State news agency says fatal fire broke out after ambush thought to have involved drone
At least three people died when an Iranian fuel tanker was attacked off Syria’s coast on Saturday, in the first assault of its kind since the Syrian civil war started a decade ago, a war monitor said.
“At least three Syrians were killed, including two members of the crew,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Continue reading...President called Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday to inform him US would make designation on 106th anniversary of the genocide
Joe Biden has become the first US president declare formal recognition of the Armenian genocide, more than a century after the mass killings by Ottoman troops and opening a rift between the new US administration and Ankara.
Related: Biden vows US will work with Russia on climate
Continue reading...Rockets seen as response to unrest in mostly Palestinian east Jerusalem, including far-right Jewish groups chanting ‘death to Arabs’
Militants in Gaza have fired at least 35 rockets into Israel in one of the most intense flare-ups in months, seemingly triggered by days of tensions in Jerusalem in which far-right Jewish groups and the Israeli police have clashed with Palestinians.
Hours of sustained rocket launches early on Saturday – and Israel’s retaliatory strikes on the strip using fighter jets and attack helicopters – broke a months-long lull along the frontier with the coastal enclave.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru
One of the fiercest voices of Middle Eastern feminism, the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls explains her mission to ‘destroy patriarchy’
Every morning, Mona Eltahawy carefully lines her eyes in thick kohl. “It’s a ritual I gift to myself every morning,” explains the 53-year-old Egyptian author, journalist and feminist activist. “Holding that brush is like being a calligrapher, and I consider lining my eyes as a way of writing a love letter to myself. It’s a form of adornment, but it also connects me to my Egyptian heritage, because in ancient Egypt, men and women of all social classes wore eyeliner. It has become a kind of self-care for me since the pandemic began.”
We are speaking via Zoom, with Eltahawy in Montreal, where she lives with her partner. Behind her is a framed portrait of the Egyptian blogger and women’s rights activist Aliaa Mahdy, by the Canadian artist Nadine Faraj. Eltahawy speaks fast, beaded earrings swinging from her ears, often pausing to run her hand through her close-cropped hair; she shaved her long red hair in May. “Red was my power before,” she says, “but to signal power now, I wanted to shave it all off, to say, ‘This is the pandemic me that is emerging.’” Eltahawy is not one for the unexamined life. She is likable, earnest and sincere.
Continue reading...Dozens of bodies have been spotted near a capsized vessel which had about 130 people on board
At least 120 asylum seekers are feared dead after their rubber boat capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya while they were attempting to reach Europe, charities and the UN migration agency say.
Dozens of bodies were spotted near a capsized vessel on Thursday, which had about 130 people on board, a rescue charity said.
Continue reading...Campaign Against Arms Trade claims UK-made weapons have been used in airstrikes in Yemen that breach humanitarian law
Anti-arms trade campaigners have been given permission to challenge in the high court the UK government’s decision to resume the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the war in Yemen.
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) won leave to seek a judicial review of a decision taken by international trade secretary, Liz Truss, last summer, which was followed by £1.4bn worth of arms exports soon after.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary denies that aid organisations are scared to speak out or people are going hungry
The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has told MPs that “no country is immune” from the impending aid cuts, but failed to clarify when specific plans would be made public.
Speaking after the release of the first details of the £4bn cuts to international aid, which have been widely criticised as “draconian” and opaque, the minister confirmed “no stand-alone” impact assessment had been carried out in individual countries but that “we identify risks we see across the board”.
Continue reading...Trials coincide with Iran announcing desire for ‘all for all’ simultaneous prisoner exchanges with west
Iran has set trial dates for two dual nationals, one British-Iranian and the other German-Iranian, in cases that may increase the pressure before the next stage of talks on the future of the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna.
The news of the trials set for next Wednesday comes as the lead Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said at a Clubhouse event on Tuesday that Iran wants a big “all for all” prisoner exchange.
Continue reading...Minister tells MPs that cuts come at ‘terrible’ time, with 16m close to famine as Covid infections double
The UK government has admitted that no assessment has been carried out of how “dire” the impact of the 60% cut in foreign aid to Yemen will be.
Related: UK 'balancing books on backs of Yemen's starving people', says UN diplomat
Continue reading...Opposition leaders leave airport bolthole as they step up pressure over contested presidency of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed
After months living at an upmarket inn close to Mogadishu’s airport, Somalia’s opposition leaders, including two former presidents and their armed teams, have decamped, spreading across the capital in what is seen as a strategic move.
The sitting president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmaajo”, has meanwhile flown to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he reportedly hopes to win support for an extension of his presidential term from the African Union.
Continue reading...Investigation finds one in six were solo and under 15, as experts say cross-border cooperation ‘nonexistent’
At least 18,000 unaccompanied child migrants have disappeared after arriving in European countries including Greece, Italy and Germany.
An investigation by the Guardian and the cross-border journalism collective Lost in Europe found that 18,292 unaccompanied child migrants went missing in Europe between January 2018 and December 2020 – equivalent to nearly 17 children a day.
