UK

Sunak Enters Rwanda Migration Plan Endgame With Tories Fearing Fresh Failure

Alex Wickham, Bloomberg News

, Source: Home Office

(Bloomberg) -- As Rishi Sunak’s flagship migration policy enters its endgame next week, some Conservatives fret the prime minister has left himself exposed by the issue on which he has staked his premiership. 

The UK leader on Friday vowed to keep Parliament sitting on Monday night until it passes legislation declaring Rwanda a “safe” destination to send asylum seekers, allowing deportation flights that were first mooted two years ago to get off the ground at last. That would crystallize the “deterrent” ministers have promised to put migrants off crossing the English Channel from France in small boats.

 “We are going to get this done on Monday and we will sit there and vote until it’s done,” Sunak — who has repeatedly promised a deportation flight by the “spring” — told reporters on Friday. “We’re going to do everything we can to stop the boats.”

With the Tory right and the Reform UK party founded by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage accusing Sunak of being soft on migration, Rwanda has become politically perilous for the prime minister as he seeks to revive his ailing fortunes ahead of a general election due by the end of January. 

The premier made “stopping the boats” one of five key pledges to voters, and passing the bill — currently stuck in a Parliamentary process known as ping pong as the House of Lords and the Commons disagree on its content — would finally test the policy’s effectiveness.

For Sunak, it’s a dangerous moment, according to Conservative ministers and officials who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity discussing internal party thinking. If flights are blocked by legal challenges, then the law will have failed and Sunak’s chances of sending migrants to Rwanda before the election may be over, they said. If deportations begin in small numbers and crossings continue to surge, it would suggest the policy isn’t the deterrent Sunak promised, emboldening Reform and the right-wingers who want to oust him.

Since being announced in 2022 by Boris Johnson’s government, the Rwanda plan has yet to yield significant results. Sunak’s government argues that a 36% decline in crossings last year shows its potential. But numbers are at record levels this year. 

The latest legislation aims to bypass last year’s Supreme Court ruling that Rwanda isn’t a safe destination for asylum seekers, by stating the opposite in law. The government hopes to organize the first deportation flight by the end of May, or even sooner to help Sunak through the a difficult set of local elections on May 2. 

After a series of tax cuts failed to revive the Conservatives’ standing with the electorate, it’s one of the party’s last chances to reset the narrative ahead of the election, a Sunak ally said. That’s badly needed: The Tories for months have trailed Keir Starmer’s Labour Party by a polling margin fluctuating around 20 points.

Some in government are nervous that flights could again be blocked by legal challenges, even though that is exactly what the new law aims to avoid. If deportees manage to convince a judge of their case, that could mean months more delay, with time running out to enact the policy before election day.

In that scenario, Sunak has hinted he could pivot to a more hard-line policy, ignoring court rulings and even ending Britain’s relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights. That would test party unity. Centrist ministers may find themselves unable to support another lurch to the right, while right-wingers including former Home Office ministers Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick would argue they’d been proved correct.

Other Tories warn a successful deportation flight may lead to new problems. Officials expect initially to deport only a few hundred migrants to Rwanda before the African nation pauses the program to assess how it’s working. Tories are concerned too that Channel crossings could spike in the summer due to the lag effect of large numbers of migrants who entered southern Europe last year attempting the onward journey to Britain.

It’s therefore possible crossings could increase after the first Rwanda flights, a Tory official said: in effect the policy’s implementation would expose its flaws.

“The prospect that they don’t manage to get a flight away is still underestimated,” Sunder Katwala of the British Future think tank told Bloomberg. “And if they do, the risk then is they end up proving that the policy doesn’t provide a deterrent, if the numbers of people continuing to cross the Channel exceed the number being flown to Rwanda week-by-week.”

Some of Sunak’s aides sense he’s running out of road. Advisers are looking for a “moment” they can use to call an election that would set them off on the front foot, one said. The plan has always been that Sunak would go to the polls later in the year, using an improving economy as a springboard to try to upend the polls. Economic moments that could be leveraged include when inflation, currently at 3.2%, falls to the Bank of England’s 2% target, or after the first interest rate cut, which markets suggest is expected in August or September.

Some Sunak staffers say Rwanda could offer a moment to call an earlier election. One suggested a summer vote after the first flight but before crossings pick up in the warmer months could allow the Tories to claim a policy win before it has a chance to unravel. Another envisaged a different outcome: if the courts do block flights, Sunak could call a snap election arguing he needs an electoral mandate to push the policy forward.

The bigger picture is that it’s not clear how any of those options would save the Tories from a resounding defeat. Polling this week gave them their worst rating in 45 years, with Sunak sinking to the joint lowest satisfaction rating for a sitting premier. Holding an election off the back of those numbers would be madness, one lawmaker said.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

Fighting flares at Myanmar-Thai border as rebels target stranded junta troops

A Thai soldier takes cover near the 2nd Thailand-Myanmar Friendship Bridge during fighting on the Myanmar side between the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and Myanmar's troops, which continues near the Thailand-Myanmar border, in Mae Sot, Tak Province, Thailand, April 20, 2024. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

APR 20, 2024, 02:06 PM

Fighting raged at Myanmar's eastern frontier with Thailand on Saturday, witnesses, media and Thailand's government said, forcing about 200 civilians to flee as rebels pressed to flush out junta troops holed up for days at a bridge border crossing.

