MOGADISHU: Crowds of Somalis joined a demonstration on Monday against the jihadist group Al-Shabab at the site of a deadly beachfront attack in the capital Mogadishu last week.
A suicide bomber and gunmen attacked the popular Lido Beach on Friday evening, killing 37 people and wounding scores more, in one of the deadliest strikes in the East African country in months.
“We came here to Lido Beach to show we can’t be intimidated,” said one of the protesters, Abdisalam Ahmed Abdullahi.
“Mogadishu people are not afraid of Kharijite enemy,” he said, using a government term for the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants who have carried out numerous attacks in the predominantly Muslim country for years.
Survivors of Friday’s assault described how following an explosion, gunmen stormed onto the beach intending to “kill everyone they could,” with graphic video shared online showing bloodied bodies on the sand.
Al-Shabab has been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s fragile federal government for more than 17 years and has previously targeted the Lido beach area, which is popular with business people and government members as well as ordinary Somalis.
“Somali people in general, and those in Mogadishu particularly, need to unite in fighting against the enemy,” said Livestock Minister Hassan Hussein, one of several government officials who joined the rally.
He described Al-Shabab militants as “bedbugs.”
Amina Ibrahim Halane said she joined the rally to show sympathy for the victims of Friday’s attack, saying they were simply “innocent men... enjoying their city.”
‘We won’t be intimidated’: Somalis protest after Al-Shabab attack
https://arab.news/vr5h7
‘We won’t be intimidated’: Somalis protest after Al-Shabab attack
Cyprus and the US sign a defense deal outlining ways to tackle regional crises
Cyprus Defense Minister Vassilis Palmas and US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander hailed the agreement on Monday as another milestone in burgeoning Cypriot-US ties in recent years that saw the lifting in 2022 of a decades-old US arms embargo imposed on the east Mediterranean island nation.
“The Republic of Cyprus is a strong partner to the United States, in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, and plays a pivotal role at the nexus of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,” Wallander said after talks with Palmas.
The US official praised Cyprus for acting as a safe haven for American civilians evacuated from Sudan and Israel last year and for its key role in setting up a maritime corridor to Gaza through which more than 20 million pounds of humanitarian aid has been shipped to the Palestinian territory.
“It is evident that Cyprus is aligned with the West,” Wallander said.
Palmas said Cyprus would continue building toward “closer, stronger and beneficial bilateral defense cooperation with the United States.”
According to a joint statement, the agreement also foresees working together on dealing with “malicious actions” and bolstering ways for the Cypriot military to operate more smoothly with US forces.
Two Pakistanis convicted of incitement to kill Dutch far-right leader Wilders
- The two men were tried in absentia as Pakistan did not force the men to appear at the high-security trial as requested by the Netherlands
BADHOEVEDORP: A Dutch court on Monday convicted two Pakistani men on charges of incitement for urging their followers to murder far-right and anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders.
The two men, Muhammed Ashraf Jalali and Saad Hussain Rizvi, were tried in absentia as Pakistan did not force the men to appear at the high-security trial as requested by the Netherlands.
Jalali, a 56-year-old religious leader, was handed a 14-year sentence for calling on his followers to kill Wilders and promising they would be “rewarded in the afterlife.”
Rizvi, 29, leader of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party, was sentenced to four years after urging followers to kill Wilders after Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced for incitement to murder him.
In September 2023, judges sentenced Latif to 12 years behind bars for incitement to murder Wilders after the firebrand lawmaker sought to arrange a competition for cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Wilders canceled the cartoon contest after protests broke out in Pakistan and he was inundated with death threats.
He has been under 24-hour state protection since 2004.
The call to kill Wilders appeared to resonate, as a Pakistani man was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2019 for plotting his assassination in the wake of the canceled contest.
In the Netherlands, the plan for the cartoon contest was widely criticized as needlessly antagonizing Muslims.
“This case has had a huge impact on me and my family,” Wilders told the court last week.
Wilders’ PVV (Freedom Party) was the big winner of Dutch parliamentary elections in November.
