Death toll of Sudan anti-coup protests rises to 40: medics

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
20 November, 2021

Protests erupted in Sudan following a military coup at the end of October [Getty]


The death toll in Sudan from anti-coup protests since last month's military takeover has risen to at least 40, medics said Saturday after a teenager shot in the head days earlier died.

Sudan's top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on 25 October declared a state of emergency, ousted the government and detained the civilian leadership.

The military takeover upended a two-year transition to civilian rule, drew wide international condemnation and punitive measures, as well as provoking people to take to the streets.

Protests on Wednesday provoked the deadliest day so far, with the toll of those killed now standing at 16, according to medics.

"One martyr passed away... after he succumbed to severe wounds after being hit by live rounds to the head and the leg on 17 November," the independent Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said. He was aged 16, it added.

Most of those killed on Wednesday were in North Khartoum, which lies across the Nile river from the capital, medics said.

Police officials deny using any live ammunition and insist they have used "minimum force" to disperse the protests. They have recorded only one death, among demonstrators in North Khartoum.

'Abuses and violations'

On Friday, small groups of protesters rallied in several neighbourhoods after prayers against the military coup, especially in North Khartoum, where people were seen building barricades across the roads. Security forces sporadically fired teargas to disperse them.

The United States on Friday condemned the deadly crackdown.

"We call for those responsible for human rights abuses and violations, including the excessive use of force against peaceful protesters, to be held accountable," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

Washington said Sudanese should "be free to voice their opinions without fear of violence", and called for those arrested since the takeover to be freed.

"In advance of upcoming protests, we call on Sudanese authorities to use restraint and allow peaceful demonstrations," the US added.

Internet shutdowns are being weaponised by Sudan's regime
Perspectives
Jillian C. York

The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) have urged protesters to keep up their campaign, reporting Friday that security forces had "stormed homes and mosques" in North Khartoum.

The SPA is an umbrella of unions which were instrumental in the months-long demonstrations that ousted president Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Sudan has a long history of military coups, enjoying only rare interludes of democratic rule since independence in 1956.

Burhan, the top general, insists the military's move "was not a coup" but a step "to rectify the transition" as factional infighting and splits deepened between civilians and the military under the now-deposed government.

He has since announced a new civilian-military ruling council in which he kept his position as head, along with a powerful paramilitary commander, three senior military figures, three ex-rebel leaders and one civilian.

But the other four civilian members were replaced with lesser known figures.

Sudan PM Hamdok to return to lead government after deal with General Burhan: Report

AFP , Sunday 21 Nov 2021

Sudan's General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok have reached a deal for his return and the release the civilian leadership detained since last month's military takeover, mediators said Sunday.

File Photo: Sudan s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok chairs a cabinet meeting in the capital Khartoum. AFPShare

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Burhan on October 25 declared a state of emergency, ousted the government and detained the civilian leadership.

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The military takeover upended a two-year transition to civilian rule, drew international condemnation and punitive measures, and provoked large protests.

A group Sudanese mediators -- including academics, journalists and politicians -- who have been locked in talks to mediate a deal since the outbreak of the crisis, released a statement outlining the main points of the deal.

It includes the restoration of Hamdok as prime minister, the release of all detainees, and what it said was the resumption of the constitutional, legal and political consensus governing the transitional period.

A statement from the mediators said the deal was reached following an agreement among political factions, ex-rebel groups, and military figures.

"The agreement will be officially announced later today (Sunday), after the signing of its terms and the accompanying political declaration," the statement said.

The deal was announced ahead of planned mass protests against the military takeover, the latest in a string of rallies that have left at least 40 people killed, according to medics.

Wednesday was the deadliest day with 16 people killed.

On Saturday, Sudanese authorities said an investigation into the killings would be launched.

Since the military takeover, Burhan has insisted that the military's move "was not a military takeover" but a step "to rectify the transition" as factional infighting and splits deepened between civilians and the military under the now-deposed government.

Earlier this month, he announced a new ruling council in which he kept his position as head, along with a powerful paramilitary commander, three senior military figures, three ex-rebel leaders and one civilian.

But the other four civilian members were replaced with lesser known figures.

The return of Hamdok, a British-educated economist who worked for the United Nations and African organisations, was a key demand of international community.

Hamas blasts Britain's plans to designate it a 'terror' group

MENA3 min read
The New Arab Staff
20 November, 2021

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has called Britain’s plan to designate it as a terrorist group “supporting the aggressor at the expense of the victim”

Hamas and other Palestinian factions condemned Priti Patel's 'terrorism' designation [Getty]

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has responded to British Home Secretary Priti Patel's plans to designate it as a "terrorist group", saying that Britain was "supporting the aggressor at the expense of the victim".

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas also condemned the move.

"Instead of apologising for and correcting its historic injustices against the Palestinian people, both in the disastrous Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate… Britain is supporting the aggressor at the expense of the victim," a statement from Hamas said.

The 1917 Balfour Declaration, issued by then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, promised Jews a "national home" in Palestine. Israel was later established in 1948 after Zionist militias expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

Britain currently designates Hamas's military wing, the Izzedin Al-Qassam Brigades, as a terrorist organisation, but has not yet banned the movement’s political wing.

Under Patel's plans, Hamas' political wing will also be considered a terrorist organisation.

Parliament is set to vote on the proposals next week, with the legislation possibly taking effect from next Friday.

Any display of support for Hamas, including arranging to meet its members, flying its flag or wearing clothing displaying its slogans could be punishable by a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.

Patel has justified her decision by calling Hamas a "rabidly anti-Semitic" organisation, although Hamas has denied accusations of anti-Semitism in the past.

"Britain must stop adopting the Zionist narrative and betting on the Zionist project, and instead make up for its past injustices against the Palestinian people in the Balfour Declaration, by supporting their struggle for freedom, independence, and return [to their land]," the Hamas statement said, adding that it was Israel’s actions which amounted to "terrorism".