Resistance fighters and ethnic minority rebels seized the key trading town of Myawaddy on the Myanmar side of the frontier on April 11, dealing a big blow to a well-equipped military that is struggling to govern and is now facing a critical test of its battlefield credibility.

Three witnesses on the Thai and Myanmar sides of the border said they heard explosions and heavy machine gun fire near a strategic bridge from late on Friday that continued into early Saturday.


Several Thai media outlets said about 200 people had crossed the border to seek temporary refuge in Thailand.

Thai broadcaster NBT in a post on social media platform X said resistance forces used 40-milimetre machine guns and dropped 20 bombs from drones to target an estimated 200 junta soldiers who had retreated from a coordinated rebel assault on Myawaddy and army posts since April 5.

Reuters could not immediately verify the reports and a Myanmar junta spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said he was closely monitoring the unrest and his country was ready to provide humanitarian assistance if necessary.

"I do not desire to see any such clashes have any impact on the territorial integrity of Thailand and we are ready to protect our borders and the safety of our people," he said on X. He made no mention of refugees.

BIG SETBACK

Myanmar's military is facing its biggest challenge since first taking control of the former British colony in 1962, caught up in multiple, low-intensity conflicts and grappling to stabilise an economy that has crumbled since a 2021 coup against Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's government.

The country is locked in a civil war between the military on one side and, on the other, a loose alliance of established ethnic minority armies and a resistance movement born out of the junta's bloody crackdown on anti-coup protests.

The capture of Myawaddy and surrounding army outposts is a significant setback for a junta that has been squeezed by Western sanctions, with the town a key tax revenue source and conduit for more than $1 billion of annual border trade.

The Khaosod newspaper in a post on X showed a video of Myanmar civilians, many of them women and children, being marshalled by Thai soldiers at an entry point to Thailand.

Thailand had on Friday said no refugees had entered the country and it was discussing with aid agencies about increasing humanitarian relief to civilians on the Myanmar side. 

REUTERS

Why Myanmar’s War Matters, Even if the World Isn’t Watching

A devastating, years long civil war is heating up, but it still hasn’t attracted broad international notice.

Fighters from the Karen ethnic group patrol next to an area destroyed by Myanmar’s airstrike in Myawaddy, on the Thai border this month. In recent weeks, Karen fighters captured a trading town. Credit...Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

By Mike Ives

The New York Times

April 20, 2024

An escalating civil war threatens to break apart a country of roughly 55 million people that sits between China and India. That has international consequences, but the conflict hasn’t commanded wide attention.

Over the past six months, resistance fighters in Myanmar’s hinterlands have been defeating the ruling military junta in battle after battle, stunning analysts. That raises the possibility that the junta could be at risk of collapsing.


The resistance now controls more than half of Myanmar’s territory



Areas of control


Largely military junta control


Largely resistance control


Contested


INDIA


CHINA


BANGLADESH


Mandalay


MYANMAR


LAOS


Naypyidaw


Bay of Bengal


Yangon


THAILAND


Source: Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M)

By Weiyi Cai

The war is already a human rights catastrophe. Myanmar’s implosion since a 2021 military coup has wrecked its economy, throwing millions of people into extreme poverty. Its reputation as a hub for drugs, online scam centers and money laundering is growing. And its destabilization has created strategic headaches for China, India, the United States and other countries.

Here’s a primer

.
A coup opened the path to disaster.

Myanmar is not a democracy. The junta allowed elections more than a decade ago, enabling Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of an assassinated independence hero, to sit in Parliament. She later led a civilian government. But the junta controlled key levers of power through a military-drafted Constitution.

In 2021, the generals arrested Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi — who by then had lost her halo as a human rights icon — and staged a coup. That set off demonstrations, a brutal crackdown on mostly peaceful protesters, and waves of resistance from armed fighters.

Image

Protesters using homemade weapons to defend themselves against government forces in Yangon in 2021, the year a coup set off demonstrations

The civil war is not new. Myanmar’s Army has been on a war footing since the former British colony gained independence in 1948. The recent fighting is unusual because many civilians from the country’s Bamar ethnic majority have taken up arms alongside ethnic groups that have been battling the army for decades.
Fighting has killed thousands of civilians.

In the years before the coup, Myanmar was emerging from decades of isolation under oppressive military rule. Companies like Ford, Coca-Cola and Mastercard made big investments. In Yangon, the largest city, tourists wandered among gilded pagodas and grand colonial-era buildings.

Now, bombings have put Yangon on edge, Western nations have imposed financial sanctions on members of the military regime, and thousands of middle-class people have fled to jungles to fight alongside ethnic insurgencies.

More on ChinaSinking Cities: An estimated 16 percent of the country’s major cities are losing more than 10 millimeters of elevation per year and nearly half are losing more than 3 millimeters per year because of development and groundwater pumping, according to a new study.
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An Effusive Welcome: As tensions fester between China and Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, a former president of the island democracy, is receiving warm treatment from Beijing during a rare trip to the mainland.

