Lockdown at labor camp in Qatar described as coronavirus prison

Migrant workers in Qatar have described being trapped in a coronavirus prison at the country’s largest labor camp. (File/Shutterstock)
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Updated 20 March 2020
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Lockdown at labor camp in Qatar described as coronavirus prison

  • The area is guarded by police, and workers who live there, many of whom had been working on Fifa World Cup 2022 infrastructure projects, cannot leave
  • Some workers have been told to go on unpaid leave until further notice, with only food and accommodation covered

LONDON: Migrant workers in Qatar have described being trapped in a coronavirus prison at the country’s largest labor camp.
The camp was locked down after hundreds of construction workers became sick with Covid-19.
Thousands of workers are trapped in filthy, over-crowded camps within the “Industrial Area” in Doha where the virus can spread rapidly, The Guardian reported.
The area is guarded by police, and workers who live there, many of whom had been working on Fifa World Cup 2022 infrastructure projects, cannot leave.
Qatari authorities on Tuesday announced the closure of several square kilometers of the Industrial Area.
Workers are fearful and there is an atmosphere of uncertainty.
Some workers have been told to go on unpaid leave until further notice, with only food and accommodation covered, sources at the camp told The Guardian.
“The situation is getting worse each day. Workers from camp 1 to camp 32 are in lockdown. My friends who live there are in extreme panic,” a Bangladeshi worker told The Guardian.
“We are not allowed to walk in groups or eat in a tea shop. But you can still buy food and take it home. I’m worried about my family back home. There won’t be anyone to take care of them if anything happens to me,” a Nepali worker said. He added that no one is allowed to leave the area.
On Mar. 11, authorities said 238 people under quarantine in a residential compound had tested positive for coronavirus. Subsequent announcements have linked most reported cases to migrant workers without mentioning nationalities.
Terrified workers are doing everything they can to prevent the spread of the disease. “We are doing everything to keep ourselves safe. The camp was a little dirty, so we cleaned everything, changed the bed sheets, and used spray to kill the germs,” a worker told The Guardian.
Although the country is on lockdown and has shut down almost all public spaces in the face of the outbreak, some construction workers who have not tested positive for Covid-19 say they are being forced to work after having just their temperatures checked before they begin.

Amnesty International said migrant workers trapped in camps such as those in Qatar are at particular risk of exposure to the virus.

“The Qatari government must ensure that human rights remain central to all attempts at prevention and containment of the COVID-19 virus, and also that all people have access to health care, including preventive care and treatment for everyone affected, without discrimination,” said Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director of Global Issues.

Doha’s Industrial Area is made up of warehouses, factories and workers’ accommodation. It is home to hundreds of thousands of men who live in cramped and dirty conditions. Kitchens and toilets are communal, making it very easy for virus to be transmitted.
Expats make up the majority of the population in Qatar, and the government on Thursday said there were 460 cases in the country — the highest number among the six Gulf Arab states that have reported a total of more than 1,300 coronavirus cases.


Assad exit puts US at perilous crossroads in Syria

Updated 10 sec ago
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Assad exit puts US at perilous crossroads in Syria

  • Assad fell in a lighting surprise offensive as his protector Russia is bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine and after Israel's military heavily degraded Assad's other key supporters -- Iran and Lebanese militia Hezbollah
  • Robert Ford, the last US ambassador to Syria, helped spearhead the terrorist designation of HTS in 2012 but said that the group since then has not attacked US or Western targets and has instead fought Al-Qaeda and Daesh forces

WASHINGTON: For more than a decade, the United States has sought to keep out of Syria's political debacle, seeing no viable partner. Islamist rebels' toppling of strongman Bashar al-Assad has forced a change of tune -- and a debate over just what US interests are.
Donald Trump, who returns to the White House in little more than a month, on the eve of Assad's fall called Syria "a mess" and stated in his plain-speaking style that the United States should not be involved.
Joe Biden's administration, after putting Syria on the backburner in a turbulent region, has offered a tacit rebuttal by stating that clear US interests are at stake -- including preventing Syria from fragmenting and avoiding a resurgence of the Daesh extremist group.
Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump's and Biden's statements could be combined and "together they make a kind of decent policy."
The United States needs to address real concerns about the Daesh group and Al-Qaeda but "as far as getting involved in arranging the politics of Syria, I think that no good can come from it," Cook said.
Since the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States has walked a fine line on Syria that critics often derided as a non-policy.
The United States questioned the legitimacy of Assad, demanding accountability for brutality in one of the 21st century's deadliest wars, but stopped short of prioritizing his departure due to suspicions about the main rebels.
The Islamist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has now led Assad's ouster, traces its roots to Syria's Al-Qaeda branch and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
Since Obama's time, the United States instead has allied itself in Syria with a smaller fighting force of the Kurdish minority -- over strenuous objections of neighboring Turkey, which backs HTS -- with a narrow mission to counter the Daesh group. Some 900 US troops remain in Syria.
Assad fell in a lighting surprise offensive as his protector Russia is bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine and after Israel's military heavily degraded Assad's other key supporters -- Iran and Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

