specifically.

Several First Nations communities, including Wet'suwet'en villages, have set up checkpoints to try to control the spread of the disease.

© Betsy Trumpener/CBC News Numerous First Nation villages in northern B.C. have set up roadblocks, like this one in Gitanyow, as they try to keep COVID-19 out of their communities.

Na'moks says talks with the provincial and federal governments have slowed but haven't "fallen off the rails," and the chiefs remain determined to uphold their rights.

"They can't just come in and say, "Oh, what you have, we want, and we're taking it," said Na'moks.

"Talk to us. Involve us. We'll tell you what's important. There should be entire places on this planet that shouldn't be touched."

The hereditary chiefs say supporters who call themselves land defenders are still staying in camps close to the pipeline route, near Houston, B.C., where RCMP arrested several people for defying a court injunction last year — and where police, too, still have a presence.

B.C.'s representative in talks with the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, lawyer and former MP Murray Rankin, said there has been progress, but the pandemic has been an obstacle to a "lasting agreement on rights and title."

"There has been the loss of elders and the mourning process," Rankin said. 

Pipeline slowdown

The pandemic has also slowed the pace of construction at Coastal GasLink. Last March, the company scaled back to essential service levels to comply with provincial health rules. Before the pandemic, around 4,000 people were working on the project; now, about 600 workers are on the job.

In December, there were several COVID-19 outbreaks among employees at two pipeline work camps and at the project's export terminal. The Northern Health Authority says a total of 71 workers tested positive for the coronavirus.

© Betsy Trumpener/CBC Workers construct a Coastal Gaslink work camp for hundreds of crew. This camp is about 100 kilometres west of Prince George.

Coastal GasLink said it's improved its COVID-19 prevention efforts and will now be seeking permission from health authorities to "safely increase the number of personnel" to complete critical work before the spring thaw.

Despite the delays, Coastal GasLink says the project is one-third complete. With almost a quarter of the pipeline in the ground, another 500 kilometres of pipe has been delivered to storage facilities, ready for installation.

When finished, it will cross 622 rivers, creeks, streams, and lakes, the company says.

'The industry puts food on the table'

While the project has faced opposition from some Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, all 20 elected band councils along the Coastal GasLink route support the pipeline and have signed benefits agreements with the company.

Wet'suwet'en member and former elected band councillor Gary Naziel is one of the workers who has been kept on the project during the pandemic. He works for a pipeline contractor, operating a grader and an excavator to keep a winter road open for pipe trucks.

Naziel welcomes the jobs and benefits the pipeline has brought. He says local workers laid off during the construction slowdown have taken a big hit.

"This community will be benefiting from these pipelines," Naziel said. "The industry puts food on the table, clothes on our back."

Calgary business analyst Deborah Yedlin says the pipeline's completion is key to getting Canada's natural resources out to markets, particularly in light of the recent cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline by U.S. President Joe Biden.

"We are a trading nation. And Coastal GasLink is a conduit," Yedlin said.