On cars, restaurant walls and buildings reduced to rubble, Bashar al-Assad’s face is plastered across the country, a decade after he crushed the first protests against his rule. By photographer Rami al-Bustan
Continue reading...Category Archives: Arab and Middle East unrest
Denmark strips Syrian refugees of residency permits and says it is safe to go home
Government denies renewal of temporary residency status from about 189 Syrians
Denmark has become the first European nation to revoke the residency permits of Syrian refugees, insisting that some parts of the war-torn country are safe to return to.
At least 189 Syrians have had applications for renewal of temporary residency status denied since last summer, a move the Danish authorities said was justified because of a report that found the security situation in some parts of Syria had “improved significantly”.
Continue reading...UN calls for inquiry after rebels fired missiles into Yemen detention centre
Dozens of Ethiopian migrants died and UN special envoy described the deaths as ‘extraordinarily horrific’
The UN has called for an independent inquiry into a horrific fire at a detention facility in Yemen’s capital Sana’a that left dozens of Ethiopian migrants dead and more than 170 injured.
Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that the fire on 7 March occurred after Houthi rebels fired missiles into the detention centre where the migrants were protesting over their cramped conditions.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on the Arab Spring, a decade on: a haunting legacy | Editorial
High hopes in the region soon turned to exhaustion and despair. But the movement is not over
It is sometimes said that the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, when asked in 1972 about the influence of the French Revolution, replied: “Too soon to tell.” Though the tale is apocryphal – he was referring to the student revolts of 1968 – it reminds us that the world’s great events may look quite different from another temporal perspective.
In January 2011, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled by protests triggered by the self-immolation of a street vendor weeks earlier. Within days, tens of thousands of Egyptians had flooded into Tahrir Square, forcing Hosni Mubarak from power and transforming the nascent movement into a true phenomenon. Yet a decade after the region rose up against its dictators, authoritarianism has a tighter grip than ever, and its people are drained or traumatised. Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, is in the throes of its worst human rights crisis for decades. Poverty has deepened, with the pandemic and falling oil prices exacerbating the impact.
Continue reading...‘Things are getting worse’: Tunisia protests rage on as latest victim named
Police brutality and unemployment worsened by the pandemic continues to drive young protesters onto streets to demand reform
The latest victim of Tunisia’s current unrest has been named as Haykel Rachdi, from Sbeitla in Kasserine, near the Algerian border. He died of his injuries on Monday night after reportedly being struck on the head by a police teargas canister.
Protests were continuing on Wednesday, with police pushing back hundreds of mainly young demonstrators outside the country’s parliament in the capital, Tunis. One group had marched there from the working-class district of Hay Ettadhamen, in the north of the city. The protesters chanted refrains from the revolution of the winter of 2010–11 and anti-police slogans, while inside, politicians continued to debate whether to accept or reject a proposed new government, the fifth since 2019’s inconclusive elections.
Continue reading...‘Preserve my son’s name’: families of Tunisia’s Arab spring martyrs fight on
Delays in publication of official list of those killed and wounded provokes anger and claims of government indifference
Moslem Kasdallah rests on his crutches, the stump of his amputated leg on display. His voice hoarse, he yells the demands that, after years of delay, have brought him and the other wounded and bereaved of the Tunisian revolution to the steps of the government building they have been occupying since December.
Some are on hunger strike, others have sewn their lips shut. Kasdallah carries a bottle of fuel and a lighter, ready to self-immolate.
Continue reading...Arab states agree to end three-year boycott of Qatar
Reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE includes a non-aggression pact
A three-year boycott of Qatar by four other Middle Eastern countries that disfigured Gulf cooperation and raised concerns in the west about a strengthened regional role for Iran and Turkey has come to a stuttering close.
“The kingdom is happy to welcome you,” Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said as he greeted Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, on the tarmac of the airport in Al-Ula, north of Medina, on Tuesday.
Continue reading...The Arab spring wasn’t in vain. Next time will be different | Nesrine Malik
Lessons have been learned about how to convert the forces that demand equality into those that deliver it
At the end of 2010, I was en route to Sudan for Christmas, scouring Arabic social media in search of scraps of information about a story unfolding in Tunisia; a story the Arab media was censoring and the western media was still ignoring. A street trader, Mohammed Bouazizi, had set himself on fire in protest at the government in the city of Sidi Bouzid, sparking demonstrations that spread across the country.
Weeks before the protests toppled Tunisia’s president-for-life, you could see that something about this uprising was different. There was something about the way the protests resonated in households around the Arab world, the intensity of the moral outrage and the force of the momentum that felt new and exciting.
Continue reading...Life has got worse since Arab spring, say people across Middle East
Exclusive: Guardian-YouGov poll suggests majority in nine countries across the Arab world feel inequality has increased
A majority in nine countries across the Arab world feel they are living in significantly more unequal societies today than before the Arab spring, an era of uprisings, civil wars and unsteady progress towards self-determination that commenced a decade ago, according to a Guardian-YouGov poll.
Pluralities in almost every country agreed their living conditions had deteriorated since 2010, when the self-immolation of Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi is credited with kicking off mass demonstrations and revolutions that spread across the region. Reverberations of that moment continued into 2019 with the overthrow of Sudan’s former dictator Omar al-Bashir and large protest movements in Lebanon, Algeria and Iraq.