Robert Ford, the last US ambassador to Syria, helped spearhead the terrorist designation of HTS in 2012 but said that the group since then has not attacked US or Western targets and has instead fought Al-Qaeda and Daesh forces.
Ford also pointed with hope to post-victory statements by rebel chief Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, including welcoming international monitoring of any chemical weapons that are discovered.
"Can you imagine Osama bin Laden saying that?" said Ford, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
"I'm not saying 'trust Jolani.' He's obviously authoritarian. He's obviously an Islamist who doesn't believe that Christians have an equal right to power as Muslims. But I sure as hell want to test him on some of these things," Ford said.
He said that the United States should encourage HTS, as well as other Syrian actors, to reach out and reassure the country's diverse communities including Christians, Kurds and Alawites -- the sect of the secular-oriented Assad.
Beyond that, Washington should take a back-seat and let Syrians sort out their future, he said.
"We should learn from the experience in Iraq that trying to impose exiles on a population traumatized by a brutal dictatorship and war is not a recipe for success," Ford said.
Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday offered US recognition to a future government that is "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian."

Trump in his first term, at the urging of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, abruptly said he would pull troops out of Syria. He backtracked after intense criticism at home and appeals from French President Emmanuel Macron, who pointed to the risk of Daesh filling the vacuum.
Trump has not indicated how he would change Syria policy this time. But he has shown no reluctance in the past to negotiate with foreign adversaries on the US blacklist, from Afghanistan's Taliban to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there was no legal restriction on US contact with designated terrorists, although he indicated there was no direct dialogue with HTS.
Natasha Hall, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Syria could face "devastating economic and humanitarian consequences" unless the United States reconsiders the terrorist designation of HTS, which impedes aid groups.
"That said," she said, "if there isn't sort of an established framework for negotiations and good behavior now, before that designation is lifted, that could potentially also be a major mistake down the line for Syria's future."

 


Humanitarian aid to North Gaza mostly blocked for the last 2 months, UN says

Updated 37 min 39 sec ago
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Humanitarian aid to North Gaza mostly blocked for the last 2 months, UN says

  • Sigrid Kaag, the senior UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon that civilians trying to survive in Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation”

UNITED NATIONS: Humanitarian aid to North Gaza, where Israel launched a ground offensive on Oct. 6, has largely been blocked for the past 66 days, the United Nations said Tuesday. That has left between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians without access to food, water, electricity or health care, according to the world body.
In the north, Israel has continued its siege on Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya with Palestinians living there largely denied aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said. Recently, it said, about 5,500 people were forcibly displaced from three schools in Beit Lahiya to Gaza City.
Adding to the food crisis, only four UN-supported bakeries are currently operating throughout the Gaza Strip, all of them in Gaza City, OCHA said.
Sigrid Kaag, the senior UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon that civilians trying to survive in Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation.”
She pointed to the breakdown in law and order and looting that has exacerbated a very dire situation and left the UN and many aid organizations unable to deliver food and other humanitarian essentials to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need.
Kaag said she and other UN officials keep repeatedly asking Israel for access for convoys to North Gaza and elsewhere, to allow in commercial goods, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt in the south, and to approve dual-use items.
Israel’s UN mission didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment
The UN has established the logistics for an operation across Gaza, she said, but there is no substitute for political will that humanitarians don’t possess.
“Member states possess it,” Kaag said. And this is what she urged Security Council members and keeps urging the broader international community to press for — the political will to address Gaza’s worsening humanitarian crisis.

 

 


In first contacts, US officials urge Syrian rebels to support inclusive government

Updated 11 December 2024
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In first contacts, US officials urge Syrian rebels to support inclusive government

  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out on Tuesday criteria for Syria’s political transition, saying Washington would recognize a future Syrian government that amounts to a credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governing body

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration has urged the rebel group that led the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad not to assume automatic leadership of the country but instead run an inclusive process to form a transitional government, according to two US officials and a congressional aide briefed on the first US contacts with the group. The communications with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a group formerly allied with Al-Qaeda and designated a terrorist organization by the United States, are being conducted in coordination with Washington’s Middle East allies, including Turkiye. The administration is also in touch with President-elect Donald Trump’s team about the matter, one of the officials said. The discussions, which have taken place over the last several days, are part of a larger effort by Washington to coordinate with various groups inside Syria as it tries to navigate the chaotic aftermath of the sudden collapse of the Assad regime on Sunday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US has sent messages to the group to help guide early efforts to establish a formal governing structure for the country.
The sources declined to say whether the messages were being sent directly or via an intermediary. Washington believes the transitional government should represent the desires of the Syrian people and would not support HTS taking control without a formal process to select new leaders, the officials said.
The US National Security Council declined to comment.
TERRORIST DESIGNATION
The United States in 2013 designated HTS leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, a terrorist, saying Al-Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. It said the Nusra Front, the predecessor of HTS, carried out suicide attacks that killed civilians and espoused a violent sectarian vision. The official said the administration is not clear about Golani’s role in a future Syrian government — or whether he still holds extremist ideologies. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out on Tuesday criteria for Syria’s political transition, saying Washington would recognize a future Syrian government that amounts to a credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governing body.
Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are pushing the administration to consider lifting US sanctions on Syria, including sanctions specifically related to HTS, in exchange for the group meeting certain US demands, the congressional aide told Reuters.
The aide said there is a growing feeling among some members of Congress that the US will need to help a transitional government in Syria connect to the global economy and rebuild the country. Sanctions are preventing that from happening, the aide said. Washington is also in communication with HTS and other actors on the ground about battlefield operations, one of the officials said. Senior US officials have repeatedly said they intend to continue military operations in northeastern Syria against Daesh, to ensure the radical extremist group does not become a threat again, given the current power vacuum in the country. US forces in Syria will also continue to prevent Iranian-backed proxy groups from gaining ground, one of the officials said.

