Malaysians to protest after probe into claims of improper stock trading by anti-corruption chief is 'inconclusive'

JANUARY 18, 2022

ByBHAVAN JAIPRAGAS HADI AZMI

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

A poster for a protest planned against Malaysia’s anti-corruption chief.

Malaysia’s Securities Commission on Tuesday said an investigation into allegations of improper stock trading by the country’s anti-corruption chief was inconclusive, a finding likely to further rile government critics who are planning a protest against the official this weekend.

In an immediate response to the capital markets regulator’s decision, Azam Baki, the chief commissioner of the powerful Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), framed the probe’s findings as conclusive that he did not commit an offence.More from AsiaOneRead the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite.

He said he was grateful for the decision and would “continue to fight corruption in the country without fear or favour”.

Azam, 58, has dominated headlines for weeks since a whistle-blower revealed he owned stocks of publicly listed companies well above the 100,000 ringgit (S$32,107) threshold set for civil servants.

The saga took a twist after Azam revealed in a press conference that it was his brother Nasir who purchased the shares with his trading account.

While the Securities Commission launched an investigation, Azam and senior MACC officials dug in their heels – saying that the claims against the top graft-buster were motivated by “revenge politics”.

On Tuesday, the Securities Commission said its investigation had explored whether there had been a breach of rules that require a trading account to be “opened in the name of the beneficial owner or authorised nominee”.

“The Securities Commission has concluded its inquiry and based on the evidence gathered, the Securities Commission is not able to conclusively establish that a breach of Section 25(4) [of the Securities Central Depository Act] has occurred,” the regulator said.

Chief Commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Azam Baki. PHOTO: MACC

The development came as Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s critics sharpened their knives, with opposition MPs angered by the abrupt postponement of a select committee meeting that was to look into the saga.

Parliamentary officials said the proceeding scheduled for Wednesday was indefinitely postponed due to “several legal issues” that required the deliberation of the legislature’s legal office.

Azam, a career graft-buster, had earlier filed a civil suit against anti-corruption activist Lalitha Kunaratnam over her reports about the stockholdings in December.

On social media, reports about the Securities Commission’s findings on Tuesday prompted dismay.

“Now everyone can use their relatives’ names to buy shares. No more insider trading rules also. Way to go [Securities Commission]! Yahoo!,” wrote Twitter user TJ.

Lim Guan Eng, the leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP), described Tuesday’s decision as an instance of “regulatory and enforcement failure”.

The regulator’s inability to act against Azam meant the section of the law governing proxy trading was “impotent and broken”, Lim said.

The decision would not only result in a loss of investor confidence but also raised questions on whether the Securities Commission was capable of performing its “statutory duty without fear or favour”, he added.

Lawyer Syahredzan Johan told This Week in Asia the ongoing episode was the biggest crisis for the MACC since the multibillion-dollar plunder of the 1MDB state fund.

The MACC has vast powers under the country’s anti-corruption laws but its reputation has been tarnished in recent years due to a widespread perception that the agency sat on its hands during the 1MDB scandal, which took place during the 2009-2018 tenure of ex-prime minister Najib Razak.

“To those who remember the 1MDB controversy circa 2015-16, the perception was that our institutions failed us with the various findings of ‘no wrongdoing’ and ‘everything is fine’ at the time,” said Syahredzan, a member of the DAP. “There are echoes of what happened then in the episode unfolding before us today.”

Cynthia Gabriel, executive director of the Kuala Lumpur-based Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism, said it was crucial for the Securities Commission to make public the details of its probe.

The activist added that a “full and independent probe” was required to establish whether public servant asset declaration laws were breached and to determine the source of funds used in the purchase of the shares.

Before the Securities Commission’s statement, civil society groups planning a protest against Azam on Saturday said they had three demands: his arrest, an immediate start to legal proceedings, and a restructuring of the MACC.

“The rakyat [‘people’] have been left for too long without a satisfactory explanation from the government and the authorities,” the groups and the youth wings of opposition parties said in a joint statement.

Read AlsoMalaysia's top anti-graft official to cooperate with regulator after share trading allegations


With the select committee hearing postponed, the groups questioned whether the people had further recourse to “ensure that those who have been given our trust can carry out their duties independently and fairly”.

The statement indicated the protest would be held at 11am on Saturday in front of the Sogo shopping centre in downtown Kuala Lumpur – a long-favoured starting point for anti-government demonstrations.

The police on Monday said they had not received applications for a rally from the organisers, and warned that any mass gathering would breach Covid-19 rules.

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri, whose office has supervisory powers over the MACC, has sparingly commented on the saga – indicating on Jan 8 that he hoped the matter would be looked into by the authorities with impartiality.

The prime minister’s office did not immediately comment following Tuesday’s developments. Gabriel, the anti-corruption activist, urged Ismail Sabri to “immediately convene a high-level task force to investigate the Azamgate fiasco”.