“Occupation is terrorism, killing the original inhabitants [of Palestine], forcibly displacing them, destroying their houses, and detaining them is terrorism. Besieging two million Palestinians, most of them children, in Gaza for over 15 years is terrorism."

Palestinian Authority, Iranian condemnation

On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority, which is led by Hamas's rival Palestinian movement Fatah, also condemned the UK move.

The planned designation is "an unjustified attack on the Palestinian people, who are subjected to the most heinous forms of occupation, and historical injustice established by the Balfour Declaration", a statement from the PA's foreign ministry said.

It added that the move puts "obstacles in the way of achieving peace, and obstacles in the way of ongoing efforts to consolidate the truce and rebuild the Gaza Strip", saying that Britain had "acquiesced to Israeli pressure".

The PA statement said that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had asked his UK counterpart Boris Johnson to designate the entirety of Hamas as a terrorist group on the sidelines of the recent COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Bennett has welcomed the British move against Hamas, calling the movement "a radical Islamic group that targets innocent Israelis and seeks Israel's destruction" on Twitter.

Iran late on Friday also denounced the UK plans.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian tweeted: "We condemn the UK's decision to declare the popular resistance movement of HAMAS a terrorist organization. Rights of Palestinians cannot be trampled on by distorting facts."

Los Angeles Times review praises ‘remarkable’ performance in Welsh language horror film

19 Nov 2021 

Annes Elwy, who stars as Cadi in The Feast / Gwledd

A review in the Los Angeles Times has praised a “remarkable” performance in a Welsh language horror film.

Film critic Noel Murray, who reviewed The Feast, or Gwledd in Welsh, for the California-based newspaper, had warm words for Annes Elwy, who stars as Cadi in the production.

It opens in theatres in the US today and is also being released on video on demand (VOD).

The movie, which was directed by Lee Haven Jones, written by Roger Williams and funded by Ffilm Cymru, was filmed in Welsh and has English subtitles.

It unfolds over the course of one evening as a wealthy family gathers for a sumptuous dinner in their ostentatious house in the Welsh mountains.

The guests are a local businessman and a neighbouring farmer, and the intent is to secure a business deal to mine in the surrounding countryside.

When a mysterious young woman (Cadi) arrives to be their waitress for the evening, the family’s beliefs and values are challenged as her quiet, yet disturbing presence begins to unravel their lives, slowly, deliberately and with the most terrifying consequences.

Noel Murray said: “As horror movies go, ‘The Feast’ is one for the gourmands, the kind of genre fans who like their thrills and kills to skew more avant-garde.”

‘Avenging spirit’ 

He added: “And Cadi is like an avenging spirit, sent by the land itself to show who’s really at the top of the food chain.

“The movie’s last act gets splashed with gore, as the dinner goes awry. But even here, there’s an elegance to ‘The Feast’ that makes its most disgusting images more palatable.

“The film takes its cues from Elwy’s remarkable performance as Cadi, who is at once seductive and terrifying. This is a story from the monster’s point of view as she walks into a nest of parasites and starts slowly, gleefully gobbling them up.”

The film features a cast of Welsh stars, including Nia Roberts, Sion Alun Davies, Steffan Cennydd, Julian Lewis Jones and Rhodri Meilir.

It has gathered awards and acclaim, after being shown at film festivals around the world including Fantasia in Canada, BiFan in South Korea, and Motel X in Portugal, where it won the Méliès d´argent award for Best European Fantastic Feature Film.

 OPINION

There’s no denying global warming – but we’re still in denial about the scale of the challenge of tackling it

Picture by No 10 Downing Street (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

John Ball, former lecturer in economics at Swansea University

In case you missed it, COP26 is being held in Glasgow, with lots of commitments to save the planet before delegates fly away in their private jets.

The is no denying the problem of global warming. But we still seem to be in denial about the scale of the task of tackling it.

The planet is getting warmer and we need more than grand plans and buckets of greenwash. But the reality is that the massive practicalities and challenges are simply not being faced.

Take materials. Products and services that reduce carbon emissions have an eye-watering cost. The price of minerals used in car batteries has risen 139% in the past year, lithium has risen by 200%, copper by 70% and there are concerns over the supply of nickel and balsa wood for wind turbine blades. To meet demand, the annual production of critical metals used in carbon reducing products is forecast to rise by 500% per annum.

We need to heat our homes. The twenty-three million gas boilers in the UK (of which 1.3 million are in Wales) must go and, in their place, air source and ground sources pumps. They are unproven, expensive, require building alterations and are not ready for mass roll out. They cost between £14,000 and £19,000 to install, take time to warm up, operate at lower temperatures and invariably require larger radiators or solar panels to compensate

The pumps run through horizontal trenches but properties with small gardens require a bore hole of over one hundred metres. Quite how this will work in the thousands of terraced houses in Wales with a small or no garden is anyone’s guess. In addition, the requited specialist installation and maintenance skills are simply not available.

Congestion

Much is being made of alternative ways to generate electricity. But wind farms, solar panel farms and other forms of green electricity generation are smaller and more numerous than conventional power stations and so require substantial distribution infrastructure. Therefore, more steel, concrete and copper are required, serious disruption to communities during construction and yet more ugly power lines afterward.

Off-shore turbines are seen as part of the answer. Aside from the materials involved in their manufacture and negative effect on the seascape, they are limited in where they can be placed. They are restricted to depths of less than 60 metres. Unfortunately, four-fifths of the most powerful winds blow over deeper waters.

The latest research indicates that for sufficient electricity to drive our cars and light our streets and homes will require ten times the present generating capacity. Quite how this demand is to be met with intermittent and often non-existent wind and sunshine remains to be explained.

How much food producing farmland is to be lost for wind and solar panel farms?

Of course, one way to save the planet is to scrap our petrol driven cars and purchase an electric car – if we can afford one. Currently the best total distance possible is about three hundred miles, excellent for the school run but a drive from Swansea to Bangor is not on.

Charging takes time and if away from home and after a search hopefully a charger can be found. To meet projected demand, the number of chargers required will have to rise by thirty-one times the present number.