Continue reading...‘He ruined us’: 10 years on, Tunisians curse man who sparked Arab spring
Thanks in part to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, Tunisians are freer than before, but many are miserable and disillusioned
His act of despair still shakes the Arab world. Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old fruit seller whose self-immolation triggered revolutions across the Middle East, has a boulevard named after him in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis. In his home town of Sidi Bouzid, he is depicted in a giant portrait facing the local government headquarters.
But a decade since he set himself on fire in protest at state corruption and brutality, Bouazizi is out of fashion in Tunisia – along with the revolution his death inspired. His family have moved to Canada and cut most ties with Sidi Bouzid. “They were smeared,” says Bilal Gharby, 32, a family friend.
Continue reading...Hosni Mubarak buried with full military honours
Egypt pays tribute to former president, who died at 91, amid tight security in Cairo
Former Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak has been buried in Cairo with a full military funeral, following his death aged 91.
Mubarak’s body was transported from a mosque on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital to the family cemetery on Wednesday amid tight security. His coffin was pulled by horse-drawn carriages alongside a procession led by his sons Gamal and Alaa Mubarak and the current president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, flanked by military top brass and leading religious figures.
Continue reading...Labour condemns government for praising Trump Middle East plan
Emily Thornberry accuses Boris Johnson’s administration of ‘shameful betrayal’
Labour has condemned the government for praising Donald Trump’s vision for Middle East peace, with the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, calling it a “shameful betrayal” of previous UK support for a viable two-state solution.
In an urgent Commons question on the plan, which has been condemned for granting Israel the bulk of its wishes but only offering a Palestinian state under severe restrictions, Thornberry called it “a monstrosity” and a guarantee of future violence.
Continue reading...Threat of jail looms over even mildest critics under Egyptian crackdown
Nine years after uprising, Egyptians face strict controls on political activity and free speech
Mohammed Abdellatif did not see himself as a political activist. As a dentist in Cairo, his concerns were focused on healthcare and issues such as a lack of medical supplies and low wages for doctors.
Then at 3am one day last September, 50 armed security agents stormed his family home. Abdellatif’s alleged crime was to have launched a social media campaign demanding better pay and conditions for health workers in Egypt. The previous month while working at a public hospital in Giza, he had started the Twitter hashtag “Egyptian doctors are angry”.
Continue reading...Iraqi security forces open fire on protesters in fatal clashes in Baghdad – video
Clashes have erupted in Iraq's capital as security personnel fired live rounds and used water cannon to dispel thousands of demonstrators who defied a plea from the prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, to suspend their protests. Reuters reported that at least five people had been killed
Continue reading...Syria: videos of Turkey-backed militias show ‘potential war crimes’
Arab forces have allegedly been filmed torturing Kurdish fighters and mutilating bodies
Calls for war crimes investigations into the conduct of militias used by Turkey in Syria are mounting after a spate of new videos depicting Ankara-linked fighters torturing captives and mutilating dead bodies.
Footage of atrocities allegedly committed by Arab forces in northern Syria is circulating widely across Kurdish regions of the country, sparking fears of renewed fighting and a deepening ethnic divide in the region, even as a tenuous ceasefire begins to settle.
Continue reading...Donald Trump says Kurds ‘didn’t help us with Normandy’ – video
US president Donald Trump defends his decision to withdraw support for Kurdish allies in Syria by saying they did not help the US during the second world war, citing Normandy as an example. Kurdish forces did fight alongside the US against Isis for nearly five years before Trump's call to remove US troops from the region
Iraq protests: police open fire on demonstrators as death toll rises – video
Security forces in Iraq opened fire on protesters in Baghdad despite the prime minister's plea for calm and promise of reform. The protests, which have been fuelled by rage over poor living standards and alleged corruption, have escalated by the day since they first erupted on 1 October.
On Friday, hundreds of people, including members of the security forces as well as demonstrators, were wounded when police opened fire on protesters. The death toll has now risen to more than 40 dead
- Iraq death toll rises as police open fire on protesters in Baghdad
- Corruption will not be solved by 'wishing it away', Iraqi government warned
Arab leaders denounce Netanyahu’s plan to annex Palestinian territories
Israeli prime minister’s proposal would ‘kill all chances of peace’, says Jordan
Arab leaders have denounced Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex large swathes of the Palestinian territories if he is re-elected next week as an election stunt that would “kill all chances for peace”.
The Arab League held an emergency session on Tuesday evening after the Israeli prime minister announced the plan in a live press conference.
Continue reading...Tunisia’s presidential election to put young democracy to the test
Arab spring’s sole democratic state has proved resilient despite anger over price rises
Tunisia will hold its second-ever presidential elections on 15 September in a poll seen as a major test of the only democracy to emerge from the 2011 Arab spring.
The death in July of the country’s president, Beji Caid Essebsi, 92, a secularist who was instrumental in steering the country’s transition to democracy, forced the polls to be held earlier than originally scheduled in November.
Continue reading...Qatar to send $480m to help Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza
Gulf state reveals funding plan after ceasefire ends latest Israeli-Palestinian hostilities
Qatar has said it is sending $480m (£370m) to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire deal ended the deadliest fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants since 2014.
Qatar’s foreign ministry said $300m would go towards supporting health and education programmes of the Palestinian Authority, while $180m would go toward urgent humanitarian relief, UN programmes and providing electricity.
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