Civilians are bearing the costs. The fighting has killed thousands and displaced nearly three million others. The country is now littered with land mines, and extreme inflation has contributed to a drastic shrinking of the middle class, according to the United Nations.


A

 family cooking amid the debris following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Kachin fighters in Myanmar’s northern Shan State in February. An alliance of ethnic groups in the state has captured several towns.

Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The health sector is in crisis, partly because the regime has targeted doctors. Among the many problems, childhood vaccinations have essentially stopped, and malaria has increased substantially. Experts worry about the spread of H.I.V. and tuberculosis.


The rebels gain territory.

Rebels have seized large chunks of territory since October, the month an alliance of ethnic groups near the China border, in Shan State, captured several towns. Some have attacked the capital, Naypyidaw, with drones and made swift advances in several border regions. In recent weeks, rebels from the Karen ethnic group captured a trading town that lies east of Yangon along the Thai border — a once-unthinkable target. Neighboring Karenni State could be the first to entirely free itself of junta control.

A Karen fighter at a Myanmar military base on the outskirts of Myawaddy on the Thailand border in April. The town is under the control of a coalition of rebel forces led by the Karen National Union.

Credit...Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

There have also been advances in Kachin State, in the northeast, where the army controls lucrative jade mines, and in the western border state of Rakhine, where Myanmar soldiers and their militia allies once slaughtered members of the Rohingya Muslim minority, causing hundreds of thousands to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

Some analysts say the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic militia in Rakhine, could soon take Sittwe, the heavily guarded state capital.

The conflict reverberates internationally.

The war has regional and international consequences. Russia and other countries have sold the Myanmar army at least a billion dollars’ worth of weapons since the 2021 coup, according to the United Nations. China sees threats to the infrastructure projects it has funded across the country. And India, which has long feared chaos in its borderlands, is deporting Myanmar refugees.

Thailand, Myanmar’s eastern neighbor, is similarly concerned about the estimated 40,000 or more refugees that the United Nations predicts will cross the border this year. Bangladesh sees obstacles to its efforts to repatriate the Rohingya. And the United States has started to provide nonlethal aid to armed resistance groups.

A Myanmar woman crossing into Thailand in Thailand’s Mae Sot district in April.

Credit...Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


So why doesn’t the war get more attention? One reason could be that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has gone from a Nobel Peace laureate, kept under house arrest by generals, to an apologist for their murderous campaign against the Rohingya.

Richard Horsey, an expert on Myanmar and an adviser to the International Crisis Group, said that her fall from grace killed the “democracy-versus-the-generals narrative” that would have helped to generate interest in the war.

“The fairy tale narrative is gone,” he said. “And, you know, Sudan, right? Haiti? They don’t get as much attention either.”

Sui-Lee Wee contributed reporting.
Myanmar

Aung San Suu Kyi Moved to Unknown Location From Prison by Myanmar Junta
April 17, 2024

Myanmar Rebels Take Key Trading Town, but Counteroffensive Looms
April 12, 2024

A Ragtag Resistance Sees the Tide Turning in a Forgotten War
April 20, 2024

What’s Happening In Myanmar’s Civil War?


Mike Ives  reported from Myanmar several times in the years before the country’s 2021 military coup.

Photographer documents disappearing face tattoos of Myanmar's Chin women

Traditional practice is often misunderstood by Western observers who regard them as ugly

A Laytu Chin woman in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state: German photographer Jens Uwe Parkitny has been documenting the facial tattoos of ethnic Chin women since 2001. (Photo by Jens Uwe Parkitny)

TOM VATER, 

Contributing writer

April 20, 2024 14:17 JST

BANGKOK --- The woman's eyes are closed. She looks content, perhaps there is a hint of a smile playing around her lips. There is a blue circle with a cross in its center on her forehead from which strong dark lines emanate across her entire face, including her eyelids, like a rising sun.

This is a strong face, a face filled with identity, pride and beauty. She is Chin, an ethnic minority living in northwestern Myanmar, and she is one of the last women of her culture to have her face tattooed.

"I shot the first portrait of a Chin woman with a facial tattoo in 2001," recounted German photographer Jens Uwe Parkitny, whose exhibition of Chin face tattoo portraits is now on show at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand in Bangkok.

"I showed it to a few people and they liked it. I am a self-taught photographer, and back then I was heavily influenced by the National Geographic photography school because I was a travel journalist. But I realized, I didn't want to tell the story that way. I wanted to tell a more personal story of dignity and beauty. A different type of beauty, but still beauty, and getting to that point, that turned into a long journey," he explained.

According to the United Nations, minorities make up 10% to 20% of the global population, between 600 million and 1.2 billion people. The unique identities of indigenous groups in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia encompass ethnic, linguistic and religious aspects. Tattooing in general and face tattoos in particular have been an integral part of traditional societies for centuries, for both men and women, to denote identity, belonging, courage, coming of age and beauty.