Appropriate mechanic skills are in limited supply and did you know that in the event of an accident, the rescue service must wait for the fire service to endure that the body or parts are not “live”.

Current plans to save the planet will also have an adverse effect the wider environment. Putting aside the wind farms, solar panel farms and endless pylons, has anyone thought about congestion? Electric care will save the planet so why bother to walk out in the pouring rain and stand on a draughty station platform or leaky bus shelter when we are saving the planet with our electric car? Electric cars will simply encourage far more car ownership, more commuting, more out of town development and more congestion.

There are currently 1.6 million cars in Wales alone. The construction of electric cars in the numbers required will use up enormous natural resources, already in short supply, not forgetting the carbon generation used in their manufacture. Electric cars are heavier than petrol cars weighing over a ton, hastening road surface wear generating more carbon emissions from resurfacing.

Real challenge

Meanwhile, the Welsh Government has published grand plans outlining our bid to save the world whilst ignoring real and immediate practical steps within its power. Take the plans for three thousand new houses in north Swansea. Planning consent was refused on a number of grounds, not least local services, structure and traffic congestion. The developer appealed and a Welsh government inspector overturned the refusal.

Limited services mean accessing schools and shops will require a car, at least one per household and thus three thousand or more cars. One of the selling points – surprise surprise – is nearness to the M4; already a car park for much of the day. Congestion, even with electric cars, will lead to more environmental degradation with eventual widening of the M4.

Business parks continue to be developed in out-of-town sites; a nice new Lidl store outside Llanelli boasts 250 free car parking spaces. Do not expect to catch a bus.

There is no denying the problem of global warming. I am doing my bit, walking to the local shop, travelling by bus and using the car as little as possible.

But whilst I am being exhorted to do my bit, who is facing up to the real challenge?

A version of this article first appeared in The Welsh Agenda.

 

UK Government taking ‘deliberate decisions’ that plunge Welsh children into poverty says First Minister

16 Nov 2021 

Mark Drakeford speaking in the Senedd

Wales’ First Minister has accused the UK Government of taking “deliberate decisions” that ensured that more children in Wales would live in poverty.

Answering a question in the Senedd about the cuts to universal credit and the rising cost of living, Mark Drakeford rejected the idea by another Senedd Member that the UK Government’s handling of the economy was down to “incompetence”.

“I think he’s generous to describe the policies of the Conservative Government as the result of incompetence,” Mark Drakeford said.

“My view is that they are very often the deliberate decisions of a Government that knows what it is doing, knows that there will be thousands more children in poverty in Wales because of their cuts to universal credit, but simply don’t care.”

He made the comments after saying that Welsh households on universal credit and other working-age benefits would be offered a £100 one-off payment this winter to help with fuel bills.

The Welsh government said it expected 350,000 households to benefit from the £38m winter fuel support scheme.

Mark Drakeford contrasted the UK Government which “decided to rip up the social fund, the final safety net of the welfare state” with the Welsh Government which had “decided to invest in a Welsh scheme that is the same across the whole of Wales,”.

His comments came after the latest UK Government figures showed that 168,600 children in Wales were in families who received Universal Credit and therefore hit by the £20 cut announced by UK Government Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

Welsh Conservative finance spokesman Peter Fox said said that it was not their fault that so many people in Wales lived in poverty.

“Labour have been in power for the past 22 years and sadly it’s left Wales with the lowest take home pay in Britain, and the most people living in poverty in the UK,” he said.

“The Conservative government is helping families meet the cost of living and supporting vulnerable households by reducing the universal credit taper rate from 63p to 55p, as well as raising the national living wage to £9.50.”

Do you hear the sound of change? Wales is outlawing the physical punishment of children

20 Nov 2021 

A screengrab from the Welsh Government’s smacking ban advert

World Children’s Day is observed annually on 20 November to commemorate the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child by the UN General Assembly.

Earlier today the Welsh Government marked the occasion by releasing a video of a girl sending out a firm message that from March next year, any physical punishment of children in Wales will be illegal.

The new law will give children the same protection from assault as adults have, and it will apply to everyone, parents and caregivers – anyone who is responsible for the care of a child – and it will also apply to anyone visiting Wales.

Physical punishment is already illegal in schools, children’s homes, local authority foster care homes and childcare settings.

Tweeting the video today, the Welsh Government said “Do you hear the sound of change? This amazing young lady has a very important message for you all this World Children’s Day. We want the world to know: Wales is outlawing the physical punishment of children”

The new law will clarify what has been a ‘grey’ area for some time.

As the law stands in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, it’s illegal for a parent to smack their own child, except where the smacking is “reasonable punishment”.

But without a legal definition of “reasonable punishment” the decision about whether a smack is reasonable or common assault depends on the individual circumstances of each “punishment”.

Under current laws, factors that would be considered include the age of the child and the nature or force of the smack and that “reasonable punishment” would not include anything that left a child with swelling, bruises, cuts or grazes, reddening of the skin, abrasions or a black eye.

No defence

Scotland outlawed any type of physical punishment against the child in 2020, declaring: “There is NO legal justification for hitting your child. The defence of ‘reasonable punishment’ that exists in England, Northern Ireland and Wales no longer counts in Scotland.”

Under Scottish law physical punishment was defined as slapping and smacking with a hand or an implement, kicking, shaking or throwing, scratching, pinching, biting, pulling hair or boxing ears,forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions, burning, scalding or forced ingestion.

From 21 March 2022, the defence of ‘reasonable punishment’ will no longer be available in Wales; all types of physical punishment will be illegal.

Information, advice and support is available for anyone who needs it, to help them find positive ways to manage children’s behaviour and to help avoid such a situation ever happening.

• Parenting. Give it time offers positive parenting practical hints, tips and expert advice to encourage good behaviour from children and alternatives to physical punishment. Their parenting support page offers links to further support and helplines.
• Universal parenting support and advice is provided by midwives, health visitors, GPs and Family Information Services.
• Early help programmes such as Flying Start (if you live in a Flying Start area) and Families First.