US Signaling Putin that Ukraine Will Be Bloody

CIA, Green Berets prepare Ukraine for guerrilla war, while Washington eyes other Russian weak points

Jeff Stein  and  Peter Eisner SPYTALK

The diplomatic game of chicken between Russia and the U.S. appears to be rolling toward a violent climax, with a U.S. official warning Tuesday that the situation is "extremely dangerous," and that Russia could invade Ukraine "at any moment." The U.S.-Russia talks appear to be “at a dead end,” as one Kremlin diplomat put it last week, even as they intend to give it one more try on Friday in Vienna.

Washington has taken pains to appear girding Ukraine for battle, with CIA Director Bill Burns and Secretary of State Antony Blinken flying off to Kyiv for urgent meetings, all the while expediting intelligence support and defensive arms shipments. On Tuesday a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators visiting Kyiv vowed solidarity and weapons for the Ukrainian government and people, including possibly deadly Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. The CIA and U.S. Green Berets have been preparing Ukraine troops for unconventional warfare—a defense-only move, they say. But the training, which has included “tactical stuff,” is “going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,” a former senior intelligence official told Yahoo News’ Zach Dorfman.

(Staff Sgt. Eddie Siguenza/Army National Guard)

"I think Vladimir Putin has made the biggest mistake of his career in underestimating how courageously the people of Ukraine will fight him if he invades," Senator Richard Blumenthal told reporters.

No one imagines that Ukraine can imperil, much less rout, a Russian invasion, but Washington’s part in the darkening drama has been to warn Putin that an attempt at a permanent occupation will be plagued by a bloody, U.S.-backed insurgency that will make its experience in Afghanistan seem mild in comparison. 

And Washington could well be tempted to stir up trouble elsewhere.

“U.S. Special Forces Are Training for Full-Blown War with Russia,” a  headline in The National Interest, a bipartisan conservative magazine, trumpeted last May. Green Berets and other American spec ops teams have been conducting joint training exercises in a Russia-ringing arc from northern Scandinavia through the Baltics to the Balkans and beyond, involving nearly two dozen foreign counterparts (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Spain and, of course, Ukraine).  Albania was just added to the mix. U.S. Special Forces have also been welcomed in some of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

“If Putin invades Ukraine with a major military force, U.S. and NATO military assistance—intelligence, cyber, anti-armor and anti-air weapons, offensive naval missiles—would ratchet up significantly,” James Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was the supreme allied commander at NATO, told the New York Times last week. “And if it turned into a Ukrainian insurgency, Putin should realize that after fighting insurgencies ourselves for two decades, we know how to arm, train and energize them.”

Stavridis may have misspoken. “Fighting insurgencies,” we haven’t been so good at, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. efforts were undermine by their tethers to corrupt, inefficient regimes and officials. Supporting insurgencies, we’ve been better at. 

But CNN reports that some Biden officials, “wary of getting bogged down in an anti-occupation support effort,” are not so gung-ho to green light an unconventional warfare campaign that could go on for years. Afghanistan is a not distant memory, it’s not even over.

"We can exact some pain, but there is a big difference between exacting pain and actually having leverage," a senior US official said.

Optimists look back to the U.S.-backed Muslim uprising against the Soviet Red Army during the 1980s, especially after the CIA deployed game-changing Stingers, which neutralized Russian warplanes and gunships. But other CIA-backed insurgencies—Nicaragua in the 1980s, Iraq in the 1990s and Syria over the past decade—have fallen far short of that mark. With one major exception—covertly backing Poland’s Solidarity movement in the 1980s—the CIA’s Cold War record of clandestine operations aimed at the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites was mostly a bust. 

History Lessons

In the summer of 1948, President Harry S Truman’s White House National Security Council drew up “perhaps one of the most important documents in the CIA's history,” as a an agency planning document described it. NCS Directive 10/2 was a plan for all-out "covert operations" and “activities” against the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites.  

Frank Wisner, the leader of Its psychological warfare component, thought the U.S. could exploit Russia’s “internal strains” and "psychological fission" to crack the Soviet Union.  The project had some psywar successes, publicizing Soviet repression and economic failures, mainly through such CIA-backed propaganda vehicles as Radio Free Europe. But its efforts to subvert the USSR and its satellites by supporting or inventing anti-communist organizations in Russia were a spectacular bust. The KGB was always one step ahead.

“There were hundreds of these operations. And, yes, they ranged all the way from Bulgaria in the southeast of Europe all the way up to Poland, even in the Baltic states that were under Soviet control—or were part of the Soviet Union,” Scott Anderson, author of The Quiet Americans, told NPR in 2020. “They were uniformly disastrous. Virtually everybody who was parachuted in either disappeared or were captured and executed.”

In the 1960s, the CIA was busy at war elsewhere with the Soviets or their putative proxies,  in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.  Covert action aimed directly at Mother Russia was pretty much abandoned over the next two decades.  