WTO says trade alone won’t bridge gap between economies
- WTO’s 2024 report on global trade looked at role commerce has played to narrow gap between economies
GENEVA: The World Trade Organization said Monday that open trade alone was not enough to reduce inequalities between wealthy and developing nations and more was needed to help poorer countries.
The WTO’s 2024 report on global trade looked at the role that commerce has played to narrow the gap between economies since its creation in 1995.
“Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the report is its reaffirmation of trade’s transformative role in reducing poverty and creating shared prosperity,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in the foreword.
This conclusion, she added, runs “contrary to the currently fashionable notion that trade, and institutions like the WTO, have not been good for poverty or for poor countries, and are creating a more unequal world.”
“But the second biggest takeaway is that there is much more we can do to make trade and the WTO work better for economies and people left behind during the past 30 years of globalization,” Okonjo-Iweala said.
The report found that low- and middle-income economies tend to engage less in international trade, receive less foreign direct investment and depend more on commodities.
They also export fewer “complex products” and “trade with fewer partners,” the WTO said.
“Protectionism, the report demonstrates, is not an effective path to inclusiveness,” Okonjo-Iweala said, warning that it can raise production costs and invite “costly retaliation from disgruntled trading partners.”
WTO chief economist Ralph Ossa added: “Less trade will not promote inclusiveness, nor will trade alone.”
“True inclusiveness demands a comprehensive strategy — one that integrates open trade with supportive domestic policies and robust international cooperation,” Ossa said.
The report said domestic policies that are needed to make trade more inclusive include vocational training, unemployment benefits and “education for a more skilled and mobile workforce.”
It also called for “competition policy to ensure consumers benefit from lower prices, reliable infrastructure, and well-functioning financial markets.”
Catherine, princess of Wales, says she’ll return to public duties
- The princess announced in March that she was being treated for an undisclosed type of cancer
LONDON: Catherine, the Princess of Wales, says she has completed chemotherapy and will return to some public duties in the coming months.
The 42-year-old wife of Prince William is expected to undertake a light program of engagements until the end of the year.
The princess announced in March that she was being treated for an undisclosed type of cancer.
Kate attended a ceremonial birthday parade for her father-in-law King Charles III in June, and the following month presented the men’s winner’s trophy at the Wimbledon tennis championships.
UN rights chief voices ‘abhorrence’ of Afghanistan ‘vice’ law
- Taliban published widely-criticized law in August further tightening restrictions on women’s lives
GENEVA: The UN rights chief on Monday slammed Afghanistan’s latest laws curtailing women’s rights, decrying the “outrageous” and “unparallelled” repression of half the country’s population.
Speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Volker Turk made clear his “abhorrence of these latest measures.”
The Taliban government in Afghanistan — which took power in 2021 but is yet to be recognized by any other country — published a widely-criticized law in August further tightening restrictions on women’s lives.
While many of the measures have been informally enforced since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, their formal codification sparked an outcry from the international community and rights groups.
The new “vice and virtue” law dictates that a woman’s voice should not be raised outside the home, and that women should not sing or read poetry aloud.
It requires them to cover their entire body and face if they need to leave their homes, which they should only do “out of necessity.”
These measures, Turk pointed out, come on top of previous measures that included “forbidding girls from attending secondary school and women from attending university; denying women’s rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, opinion, expression and freedom of movement; and severely curtailing women’s rights to seek employment.”
He emphasized that “women who have sought to protest such laws or express any different opinion or form of dissent have faced harsh punishments.”
“I shudder to think what is next for the women and girls of Afghanistan.”
His comments came after the UN Security Council last week called for the repeal of the new laws, warning they “undermine” efforts to reintegrate the country with the international community.
Turk meanwhile described the “repressive control over half the population in the country” as “unparallelled in today’s world.”
“It is a fundamental rupture of the social contract. It is outrageous and amounts to systematic gender persecution,” he told the council.
“It will also jeopardize the country’s future by massively stifling its development,” he warned.
“This is propelling Afghanistan further down a path of isolation, pain and hardship.”