Exhibition: Counting dead women is a fine art – ‘Manslaughter’ by DinahVagina

21 Nov 2021 

Carrying the Weight. (2020) ceramic quilted cape; Album (2021). Images by Dinah

Sarah Morgan Jones

‘Manslaughter’ is an exhibition of work about domestic violence and the murder of women, by Carmarthenshire based artist DinahVagina, presented to mark ‘White Ribbon Day’ on 25 November.

Since the days of the swing-o-meter, we have become well used to infographics, and as technology has developed and the fine art of spin came into legitimate use, we also know that statistics can be made to say whatever people want them to say, in any format that suits.

When we see graphs and pie charts and fancy 3D app-based stats modelling, or figures per hundred thousand or percentage or per hundred grams, we can often be forgiven for thinking Bullshit Baffles Brains

When it comes to counting women who have been murdered by men, the figure we most often hear is three women a week, every week. For years.

And that’s just in the UK. Three women a week. So, Monday, Wednesday, Friday every week, say, a woman is murdered by a man. Who counts these women?

The ONS counts, but it doesn’t hold data on the sex of the victim by the sex of the suspect. It does however show that more men are killed either by their children, their friends, or a stranger than by an ex/partner. It also shows that more women are killed by their ex/partner than by any other person.

Karen Ingala Smith counts, first recording the data in her Counting Dead Women blog and then with Clarissa O’Callaghan, developing that into the Femicide Census in 2015.

Jess Phillips MP reads from this list in parliament every year on International Women’s Day, meaning Hansard has to count.

And Carmarthenshire artist, Dinah Guilfoyle, known as DinahVagina, counts. She counts them and she honours each and every woman’s life taken by a man, by incorporating the woman into an infographic work of art. ‘Manslaughter’ is her latest exhibition of this beautiful, powerful and thought provoking project.

Weapons of choice

When I met Dinah at the gallery at Volcano Theatre on High Street, Swansea, I was not sure what to expect. Accompanied by Ali Morris, who has been working in the domestic and sexual violence sector for ever and a day, I definitely feel like the novice in the room.

At first glance I see a trench coat on a tailor’s mannequin which passport sized photographs stitched on to it with a red silk X.

I see rows of parcel tags tied to a from a wall hanging, with a handmade ceramic button on each tag, holding a passport sized photo in place. That represented the women who were killed in 2015.

Counting: 2015

I see many more tags, adorned with faint neat writing, hanging from a tablecloth on an occasional table, the legs of which have been replaced with huge chef’s knife, a hammer, a cricket bat and a lawn edging spade. That represented the women killed in 2018 and the legs symbolised some popular weapons of choice for that year.

And I see a full-sized staircase made of soft white fabric, stuffed full like a mattress, but sewn into treads, and decorated with what I later discover to be appliqued love letters.

The staircase was a response to a photograph of the scene that met police officers when they attended a domestic violence incident. On every one of the bare wooden treads a knife stood point down, fixed in each side, as if thrown by a skilled knife thrower.

They had been. He had thrown them there to terrify and threaten his partner. The police said a life was saved.

“You can lie on that if you want. It’s very comfortable. All my work is to there to be touched and handled, I encourage it, in fact. It’s tangible, tactile.”

Indeed, everything I saw made me want to touch it. Each work radiated tactility, and homeliness and beauty, and made me want to put my face close enough to perhaps inhale.

This had a soothing effect, calming my nerves, slowing my movements, and although I was increasingly saddened or shocked by each name or representation, I also felt I was seeing each of them.

I was moving away from the ‘three women a week’ mindset to a ‘hello, you and you and you’ one.

‘Not another isolated incident’, ceramic (2018).

“men kill themselves and each other more than they do women, but the intersection of male violence and women is brutal”

Data gathering is a constant background activity for Dinah, she’s always tuned into it, although she makes the pieces in one go.

I wonder how it makes her feel, with this kind of information in her consciousness constantly. She has after all been creating these pieces for the best part of a decade.

“I seem to have a vaguely professional detachment and I intersperse work about violence with work relating to female sexual agency.”

In an online profile she says she “wants to change the way the world perceives women, and the way women perceive themselves, to encourage female agency and refute objectification.”

In these representations, we see ‘woman,’ but we do not see her in isolation. We see her and what was done to her and who did it to her. We see that her place in the world was ended because of the who and the what.

Dinah tells me: “It’s about language… If we talk about a woman who was battered… It’s all about her and the perp has disappeared.

“If you say Bruce beat Jane then you have the active party, the act and the victim. If you isolate her and only speak of her, she starts to be seen as responsible for everything that befalls her.”

Jumper (Counting); Lobster.

“Lobster: you would not choose to dive into the boiling water, but you can find yourself in it. Things may turn from good to bad by a thousand tiny steps”

Away from the main exhibition (of which there is far more than I can describe here), there is a dimly lit room on the door of which there is a warning to approach with the understanding that we cannot un-know things once we know them.

Inside that room are two mighty tomes, one called Album, which contains over 1000 small portraits representing women murdered by men in the UK between 2012 and 2018. The other is called Brutal and it explores the data behind the images.

Each book is big and heavy and textured and wrapped in beautiful fabric.

These books are not graphic or gory, they do not objectify or glorify, but they are devastating, and in the company of Dinah and Ali, I felt safe and connected in the face of what I could not now ‘un-know’.

The exhibition is called Manslaughter and is in place to mark White Ribbon Day which is on 25 November and extends for a further 16 days. It is a campaign to end male violence against women once and for all.

This year’s message is #AllMenCan emphasising, in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard – when women’s experience of male violence became part of the mainstream conversation, prompting governmental policy reviews and debate – how men can take action and make a stand, and make the ‘White Ribbon Promise’ never to commit, excuse or remain silent about male violence against women.