Ronald Reagan would reverse that.

On May 20, 1982, Reagan signed into law National Security Decision Directive 32, authorizing diplomatic, propaganda, political, and military action to “contain and reverse the expansion of Soviet control and military presence through the world,” as Seth Jones, vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies put it in a 2018 paper.  Reagan followed up months later with an even more aggressive Top Secret directive,  one which declared “it was U.S. policy to unhinge Moscow’s grip on Eastern Europe and to reunite it—eventually—with Western Europe.” Its most lauded success,  code-named QRHelpful, funneled $20 million worth of covert support to the Solidarity labor movement. Before the end of the decade, Eastern Europe cracked open, the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union, long sagging under its own economic weight and military adventurism, was well on the way to dissolution. 

Tremors in Kazakhstan

It’s easy to understand why Vladimir Putin might’ve been rattled by the popular protests that swept across Kazakhstan early this month. His hands were already full with the crisis he’d manufactured in Ukraine. He blamed foreign interests, and people “apparently trained in terrorist camps abroad” for the unrest, which reportedly included well organized attacks on police stations. 

Analysts awarded Putin a victory for his quick military intervention (officially, an action by Moscow’s version of NATO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization). But now he’s saddled with propping up yet another deeply unpopular and corrupt regime—which makes Kazakhstan a tempting target for the CIA  and other Western intelligence agencies, especially should Putin go ahead and invade Ukraine. He appears deeply concerned that Kazakhstan, even Belarus, could be ripe for another wave of Western backed “color revolutions,” which shattered Moscow’s control of Eastern Europe beginning 20 years ago.

“Of course, there is definitely polarity in Kazakhstan between the rich and very poor, which has never been seriously challenged before now, and that is an important upshot from these protests,” says Michael Frachetti, a professor of anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis, who specializes in Central Europe.

“The future of Kazakhstan will be ultimately be decided by approaches the government takes going forward—whether they want to bolster a representative relationship with the populace or double down on the path toward greater autocracy,” Frachetti said. 

“I suspect Putin is finding out that they don’t make spheres of influence like they used to, and that in this populist era he may be sitting over powder kegs more than client states,” Robert Manning, a former State Department official at the Atlantic Council, wrote earlier this month.

That’s a message Washington wants Moscow to hear in the Kabuki shadow war over Ukraine. And it’s understood that some in Washington are indeed serious about setting fires in Kazakhstan and elsewhere—not just Ukraine—should Russian troops and tanks cross the Dnieper in the coming days. 

But the theater of veiled and unveiled threats is coming to a close. The real thing starts soon.

More than 20,000 people sign petition calling on Hong Kong to drop cull of hamsters over Covid-19 fears

JANUARY 18, 2022

ByKATHLEEN MAGRAMONADIA LAM

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Government workers take away hamsters at Little Boss in Causeway Bay on Tuesday.
Edmond So


More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling on authorities to stop a cull of hamsters launched after evidence emerged of the first possible animal-to-human transmission of Covid-19 in Hong Kong.

The surprise announcement on Tuesday also left some residents scrambling to buy enough food for their animals after some pet shops closed early for deep cleaning, while an animal welfare group said it had been flooded with calls asking for information about getting rid of hamsters.More from AsiaOneRead the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite.

Authorities asked pet shops and owners to hand over about 2,000 hamsters imported since Dec 22 for euthanisation and temporarily suspended imports of small animals as a measure to stop any possible animal-to-human transmission risk of Covid-19.

The petition at change.org calling for an end to the cull. PHOTO: South China Morning Post

A change.org petition titled “Stop the Government from Wrongfully Euthanising Little Boss’ Small Pets” expressed outrage over the move.

“Every pet owner knows that their pet’s lives are just as important as their own, yet the Hong Kong government fails to see that they, the very upholders of law, are on the dangerous path to the murders of many lives that are barely any different to ours,” the petition said.

Hong Kong Life on Palm said it received more than 60 inquiries about abandoning hamsters within just hours of the announcement of the cull, compared to the usual one to two inquiries a day.

“We had already tried our best to persuade them, some gave up their minds after that,” said Sophia Chan, president of the organisation. “However, about 20 pet owners did not change their mind. It involves about 30 to 40 hamsters.”

She added that those included ones bought after Dec 22 and volunteers were working around the clock to pick up the animals.

Chan advised pet owners to observe whether the hamster had developed any respiratory symptoms such as runny nose or weight loss and seek out a veterinarian’s opinion. People should not abandon the hamsters on the street but contact volunteers for help, she said.

A hamster at Little Boss pet shop. PHOTO: Facebook

Health authorities decided on the cull after 11 samples taken from hamsters came back positive and two more human infections tied to the Little Boss pet shop in Causeway Bay were reported.

