BERLIN: A prominent British-Palestinian surgeon who volunteered in Gaza hospitals during the first weeks of the Israel-Hamas war said he was denied entry to Germany Friday to take part in a pro-Palestinian conference — an event that police later ended early.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta said he arrived at Berlin airport on Friday morning before being stopped at passport control, where he was held for several hours and then told he had to return to the UK
Airport police said he was refused entry due to “the safety of the people at the conference and public order,” Abu Sitta told The Associated Press by phone. There was no immediate comment from German federal police.
Abu Sitta said his ban was to last until Sunday, covering the planned duration of the Berlin conference he was to attend, entitled the Palestine Congress. The gathering was to discuss a range of topics, including German arms shipments to Israel and solidarity with what organizers called the Palestinian struggle.
Berlin police said later Friday they pulled the plug on the event, attended by up to 250 people, on its first day after a livestream was shown of a person who is banned from political activity in Germany. They wouldn’t identify the person, but said they decided after a legal assessment to end the congress and asked those attending to leave.
Organizers wrote on social network X that the conference was “banned by the police without reason.”
Germany remains one of Israel’s staunchest defenders, even at a time of growing international outrage over the soaring Palestinian death toll in Gaza, which has surpassed 33,000.
German officials have stressed Israel’s right and duty to defend itself since the start of the war — though their tone has gradually shifted, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock increasingly decrying the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza and calling on Israel to allow more aid to reach the territory.
Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7. attack on Israel, the German government implemented a formal ban on activity by or in support of Hamas.
Since the war erupted, Germany has clamped down on many pro-Palestinian activities and demonstrations, with officials citing fears of possible antisemitic or anti-Israel incitement.
The hard line has broad political support at home, but has drawn criticism.
“Germany’s deportation of Dr. Abu Sitta is a naked act of authoritarian censorship, more in line with the policies of dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and China than a rights-respecting democracy,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Washington-based human rights watchdog Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, said in a statement.
Abu Sitta, who recently volunteered with Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, has worked during multiple conflicts in the Palestinian territories, beginning in the late 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising. He has also worked in other conflict zones, including in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Friday’s congress was viewed with great wariness by German officials before it started and was heavily policed.
Earlier on Friday, German Interior Ministry spokesperson Maximilian Kall told reporters in Berlin that federal security authorities had been in touch with their local counterparts in the capital “about questions of, for instance, entry bans,” he said. He added that he couldn’t give details.
Prominent surgeon says he was denied entry to Germany for a pro-Palestinian conference
https://arab.news/5czhr
Prominent surgeon says he was denied entry to Germany for a pro-Palestinian conference
- Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta said he arrived at Berlin airport on Friday morning before being stopped at passport control, where he was held for several hours and then told he had to return to the UK
- Abu Sitta said his ban was to last until Sunday, covering the planned duration of the Berlin conference he was to attend, entitled the Palestine Congress
Millionaire donor of Lebanese heritage defects from Conservatives to Reform UK
- Tech mogul Bassim Haidar announces intention to give £1m, making him party’s biggest donor
- He plans to leave Britain over tax changes but believes party leader Nigel Farage can return country ‘to its glory’
LONDON: A major donor to the Conservative Party has switched allegiances to Reform UK.
Bassim Haidar, born in Nigeria to Lebanese parents, has pledged £1 million ($1.33 million) to Nigel Farage’s party, having previously donated more than £700,000 to the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party has “lost its way,” Haidar told the Telegraph on Sunday, adding that he believes Farage could become prime minister and “bring this country back to its glory.”
The move makes Haidar Reform’s biggest donor, with £200,000 already delivered to aid the party at upcoming local elections.
The tech mogul, who moved to the UK in 2010 and made his fortune modernizing communications networks in Nigeria, became disillusioned with the former Conservative government after it changed Britain’s tax laws for non-domiciled individuals.
He now plans to move his family, including three school-aged children, out of the UK following the election last year of the Labour government, whose non-dom and inheritance tax policies he disagrees with.
“I’ve always been pro-business and I always supported parties that supported businesses,” he told the Telegraph. “The Conservative Party stopped listening and, for me, I had to go with the party that I believe can actually reset and change the status quo in the UK.
“Nigel and Reform are the only ones that can do this and that’s why I’m supporting them. If we want a better future, we have to stop funding the past.”
Labour’s economic strategy “defies all logic” and will make the country poorer, he said. Farage, though, is “listening to the people, he is addressing their concerns, he is talking about immigration in a way that no one has actually spoken about, he is willing to do things that I think the other parties aren’t willing to do.”
Haidar, whose business empire includes a vast property portfolio worth over £100 million, a Caribbean hotel and a loans company, added: “I believe he would reform tax, he would encourage investment, maybe come up with a new non-dom tax regime, so hopefully once he becomes prime minister we’re going to see the UK becoming great again.”