While a few minorities, including the Maori in New Zealand, some Native Americans and the Inuit, have hung on to or revived their tattoo traditions, many more have been lost in the maelstrom of 20th-century progress and development, suppressed by nationalist projects, and majority rule and its accompanying policies of assimilation. As a consequence, indigenous tattoos often changed from integral markers of common identity to signifiers of shame and backwardness.

Clockwise from top left: Daw Cue Ma Oo, Laytu Chin, northern Rakhine state; a pipe-smoking Laytu Chin woman, northern Rakhine state; Daw Pyaam Bu, Hmoye Chin, southern Chin state; Ma Shen Tang, Matu Chin, southern Chin state.

 (Photos by Jens Uwe Parkitny)

Parkitny traced the way outsiders perceived the Chin tattoos through historical texts. "The British documented how the Chin conducted warfare and how they were structured as a society, but they didn't give a second thought to facial tattoos and described them as ugly, period. The Revolutionary Union Council, the supreme government body of Burma from 1962 to 1975, banned facial tattooing, officially out of health concerns. They wanted to suppress and assimilate these groups. And both Christian and Buddhist missionaries discouraged the Chin from continuing the practice. In the mid-90s, the authorities threatened Chin women with prison if they continued marking their faces. So, the youngest woman with face tattoos that I have met was tattooed in 2000 when she was 12."

Ironically, as traditional tattoos disappeared, commercial tattooing became an industry. What was once a sordid back-alley affair for sailors and sex workers has gone mainstream. From the U.S. to China, tattooing has become a consumer and lifestyle choice. Footballers, actors and rock stars all enhance their individuality with the application of a second skin. Tattoo conventions have sprung up in every major global city from Milan to Kathmandu. Social media platforms like Instagram have become showrooms for cutting-edge skin art and unsightly disasters in equal measure.

Thousands of years before kids ordered tattoo kits online and started carving up their friends, traditional societies developed different techniques to create permanent skin markings, handed down from generation to generation. Some of these tattoo traditions -- particularly Polynesian designs -- were hijacked by Western tattooists, but the vast majority of tattoos prevalent among indigenous minorities across South and Southeast Asia have remained confined to their respective communities.

Clockwise from top left: A Sutu Chin elder, northern Rakhine state; Daw Pou Lee, N’Gha Chin, southern Chin state; Daw Pa Shwi, Ubtu Chin, southern Chin state; Daw Mar Sar, Sungtu Chin, northern Rakhine state. (Photos by Jens Uwe Parkitny)

There are notable exceptions -- the tattoos of the Dayak in Borneo are well known in the West and ethnic minority artists from Kuching are now common participants of international tattoo conventions. In India, tattoo artist Moranngam Khaling, a Naga from India's Manipur, has been researching and reviving his ancestors' tattoo traditions. Thailand's spirit tattoos, sak yant, found at the crossroads of animism and Buddhism, have experienced a renaissance that has gone beyond the confines of temples, thanks in part to Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie's interest.

"In 2001, I had the advantage that I was the first. I went to these villages and shot Polaroids," Parkitny recalled of his visits to the Chin. "The women and their families had never seen a photo of themselves. I had people queuing up to be photographed. I also brought medicines and I returned to the same villages again and again, over a period of many years. That is how I established trust. In one village, they called me the white ghost, because I appeared suddenly and was gone again and then appeared again. Some of these villagers had never seen a white person before. Others had last seen white people, missionaries, 60 years earlier."

In 2007, Parkitny's book, "Blood Faces -- Through the Lens: Chin Women of Myanmar," was issued by Singapore-based Flame of the Forest Publishing.

"At first, I didn't set out to publish anything. I did it for myself -- I needed a good excuse to return to Myanmar again and again. I was working full-time for Expedia in a disciplined, high-performance role. I needed my own creative space. When I took that first portrait, I decided, there and then, that I would spend the next 10 years documenting these tattoos. From then on, I would vanish one or two months a year into the wild."

Top left: Parkitny at the opening of his exhibition at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand in Bangkok on March 25. (Photo by Tom Vater) Top right: Parkitny's 2007 book "Blood Faces -- Through the Lens: Chin Women of Myanmar." (Flame of the Forest Publishing) Bottom: Daw Ma Lay, left, and Daw Buma, Sungtu Chin, northern Rakhine state. (Photo by Jens Uwe Parkitny)

Photographing the face tattoos of Chin communities has not only dominated Parkitny's photographic output, but his entire life.

Parkitny married a Burmese woman in 2013 and moved to Myanmar two years later. In 2017, he published "Marked for Life -- Myanmar's Chin Women and Their Facial Tattoos" in cooperation with the Goethe Institute in Yangon. Since then, he has had numerous exhibits in Europe and Asia.

"It took me years to be able to tell the different patterns apart. The Chin are organized into 53 groups that own tattoo patterns and speak 44 different dialects. But these groups are subdivided into clans and each clan owns a variation of the pattern. It is their hallmark and other clans must not copy it. So I decided to work with an illustrator in Hong Kong to produce front and side views of the tattoos to show the beauty, intricacy and differences. Some groups have women tattooists, others use both men and women to tattoo. In some groups, the tattoos were applied in a single session, in others over a period of years."