A sales assistant was confirmed as infected with Delta on Sunday and a customer who visited on Jan 8 was listed as a case on Tuesday, while her husband is believed to also be carrying the virus.

All 34 licensed pet stores that sell hamsters across the city will have to temporarily shut down, while about 150 customers will have to quarantine. Several other shops selling cats and rabbits announced they would suspend services to ensure their animals were safe

Two subsidiary stores of Little Boss, I Love Rabbit and Miss Rabbit, will also close their branches for two days for deep cleaning.

Read AlsoHong Kong pet shop worker may have 'caught Covid-19 from imported hamsters'

Pet owners were advised to order supplies from their online website.

Miffy Mak, who owns two hamsters, said she always bought supplies and goods from the stores that were ordered to halt operations.

“Luckily, I went to the pet store last weekend to purchase food for the hamsters; otherwise it would be a big worry for me,” said the woman in her late 20s.

“I was appalled when the government suddenly announced they were going to euthanise the animals. Hamsters are still living beings. If this outbreak was linked to pet cats or dogs, the government would not make such a rash decision.”

One pet owner, who gave his surname as Yu, told a television station he was scrambling to secure supplies for his pets.

“I’m rushing to buy supplies for the little animals back home. I usually buy from the branches under these brands but now they’re going to be shut for a while. A lot of people are going everywhere to find pet food” he said.

Another person, who gave his surname as Chan, said it was heartbreaking that the government suddenly decided to cull the animals.

“It’s heartbreaking because at the end of the day lives will be lost. But I think it’s hard to decide what is the right or wrong course of action,” he said. “They should have allowed more time to analyse the full picture and confirm who infected whom.”

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.

Stop the Government from Wrongfully Euthanising Little Boss’ Small Pets

23,721 have signed. Let’s get to 25,000!

Soren LEE started this petition to Hong Kong SPCA and 

Over 2000 pets at risk for euthanasia.

Over 2000 lives on the brink of being lost.

On 18th of January, 2022, upon a staff member from Little Boss transmitting COVID-19, a hamster tested positive for the illness. The government has now decided that their optimal solution to this is to test all of the animals in the shop at the time and all of the pets that were purchased before December 22nd, and euthanise them whether or not they test positive.

Every pet owner knows that their pet’s lives are just as important as their own, yet the Hong Kong government fails to see that they, the very upholders of law, are on the dangerous path to the murders of many lives that are barely any different to ours. They fail to recognise that the lives of animals are not subjects for their selfish development, and that the act of testing the pets for scientific research and euthanising them regardless of whether they test positive or not is heartless and cruel. Just like humans, these pets could be quarantined and isolated rather than killed off mercilessly, yet authorities insisted on trading over 2000 lives for the sake of “public health needs”.

Therefore, we are asking you to lend a hand by signing this petition to support this cause. A pet is an owner’s best friend, and due to the government’s orders, thousands of people could unjustifiably lose their dearest companions. With your help, we can successfully convince the government that their decision is unjust and brutal, and you could help save dozens of animals in loving homes and happy lives.

Petition · Stop the Government from Wrongfully Euthanising Little Boss’ Small Pets · Change.org

SPECTACULAR COMMODITY FETISH

Spider-Man comic book page leaps to record $3.36 million at auction

This image provided by Heritage Auctions shows Page 25 from the 1984 Marvel comic Secret Wars No. 8, which tells the origin story of Spider-Man's now-iconic black costume. AP

A single page of original artwork from an acclaimed 1984 comic featuring Spider-Man sold for a record $3.36 million in the United States on Thursday, making the webslinger the world's mightiest auction superhero.

The page features the first appearance of Spidey's black symbiote suit that would later lead to the creation of anti-hero Venom in artwork by Mike Zeck from Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars no. 8.

"This page was the big reveal teased on the cover! This is where Peter Parker actually got his spiffy new black costume," Heritage Auctions said in its description of the artwork for page 25 of the issue.

"But... it's a costume with a secret! Because it very soon turns out to be alive and have its own agenda. This is the origin of the character Venom!"

Bidding for the artwork started at $330,000.

The previous record for a single page of artwork from the interior of an American comic book was a frame showing the first image of Wolverine in a 1974 issue of "The Incredible Hulk."

The page sold for $657,250.

A copy of 1938's Action Comics no.1, the first appearance of Superman, sold for $3.18 million on the first day of Heritage Auctions' four-day comic event in Dallas, Texas, the auction house said on Twitter.

The copy was graded 6.0 by comic book grading authority CGC. Two other copies of the world's most famous comic book issue with a higher grade have previously sold for more at auction, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Agence France-Presse

Taliban 2.0 aren’t so different from the first regime, after all

January 18, 2022 

The international community is closely monitoring the Taliban, after the group re-seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

There is legitimate reason for concern. The Taliban are again ruling through fear and draconian rules.