The exhibition runs until 3 December at Volcano Theatre

Details of White Ribbon Campaign can be found here

Israel uses settler violence as 'tool' to take Palestinian land: B'Tselem

Israel, as policy, 'fully supports and assists' settler intimidation tactics that often result in the loss Palestinian farm and pasture land, says Israeli rights group

Israeli soldiers stand near a Palestinian vehicle defaced with Star of David graffiti, believed to be vandalised by Israeli settlers, in al-Bireh in the occupied West Bank on 9 November (AFP/File photo)

By MEE staff
Published date: 14 November 2021

 
The Israeli government has been using settler violence as "a major informal tool" to take over Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, a leading Israeli rights group has found.

B'Tselem, in a report released on Sunday, said that Israel uses two main methods to confiscate Palestinian land in the West Bank: official annexation via its judicial system and unofficial acts of intimidation and violence carried out by its settler population.

'Sometimes, soldiers actively participate in the settler attacks or look on from the sidelines'
-B'Tselem report

"The state fully supports and assists these acts of violence, and its agents sometimes participate in them directly," the Israeli rights group said in its report.

"As such, settler violence is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation."

According to the report, Israeli settlers have taken over 11 square miles of farm and pasture land in the occupied West Bank during the past five years.
'They broke my leg'

Using five case studies to illustrate how continuous, systemic violence meted out by settlers is part of Israel’s official policy, B'Tselem said Israel is using settler violence to drive a "massive takeover" of Palestinian land.

One of the case studies documented an illegal outpost known as Ma’on Farm, which was erected illegally in the southern West Bank and consists of about one square mile of land. Settler have harassed, beaten and otherwise intimidated the Palestinians that have historically used the land for pasture and farming, resulting in confiscation.

Jummah Ribii, a 48-year-old shepherd from al-Tuwani village, told B’Tselem that settlers had been for years working to push his family off the farming that sustains them. In 2018, settlers attacked and beat Ribii, leaving him with severe injuries.

"They broke my leg, and I had to spend two weeks in hospital and continue treatment at home," he told the rights group. "I had to sell most of our sheep to cover the cost of treatment."

According to B'Tselem, Israel legitimises settler violence both by legalising their informal land grabs and by failing to even attempt to prevent or prosecute such violence.

Israel: Settler attacks on Palestinian olive harvest 'most dangerous in years'Read More »

"The military avoids confronting violent settlers as a matter of policy, although soldiers have the authority and duty to detain and arrest them. As a rule, the military prefers to remove Palestinians from their own farmland or pastureland rather than confront settlers, using various tactics such as issuing closed military zone orders that apply to Palestinians only, or firing tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated metal bullets and even live rounds," B'Tselem found.

"Sometimes, soldiers actively participate in the settler attacks or look on from the sidelines," it continued.

Moayyad Besharat, Programs and Project Manager at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, told MEE that settler attacks against Palestinians have increased this year, particularly during the olive harvest season, which runs between October and November.

The olive harvest is a lifeline for some 80,000 to 100,000 Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank. This year's season has been the hardest in recent memory, according to Besharat, who accompanies farmers during harvest as an observer.

Echoing B'Tselem's report, Besharat underlined the difficulty Palestinians face in attempting to combat settler attacks and land grabs, given the frequency in which the settlers are accompanied by army escorts.

 
'It is state violence'

While Palestinians regularly, document and report settler attacks - both legally and via tools such as books, research reports and documentaries - the Israeli government almost never takes legal action against settlers, B'Tselem's report said.

"Israel’s inaction continues after settler attacks on Palestinians have taken place, with enforcement authorities doing their utmost to avoid responding to these incidents," the group wrote.

'When the violence occurs with permission from the Israeli authorities... it is state violence'

- B'Tselem report

"Complaints are difficult to file, and in the very few cases in which investigations are in fact opened, the system quickly whitewashes them. Indictments are hardly ever filed against settlers who harm Palestinians and when they do, usually cite minor offenses, with token penalties to match in the rare instance of a conviction."

In all, the lack of government action has translated into de facto approval, the group found.

"State violence – official and otherwise – is part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea," it said.

"The combination of state violence and nominally unofficial violence allows Israel to have it both ways: maintain plausible deniability and blame the violence on settlers rather than on the military, the courts or the Civil Administration while advancing Palestinian dispossession. The facts, however, blow plausible deniability out of the water: When the violence occurs with permission and assistance from the Israeli authorities and under its auspices, it is state violence. The settlers are not defying the state; they are doing its bidding."

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

China is not committing genocide in Xinjiang



on November 20, 2021
By Iveta Cherneva

Genocide committed by the Chinese government in the Chinese province of Xinjiang is a commonplace narrative that gained speed over the past year or so, and it deserves closer examination. Genocide is the highest crime in the international crimes category, which itself is the highest category of crimes. Genocide accusations should never be made lightly, yet the word genocide creeps in everywhere in relation to Xinjiang – in the mainstream media, in formal accusations at the highest level by various governments, in academic and Twitter debates, and in the American government propaganda machine.

On its border with Afghanistan, China faces Uighur jihadists who are affiliated with Al Qaeda. Hundreds of Uighur jihadists fight with ISIS in Syria and across the region. Uighur jihadists are a part of the global jihad movement. It’s the same people that the US government fought after 9/11. Yet, the US government, in fact, is more than happy to stoke the radicalization forces in Xinjiang, so that the Chinese government cracks down on the population even more, and the US government can point the finger to a cruel, authoritarian regime committing genocide.

To answer the question whether China is committing genocide, it has to be acknowledged that many things are going on in Xinjiang: counter-terrorism against Uighur jihadists, fighting a separatist movement and sentiments, resettlements and deportations, fear-based and fear-inducing crackdown on the local population, detention in camps, political repression, cultural and religious pressure, unjust persecution of innocent people, and many other things that are in-between all that, and perhaps a lot more that we in the West might not be aware of.

