Wednesday, January 08, 2020

Liberian police fire tear gas, water cannon to clear protesters
THE SOURCE OF ALL VIOLENCE THE STATE
Around 3,000 people were protesting 'worsening economic situation' amid deepening economic crisis under President Weah.


6 Jan 2020

This is the second mass demonstration against the president’s
 handling of the economy in less than a year. [Zoom Dosso/AFP]
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Liberian police fired tear gas and a water cannon to clear thousands of anti-government protesters from a central district in the capital Monrovia.

A crowd of some 3,000 people had gathered outside Monrovia's capitol building since Monday morning to protest the deepening economic crisis under President George Weah.

People outside the capitol building had started cooking evening meals, against police orders, when law enforcement began to forcefully clear the area, an AFP journalist reported.
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Dozens of people suffering the effects of tear gas - or the effects of falling during the clearance - were taken to the hospital, the news agency added.

Monday's demonstration follows two mass rallies against the footballer-turned-president last summer, as the impoverished West African country struggles with corruption and inflation.

The government had assured the protesters of security. Dozens of riot police were deployed in the capital although the scene remained calm. Roads were deserted and many civil servants stayed away from work.

The demonstrators want the president to sack his entire economic management team, said Henry Costa, a protest organiser and the head of a group called the Council of Patriots.

"They have performed dismally and created the worsening economic situation we are in," Costa told The Associated Press.

This is the second mass demonstration against the president’s handling of the economy in less than a year.

"We presented a petition containing demands to the president to address the issue of corruption ... bad governance, violation of the constitution - and the president refused to act on any of our demands," Costa told Al Jazeera. 

Economic woes

The Liberian economy has declined dramatically during Weah’s two years in power.

Banks have been unable to pay depositors, salaries have been delayed and the prices of basic commodities have skyrocketed.

"I will be at the front of that protest. If I am unable to walk, I'll carry a stick," Genevieve Badio, a protester, told Al Jazeera.

Bolu Pewe, a vegetable trader in Monrovia, said: "No one is buying. There is no money. Look at my children sitting here in the sun. They are supposed to be going to school. But there is no money to pay their fees."

However, some Liberians believe protests are not the best way to address the challenges.

"We voted for the politicians. If a person wants to change the constitution, they should talk to the politicians. If someone eats your reserve money, go to your representative," said Bendu Dukuly.

Members of the Council of Patriots (COP) hold a flag as 
they protest outside Monrovia's capitol building against
 the deepening economic crisis under Liberian President 
George Weah [Zoom Dosso/ AFP]

The protest was initially dubbed a "Weah Step Down Campaign" with organisers mobilising people to turn out and call on the former football star to leave office.

But many criticised the move as undemocratic, and simply want him to account for finances.

In June, protesters urged Weah to account for $25m his government withdrew from the country’s federal reserve account in New York in 2018 for infusion into the economy. A presidential task force set up to investigate the funds later uncovered discrepancies and misallocations.

Weah, who was voted into office in 2017, has been criticised for building personal properties, including close to 50 apartment buildings, immediately after taking office.

He is also criticised for travelling in a private jet with huge delegations. But the president’s supporters have often rejected these claims, saying Weah came to the job with his own money and his trips have brought back some benefits.

"The issue is that since the president has won the elections, the political elite has not really accepted him as president," Minister of Information Lenn Eugene Nagbe told Al Jazeera.

"So they have been using all sorts of devious means to undermine his authority and to delegitimise his election," he added.


SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Israel approves more than 1,900 new settler homes: NGO

ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS ARE A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

Peace Now says settlement building has increased under PM Benjamin Netanyahu and ally US President Donald Trump.

6 Jan 2020
Israeli settlements are deemed illegal under international
 law and widely seen as the main obstacle to peace 
mir Levy/Getty Images]

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Israel has approved the construction of nearly 2,000 new settler homes on occupied Palestinian territories, an anti-settlement watchdog group said on Monday.

Peace Now said that nearly 800 housing units received the final approvals needed for construction to begin. It said initial approvals were given for an additional 1,150 homes. Settlement projects require several rounds of approvals.