The Taliban’s last regime, in the mid-1990s, was marked by human rights violations, including massacres, mass detentions and rape. The regime collapsed on Nov. 14, 2001, shortly after the U.S. launched its global war on terrorism.

Even after the Taliban officially fell from power, their subsequent two decades of insurgency produced various gross human rights violations, an encompassing term under international human rights law.

Read news coverage based on evidence, not alarm.Get newsletter

When the Taliban regained control over Afghanistan last year, some outside observers speculated that an evolved version of the group might materialize. These spectators assumed that the Taliban recognized it cannot govern merely with fear and bans.

Many Afghan people still expressed widespread fear and skepticism about the Taliban’s return.

The Taliban say they are adopting a more moderate approach to daily life in Afghanistan. But evidence points to continued human rights violations. Photo by Bilal Guler/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Branding Taliban 2.0

The Taliban have now been in power for almost five months. A clearer image of the human rights and personal freedoms situation in Afghanistan is emerging.

As political science professors specializing in conflict and violence, we find that the Taliban’s changes are limited to international public relations campaigns on social media and other outlets.

While promoting a moderate face to the world, with promises of living “peacefully” and respecting women’s rights, the regime has continued to systematically violate human rights and strengthen its autocratic grip.

Theories about what experts called “Taliban 2.0” continued after the group assumed control over Afghanistan.

Representatives from countries such as Turkey and Qatar encouraged the international community to engage with the Taliban.

While international donors have frozen about $5 billion in foreign aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, some Western countries, including the U.S., have announced increases in aid to address the country’s humanitarian crisis.
Limiting the flow of information

The Taliban have undertaken a systematic media crackdown to achieve their contradictory goals of presenting a softer face to the international community while violating Afghans’ rights.

The group is forcing media to follow two of the Taliban’s dogmatic and moral regulatory bodies’ guidelines.

The Taliban also announced the “11 journalism rules,” which include forbidding journalists from publishing or broadcasting stories that are “contrary to Islam” or “insult national figures.”

About 40% of the country’s media sources have shut down, 6,400 journalists lost their jobs, including 84% of female journalists. Violence against media and journalists has again become widespread.

Many other journalists have left the country.

The media crackdown has a practical reason: limiting the flow of information about the regime’s continued rights violations.

United Nations human rights experts say they have received credible reports of the Taliban killing civilians, as well as hundreds of former Afghanistan security personnel across the country.

The Taliban have shown gruesome hangings of dead bodies and stoning of people to death.

The Taliban’s crackdown on media in Afghanistan has resulted in the majority of the media outlets closing their operations, and many female journalists especially losing their jobs. Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images

An emerging humanitarian crisis

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation has deteriorated under the Taliban. Approximately 23 million Afghans are facing hunger, including 3.2 million children who are suffering from severe malnutrition.

The Taliban leadership denies any responsibility for alleviating the looming humanitarian crisis.

In November 2021, Taliban Prime Minister Mullah Hasan rejected the regime’s responsibility for food insecurity in Afghanistan and asked people to “cry to God to alleviate famine and drought.”

Anas Haqqani, a senior member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha, also downplayed the seriousness of the looming hunger crisis by rhetorically asking a BBC reporter if she had ever witnessed someone dying of hunger.

The Taliban have ordered shopkeepers in Afghanistan to cut the heads off of female mannequins, saying that showing full human figures violates Islamic law. Photo by AFP via Getty Images

Regressing on women’s and girls’ rights

The Taliban’s conduct toward girls and women also reveals a return to previous ways.

The Taliban has banned women from traveling more than 72 kilometers from home without a male relative.

In early December, the Taliban released a decree saying a woman is a “noble and free human being” and should not be forced into a marriage. The international community largely welcomed the announcement.

However, a closer look at the decree reveals that the Taliban formalizes the regime’s right to determine whether a woman actually consents to a union.

The Taliban have systematically reinstated old restrictions on girls education and female employment.

While most primary girls schools are closed across the country, secondary and tertiary education remains completely banned for girls.

In 2017, U.N. Children’s Fund figures showed that 3.7 million Afghan children were out of school, 60% of them girls. This percentage is now likely much greater with the Taliban’s ban on girls education.

This differs from the Taliban’s recent public messaging on girls’ and women’s “right to education and work.”

To the domestic audience, the regime’s messages are vague. Leaders condition reopening girls education, for example, to unclear economic and moral conditions. Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar said recently that once “economic challenges are resolved, we will provide education for all those who want to pursue their studies.”

The Taliban have also banned most female government workers from returning to their jobs, resulting in a workforce restriction that would result in economic losses totaling $1 billion.

The only indication of a “new Taliban” is a much more sophisticated and strategic public relations approach for masking ongoing human rights violations.

