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Showing posts from November 28, 2021

Attacks Kill Dozens of Displaced People in Eastern DR Congo

  GENEVA —  The U.N. refugee agency has expressed outrage at the sharp rise in deadly attacks by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri and South Kivu provinces. Dozens of people have been killed and scores wounded in the last month in a series of raids on sites harboring displaced people. The latest incident took place Sunday at Ndjala, a site for displaced people in the Drodro health zone in Ituri province. Local authorities say 10 women, and nine children were killed and 11 people wounded. They say men used guns, machetes and knives during their killing spree. A spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, Boris Cheshirkov, says the attack was preceded by a series of grisly assaults against unarmed civilians who were displaced by previous atrocities. "And what we have seen just in the span of several weeks is an increase in the number and frequency of attacks," Cheshirkov said. "And these are brutal attacks. At the end of these attacks, we have the bodies

Yemen, US officials accuse Iran of imperiling peace efforts in Yemen

  AL-MUKALLA: Yemeni and American officials have accused the Iranian regime of perpetuating the war in Yemen through arming and training the Houthis, renewing demands that the Houthis abandon military activities and comply with peace efforts.  Speaking on Friday during Mediterranean Dialogues, an annual high-level gathering sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Italian Institute for International Political Studies in Rome, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak and the US special envoy to Yemen Tim Lenderking agreed that the Iranians played a negative role in Yemen and the Houthis were not serious about striking a peace deal to end the war.  The foreign minister said that the Iranians were using Yemen as a blackmail card to extract concessions during nuclear talks and to settle scores with their opponents.  “Iran is using Yemen as a bargaining chip and they want to get something in Yemen while they are holding talks in Vienn

Finland arrests 5 over far-right terror plot

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  Five men suspected of planning a far-right motivated bomb and gun attack have been arrested, Finnish police said on Friday. The men are from the southwestern municipality of Kankaanpaa and were born between the years 1995 and 1998. They were arrested on Tuesday morning after being under surveillance for two years, police said. Finnish radio station Yle reported that some of them had previous convictions. Police say the arrests mark Finland's first case of suspected far-right terrorism. What is the ideology of the suspects? Residents of Kankaanpaa who knew some of the suspects said that one was a skinhead and that two others were allegedly neo-Nazis. According to police, the men follow "accelerationism”. This white supremacist ideological tendency aims at fomenting racial division in society and has been linked to mass shootings  in the United States . Police said that group did not appear to belong to an extremist organization. "A small group like this which idealizes t

FARC | Five years of solitude for the ex-guerrillas

  Despite successfully transitioning into a political party, the erstwhile FARC has not managed to achieve what it expected of the 2016 Peace Accord with the Colombian government Five years after a landmark peace accord that brought to end a conflict that lasted more than five decades in Colombia, the United States has finally revoked its designation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as a foreign terrorist organisation. FARC had disbanded from being a guerilla military organisation as part of the peace accord signed with the Colombian government in 2016, into an overground political force called the Comunes (commons in Spanish). But splinter groups that did not accede to or abide by the accord continue to be designated as foreign terrorist organisations — dissident groups such as the La Segunda Marquetalia and the FARC-EP (People’s Army). This indicates that the accord continues to retain its discontents with some former FARC combatants refusing to give up on what th

Can Europe’s right-wing parties be united?

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  The leaders of 14 European right-wing parties are at a conference in Poland. Among the nationalist and populist issues up for discussion is the building an alternative centre of power in the European Union. It's aimed at opposing the EU on issues such as migration, national sovereignty as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. They face a number of challenges caused by their differences. Despite that, what's clear is they all want more influence in European politics. But how much influence do they have now? Source:  https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2021/12/4/can-europes-right-wing-parties-be-united

Yemen's Marib: The city at the heart of a dirty war

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  Marib is full. At a time when rich countries in Europe are in political crisis about hundreds of new refugees, one city in the poorest Arab country has had to deal with the arrival of something approaching one million people fleeing for their lives since Yemen's war started in 2015. Another 45,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) have arrived at the city in the desert since September. The pressure of the war pervades every part of life in Marib. The bustling city centre should not deceive anyone, as wars generate business opportunities. Crowded streets and stalls selling fruit, vegetables and fresh meat should not mask the fact that this is now the heart of the war, or that a large part of the population cannot afford to buy food. The doctors at the hunger clinic say that 10 out of every 100 children are malnourished. Of that 10, two have severe malnutrition. Taqua Tarish's mother was lucky enough to get a bed for them at the hospital. Taqua is six months old and weighs 2.5

Yazidi genocide: IS member found guilty in German landmark trial

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  An Iraqi member of the Islamic State (IS) group has been found guilty of genocide against the Yazidi religious minority in a landmark German trial. A court in Frankfurt sentenced Taha al-Jumailly to life for crimes including the murder of a Yazidi girl in Iraq. The court found the jihadist enslaved the five-year-old in 2015, chaining her up and leaving her to die of thirst. Al-Jumailly is the first IS member to be convicted of genocide against the Yazidis. During the trial his defence lawyers had denied the allegations. The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority, were persecuted by IS after the jihadist group seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq beginning in 2014. Thousands of men were killed and women and children were enslaved and raped when IS fighters stormed into the ancestral heartland of the Yazidis in northern Iraq. The United Nations has said IS committed genocide  as well as multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Yazidis. IS suspect in cour