On the subject of Farage potentially becoming prime minister, Haidar said he is “very convinced” of his chances.
“Nigel has all it takes, and if funding is an issue, I don’t think he will have that issue going forward,” he added.
“They (Reform) have a lot of momentum behind them. Yeah, they are a small party, but what does that actually mean? It means nothing. All of us were small once.
“It’s the same thing I said to people who thought I would never make it in life, when I was in my 20s and I was starting out in business and I had something to prove, and look where I am today.”
Reform UK is expected to perform well at local elections across the UK next week, and currently leads the Conservatives by a considerable margin in a number of opinion polls.
Haidar believes that success over Labour and the Conservatives could lead to even more financial support for Reform from wealthy donors.
“I have a few friends that are seriously, seriously considering (donating to Reform),” he said. “Some of the statements that Nigel made recently have resonated with them and I have got calls and they have told me they really believe that he is on the right track and they have become very encouraged.
“I know it will come. Like everything else you have to be a pioneer, you have to lead and once you lead people will follow. Nigel has done it from a politics point of view, I want to do it from a support point of view.”
He added: “There is absolutely nothing in it for me besides me believing that Nigel can turn it around and bring this country back to its glory.”
Farage told the Telegraph: “Reform has achieved a huge amount on a small budget so far. With a donation like this, we can rapidly build out our team and professionalise further as we head towards the next general election. This is especially true if others follow Bassim’s lead.”
Pakistani troops kill 54 militants attempting to sneak into Pakistan from Afghanistan
- Pakistani intelligence reports indicated that the killed militants were 'Khwarij,' a phrase the government uses for the Pakistani Taliban
- The insurgents were spotted and killed near the former stronghold of Pakistan Taliban near North Waziristan
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani security forces overnight killed 54 militants who attempted to cross into the country from Afghanistan, the military said Sunday, marking one of the deadliest such killings in recent years.
The military said in a statement that intelligence reports indicated that the killed militants were “Khwarij” — a phrase the government uses for the Pakistani Taliban.
Without directly blaming anyone, the military said that the slain insurgents had been sent by their “foreign masters” to carry out high-profile attacks inside Pakistan.
The insurgents were spotted and killed near the former stronghold of Pakistan Taliban near North Waziristan, a district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province along the Afghan border.
“This is the first time during the ongoing operations against terrorists that Pakistani forces killed terrorists in such a high number in a single day,” Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi told reporters. He praised security forces for carrying out a successful operation against militants and foiling possible attacks by them in the country.
“We had this information that the foreign masters of these terrorists are asking them to enter Pakistan as soon as possible” to carry out attacks. He stopped short of saying that India had urged the militants to enter Pakistan from Afghanistan.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have congratulated security forces for eliminating the insurgents.
The military also said in the statement that the infiltration attempt came “at a time when India is leveling baseless accusations against Pakistan” following a recent deadly assault on tourists in India-controlled Kashmir.
In recent months, Pakistan has witnessed a surge in violence, mostly blamed on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. It’s a separate group, but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuary in Afghanistan since then.
Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tatar on Sunday told foreign media that New Delhi blamed Islamabad for the tourist attack to distract Pakistan’s security forces from their focus on the war on its western borders.
He said that New Delhi, without presenting any evidence, blamed Pakistan for the assault on tourists in Kashmir “to divert Pakistan’s attention from the western region.” He said that Pakistan had “undeniable evidence” about India’s backing for the Pakistan Taliban and Baloch Liberation Army, which is behind multiple attacks in Balochistan, including one on a train in which more than 30 hostages were killed in March.
Balochistan has been the scene of a long-running insurgency with the separatists seeking independence from the central government in Islamabad. Although Pakistani authorities say they have quelled the insurgency, violence has persisted.
No place for racism, hate in France, says Macron after Muslim killed in mosque
- “Racism and hatred based on religion can have no place in France. Freedom of worship cannot be violated,” Macron wrote on X in his first comments on Friday’s killing
PARIS: There can never be a place for racism and hate in France, President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday after the brutal stabbing to death of a Muslim in a mosque in the south of the country.
“Racism and hatred based on religion can have no place in France. Freedom of worship cannot be violated,” Macron wrote on X in his first comments on Friday’s killing, extending his support to “our fellow Muslim citizens.”
The attacker, who is on the run, stabbed the worshipper dozens of times and then filmed him with a mobile phone while shouting insults at Islam in Friday’s attack in the village of La Grand-Combe in the Gard region.
French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou had already denounced what he described an “Islamophobic atrocity.”
The alleged perpetrator sent the video he had filmed with his phone — showing the victim writhing in agony — to another person, who then shared it on a social media platform before deleting it.
A source close to the case, who asked not to be named, said the suspected perpetrator, while not apprehended, has been identified as a French citizen of Bosnian origin who is not a Muslim.
The victim, a young Malian man in his 20s, and the attacker were alone inside the mosque at the time of the incident.