What’s missing from the analysis of the genocide narrative is the element of the intent to destroy the group – the decisive element that makes genocide very difficult to prove, uniformly, time after time. You might remember that the genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Serbia showed that there was genocide committed in Srebrenica, and the state was guilty of not preventing and addressing it, and for not punishing the criminals. It could not be proven that the state itself committed genocide, even in that clear-cut example where it was proven that genocide took place. That’s as close as we ever got to seeing what a genocide case would look like in the court room, and the standard indeed is very high. This is not knit-picking or just semantics – this is the center of gravity in the international crime of genocide.

Hitler’s genocide against the Jews had the intent to end them as a group – full extermination, so that they no longer exist. That’s a clear-cut case of genocide in the legal sense, not just anecdotally to denote something very horrible. Turkey’s genocide against the Armenians during the First World War has also been recognized by the American government. Saddam gassing the Kurds is similar – he wanted to destroy and get rid of the Kurds as a group, so that they didn’t exist in Iraq.

What’s happening in Xinjiang can be compared to the Japanese internment camps after Pearl Harbor. It was not genocide directed to exterminate the Japanese population in the US because the US government hated Japanese people and wanted to end them as a group. Instead, it was over the top, heavy-handed suppression, repression and revenge on people from the same group as the military enemy. It was a way to make sure that people from the enemy ethnic group won’t pose a threat, as the US was fighting Japan externally. I think it’s safe to say that the Chinese regime does not intend to destroy the Uighurs as a group – it’s carrying out a number of systematic human rights violations against the population in order to suppress them, scatter them and diffuse the movement and the descent, not to destroy them and exterminate them as a group.

States are always very careful when they utter the word genocide. You might remember that there was a lot of hesitation at the UN level to pronounce the genocide in Darfur as genocide. The reason was that once you make the determination that the highest of the highest international crimes is taking place, the UN and the international community have to step in. So, there are situations where the assessment errs on the lower side, failing to brand a genocide genocide. Other times, countries err on the opposite side – they exaggerate a human rights situation into genocide in order to tout the horn for political reasons. The Biden administration pronouncing the situation in Xinjiang genocide in 2021 is a clear example of that, and in time, history will also judge the US government’s assessment as an error. But that doesn’t matter because the US government needs the genocide narrative, now, in the context of hardening the Cold War rhetoric against China.

Jeffrey Sachs argued recently in Project Syndicate that the genocide accusations against China are unjustified, and I agree. That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening there. It simply means that the highest of the highest international crimes is not taking place.

You have to take a look at the US government’s treatment of the issue on the practical level. The US government hasn’t admitted any Uighur refugees over the past years. Generally, Chinese refugees seeking asylum are not accepted into the US. Also, zero Uighurs were accepted in the United States, even though they were designated by Biden himself a priority refugee group in 2021, and the Biden administration claims genocide is taking place.

There is a reason for that, and it’s not a practical or logistical one in the sense that it must be close to impossible for Uighurs to apply for refugee status and escape the country – there are many Uighurs outside of China who would gladly try, and people from far worse and more difficult places apply and come to the US as refugees. It is also not the case that accepting Chinese refugees would be very rude to China. The US government has already accused China of genocide – I don’t think it can get ruder than that. Rather, the US government knows that there are hundreds of Uighurs fighting with ISIS in Syria and across the region, and they will be the first to apply, if the US government started taking in Uighurs. The US government knows that really well. That’s why it’s not opening up the refugee program to Uighurs, even if formally, the Uighurs are a priority refugee group for Biden.

The zero number simply shows that the US government is itself not convinced. It knows very well that hundreds from the group are engaged in jihad and it will be difficult to determine who is who. The US government itself fears this Chinese minority group and it doesn’t want to open its doors even to a small number for the worst, clear-cut cases of persecution. In the same time, the US government scooped up and accepted indiscriminately thousands of Afghan refugees in 2021, without any vetting. So there is something much bigger behind the zero number of refugees fleeing genocide. The US government itself is not buying its own narrative, aware of the reality on the ground.

In terms of what can be done to help the situation of the Uighurs in China, you can’t make terrorists not want to be terrorists, you can’t make people who want to separate from China not want that, and you can’t make a government not crackdown on a group of people. What can be done, however, is to not support Uighur terrorist groups in and outside China, and to prevent a military escalation of the situation, which is something that the US government could be entertaining as an option, behind the scenes. There is nothing worse for innocent people from the same ethnic group than a government facing an actual terrorist or military threat.

With jihadist groups in the region, and around and inside Xinjiang, the most important priority for the international community right now is that the situation doesn’t grow into actual military hostilities, or worse, a civil war that draws in all kinds of forces. After Syria, the global jihadist movement could be eyeing Xinjiang to be next.

The heartwarming story of Uighur jihadists


on November 19, 2021
By Iveta Cherneva

In the wake of 9/11, the US government scooped up all the terrorist networks and made an assessment of which ones were a threat to America. The prisoners held in Guantanamo were of the jihadist Islamic militant type. It’s not like the US government, in order to help other governments, filled Guantanamo with random, latent secessionist movements from around the world – Quebec, Catalonia, the IRA in Ireland, or the Tigray in Ethiopia. You wouldn’t find any of them in Guantanamo. The Guantanamo profile was clearly that of the Islamic militant jihadist that poses a threat to America.

Guantanamo was not a charity project where governments from around the world could dump and keep their separatists. There was a shared counter-terrorism interest between the United States and China, specifically in the area of combating Uighur jihadists, and that’s not a story that can be erased.

There were 22 Uighur jihadists held in Guantanamo, in total. Uighur jihadists were and still are the China-oriented spinoff of Al-Qaeda. Their organization, the East Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM) was formally listed as a terrorist organization by the US Treasury Department and the US State Department during the war on terror. ETIM is still on the UN Security Council’s list of sanctioned for terrorism entities. The Uighur jihadists stayed on the Security Council’s list after a recent review of their status was completed in November, 2020. ETIM is also a part of the UN report on the status of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Very recently, in July 2021, the UN said that the Uighur jihadists group ETIM has several hundred fighters in Afghanistan on the border with China, and that they are affiliated with Al-Qaeda, even though the US government de-listed them from its terrorist organizations list in 2020 and has argued that they no longer exist. This was a purely political move by the US government that does not reflect the reality on the ground, and signifies a shift that the American public is expected to follow.