The green light was given on Sunday and Monday, the watchdog group said, adding that 89 percent of the new homes will be erected in "settlements that Israel may have to evacuate under a future peace agreement with the Palestinians".
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The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli military body that oversees civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Peace Now, settlement building has vastly increased under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally US President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu has been fighting for his political survival after being charged with corruption and after failing to form a new coalition government following April and September elections.

The prime minister, who was indicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, is now facing a third general election in March.

"Despite lacking a clear mandate, for this caretaker government it's business as usual - continue the massive promotion of harmful and unnecessary construction in occupied territory and in places that Israel will have to evacuate," said Peace Now in a statement.

"Netanyahu continues to sabotage the prospects of peace, dragging Israel into an anti-democratic one-state reality resembling apartheid."
Illegal under international law

Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community.

Its settlements are deemed illegal under international law and widely seen as the main obstacle to peace.

Some 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem among around 2.9 million Palestinians.

Late last year, the Trump administration said it would no longer consider Israeli settlements in the occupied territories illegal.

The move was hailed by Netanyahu while Palestinians have been outraged.

The European Union, United Nations and others have stressed, however, that they continue to consider the settlements illegal.

Last month, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced that she believes there is a basis for investigating Israel's settlement policies in the occupied West Bank, and that they could constitute a war crime.

The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has asked the ICC to determine whether she has jurisdiction before opening a formal investigation.

Israel has argued that the occupied West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be resolved in negotiations and that Bensouda has no jurisdiction in this case.


VIDEO
INSIDE STORY
Will Israel annex Palestinian territories?


SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
US to send Mexican asylum seekers to Guatemala under new plan

ALSO KNOWN AS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY 
WHICH IS WHY THE USA REFUSES TO RECOGNISE
THE ICC

Under a bilateral agreement, Trump administration to begin sending Mexican asylum seekers in the US to Guatemala.

6 Jan 2020
A migrant sits with his children as they wait to hear if their 
number is called to apply for asylum in the United States
 [File: Gregory Bull/AP Photo]
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Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States could be sent to Guatemala under a bilateral agreement signed by the Central American nation last year, according to documents sent to US asylum officers in recent days and seen by Reuters.

In a January 4 email, field office staff at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) were told Mexican nationals will be included in the populations "amenable" to the agreement with Guatemala.

The controversial agreement, brokered last July between the administration of Republican President Donald Trump and the outgoing Guatemalan government, allows US immigration officials to force migrants requesting asylum at the US-Mexican border to apply for protection there.
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Trump has made clamping down on undocumented migration a top priority of his presidency and a major theme of his 2020 re-election campaign. His administration penned similar deals with Honduras and El Salvador last year.

Democrats and pro-migrant groups have opposed the move and contend asylum seekers will face danger in Guatemala, where the murder rate is five times that of the US, according to 2017 data compiled by the World Bank. The country's asylum office is tiny and thinly staffed and critics have argued it does not have the capacity to properly vet a significant increase in cases.

Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, who takes office this month, has said he will review the agreement.

Acting Deputy US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said in a tweet in December that Mexicans were being considered for inclusion under the agreement.

USCIS referred to Cuccinelli's tweet, and US Customs and Border Protection and Mexico's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Unaccompanied minors cannot be sent to Guatemala under the agreement, which currently applies only to migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico who entered the US after November 19, 2019, according to the guidance documents. Exceptions are made only if the migrants can establish that they are "more likely than not" to be persecuted or tortured in Guatemala based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

Numbers of Central American migrants apprehended at the border fell sharply in the second part of 2019 after Mexico deployed National Guard troops to stem the flow, under pressure from Trump.

Overall, border arrests are expected to drop again in December for the seventh straight month, a Homeland Security official told Reuters last week, citing preliminary data.

The US government says another reason for the reduction in border crossings is a separate programme, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, that has forced more than 56,000 non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico for their US immigration court hearings.

With fewer Central Americans at the border, US attention has turned to Mexicans crossing irregularly or requesting asylum. Around 150,000 Mexican single adults were apprehended at the border in fiscal 2019, down sharply from previous decades but still enough to bother US immigration hawks.


