YANGON: Myanmar is not ready for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees, said the most senior United Nations official to visit the country this year, after Myanmar was accused of instigating ethnic cleansing and driving nearly 700,000 Muslims to Bangladesh.
“From what I’ve seen and heard from people – no access to health services, concerns about protection, continued displacements – conditions are not conducive to return,” Ursula Mueller, UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said after a six-day visit to Myanmar.
The Myanmar government has pledged to do its best to make sure repatriation under an agreement signed with Bangladesh in November would be “fair, dignified and safe.”
Myanmar has so far verified several hundred Rohingya Muslim refugees for possible repatriation. The group would be “the first batch” of refugees and could come back to Myanmar “when it was convenient for them,” a Myanmar official said last month.
Mueller was granted rare access in Myanmar, allowed to visit the most affected areas in Rakhine state, and met army-controlled ministers of defense and border affairs, as well as de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian officials.
The exodus of Rohingya Muslims followed an Aug. 25 crackdown by the military in the northwestern Rakhine state. Rohingya refugees reported killings, burnings, looting and rape, in response to militant attacks on security forces.
“I asked (Myanmar officials) to end the violence … and that the return of the refugees from (Bangladeshi refugee camps in) Cox’s Bazar is to be on a voluntary, dignified way, when solutions are durable,” Mueller told Reuters in an interview in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon.
Myanmar says its forces have been engaged in a legitimate campaign against Muslim “terrorists.”
Bangladesh officials have previously expressed doubts about Myanmar’s willingness to take back Rohingya refugees.
Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in January to complete a voluntary repatriation of the refugees in two years. Myanmar set up two reception centers and what it says is a temporary camp near the border in Rakhine to receive the first arrivals. “We are right now at the border ready to receive, if the Bangladeshis bring them to our side,” Kyaw Tin, Myanmar minister of international cooperation, told reporters in January.
Many in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The UN has described Myanmar’s counteroffensive as ethnic cleansing, which Myanmar denies.
Asked whether she believed in government assurances the Rohingya would be allowed to return to their homes after a temporary stay in camps, Mueller said: “I’m really concerned about the situation.”
Part of the problem is that, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch, Myanmar has bulldozed at least 55 villages that were emptied during the violence.
“I witnessed areas where villages were burned down and bulldozed...I’ve not seen or heard that there are any preparations for people to go to their places of origin,” Mueller said.
Myanmar officials have said the villages were bulldozed to make way for refugee resettlement.
Mueller said she has also raised the issue with Myanmar officials of limited humanitarian aid access to the vulnerable people in the country and added, referring to the authorities, that she would “push them on granting access” for aid agencies. (Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski. Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
Myanmar not ready for return of Rohingya refugees: UN official
Myanmar not ready for return of Rohingya refugees: UN official
Russia’s UK embassy denounces G7 loans to Ukraine as ‘fraudulent scheme’
- Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets
Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets to help buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure.
The loans were agreed in July by leaders of the G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US — along with top officials from the European Union, where most of the Russian assets frozen as a result of the war are held.
“We are closely following UK authorities’ efforts aimed at implementing a fraudulent scheme of expropriating incomes from Russian state assets ‘frozen’ in the EU,” the Russian embassy in London said on social media.
British Defense Minister John Healey said the money would be solely for Ukraine’s military and could be used to help develop drones capable of traveling further than some long-range missiles.
The embassy added: “The elaborate legislative choreography fails to conceal the illegitimate nature of this arrangement.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week described the US transfer to Ukraine of its share of the G7’s $50 billion in loans as “simply robbery.”
Death toll from German Christmas market car-ramming rises to four, Bild reports
- Death toll rises to 4, small child among the dead
- German media point to anti-Islam, far-right sympathies
MAGDEBURG, Germany: The death toll from a car-ramming at a German Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg rose to four on Saturday, according to German newspaper Bild, after a Saudi man was arrested on suspicion of plowing a car into the crowd.
Scores of people were injured in the attack on Friday evening, which came amid fierce debate over security and migration during an election campaign in Europe’s largest economy in which the far right is polling strongly.
Police were not immediately available to comment on the reported casualty figures. Local officials had initially said at least two people were killed and had warned that the toll could rise.
The Bild report said 41 people were critically injured, 86 were receiving hospital treatment for serious injuries and another 78 sustained minor injuries.
German authorities are investigating a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who has lived in Germany for almost two decades in connection with the car-ramming. Police searched his home overnight.
The motive remained unclear and police have not yet named the suspect. He has been named in German media as Taleb A.
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker after he posted extremist views on his personal X account that threatened peace and security.
Der Spiegel reported that the suspect had sympathized with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The magazine did not say where it got the information.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Germany’s FAZ newspaper said it interviewed the suspect in 2019, describing him as an anti-Islam activist.
“People like me, who have an Islamic background but are no longer believers, are met with neither understanding nor tolerance by Muslims here,” he was quoted as saying. “I am history’s most aggressive critic of Islam. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs.”
Andrea Reis, who had been at the market on Friday, returned on Saturday with her daughter Julia to lay a candle by the church overlooking the site. She said that had it not been for a matter of moments, they may have been in the car’s path.
“I said, ‘let’s go and get a sausage’, but my daughter said ‘no let’s keep walking around’. If we’d stayed where we were we’d have been in the car’s path,” she said.
Tears ran down her face as she described the scene. “Children screaming, crying for mama. You can’t forget that,” she said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is scheduled to visit Magdeburg later on Saturday.