 


218 killed in Syria in fighting between pro-Turk and Kurdish forces: war monitor

Updated 11 December 2024
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218 killed in Syria in fighting between pro-Turk and Kurdish forces: war monitor

  • Turkish forces and their Syrian rebel allies control territory in two strips along the border between Afrin and Ras al-Ain

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Fighting between Turkish-backed and Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria has left 218 people dead in just three days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported on Tuesday.
The British-based monitor said that at least “218 members of pro-Kurdish forces and pro-Ankara factions were killed during three days of fighting in and around Manbij” where Turkish-backed factions launched an offensive.
 

 


Assad’s feared dungeons give up their secrets

Updated 11 December 2024
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Assad’s feared dungeons give up their secrets

  • Thousands of intelligence files lay abandoned, many of them scattered on the floor, detailing the activities of ordinary citizens subjected to draconian surveillance by security service agents

DAMASCUS: Syrians lived in terror for decades of what went on behind the concrete walls of Damascus’s security compound. Now the Assad dynasty has been toppled, its dungeons and torture chambers are giving up their secrets.
Rebel fighters stand guard at the entrances to the forbidden city in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district, where the feared security services had their headquarters alongside government offices.
The myriad of different agencies which kept tabs on the lives of ordinary Syrians each operated their own underground prisons and interrogation chambers inside the walled defense ministry compound.

A woman looks through a list of names in a document found on the floor at the infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)

Syrians lived in fear of being summoned for a round of questioning from which they might never return.
AFP found first responder Sleiman Kahwaji wandering around the complex this week trying to locate the building where he was questioned and then detained.
He said he was still at secondary school when he was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of “terrorism,” a frequent allegation under the rule of now toppled president Bashar Assad, who brooked no dissent.

“I spent 55 days underground,” he said. “There were 55 of us in that dungeon. Two died, one from diabetes.”

This picture shows empty sells at Sednaya prison in Damascus on December 9, 2024. (AFP)

Scribbled graffiti left by the prisoners are barely legible on the walls amid the darkness.
“My dear mother,” one had scribbled, probably in his own blood.
The cells that were used for solitary confinement are so small there isn’t even space to lie down.
As many as 80 prisoners per cell were crammed into the larger ones, forcing inmates to take turns to sleep, recalls another former detainee Thaer Mustafa, who was arrested for alleged desertion.
All remaining prisoners were freed on Sunday after their captors fled as the rebels swept into Damascus capping the lightning offensive they launched late last month.
A large crowd broke into the security zone and ransacked the sprawling offices on the upper floors of the complex.
Thousands of intelligence files lay abandoned, many of them scattered on the floor, detailing the activities of ordinary citizens subjected to draconian surveillance by security service agents.
One handwritten document lists more than 10,000 prisoners held on suspicion of membership of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Sunni Islamist group was anathema to the Assad clan who are members of Syria’s Alawite minority, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Brotherhood membership became punishable by death since 1980 two years before Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez ordered the army to crush its insurgency with an assault on the central city of Hama which killed between 10,000 and 40,000 people.
Alongside each prisoner’s name and date of birth, the security services noted the details of their detention and interrogation, and whether and when they had died.
Another abandoned file details the detention of a Briton of Syrian origin, who was subjected to a lie detector test over allegations he was working for British intelligence.

Another, dated this January, details the investigation into a bomb attack on the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus, in which an Iraqi was wounded.
Nothing was considered too trivial to escape the security services’ attention. There are files recording the activities of ordinary citizens as well as journalists and religious leaders.
Not even government ministers were immune. On a list of members of Assad’s government, a security service agent has carefully noted the confession of each minister — Sunni or Alawite, Christian or Druze.
The security services operated vast networks of paid informers, who provided the tiniest details of people’s daily lives.
Families have been arriving at the gates of the Damascus security zone since Saturday, desperately seeking word on the fate of their missing loved ones.
Many come after first visiting Saydnaya Prison, a vast detention complex on the outskirts of Damascus where many of those who survived interrogation at security headquarters were taken for long-term incarceration.
“We heard that there were secret dungeons. I’m looking for my son Obada Amini, who was arrested in 2013,” said Khouloud Amini, 53, her husband and daughter by her side.
“He was in his fourth year at the engineering faculty, I went to Saydnaya but I didn’t find him.
“I was told there were underground dungeons here. I hope that all Syrian prisoners are freed.”