SOURCE: REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
Bangladesh student's rape sparks protests demanding death penalty

Protesters march along city's main roads, halting traffic to demand rapist's arrest and capital punishment for convicts.

6 Jan 2020
Police said about 1,500 students joined the protests, which remained peaceful [Munir Uz Zaman/AFP]

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The sexual assault of a student at a top university in Bangladesh has triggered angry protests in the capital Dhaka, with demonstrators calling for the death penalty for all the convicted rapists.

Demonstrators on Monday linked arms and marched along main roads in Dhaka, halting traffic to demand the perpetrator's arrest within 24 hours.
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Signs held up in the protest included messages such as: "No mercy to rapist" and "Please tell me, am I next?"

"Rape is an unforgivable offence. In Bangladesh, the punishment for rape is very slow," said Shahela, a demonstrator who, like the 21-year-old victim of Sunday's attack, is a student at Dhaka University.

"We want quick executions for the perpetrators so that others are deterred from committing such crimes," she said.

Nurul Haque Nur, vice president of Dhaka University Central Students' Union, said: "Dhaka University is considered the supreme educational institute of the country. It is very shameful that a student of that institute was raped."

"We demand that all the rape cases in the country including this one are processed under a speedy tribunal and that the rapists are brought to justice," he said.

Jannat Ul Firdous, a Dhaka University student, said rapists must be killed.

"We want nothing but the rapists' execution by hanging. How is it possible that women can't move freely in an independent country? We can't just passively witness the assaults of rapists. We demand that the rapists are hanged," the protester said.

Police said about 1,500 students joined the protests, which remained peaceful. AFP news agency estimated that twice as many people joined the rally.
Sunday's assault

The victim in Sunday's attack was travelling to a friend's home when she was gagged, taken to a remote area in Dhaka's outskirts and sexually assaulted.

The victim was taken to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital at about midnight on Sunday, and is being treated there.

"We are working to arrest [the attacker]," Sazzadur Rahman, senior police official, told AFP news agency.

Local rights group Ain o Salish Kendra said there were 1,413 reported rape cases in Bangladesh last year, double the number recorded in 2018. Dozens of victims were killed while 10 committed suicide after they were attacked.

Nationwide protests gripped Bangladesh in April after a 19-year-old student who accused her seminary's head teacher of sexual harassment was doused in kerosene and set on fire.

Sixteen people were later sentenced to death over the attack, including the teacher.

VIDEO
SOUTH 2 NORTH
Behind the global rape epidemic


SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
India's JNU attacked: 'We thought ... we all will lose our lives'

Students and teachers at premier university recount the horrors of Sunday night's violence that injured dozens.

by Bilal Kuchay
6 Jan 2020
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New Delhi, India - Surya Prakash - a visually impaired student at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) - says masked assailants broke into his ground-floor room in Sabarmati Hostel and beat him with iron rods.

"I kept shouting that I'm blind but they didn't listen to me," Prakash, 25, who is pursuing his PhD in Sanskrit, told Al Jazeera on Monday.
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Prakash's left arm and back are swollen. He told Al Jazeera that he could not say who the attackers were.

He is among at least 26 students and teachers who were injured during Sunday night's violence that has caused an outrage, with people across several cities staging solidarity protests on Monday.

Videos shared on social media showed masked men roaming inside the university's hostels and attacking students and teachers with iron rods, sticks and sledgehammers and vandalising properties.

Prakash was rescued by other students and taken to New Delhi's All India Medical Institute of Sciences (AIIMS) for treatment. He was discharged after an hour.

Protests have been organised across several Indian cities
 in solidarity with JNU students [Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

"I couldn't sleep all night. I froze in my bed thinking they might come again," he said.

The Sanskrit scholar says he is getting threat calls from unknown numbers for speaking out.

"I'm scared but I do not want to remain silent. I want everyone to know what happened with me. I want them to understand that nobody is safe here," he said, adding that he is not part of any political party and spends most of his time studying in his room.
'Mayhem'

Students and teachers at JNU have been protesting for the past few months against fee rise, which they say will hurt poor students.