Authors

Atal Ahmadzai
Visiting Assistant Professor of International Relations, St. Lawrence University

Faten Ghosn
Professor, School of Government & Public Policy and School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies, University of Arizona

 

Taliban attack women with pepper spray at Kabul University protest

TALIBAN forces opened fire with pepper spray to disperse women protesting for the right to work and education at Kabul University yesterday.

Around 20 had gathered chanting “equality and justice” and held aloft a banner reading “women’s rights, human rights,” when the Islamists arrived in several vehicles.

“My right eye started to hurt,” one of the protesters told AFP after the incident. “I told one of them shame on you and then he pointed his gun at me.”

The Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan in August after the US left the country in a humiliating defeat after 20 years of war and occupation.

It has since banned unauthorised protests and frequently breaks up demonstrations demanding rights for women.

The Islamists were quick to reimpose severe restrictions on women’s right to work and to education with the burqa — which provides full-body covering — also returning.

Last week a group known as the Spontaneous Movement of Afghanistan’s Warrior Women, which was formed when Kabul fell to the Taliban, issued an urgent appeal for support.

They have organised at least 43 protests for women’s rights but have been targeted because of their actions.

“We ask for your help for our evacuation from Afghanistan to a safe place,” it said in a letter.

Hunger ‘poised to kill more Afghans than all the bombs’ in past two decade

An Afghan woman with a child seeks alms from passers-by on a bridge covered with snow in Kabul. AFP

Afghan farmer Abdul Qaher cannot remember a worse drought. Unable to feed his four children after losing his harvest, he took the drastic decision to sell his possessions and move to the western city of Herat to look for work.

Days later, on Aug.15, the Taliban seized power, triggering an economic meltdown that has tipped millions into poverty and made Afghanistan one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

As the harsh winter sets in, Qaher's family are among nearly 9 million Afghans perilously close to famine. "The children don't have warm clothes and it's becoming very cold. We're afraid they'll get sick," he said.

The Taliban's lightning takeover saw billions of dollars in Afghan assets frozen overseas. International funding, which had supported 75% of government spending, also dried up overnight. Banks ran short of cash, millions lost work or went unpaid, the local currency nosedived, while prices rocketed.

 Afghan children eat bread at the Wazir Akbar Khan hill. AFP

Hunger and destitution seem "poised to kill more Afghans than all the bombs and bullets of the past two decades," the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank said, calling donors' suspension of all but emergency aid "the biggest culprit."

But finding a way to avert catastrophe has been complicated by a slew of long-standing UN, US and other sanctions on the Islamist group, which remains a designated terrorist organisation.

In late December, the UN Security Council and the United States gave aid agencies a green light to scale up life-saving assistance without fear of breaking sanctions.

On Tuesday, UN agencies asked donors for $4.4 billion in humanitarian aid for 2022, the largest appeal ever sought for a single country.

But analysts said humanitarian aid was only a sticking plaster - liquidity must be injected into the economy to revive business, trade and livelihoods, and frozen money released to pay for crucial services. "This money is Afghans' money, and these sanctions are hurting vulnerable people," Qaher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on a video call from Herat.

SKIPPING MEALS

Qaher is among 3.5 million Afghans displaced by drought and insecurity. His family shares one room in a camp on the outskirts of Herat. There is no water or electricity and the temperature falls below freezing at night.

The 45-year-old farmer regularly treks into Herat to find rubbish to burn so the family can cook rice and potatoes. He and his wife skip meals so their children can eat. With a record 23 million people — more than half the population — struggling to eat, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) country representative Mary-Ellen McGroarty said Afghanistan faced a "tsunami of hunger."

 A Taliban fighter (C) stands guard as women wait in a queue during a World Food Programme cash distribution in Kabul. AFP

Farmers often move to look for jobs in lean times, but the economic crisis has scuppered other labour options.

"It's created a complete catastrophe. It's taken away Plan B," McGroarty said from the capital, Kabul. "I've had women drop at my feet screaming for assistance. I've met many men who are scavenging in bins for dry bread to feed their kids."

When she travelled to the northern province of Badakhshan, elderly farmers who had lived through 19 governments told her they had never seen it so bad.
"They told me they nearly preferred the war to the torture and torment of the hunger they were facing," she said.

Malek, a 25-year-old farmer from western Afghanistan, used to supplement his income from growing chickpeas, wheat and cumin with casual labour — but nobody is hiring.

He has started selling the few sheep he bought for breeding. Other Afghans are selling everything from motorbikes to jewellery and land. Some are marrying off young daughters for income.

 A child eats bread at the Wazir Akbar Khan hill. AFP

"Winter will be very, very difficult," said Malek, who only uses one name. "Many people will have to sell assets to buy food." Many men in his region have gone to Iran. Malek was considering joining them, but recently received wheat seeds from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which he hopes will help him stay put.

FAO country representative Richard Trenchard said he had never seen a crisis worsen so quickly and dramatically, adding that keeping farmers on their land was critical to stave off famine.