After initially praying alongside the man, the attacker then stabbed the victim up to 50 times before fleeing the scene.
The body of the victim was only discovered later in the morning when other worshippers arrived at the mosque for Friday prayers.
A protest “against Islamophobia” was due to take place Sunday evening in Paris in the wake of the killing.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) said it was “horrified” by the “anti-Muslim terrorist attack” and urged Muslims in France to be “extremely vigilant.”
“The murder of a worshipper in a mosque is a despicable crime that must revolt the hearts of all French people,” added the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF).
The attacker — who has been named only as Olivier, born in France in 2004 and unemployed without a criminal record — is “potentially extremely dangerous” and it is “essential” to arrest him before he claims more victims, according to regional prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini.
Indonesia joins BRICS foreign ministers meeting as member
- BRICS accounts for about 48% of world’s population, over 37% of global economy
- Ministerial meeting comes amid Trump’s trade tariffs on nearly all goods imported to US
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Sugiono will attend a meeting with his counterparts of the BRICS bloc of emerging economies in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, the country’s first ministerial participation since becoming a full member of the geopolitical forum earlier this year.
Initially comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the group has expanded with the accession of Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and the UAE last year, and Indonesia in January.
Morphing into the most powerful geopolitical forum outside the Western world, BRICS now accounts for about 48 percent of the world’s population and more than 37 percent of the global economy.
“The Indonesian foreign minister will encourage BRICS to play a more constructive role in maintaining peace and upholding global norms that have been mutually agreed upon,” Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
“(He) will also emphasize the importance of reforming various multilateral institutions to be more inclusive, transparent, and responsive in facing various challenges in the world.”
Brazil holds the BRICS presidency this year under the theme “Enhancing Global South Cooperation for a More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance.”
The two-day meeting of the group’s foreign ministers in Rio de Janeiro will also cover preparations for the upcoming annual leaders’ summit, which Brazil will host in July.
The ministerial-level meeting comes amid the US’ 90-day pause on sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs, while it has raised tariffs on Chinese imports to an effective rate of 145 percent. Beijing has responded with retaliatory hikes on US exports.
The Trump administration has imposed a 47 percent tariff on Indonesian imports, raising concerns about its billions of dollars-worth exports to the US.
The intensifying trade war with the US and the impacts of Washington’s tariffs around the world will be high on the agenda of the BRICS meeting, said Dinna Prapto Raharja, founder of Jakarta-based think-tank Synergy Policies.
“It will be a big part of the agenda, how BRICS countries will respond to the US tariffs,” Raharja told Arab News on Sunday.
Alternative payment methods in international trade and the role of the New Development Bank — a multilateral bank developed by BRICS member nations — are also likely to be discussed.
She noted that the BRICS meeting is taking place as China urges a unified response in Southeast Asia, following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tour to the region earlier this month.
“Indonesia must be able to choose and talk about extremely strategic matters in these negotiation processes,” Raharja said.
Jakarta must decide on which aspects it is willing to work with the US and in which areas it is open to create alternatives with BRICS countries.
She added: “This must be decided, so that in the case of China coming into the forums with offers or even a little push for BRICS member countries to choose a certain path, Indonesia is ready.”
South Korea’s main opposition party taps former party chief as presidential candidate
- Lee, 60, lost the 2022 election to Yoon in the narrowest margin recorded in the country’s presidential elections
SEOUL: South Korea’s main liberal opposition party tapped Sunday its former leader Lee Jae-myung as presidential candidate in the upcoming June 3 vote.
The Democratic Party said Lee has won nearly 90 percent of the votes cast during the party’s primary that ended Sunday, defeating two competitors.
Lee, a liberal who wants greater economic parity in South Korea and warmer ties with North Korea, has solidified his position as front-runner to succeed recently ousted conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Lee had led the opposition-controlled parliament’s impeachment of Yoon over his imposition of martial law before the Constitutional Court formally dismissed him in early April. Yoon’s ouster prompted a snap election set for June 3 to find a new president, who’ll be given a full, single five-year term.
Lee, 60, lost the 2022 election to Yoon in the narrowest margin recorded in the country’s presidential elections.
He is the clear favorite to win the election.
In a Gallup Korea poll released Friday, 38 percent of respondents chose Lee as their preferred new president, while all other aspirants obtained single-digit support ratings. The main conservative People Power Party is to nominate its candidate next weekend, and its four presidential hopefuls competing to win the party ticket won combined 23 percent of support ratings in the Gallup survey.
Lee, who served as the governor of South Korea’s most populous Gyeonggi province and a mayor of Seongnam city, has long established an image as an anti-establishment figure who can eliminate deep-rooted unfairness, inequality and corruption in South Korea. But his critics view him as a populist who relies on stoking divisions and demonizing opponents and worry his rule would likely end up intensifying a domestic division.