As to the meanings of the face tattoos, some Chin and a number of other minorities in Asia and Africa claim that the tattoos were put on young women to discourage powerful men, such as rich landowners or Japanese soldiers during World War II, from abducting them. But Parkitny does not believe this explanation.

"I have heard that story, but only in villages that were easily accessible, particularly by missionaries. What's more, the markings denote group affiliations in countless minorities in Asia as well as amongst Native Americans. They are universal. The idea that tattoos make a face ugly is a Western point of view. There are tattoo shops on every corner, and yet facial tattoos are still taboo. But the story is great, it is like a Hollywood movie: innocent girls in the hills and the evil king."

Clockwise from top left: Ma Sein Shwe, Laytu Chin, northern Rakhine state; Daw Ni Ni San, Mun Chin, southern Chin state; a Yindu Dai Chin woman, southern Chin state; Ma Htay, Laytu Chin, northern Rakhine state. 

(Photos by Jens Uwe Parkitny)

Parkitny also senses that Chin culture does not lend itself to victimization. "The Chin were fierce raiders," he said. "They came down from the hills and kidnapped Bamar (the dominant ethnic group in Myanmar). What makes them unique today is that they are the largest group of women that still bear facial tattoos."

The Chin girls are usually inked in puberty, when the tattoos are applied with rattan thorns, which has led to comparisons with female circumcision. Parkitny agrees that there is "fine line" between the two practices, but he views female circumcision as mutilation, unlike tattooing. "I set out to depict these women in dignity and to debunk our notion that this is ugly. I saw something; I saw art in a face and wanted to capture it. It is not my job to judge it."

The COVID-19 pandemic and the February 2021 military takeover in Myanmar have disrupted Parkitny's work.

"In 2016, my wife and I opened a small lodge in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah state, but this town of 65.000 people was destroyed by airstrikes in 2023 and we have had no news for months on whether our building is still standing. Most ethnic states are inaccessible now. The conflict accelerated the loss of cultural practices. That is why I want to return to Chin state and do more work on the meaning of the tattoos, but I might not be able to do that."

Top: Ma Ning Li, Mun Chin, southern Chin state. Bottom: Laytu Chin women in their traditional attire in northern Rakhine state.

 (Photos by Jens Uwe Parkitny)

Parkitny's latest book, "Icons of Courage," lovingly documents Myanmar's last Kayin men with traditional leg tattoos. "The book has no ISBN number; it is hand-stitched and in Burmese and English. I produced this with a Myanmar audience in mind. It is not about making a profit. It is about giving back."

"I am not an anthropologist or ethnologist, but the cultural record that I created over time has anthropological significance, a permanent record of the southern Chin groups that practiced facial tattoos. This work has to stay in Myanmar and it must be accessible to scholars as well as to the Chin."

Parkitny is quietly hopeful about Myanmar's future. "I have the feeling there will be a turning point toward a more peaceful time, three, five or 10 years, or perhaps longer away, but it will come," he said.

Jens Uwe Parkitny's exhibition at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand in Bangkok runs until May 3.

 

Tunde Onakoya: Nigerian breaks chess marathon record

20 April 2024 Share on Linked In

By Gloria Aradi & Jacqueline Howard, BBC News

Chess master Tunde Onakoya, centre, during a chess class in Lagos in 2019. Photo: PIUS UTOMI EKPEI

Under the beaming lights of New York's iconic Times Square, Nigerian chess master Tunde Onakoya has broken the record for the longest chess marathon.

After playing for 58 consecutive hours he was still at the board.

Onakoya hopes to raise US$1m ($NZ1.7 million) for charity to support chess education for millions of children.

Hundreds of supporters from the city's Nigerian community have shown up to cheer on the chess master, including Nigerian Afrobeats star Davido.

They provided music and energised him with supplies of classic Nigerian dishes, including the beloved national staple, jollof rice.

Back home in Nigeria, people threw their support behind Onakoya as they watched him conquer the record on Twitch, a video-streaming service.

Supporters left messages on the stream commending Onakoya as an inspiration.

"Thank you for daring to dream and showing us the levels to which we can all take our brain power to! Well done Tunde! I'm going to pick up my chess board back haha," one commenter wrote.

"Mr Onakoya is a symbol of excellence and resilience that distinguish Nigerians both at home and abroad... Go, make history, and inscribe our name in gold," Nigeria's Vice-President Kashim Shettima posted on X.

"Lagos is rooting for you," Lagos state governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu told Onakoya, adding that his attempt was "a powerful testament to how greatness can emerge from anywhere".

The previous world record, recognised by Guinness World records, was 56 hours, nine minutes, and 37 seconds, which was set by Norwegian duo Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad in 2018.

Onakoya, 29, credits chess with saving him from the overwhelming poverty he faced growing up in Lagos's infamous floating slums.

His non-profit, Chess in Slums Africa, teaches the game to children from poor communities and helps them with their education.