"To put it bluntly, farmers don't die in their fields, they don't die with their herds. People die on the roads and in camps when they've been forced to leave."

Reuters

Taliban trying to 'erase' women from public life: UN experts

• 
  

Afghan women march as they chant slogans and hold banners during a women's rights protest in Kabul. File/AFP

Gulf Today Report

A group of UN human rights experts have warned against the Taliban's attempts to "steadily erase women and girls from public life", the media reported.

The experts on Monday said that large-scale and systematic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls has been ongoing since the fall of the country to the Taliban last August, reports TOLO News.

"Taken together, these policies constitute a collective punishment of women and girls, grounded on gender-based bias and harmful practices," the experts said.

"Today, we are witnessing the attempt to steadily erase women and girls from public life in Afghanistan including in institutions and mechanisms that had been previously set up to assist and protect those women and girls who are most at risk."

According to the experts, women and girls in Afghanistan are being pushed out of public life.

"We are concerned about the continuous and systematic efforts to exclude women from the social, economic, and political spheres across the country."

 An Afghan woman carries a basket full of roses for sale as another woman working as a cobbler sits in a street in Kabul. AFP

The human rights experts also raised concerns over the risk of exploitation of women and girls including trafficking for the purposes of child and forced marriage, sexual exploitation and forced labour, according to IANS. 

According to the experts, barring women from returning to their jobs, requiring a male relative to accompany them in public spaces, prohibiting women from using public transportations on their own, and denying secondary and tertiary education for girls are the policies being implemented for the exclusion of women.

"In addition to severely limiting their freedom of movement, expression and association, and their participation in public and political affairs, these policies have also affected the ability of women to work and to make a living, pushing them further into poverty," the experts said.

According to the experts, the humanitarian crisis in the country has been more devastating for women, children, minorities and female-headed households.

The Taliban-led government however, denied that it has imposed any type of restrictions on women and said that women are continuing to work in government departments.

"No restrictions are imposed on women. Women are working in government departments. The plan to include women in the formation of the new government is under discussion," TOLO News quoted Taliban deputy spokesman Ahmadullah Wasiq as saying on Monday.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WALES
Policing Bill vote takes place in the Senedd

The Senedd has voted to withhold legislative consent on elements of the UK Policing Bill branded “draconian” and “racist” by members.

By Rebecca Wilks @WilksBeccaReporter

The Senedd voted on whether to grant legislative consent for the Policing Bill on Tuesday (Picture: Senedd Cymru, Huw Evans Agency)

The Senedd has voted to withhold legislative consent on elements of the UK Policing Bill branded “draconian” and “racist” by members.

The vote, which took place on Tuesday evening, was held to decide whether the Welsh Parliament should give consent for Westminster’s Policing Bill to make law changes that would impact on devolved areas.


The Senedd voted to withhold consent on a number of the Bill’s clauses, including most of its restrictions to public protest, the criminalisation of trespass, and a new offence that could punish vandalism of statues with a ten year prison sentence.


Some clauses, however, were given consent - including measures on public nuisance and the extraction of data from mobile devices by police.

Jane Hutt, Minister for Social Justice (Picture: Huw Evans Agency)

“The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is a complex and controversial piece of legislation,” Jane Hutt, Social Justice Minister, told members before the vote.

“There are some provisions that fall within the competence of the Senedd, which make changes that will benefit Wales.


“However, there are also provisions in the Bill… that we should not accept, some of which are egregious breaches of people's rights.”

In her Legislative Consent Memorandum (LCM), the minister recommended members vote in favour of Clause 61, which introduces the offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”. The offence will carry a possible sentence of one year’s imprisonment, a fine, or both.

READ MORE:

How will the UK Policing Bill affect the right to protest in Wales?

UK Police Bill could strain 'weakened' Welsh prisons

The Welsh Government stipulates that the offence should only be considered where “serious harm” is caused, which can include “serious annoyance” to a member of the public, and says that it supports the measure “in relation to protecting residents from increased noise pollution”.

The recommendation appeared to cause some discontent.

“I will vote for the motion, before the whips get onto the phone with me,” Labour MS Alun Davies commented.

“But let me say this - I find myself with a very, very heavy heart in this matter.

“We should be united, as politicians - united, across political parties - in saying that people’s right to make our lives uncomfortable is more important than our right to keep people quiet.”

Jenny Rathbone MS called Part 4 of the Policing Bill "an abomination". (Picture: Huw Evans Agency)

Jenny Rathbone, Labour MS for Cardiff Central, disagreed, calling the measures “unremarkable proposals which safeguard communities.”

The government also recommended consenting to new powers for police to extract data - including deleted data - from electronic devices, providing that a device has been provided to authorities voluntarily.

This measure has been criticised by civil liberties groups including Big Brother Watch and Privacy International, who said that the Bill did not include strict, precise limits on the kind of information that can be extracted and why, and would rely on consent from potentially distressed victims and witnesses.