Just after 9/11, in 2002, Uighur jihadists plotted a terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. At the time, the Washington Post said: “The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said today there is evidence that an obscure Muslim organization fighting Chinese rule in the western province of Xinjiang has been planning a terrorist strike against the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan”. That marked the first time China and the US shared a common terrorist enemy. That same year, the same terrorist group (ETIM) shot dead a Chinese diplomat in the same city.

The Uighur jihadists threatened the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing; they are responsible for political assassinations, bombings and wide-spread, clear-cut terrorism of substantial scale. Uighur jihadists perpetrated a terrorist attack in Thailand in 2015, killing 20 people in a tourist resort. The same group of Uighur jihadists successfully carried out a suicide car-bomb attack on the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan in 2016, 14 years after the US Embassy there shared the same risk. You didn’t hear about more plots against America by the Uighur jihadists because the US government went after them right away: some went to Guantanamo; others were scattered.

The US State Department reported in 2002 that ETIM was a terrorist organization with over 200 acts of terrorism committed in the 1990s. China did not start making things up only after 9/11, just to fit in the US counter-terrorism narratives and priorities in order to get rid of uncomfortable critics of the regime. China was already experiencing a big, very real terrorism threat of the same kind the US faced in the 2000s. It was the same enemy.

Something as big as a terrorism plot against a US Embassy would have definitely counted in a time when even borrowing the Quran from a library was followed. If put through the ordinary legal system, a foiled plot on a US embassy could give you 15-20 years in jail or less, and then you’d be out, or maybe you would just walk if the judge didn’t like the source of the evidence. If you were “only” training with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden without an actual plot, that would also give you only several years in jail, or no jail time at all, if the judge didn’t like the source of the evidence. That’s the kind of things Guantanamo was created to prevent: a place to keep “the worst of the worst” where the US government didn’t have to think about the regular legal system. Current Attorney General, Merrick Garland, in fact, was one of those judges back in the days of the Guantanamo court wars, who ruled to release Uighur jihadists on the basis of over-reliance on evidence from the Chinese government. If the Chinese are saying it, they can’t be terrorists, was the argument there, so they had to be released. With the parents-as-terrorists DOJ memo by Garland and the recent confirmation that the FBI’s counter-terrorism unit indeed puts red flags on parents as potential terrorists in 2021, one has to be reminded that Garland rarely gets it right in the area of terrorism. More often than not, it’s exactly the other way around. Jihadists can leave, parents can come in.

There is an attempt right now to reverse the narrative of the Uighur jihadists, and the audience is the American public. That push is relatively new and emerged in the US mainstream media only over the past 1-2 years, in parallel with the narrative of the Uighur genocide committed by China. The reason is simple: you can’t have it both ways. Americans can’t feel compassion for the Uighurs and hate China, if they are constantly reminded the uncomfortable facts that the Uighur jihadists were actually together with Bin Laden in Tora Bora, they lived in a village provided by Al Qaeda and trained in weapons and terrorism tactics for Bin Laden. It’s just that their direction was different: mostly against China. They ran away together from the American bombardments of Al Qaeda in Tora Bora. They were sought after by the Americans, the same way the Americans searched for Bin Laden for 10 years. There was bounty on their heads. 22 Uighurs were held in Guantanamo for many years and were released only after a decade. In Guantanamo, Uighurs confessed right away to their activities and their links to Al Qaeda. The ETIM was listed as a terrorist organization by the US government in 2002, after the US government reviewed several organizations proposed for terrorism listing by the Chinese government, and concluded there was evidence only for them, dismissing the other organizations proposed by the Chinese. The US government wasn’t indiscriminately accepting requests by countries to help them with their problematic groups. Just after 9/11, in 2002 the group organized the plot against the US Embassy. The plot was foiled.

When the facts are so damning, the US mainstream media certainly has a problem. These facts show that China was not just making it up, looking for ways to exploit the US counter-terrorism mania of the 2000s when everything was about the war on terror and, in the haste, the US government could have been easily misled. The Uighurs as jihadists presents a very clear challenge to the spin factory of the liberal media right now. The attempt to reverse the narrative of the Uighurs as jihadists over the past 1-2 years takes the nuanced analysis angle to the level of parody. I’ll walk you through some of it.

A recent CNN investigation claims that the Uighurs jihadists held in Guantanamo were mostly economic migrants who left China in a search of a better life and they had nowhere else to go but Bin Laden’s Tora Bora. They have no idea how they found themselves in the Al Qaeda village, they were in the wrong place, at the wrong time. They were not aware of what Bin Laden was doing. Now, years after leaving Guantanamo, they are just men looking for love and family. The CNN story is that the Uighur jihadists were never really terrorists, just “dreamers” with guns. They used weapons only because that was the cultural tradition in the mountains – not as terrorists or something. The terrorist training camps in Tora Bora under the umbrella of Al Qaeda and bin Laden was not actually terrorism training, they were using weapons only casually, not in a determined way. The Uighur jihadists didn’t join Bin Laden as terrorists; it’s just that there was nowhere else to go. When the American bombardments of Tora Bora started, it was very scary for them. They ran around the caves looking for food like refugees. When they were captured by the Americans in Pakistan, they felt “cheated” and tricked. How could they do this to them? That wasn’t nice of the Pakistanis at all. Their dreams were shattered after all the suffering experienced in running away from the Americans bombardments. Actually, going to America and Guantanamo was better than going back to China for them. They were impressed with the level of cultural awareness demonstrated by the Americans in Guantanamo that surprised the Chinese that visited Guantanamo. To you and me, from the point of view of our standards, it could look like the American government was torturing in Guantanamo, but the Uighur jihadists really preferred the American prisons to ordinary life in China, despite “some mistakes” on the part of the Guantanamo management. The narrative is mind-boggling and you wonder how the American public can stomach that at all.