Onakoya is also a board member of the US non-profit The Gift of Chess, which works to transform lives through chess and is targeting to distribute one million chess sets to underserved communities by 2030.

- BBC

India pushes Maoist rebel strongholds on road to democracy

NORTHERN INDIA NEAR NEPAL

By AFP

April 20, 2024

People queue to vote in a village in Bastar district, one of the last strongholds of the Naxal rebels - Copyright AFP Idrees MOHAMMED
Bhuvan BAGGA

A narrow winding road through an untamed forest has proven a blow to a decades-old Maoist rebellion that is one of India’s longest and deadliest insurgencies.

As the world’s biggest democracy began a six-week election Friday, the people of one small village — newly connected by fresh tarmac to the outside world — cast their ballots for the first time.

“There was no government here during the last national vote, no polling booth, but only the rebels who warned against contact with the state,” Tetam village chief Mahadev Markam told AFP.

Remote and wild Bastar district of Chhattisgarh state where Tetam lies is the centre of the country’s “Red Corridor”, home to left-wing guerrillas sworn to battle the state.

For years unable to penetrate rebel strongholds in the district, India instead urged Tetam’s inhabitants to travel vast distances to vote in government-controlled areas.

With the Maoists threatening punishment for anyone who participated, very few people undertook a journey fraught with high risk — and no rewards.

“Why vote? Why would anyone trek for hours across the forest, over the hills and the streams, and risk the wrath of the rebels? For what? What did the government ever do for us?” Markam asked.

This year it was different: Tetam was one of more than 100 villages in former rebel-held territories where a national vote was staged for the first time since independence from British rule in 1947.

– ‘The state has arrived’ –

The Naxalite rebellion, as the Maoist movement is known, began in the 1960s as a revolt against the exploitation of marginalised rural Indians.

More than 10,000 people have died in the insurgency, waged in the name of the poor and largely tribal communities where the rebels are based.

Heavy-handed campaigns against the guerrillas have often backfired in the past by bolstering hostility towards the government.

But the Naxals also have a track record of abductions, forced recruitment, demands for protection money and summary executions that have struck fear into those living alongside the rebels in their heartland.

At the peak of the insurgency, the Red Corridor was a vast swathe of territory controlled by rebels that rejected the Indian state, operating their own parallel health clinics, schools and criminal justice system.

“Earlier, the rebels used to ask the villagers if they’d seen any other government,” a top interior ministry official in New Delhi told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

“‘We are your doctors, teachers, and judges,’ they said. And they were right. But not anymore. They negated the state. But the state has finally arrived.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has pumped billions to construct new roads and mobile towers in the region in the last few years.

Along with reinvigorated counterinsurgency operations, the number of districts with an active Maoist presence has nearly halved to 45 since 2010, according to an official report last year.

“The government and security forces reaching these regions simultaneously is the antidote, and not just a singular focus on security,” the interior ministry official said.

“We are the two tracks of a train, and we have to run with each other to reach the destination.”

– ‘So much to see’ –

Around 80 Maoist rebels have been killed since January, including a group of 29 killed in a government assault in a remote area of Chhattisgarh three days before India’s election began.

Home minister Amit Shah this week said the government was running a “focused campaign to root out” the insurgents, with 250 security garrisons established in the state since 2019.

One such garrison was established near Tetam in 2022 as a paved road was being laid to the village for the first time.

Life in the village remains hardscrabble and reliant on foraging from the surrounding forests for survival, but evidence of a budding transformation is everywhere.

In the last 18 months, Tetam’s inhabitants now have mobile connections, power from the national grid, a health clinic and a government ration shop.

Long kept isolated as the insurgency raged around them, some of Tetam’s 1,050 inhabitants have since ventured out of their home community for the first time.

Many have gone to visit the nearest small town of Dantewada — population around 20,000, according to local officials — for the first time.

“The city was really wonderful,” Tetam resident Deepak Markam, 27, told AFP.

“There was so much to see there. I hope our village also develops to be like it.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for NEPAL MAOISM 

Barbados officially announces recognition of Palestine as a state

“How can we say we want a two-state solution if we do not recognise Palestine as a state,” Foreign Minister Kerrie Symmonds says.



REUTERS ARCHIVE

The foreign minister emphasized the nation's UN stance for a two-state solution. / Photo: Reuters Archive

Barbados has announced its decision to officially recognise Palestine as a state, becoming the 11th Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member to do so.

"How can we say we want a two-state solution if we do not recognise Palestine as a State," Foreign Minister Kerrie Symmonds said in a statement Friday.

Symmonds said the decision does not affect Barbados' relationship with Israel.

He stressed that the island nation has always maintained at the UN that there should be a two-state solution.

He criticised, however, the fact that Barbados has never recognised Palestine until now.

"I think, an error that we have made through the years and to correct that," he said. "And now, we have formally reached out to the State of Palestine to signal our intention to formally recognise them as a State,” he added.

Palestine ambassador 'appreciates' Malta's efforts at UN

US veto “unethical, unfair and unjust", ambassador says

| James Cummings |

Palestine's ambassador to Malta Fadi Hanania said he appreciated Malta putting the Palestinian question on the agenda at the UN. 