READ MORE: Westminster 'increasingly authoritarian' says Welsh Government

Similarly, another policy recommended for consent by the Welsh Government, the Serious Violence Duty, was condemned late last year by more than 600 experts - including doctors, teachers and social workers - who expressed concerns that the policy would obligate them to inform on vulnerable children to the police, and therefore prevent them from accessing support services.

Under Clause 16 of the Bill, a wide range of public bodies would be required to share information with the police if requested to. Civil liberty campaign group Liberty said the measure would breach data confidentiality “in a racially disproportionate way”.

The government also recommended consenting to measures that would increase punishments for poaching and double the maximum prison term for assaulting emergency workers.

Plaid Cymru members voted against allowing consent for any part of the Policing Bill.

Sioned Williams MS, Plaid spokesperson for Social Justice (Picture: Huw Evans Agency)

The party’s Social Justice minister, Sioned Williams, told members: “The dangerous extremism of the present Tory Westminster government is evident when it prompts the House of Lords to act with the determination it showed last night - sitting into the early hours, defeating clause after clause.

“We must send an equally powerful message from this place, that we will have no part in the passage of a Bill containing draconian measures which are in many cases racist, authoritarian, and disproportionate - undermining as they do the very cohesion of our society, and the values we hold dear, upon which our democracy rests.”

Consent was nevertheless agreed for all those measures recommended by the Welsh Government.

Part Four of the Policing Bill, which would make residing on land without permission a criminal offence, was voted against by members - meaning that consent was withheld.

This afternoon, The National reported on the potential impact of this policy on Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) communities. Charities and campaign groups had today lobbied Senedd Members over fear that the measure would put GRT people at risk of poverty and homelessness, and place increased pressure on social services.

Jenny Rathbone called this element of the legislation “an abomination”, adding that she held “little hope” that the Westminster government would take notice of opposition by either the Senedd or the House of Lords.

“It is extremely likely that they will railroad these proposals through the House of Commons as part of their ‘Save Big Dog’ campaign’.”

Mark Isherwood, the Conservative MS for north Wales, acknowledged concerns that the plans would discriminate against GRT people, but said that the onus was on the Welsh Government to ensure suitable encampment sites were provided.

Pointing to Monday’s late night defeat at the House of Lords for the UK government, Mr Isherwood emphasised that Westminster’s policies were subject to “robust” scrutiny.

“We must therefore trust our colleagues in the UK Parliament to do their job, just as we expect to be trusted to do ours,” he added.

The Welsh Conservatives voted in favour of all the clauses laid before the Senedd.

Other measures for which consent was withheld included the ability to try those accused of damaging a memorial in Crown Court - with the possibility of ten years’ imprisonment - and many of the Policing Bill’s restrictions to public protest, including the ability for police to impose limits to one-person

Climate change has 'saved lives', says UK Tory Lord

By Nick Lester, Chief Lords Reporter, PA

Former UK minister, Lord Lilley, said that climate change had "saved lives". (Picture: Policy Exchange)

A Conservative former UK Cabinet minister has hailed the “good news” that climate change has “prolonged or saved the lives of over half a million of our fellow citizens”.

Conservative peer Lord Lilley, who was previously linked to the climate sceptic think-tank The Global Warming Policy Foundation, was responding to analysis carried out by the Office for National Statistics.

Data over the last two decades showed there had been a reduction in deaths caused by cold winters since 2001 in Wales and England as the climate warms, while there was relatively little increase in deaths due to hotter weather.

Temperature-related deaths, with the UK experiencing fewer cold days and more warm days, fell by 555,103 or an average of 27,755 deaths a year between 2001 and 2020.

Raising the figures in Parliament, Lord Lilley, who sits on the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, said: “Isn’t that good news, that climate change has prolonged or saved the lives of over half a million of our fellow citizens?”

Addressing the work and pensions minister, Baroness Stedman-Scott, he added: “How long does she expect this beneficial effect to continue?”

The minister said: “I’m afraid the impact of climate change is way outside my brief, but I am sure everybody notes the points made.”

Earlier, responding to a separate question, the environment minister, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, indicated his frustration with “endless consultations” on Government plans.

READ MORE: Welsh pensioner among Extinction Rebellion activists cleared over train protest

He had been pressed in the upper chamber over moves to ban the use of peat in horticulture in England and Wales, the extraction of which is environmentally damaging.

Lord Goldsmith said the Government was currently canvassing views on ending its professional use in England and Wales.

In reply, Green Party peer Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb said: “Environmentalists are just sick of all these consultations because the Government promised to ban it in 2020.”

Lord Goldsmith said: “She is not the only person who is sick of endless consultations, but unfortunately consultations are unavoidable when the impact of a policy affects the value of a business or the value of assets.

“So we have no choice but to consult and that is what we are doing, but we are doing so as quickly as we can.”