His Social Democrats are trailing both the far-right AfD and the frontrunner conservative opposition in opinion polls ahead of snap elections set for Feb. 23.
The AfD has led calls for a crackdown on migration to the country.
Its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and co-leader Tino Chrupalla issued a statement on Saturday condemning the attack.
“The terrible attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg in the middle of the peaceful pre-Christmas period has shaken us,” they said.
A leading member of Scholz’s Social Democrats in the Bundestag parliament warned against jumping to conclusions and said it appeared the attacker did not have an Islamist motive.
“Now we have to wait for the investigations. It seems that things are different here than was initially assumed,” Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
Eight convicted in France over murder of teacher who showed Prophet caricature
- Eight sentenced for roles in hate campaign against teacher
- Two associates of killer sentenced to 16 years for complicity, the father of pupil sentenced to 13 years for inciting hatred
PARIS: A French court sentenced eight people to prison terms ranging from one to 16 years for their roles in a hate campaign that culminated in the murder of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class, local media reported.
Days after Samuel Paty, 47, showed his pupils the caricatures in October 2020, an 18-year-old Chechen assailant stabbed and beheaded him outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris. The assailant was shot dead by police moments after.
Among those convicted on Friday was the father of a student whose false account of Paty’s use of the caricatures triggered a wave of social media posts targeting the middle-school teacher.
The court sentenced Brahim Chnina to 13 years in prison for criminal terrorist association, according to broadcaster Franceinfo. Chnina had published videos falsely accusing the teacher of disciplining his daughter for complaining about the class, naming Paty and identifying his school.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the founder of a hard-line Islamist organization, received a 15-year sentence. Both Sefrioui and Chnina were found guilty of inciting hatred against Paty.
Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous. Sefrioui’s lawyer said his client would appeal the decision, according to French media.
Two associates of Paty’s killer, Abdullakh Anzorov, were also convicted. Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov were sentenced to 16 years in prison for complicity in a terrorist killing. Both had denied wrongdoing, according to Franceinfo.
Last year, a court found Chnina’s daughter and five other adolescents guilty of participating in a premeditated conspiracy and helping prepare an ambush.
Chnina’s daughter, who was not in Paty’s class when the caricatures were shown, was convicted of making false accusations and slanderous comments.
French media reported that the 13-year-old made the allegations after her parents questioned why she had been suspended from school for two days.
Pope Francis slams ‘cruelty’ of strike killing Gaza children
- ‘Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war. I want to say it because it touches my heart’
- The Holy See has recognized the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as “cruelty,” a day after the territory’s rescue agency said an Israeli air strike killed seven children from one family.
Gaza’s civil defense rescue agency reported that an Israeli air strike killed 10 members of a family on Friday in the northern part of the territory, including seven children.
“Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised. Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he told members of the government of the Holy See.
“I want to say it because it touches my heart.”
Violence in the Gaza Strip continues to rock the coastal territory more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war, even as international mediators work to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.
The Israeli military said it had struck “several terrorists who were operating in a military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization and posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area.”
“According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF,” it added.
Francis, 88, has called for peace since Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza.
In recent weeks he has hardened his remarks against the Israeli offensive.
At the end of November, he said that “the invader’s arrogance... prevails over dialogue” in “Palestine,” a rare position that contrasts with the tradition of neutrality of the Holy See.
In extracts from a forthcoming book published in November, he called for a “careful” study as to whether the situation in Gaza “corresponds to the technical definition” of genocide, an accusation firmly rejected by Israel.
The Holy See has recognized the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations, and it supports the two-state solution.
Rival protests in Seoul over South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol
- Yoon Suk Yeol’s presidential powers are suspended but he remains in office
- He has not complied with various summonses by authorities investigating whether martial law
SEOUL: Demonstrators supporting and opposing South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held rival protests several hundred meters apart in Seoul on Saturday, a week after he was impeached over his short-lived declaration of martial law.
Yoon’s presidential powers are suspended but he remains in office. He has not complied with various summonses by authorities investigating whether martial law, which he declared late on Dec. 3 and rescinded hours later, constituted insurrection.
He has also not responded to attempts to contact him by the Constitutional Court, which decides whether to remove him from office or restore his presidential powers. The court plans to hold its first preparatory hearing on Friday.
Saturday’s pro- and anti-Yoon protests were held in Gwanghwamun in the heart of the capital. There were no clashes as of 4 p.m. (0700 GMT).
Tens of thousands of anti-Yoon protesters, dominated by people in their 20s and 30s, gathered around 3 p.m., waving K-Pop light sticks and signs with sayings such as “Arrest! Imprison! Insurrection chief Yoon Suk Yeol” to catchy K-pop tunes.
“I wanted to ask Yoon how he could do this to a democracy in the 21st century, and I think if he really has a conscience, he should step down,” said 27-year-old Cho Sung-hyo.
Several thousand pro-Yoon protesters, chiefly older and more conservative people opposing Yoon’s removal and supporting the restoration of his powers, had gathered since around midday.
“These rigged (parliamentary) elections eat away at this country, and at the core are socialist communist powers, so about 10 of us came together and said the same thing — we absolutely oppose impeachment,” said Lee Young-su, a 62-year-old businessman.
Yoon had cited claims of election hacking and “anti-state” pro-North Korean sympathizers as justification for imposing the martial law, which the National Election Commission has denied.