Palestine’s ambassador to Malta has said he appreciates the country putting Palestine on the agenda at the United Nations, despite the United States vetoing its request to become a member.

On Thursday, the US shot down a draft resolution recommending full Palestinian membership in a Malta-chaired Security Council meeting at the UN headquarters in New York.

The vote was preceded by a tense debate presided over by Malta, in which Israel’s ambassador warned that granting the Palestinians UN membership would be a reward to terrorists and render the UN “a haven for dictatorships and terrorists”.

The Palestinian ambassador said it would be a major step towards peace and justice.

Approval at the Security Council would have been the first of two steps needed for Palestine to become a full UN member. Aside from Security Council approval, applicants for full membership must also obtain a two-thirds majority of votes at the UN General Assembly.

Palestine is currently classified as a non-member observer state at the UN. It first sought to be recognised as a full UN member in 2011.

Reacting to Thursday’s vote, Palestine’s ambassador to Malta Fadi Hanania said his people were “devastated” by the move but thanked Malta for its efforts at the UN.

“Almost all the Security Council voted in favour of the resolution the US vetoed... for us it was a complete failure of the international community,” he said, calling the US veto “unethical, unfair and unjust.”

Hanania said he appreciated Malta's efforts to put the Palestinian membership issue on the Security Council agenda.

“Historically, Malta has stood for justice in the Middle East,” he said, noting Malta had already signified its support for Palestine’s right to statehood.

Hanania stressed that despite the vote, the Palestinians would continue to work towards becoming a recognised member of the international community.

"Although the vote failed, it’s not the end of the road; it keeps us motivated to keep pushing forward.”

The ambassador said the US veto conflicted with its claims that it supports a two-state solution – something the superpower said on Thursday it still supported but could only be possible through direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.

“Our people are fed up with international organisations... they were hoping for this and are devastated. Those in Gaza and the West Bank feel like abandoning hope," Hanania said.

OIC expresses regret over UN Security Council failure to recognise Palestine's full membership

APRIL 19, 2024 | 

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation expressed deep regret at the failure of the United Nations Security Council to fulfill its responsibilities towards granting full membership to the State of Palestine in the United Nations, at a time when the Palestinian people are facing the harshest forms of aggression, persecution, and genocide.

In a statement, the organization affirmed that the use of the United States' veto right contravenes the provisions of the United Nations Charter, which allows membership for all states accepting the obligations therein, and continues to hinder the Palestinian people from obtaining their legitimate rights, thus perpetuating the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinian people over the past 75 years.

The organization also affirmed Palestine's legitimate right to embody its political and legal status within the United Nations, akin to other countries around the world, considering this as an overdue entitlement for decades based on the political, legal, historical, and natural rights of the Palestinian people in their land, as confirmed by relevant United Nations resolutions. It emphasized that recognizing the State of Palestine contributes to achieving peace and stability and paves the way for the implementation of a two-state solution.

The organization expressed appreciation for the positions of countries that supported the resolution project in the United Nations Security Council regarding Palestine's membership in the United Nations, reflecting their stance in favor of rights, justice, freedom, and peace, and their rejection of Israeli colonial occupation policies. It called on countries that either rejected or abstained from voting on the resolution to review and rectify their positions in line with their obligations under international law, the United Nations Charter, and relevant resolutions.

Israel and Iran’s Apparent Strikes and Counterstrikes Give New Insights into Both Militaries

A man crosses a street as motorists drive past a billboard depicting Iranian ballistic missiles in service in Tehran on April 19, 2024. (AFP)

20 April 2024 AD ـ 11 Shawwal 1445 AH


Israel demonstrated its military dominance over adversary Iran in its apparent precision strikes that hit near military and nuclear targets deep in the heart of the country, meeting little significant challenge from Iran's defenses and providing the world with new insights into both militaries' capabilities.

The international community, Israel and Iran all signaled hopes that Friday's airstrikes would end what has been a dangerous 19-day run of strikes and counterstrikes, a highly public test between two deep rivals that had previously stopped short of most direct confrontation.

The move into open fighting began April 1 with the suspected Israeli killing of Iranian generals at an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria. That prompted Iran's retaliatory barrage last weekend of more than 300 missiles and drones that the US, Israel and regional and international partners helped bat down without significant damage in Israel. And then came Friday's apparent Israeli strike.

As all sides took stock, regional security experts predicted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and the country's allies would emerge encouraged by the Israeli military’s superior performance. In response to international appeals, however, both Israel and Iran had appeared to be holding back their full military force throughout the more than two weeks of hostilities, aiming to send messages rather than escalate to a full-scale war.

Crucially, experts also cautioned that Iran had not brought into the main battle its greatest military advantage over Israel — Hezbollah and other Iran-allied armed groups in the region. Hezbollah in particular is capable of straining Israel’s ability to defend itself, especially in any multifront conflict.

Overall, “the big-picture lesson to take away is that unless Iran does absolutely everything at its disposal all at once, it is just the David, and not the Goliath, in this equation,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow and longtime regional researcher at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

Aside from those Iranian proxy forces, “the Israelis have every single advantage on every single military level,” Lister said.