The university, a bastion of left-wing student politics, witnessed scuffles between the left-leaning student's body and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - a student group linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - earlier on Sunday.
I'm scared but I don't want to remain silent. I want them to understand that nobody is safe here.

SURYA PRAKASH, VISUALLY IMPAIRED STUDENT AT JNU

The JNU Teachers Association had called for a meeting to restore peace on campus on Sunday evening, a move backed by the students' union.

Witnesses said the attacks on Sunday were carried out by ABVP members, a charge the right-wing student outfit has denied.

Aishe Ghosh, president of the students' union who was badly injured, and other students and teachers said the violent mob created "mayhem" and "terrorised" the university for close to three hours.

Many Indians took to social media to criticise the handling of the situation by the Delhi police, and some questioned the police on why it did not arrest the perpetrators of the violence.

The incident came weeks after police were accused of brutalities in handling student protests against the new citizenship law at Jamia Millia Islamia university and Aligarh Muslim University.

Meanwhile, the Delhi police have registered a case against unidentified people for rioting and damage to property.

Violence at Sabarmati Hostel

At a news conference on Monday, the JNU Teachers' Association urged India's president to dismiss JNU's vice chancellor in the wake of the violence.

"When we saw group wearing masks, we thought we will talk to them and ask them who they are and why are they in the campus wearing masks," Atul Sood, a professor at JNU, told Al Jazeera. "Before we could reach to them, they started throwing stones at us."

"Everyone ran for safety but the mob armed with rods and sticks chased the students inside hostels and beat many of them. It was complete mayhem," he said.

Many of the students chased by the rampaging mob took shelter inside Sabarmati Hostel, where most of the violence happened.

Jyoti, who withheld her surname due to security reasons, said she was in her room when the mob attacked Sabarmati Hostel.

She rushed out into the corridor to see what was happening. "They were about 30 people armed with iron rods, hammers and carrying some spray and beating students," she told Al Jazeera.
The only sound was doors being banged and glasses being broken and students screaming and crying for help

SHREYA GHOSH, A PHD STUDENT AT THE CENTRE FOR POLITICAL STUDIES, JNU

About a dozen students including Jyoti made a human chain to stop them from entering into their rooms. Jyoti took out her phone and began making videos.

"When they saw me doing the video recording, they beat me with sticks," she said. "But other students saved me. Everyone was scared and many students had panic attacks and were rushed to hospital later."

On Monday, the wardens of the hostel resigned, stating in their resignation letters that they were quitting on "moral grounds" as they were unable to provide security to the hostel residents.

Shreya Ghosh, a PhD student at the Centre for Political Studies, was one of the students who took shelter inside Sabarmati Hostel in a single-occupancy room along with nearly 20 other students.

"We put the lights off, mobiles on silent mode. At least 10 of us stood against the door to block it so that attackers could not come in," she said.

"We thought if the door gets unblocked, we all will lose our lives."

"The only sounds we heard were doors being banged and glasses being broken and students screaming and crying for help," she told Al Jazeera.

Ghosh and several other students at JNU alleged that police and security personnel did not come for their help while they were under attack.

"It was an organised mob who were determined to do what they were up to. It was a different sense of fear," she said.

"I'm speechless because police knew this is happening, the security knew this is happening and there was no one from them to stop this for one hour despite police being there in the campus and despite students calling for help."

The Delhi police said they were investigating how masked men entered the university. "Social media and CCTV footage will be a part of the investigation," police officer Devendra Arya told Reuters news agency.

JNU students and many teachers have faced attacks and have been called "anti-nationals" for opposing the Hindu supremacist agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"If ABVP and this government thinks that we will stop fighting against its brutal policies, they are mistaken. JNU will fight till its last student is alive. They cannot break our spirit," said another student, Kaushiki.

A general view of a vandalised hostel room on the JNU
 campus [Money Sharma/AFP]


SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS
Mass anti-government protests turn violent in Guinea
ALL VIOLENCE IS STATE VIOLENCE 
At least 12 injured as president's supporters attack protesters fearing a third term in the office.