It gets better. At Atlantic story of the same kind claims that the fact that the Uighur jihadists told the US government right away what they were doing, stated their affiliation with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and explained their terrorism training activities, meant that they can’t really be terrorists, if they weren’t trying to hide it. If what they themselves confessed was so damning, then they couldn’t have been terrorists, and that had to be excluded from the evidence. It was sad that they were “incriminating” themselves by being so forthcoming. If they confessed to it, that was just a sign that they were honest people and they can’t be terrorists. The Guardian, recently in 2020, also joined The Atlantic line and claimed that if the men incriminated themselves, the interrogations had to be discredited. And anyways, right now it all has to be about the Chinese detainment camps in Xinjiang anyways, so you can’t have actual Uighur jihadists uncomfortably messing up the narrative. The Guardian presses that ETIM is an organization designated as a terrorist organization only by China, skipping that the designation was virtually uniform – the US government, the UN Security Council, the UN report on the status of Al Qaeda and ISIS, the Canadian government, and more. You can really tell that these facts are quite annoying to the liberal media, and it is really messing up their stories.

The CNN rather gullible narrative ends with a criticism of Canada, which is also repeated by The Guardian: Canada won’t let in three Uighur jihadists, former Guantanamo detainees. The liberal media narrative wants you to see them simply as men looking to be reunited with their families, but the Canadian government hypocritically stands in the way of love. Hypocritically – because, as CNN states, Canada is against the Chinese crackdown and detainment of people in Xinjiang but won’t let in Uighur jihadists, former Guantanamo detainees. That, in fact, is the most rational approach to the issue a government can have.

The Guardian pushed the same story with the title “It breaks my heart”, also blaming Canada for not letting them in, after their families moved to Canada.

The Atlantic article pushed the same narrative, claiming that the Chinese government somehow tricked and deceived the American government that these Al-Qaeda affiliated, Tora Bora residing, Guantanamo-held terrorists were terrorists. This was only Chinese propaganda by an authoritarian regime. The article admits that the Chinese experienced over 200 terrorist attacks by that group, but here the nuanced analysis kicks in. These events were separate and isolated, instead of arising from one place of coordination, so this wide-spread terrorism wave can’t be terrorism. That pattern is exactly what terrorism of this kind looks like, in fact: loose, ideologically-driven networks without a direct chain of command. You don’t need one place of coordination to prove that terrorists are terrorists. The article also submits that a lot of terrorist attacks that China experienced were actually falsely branded as terrorism, citing small-scale incidents and attacks that would right away fall under the mainstream terrorism narrative, if the same happened in Western Europe. The Atlantic narrative also pushes the argument that terrorism is used only as an excuse by the Chinese, that’s not the real reason why they are after these networks, as if it could get more serious than that. And most importantly for the American audience, the Atlantic analysis claims that the Uighur jihadists were never anti-American “enemy combatants”, even though the author cites an article by the Council on Foreign Relations that mentions the foiled terrorist plot on the American Embassy in 2002, which was a central event for the US government. But that doesn’t count because it didn’t happen, the plot was foiled. The group was rather local, The Atlantic argues now, and was not a part of the international jihad. They were, however. ETIM’s objective was the creation of a fundamentalist Muslim state called “East Turkistan”, which was supposed to cover many countries in the region – something like ISIS’s idea for a caliphate, but for the Turk ethnicity across the region. In terms of operations, Uighur operations definitely had an international reach – whether across countries in the region, by threatening the international Olympic Games, and even as a terrorist attack on a tourist resort going as far as Thailand.

So, these are the narratives that various liberal corners are trying to push: the version of the warm, fuzzy, innocent terrorists who were just misunderstood. If there is one area where US mainstream media can’t sell their narratives about “demonizing”, “scapegoating” and “dog whistling” to the American public, that’s with Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. But they will still try. Reading these articles, you have to wonder: what’s the agenda there.

After their release from Guantanamo, Uighur jihadists were dispatched to Albania, Switzerland and Slovakia and some Latin American countries. The question is whether the American government has leverage over these former Guantanamo detainees, and whether they will join the terrorist networks operating against China. We don’t know what the terms of release of these jihadists were and whether they are not sleeping cells that could be unleashed upon China at some point. The radicalization of Xinjiang by the US government with the aim to create trouble for the Chinese government is one of the reasons the US government invaded Afghanistan, as I argued previously.

You have to love the way the US government interprets US support for terrorism around the world: we are not funding and supporting terrorism, we are just creating strategic groups to fight authoritarian regimes. In the 1980s, the US government created and funded the mujahidin, right there, in the same region. Then they pushed ISIS on the world as the good terrorists in Syria, only to have to fight them later, and God knows how many more terrorist groups that we have no idea about.

The fact that over the last 1-2 years the big US mainstream media spends resources on stories to basically white-wash clear-cut terrorists should signal something. These stories appear only now, almost 10 years after most of the Uighur jihadists were released from Guantanamo. These stories about the innocence of Guantanamo detainees scapegoated by the bad Chinese government didn’t appear right away. You’d think that the time for these stories would have been around the time when the Uighur jihadists got released from Guantanamo, not now.

The white-washing efforts by the US mainstream media who have to somehow explain the inconvenient past, show a sad fact about American public discourse right now: you can be vilified as a monster for saying things to women, while US mainstream media will break their backs to explain why actual terrorists are not that bad after all, and are really the victims here. They were not really terrorists, they just became victims of their terrorist activities. Watch this white-washing space. It will become even more pronounced, as we move forward into more hardened narratives of the Cold War against China.

Iveta Cherneva
Iveta Cherneva is an Amazon best-selling author, political commentator and human rights activist. Her latest book is “Trump, European security and Turkey”. Cherneva’s career includes Congress and the UN; she was a top finalist for UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of speech in 2020. Iveta’s opinions appear in Euronews, New York Times, Salon, The Guardian, Jurist, Washington Examiner, Modern Diplomacy, Emerging Europe, EurActiv, The Fletcher Forum, LSE, Daily Express. She comments on TV and radio for Euronews, DW, Voice of America and others.