In Friday’s attack, Iranian state television said the country's air defense batteries fired in several provinces following reports of drones. Iranian army commander Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi said crews targeted several flying objects.

Lister said it appeared to have been a single mission by a small number of Israeli aircraft. After crossing Syrian airspace, it appears they fired only two or three Blue Sparrow air-to-surface missiles into Iran, most likely from a standoff position in the airspace of Iran's neighbor Iraq, he said.

Iran said its air defenses fired at a major air base near Isfahan. Isfahan also is home to sites associated with Iran’s nuclear program, including its underground Natanz enrichment site, which has been repeatedly targeted by suspected Israeli sabotage attacks.

Israel has not taken responsibility for either the April 1 or Friday strikes.

The Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a Washington-based center that promotes Israeli-US security ties, quickly pointed out that Friday's small strike underscored that Israel could do much more damage “should it decide to launch a larger strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.”

Iran's barrage last weekend, by contrast, appears to have used up most of its 150 long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel, more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of the US military's Central Command.

Especially given the distance involved and how easy it is for the US and others to track missile deployments by overhead space sensors and regional radar, “it is hard for Iran to generate a bolt from the blue against Israel,” McKenzie said.

Israelis, for their part, have “shown that Israel can now hit Iran from its soil with missiles, maybe even drones,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute.

Iran's performance Friday, meanwhile, may have raised doubts about its ability to defend against such an attack, Vatanka said. Iran is about 80 times the size of Israel and thus has much more territory to defend, he noted.

Plus, Israel demonstrated that it can rally support from powerful regional and international countries to defend against Iran. The US led in helping Israel knock down Iran's missile and drone attack on April 13.

But while the exchange of Israeli-Iran strikes revealed more about Iran's military abilities, Lebanon-based Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied armed groups in Iraq and Syria largely appeared to stay on the sidelines.

Hezbollah is one of the most powerful militias in the region, with tens of thousands of experienced fighters and a massive weapons arsenal.

After an intense war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 that killed more than a thousand Lebanese civilians and dozens of Israeli civilians, both sides have held back from escalating to another full-scale conflict. But Israel and Hezbollah still routinely fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Hezbollah “is Iran's only remaining potential advantage in this whole broader equation,” Lister said.

Six months of fighting in Gaza have “completely stretched” Israel's military, he said. “If Hezbollah went all out and launched the vast majority of its rocket and missile arsenal at Israel, all at once, the Israelis would seriously struggle to deal with that.”

And in terms of ground forces, if Hezbollah suddenly opened a second front, the Israel Defense Forces “would be incapable at this point” of fighting full-on with both Hezbollah and Hamas, he said.

BBC Question Time Audience Bursts Out Laughing At Richard Tice's Take On Climate Change

Kate Nicholson

HUFFPOST
Fri, 19 April 2024 

Richard Tice, leader of the Reform UK party, went on a rant about climate change last night BBC Question Time

The leader of Reform UK Richard Tice could not stop digging himself a hole last night on BBC Question Time when discussing climate change.

Responding to an audience question about what the UK is doing to protect the environment amid rising concerns, Tice said: “We all care about the environment but the climate has changed for millions and millions and millions of years.”

At this point, leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, Carla Denyer, rolled her eyes.

Tice said this was the “reality” long before man-made CO2 emissions – triggering a wave of laughter from the audience.

He admitted that 2,000 years of human activity has worsened the climate.

But he claimed: “There’s no evidence at all that if you get to net zero CO2 emissions, that all of a sudden, the power of the sun, the power of the sea, the power of the volcanic activity is going to stop.”

He said: “The better thing to do is to adapt to the change in climate and that is the smart thing to do and it’s a lot less costly than the current route to get to net zero, where there’s no evidence it will stop climate change.”

Presenter Fiona Bruce then jumped in: “And the countries which will be underwater, how will they adapt?”

That triggered further giggles from the audience.

However, Tice doubled down by claiming the Maldives were actually larger than they were 40 years ago.

Denyer cut in and said: “Can I ask Richard a question – what’s your science background?

“What makes you think you understand how climate change better than all of the world’s climate experts combined?”

Tice ignored the ongoing laughter from the crowd, and said there were plenty of scientists who thought net zero would not stop the climate crisis – and that sea level rise will continue for 200 more years.

Denyer said: “Do you understand why that is? It’s because the carbon that’s already going into the atmosphere will continue to have an effect for hundreds of years.

“It’s not that going to net zero doesn’t have a benefit.”

A member of the audience also challenged Tice, noting: “While we still have people such as Richard that even refuse to acknowledge that climate change is happening – due to our own...”

Tice interrupted: “No that’s not what I said, I said it’s been happening for millions of years.”

The man continued: “No, because quite frankly, human activity is a direct reason why climate change is occurring on the level that it is. Because you’re refusing to acknowledge that, we won’t get to the point and we won’t find a solution.

“Until we find a solution, honestly, you can relocate Westminster because London will be under water, as will Liverpool and will most of the cities where people live.”