6 Jan 2020

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Thousands took to the streets in Guinea in a new anti-government protest on Monday, with partisan violence injuring at least 12 people.

The West African country has been hit by rolling protests since mid-October over concerns President Alpha Conde plans to stay in office for a third term.

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On Monday, tens of thousands marched from the suburbs of the capital, Conakry, to the city centre.

Wearing the red colour of the opposition, protesters carried placards reading: "No to a new constitution" and "No to a third mandate for Alpha Conde".

Conde, 81, announced a new draft constitution last month which critics fear he will use to pursue a third term.

Major opposition figures, including former prime ministers Cellou Dalein Diallo and Sidya Toure, protested in Conakry on Monday.

Abdourahmane Sanoh, the coordinator of National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), an alliance of opposition groups behind the protests, said there were plans to increase the number of rallies from January 13.

"I ask that the all Guinean people be ready from January 13," he said.

About 20 people have died since the protests began, according to the AFP news agency, and one security officer has also been killed.

Demonstrations also took part in regional cities such as Labe, Pita, Dalaba, Mamou and Boke, witnesses told the AFP.

But the protests turned violent in the Conde stronghold of Kankan in the east of the country, as the president's supporters attacked protesters.

"At least 12 people were injured, seven of them badly," said a security official in Conakry, who declined to be named. A medical official confirmed the figure.

Cheick Mohamed Kaba, an MP from the opposition Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea party (UFDG), said pro-Conde people "vandalised, ransacked and pillaged" property belonging to ethnic Fulani people.

The majority of UFDG supporters are Fulani, Guinea's largest ethnic group.

Conde's Rally of the Guinean People party draws most of its support from the country's second-largest ethnic group, the Malinke.

The violence comes after the political opposition said it would prevent legislative elections - planned for February 16 - from taking place, citing irregularities in the electoral roll.

Conde is a former opposition figure himself who was jailed under Guinea's previous authoritarian regimes.

He became the country's first democratically elected president in 2010 before winning re-election in 2015. Under the present constitution, presidents are limited to two terms in office.

Despite initial hopes of a new political dawn in the country, critics say his rule has become increasingly authoritarian.


---30---
France to strip special pension from writer accused of child rape

Essayist Gabriel Matzneff is being investigated by French police for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl.
6 Jan 2020

Underage relationships have featured in Matzneff's writing, 
and in 1977 he published a piece in Le Monde newspaper giving
 his support to three people convicted of having sexual relations
 with 13- and 14-year-olds [File: Jacques Demarthon/AFP]
THOSE SO CALLED PEOPLE WERE WHITE MEN

France's culture minister said Monday that a writer accused of raping and seducing children should be stripped of a special state pension.

Award-winning essayist Gabriel Matzneff is being investigated by French police after the publication of a book detailing his sexual relationship with a girl of 14 over three decades ago.
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Underage relationships have featured in Matzneff's writing, and in 1977 he published a piece in Le Monde newspaper supporting three people convicted of raping teenagers.

In a 1990 television talk show, Matzneff, 83, talked about his sexual exploits with girls.

Despite his views, he was named by the Culture Ministry as an "officer of the arts and letters" in 1995 and he won the prestigious literary award, the Renaudot Essai, in 2013.

Franck Riester, current culture minister, said Matzneff should be deprived of cash from a hardship fund from the National Books Centre (CNL) for elderly writers in financial straits.

In a statement, he said the author should not be granted the annual allowance if he applies for it again.

Matzneff is reported to have received around 8,000 euros ($8,900) from the fund last year, and up to 160,000 euros since 2002, according to a French Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche.

The case has highlighted what many see as an overly permissive attitude towards sexual harassment and assaults in France.

Police opened a formal investigation into Matzneff after publisher 
Vanessa Springora described her tortured relationship with the 
writer in a book called, Consent [File: Martin Bureau/AFP]

The French film establishment has been rocked by rape accusations against directors Roman Polanski and Luc Besson, while star Adele Haenel said she was sexually harassed by the director of her first film when she was 12.