Continue reading...Statement comes two months after BBC video in which Dubai ruler’s daughter said she was being held hostage
UN experts have demanded that the United Arab Emirates provide information about a daughter of Dubai’s ruler and release her, two months after the BBC published a video of Princess Latifa describing herself as a hostage in a villa.
The UAE said on 19 February that Sheikha Latifa was being cared for at home, after the United Nations human rights office headed by Michelle Bachelet asked for proof that she was alive amid growing international concern about her fate.
Continue reading...Open letter backing UN call to action says Covid has exacerbated problems of conflict, climate crisis and inequality
World leaders are being urged to act immediately to stop multiple famines breaking out, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and caused by conflict, climate crisis and inequality.
In an open letter published on Tuesday to support the UN Call for Action to Avert Famine in 2021, hundreds of aid organisations from around the world said: “People are not starving – they are being starved.”
Continue reading...Ahtisham Khan arrived in Greece, aged 16, after leaving Pakistan. A new initiative is helping children like him find a safe home where they can start to rebuild their lives
At some point in his journey to a freer place, Ahtisham Khan came to a fork in the road. Fifty days of travel from his native Pakistan to the plains of northern Greece had been unexpectedly frightening and exhausting.
“We had a lot of dreams,” he says, recalling why he and his brother, Zeeshan, left their village close to the city of Haripur in Pakistan. “We were teenagers … we didn’t know what we were embarking on. We did what we had to do to survive.”
Continue reading...Five Iranians are in Turkish detention, the latest in an apparent wave of arrests and deportation orders
Iranian dissidents in Turkey are unsure whether the country is still a refuge after what appears to be a new wave of arrests and deportation orders targeting asylum seekers from the Islamic Republic.
Afshin Sohrabzadeh, 31, a Kurdish political activist, faced torture and solitary confinement during seven years in prison in Iran before he managed to escape during a hospital visit and flee across the border to Turkey in 2016, followed by his wife the following year.
Continue reading...Meryem Benm’Barek’s smart debut lays bare the scandalous consequences for a Casablanca woman who finds herself single and pregnant
In Morocco, sex outside marriage is punishable by up to 12 months in prison. But when unmarried Sofia gives birth, in this debut feature from Meryem Benm’Barek, her family’s biggest fear is not her going to jail, it’s preserving their honour. The film is straightforward, a blunt social-realist drama. (Sofia goes into labour at a kitchen sink, while washing up.) Only at the end does it dawn on you how carefully the story is plotted: something happens that recasts everything that has gone before – and, if anything, makes the story even more grim.
Maha Alemi stars as 20-year-old Sofia, who doesn’t know that she is pregnant until her waters break during a family party in Casablanca. It’s never clear whether Sofia, who didn’t gain much weight, was completely unaware of the pregnancy; perhaps she suspected it but had blocked it out. Her face is mostly blank, and she walks through the film numbed and zombie-like. After the birth, her family is disgusted – and terrified that a scandal will blow her dad’s business deal with wealthy entrepreneur named Ahmed. (Ahmed is played by Mohamed Bousbaa. Like a bit character in a murder mystery, watch him – he’ll be important later.)
Continue reading...The poll on 26 May is all but certain to return Bashar al-Assad for a third term as president
Syria will hold a presidential election on 26 May that is virtually certain to return Bashar al-Assad for a third term, an event Washington and the opposition say is a farce designed to cement his autocratic rule.
Assad’s family and his Baath party have ruled Syria for five decades with the help of the security forces and the army, which are dominated by his Alawite minority. This year is the 10th anniversary of the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that triggered a civil war that has left much of the country in ruins.
Continue reading...This fictionalised account of the Egyptian uprising of 2011 has an eye for telling detail in the choice between struggle and self-preservation
Early on in Alaa al-Aswany’s new novel, The Republic of False Truths, a conversation takes place between an older and a younger man that proves bleakly prophetic for what is to follow. Essam Shaalan, once a student protest leader in the 1970s, is now the manager of a foreign-owned Cairo factory; Mazen Saqqa, a young engineer, is the son of Shaalan’s former comrade and a union representative for the striking workers.
“You want to know the truth?” Shaalan tells Saqqa. “Egyptians don’t revolt, or if they do, their revolution is bound to fail because they’re cowardly and submissive by nature… The Egyptians love a dictatorial hero and feel safe when they submit to despotism. In Egypt, the only thing your struggle can lead to is your own destruction.”
Continue reading...Israel’s prime minister is creating a climate of fear and crisis as his best hope for holding on to power
In a region famous for warmongers and tyrants, who is the most dangerous man in the Middle East right now? Not Bashar al-Assad, the isolated gauleiter of Damascus. Not disgraced Mohammed bin Salman, the princely Saudi executioner. Not even Turkey’s misogynist-in-chief, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the local neighbourhood bully.
Step forward Benjamin Netanyahu, easily the most convincing contender for the “danger man” title. Israel’s prime minister has outdone himself of late, threatening war with Iran, ordering one-off attacks, assassinating a top scientist, sabotaging international fence-mending, and defying the US, his country’s indispensable ally.
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