All three men have denied the claims.

The head of the CNL, Vincent Monade, said the organisation had resisted Matzneff being awarded the allowance when he first applied for it, but bowed to the request under pressure from politicians and other famous authors who lobbied for him.

He said they had recommended to the minister that the grant now be withdrawn.

Police opened a formal investigation into Matzneff last week after leading publisher Vanessa Springora described her tortured relationship with the writer in a book called, Consent.

In it, she describes how Matzneff, then in his fifties, would wait for her outside her school and then take her back to his home for sex.

Prosecutors said their inquiry would focus on "rapes committed against a minor" aged under 15.

Matzneff has denied any wrongdoing and said there had been an "exceptional love" between him and Springora.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
More than 61,000 missing in Mexico amid spiralling drug violence

The number of missing is 50 percent higher than previously estimated and follows record number of homicides in 2019.

6 Jan 2020
Mexico now says at least 61,000 people have gone missing
 in the country's drug wars. The 43 Ayotzinapa students who 
disappeared five years ago have become emblematic of 
the violence [File: Marco Ugarte/AP Photo]
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The Mexican government said on Monday more than 61,000 people had gone missing as a result of the increasingly violent drug war with powerful cartels, 50 percent more than the government previously estimated.

The new figure from the one-year-old administration of Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, compares with about 40,000 missing cited by the government as recently as June.
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"The official data of missing persons is 61,637," Karla Quintana, head of the National Registry of Missing or Missing Persons (RNPED), told a news conference.

She said about a quarter of the missing were women.
VIDEO Mexico violence: Homicide rate reached record in 2019 (2;33)
More than 97.4 percent of the total have gone missing since 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderon sent the army to the streets to fight drug traffickers, fragmenting the cartels and leading to vicious internal fighting.

AMLO has adopted a policy of "hugs, not bullets" in dealing with violent crime, focussing on addressing inequality and tackling corruption, but the death toll has continued to climb.

The country suffered a record number of homicides in 2019.

Separately, officials said efforts to find the missing had so far uncovered 1,124 corpses in 873 clandestine burial pits.

The country's National Search Commission said in its first 13 months of work, only about one-third of the bodies found were identified and less than a quarter of the total had been returned to relatives.

The government has set up DNA databases to help identify bodies, but the majority of those found still go unidentified.

Drug and kidnapping gangs often use unmarked pits to dispose of the bodies of their victims or rivals.

The commission said about a third of the corpses it had found were located in just three of the country's 31 states: the northern state of Sinaloa, the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and the Pacific coast state of Colima.


SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Philippine vice president brands Duterte's drug war a failure

Leni Robredo said only 1 percent of the estimated supply of methamphetamine has been seized in the last three years.

6 Jan 2020
Presidents and vice presidents are elected separately in
 the Philippines, resulting in candidates from rival parties 
like Duterte and Robredo in the country's top leadership 
[File: Bullit Marquez/AP Photo]
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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign against illegal drugs has failed to substantially eradicate the menace and ensnare important drug lords, and should be reformed to prevent further bloodshed, the country's vice president said late on Monday.

Vice President Leni Robredo, who leads the opposition, also called for a stop to the police practice of home inspections that have led to the killings of petty drug suspects.
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The vice president has been a longtime critic of Duterte's drug crackdown and her latest comments are likely to deepen the political divide between the two leaders.

Presidents and vice presidents are elected separately in the Philippines, resulting in candidates from rival parties like Duterte and Robredo ending up in the country's top leadership and often disagreeing on policies.

Robredo said only about 1 percent of the estimated supply of methamphetamine, a powerful banned stimulant known locally as "shabu", has been seized in the last three years.

Duterte launched the crackdown - his signature policy - when he took office in mid-2016.
VIDEOINSIDE STORY - Can Rodrigo Duterte win the war on illegal drugs? (25:11)

"Very clearly, based on official data, despite the killings of Filipinos and all the money spent, the amount of shabu and drug money we've seized has not gone beyond 1 percent of those in circulation," Robredo said at a news conference.

"If we really want to end the scourge of illegal drugs, we need to run after the big suppliers and not just the small-time pushers," she added, saying that the campaign would not succeed unless it was reformed to be more strategic, better organised and closely supervised in all aspects by the president.
Mounting death toll

In December, the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) announced that an estimated 5,552 people had been killed during government operations between July 1, 2016, and November 30, 2019.

But authorities had already released data in June 2019 saying that the death toll was 6,600 as of May 2019, raising questions about the government's handling of the data.

Human rights advocates argue the number of deaths reached at least 27,000 as of June 2019.

A mass is held during the wake of three-year-old Myca 
Ulpina, who died in crossfire between police and illegal 
drugs suspects in June 2019 in Rizal province just outside 
of Manila [File: Rolex dela Pena/EPA]

The Philippine vice president's latest remarks were largely based on information gathered during a brief stint in a government anti-drugs committee, which Duterte asked her to help lead last year after her constant criticisms of his bloody crackdown.

Robredo surprised many by accepting the offer, but Duterte fired her after 18 days after she started seeking confidential information about the campaign.

Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo dismissed Robredo's statements, saying Duterte's campaign had succeeded in closing many drug laboratories and forcing the surrender of a large number of drug suspects.

Big-time drug lords have also been neutralised, Panelo said, although he failed to immediately provide a list of names.

"If you noticed, when she was threatening to release this report, she implied that there were some irregularities discovered, a bomb that would explode on your face. It's a dud," Panelo told reporters.
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Robredo, a 54-year-old former human rights lawyer and political newcomer, has openly criticised the campaign against illegal drugs launched by Duterte, a longtime city mayor and state prosecutor known for his extra-tough approach on crime and brash speaking style.

She said she accepted Duterte's offer to help oversee the crackdown despite warnings by her advisers and allies so that she could help save lives.

One of her first moves was to request confidential documents from law enforcers, including a list of key drug suspects singled out under Duterte's campaign.

Duterte warned Robredo about sharing confidential information about the anti-drug campaign with his foreign critics, including human rights advocates.

At least two complaints about mass murder have been filed before the International Criminal Court over the deaths, but Duterte and the police have denied condoning extrajudicial killings under the crackdown.

Duterte has warned that his bloody campaign will continue up to the last day of his presidency in June 2022.


SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

India suffers hottest decade on record

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India suffers hottest decade on record

National weather office calls impact of global warming 'unmistakable' with more than 1,500 people killed last year.

7 Jan 2020
India's five warmest years on record fell in the last 10 years,
 with 2016 being the hottest [File: Amit Dave/Reuters]
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The last decade was India's hottest on record with the national weather office calling the impact of global warming "unmistakable" and extreme weather killing more than 1,500 people last year.

India, home to 1.3 billion people, is at the forefront of climate change suffering devastating floods, dire water shortages and baking temperatures. The southern city of Chennai last year declared "day zero" as taps ran dry.

Temperatures between 2010 and 2019 were 0.36 degrees Celsius (0.65 degrees Fahrenheit) above the long-term average, the hottest decade since records began in 1901, the Indian Meteorological Department said on Monday.

Extreme weather also killed more than 1,500 people last year, the seventh-hottest, the IMD said.

They included 850 people killed by heavy rain and flooding and another 350 in summer temperatures of up to 51C (123.8F). Lighting and storms killed another 380 people.

India's five warmest years on record all fell in the last 10 years, with 2016 being the hottest.

Eleven of the 15 warmest years were also during the past 15 years, the IMD said.

The average for 2019 would have been higher were it not for record cold in northern India in December.

Last year also saw eight cyclones form over the north Indian Ocean, below the record of 10 last reached in 1976, including five over the Arabian Sea, equalling the previous high of 1902, the IMD said.

"The impact of global warming on India is unmistakable," IMD chief Mrityunjay Mohapatra told the Times of India newspaper. "The past year had extreme weather during all seasons."

The United Nations said in December that the past decade was set to be the planet's hottest since records began. Each of the last four decades has been hotter than the preceding one.


SOURCE: AFP NEWS AGENCY