Opposition supporters marched in Zimbabwe’s capital on Thursday, demanding that the government do more to fix the sinking economy. The marchers, among other things, want employers to pay them in the same U.S. dollars that government institutions demand for payment. The government said marches would only derail progress. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare.
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Month: November 2018
Uganda Testing Injectable HIV Prevention Drug
Ahead of World AIDS Day, Uganda is recruiting women to participate in a trial of an injectable antiretroviral drug to replace Truvada, a daily pill that has low adherence by users. The trial will assess if the new drug – Cabotegravir – can further reduce the risk of acquiring HIV. Halima Athumani has more from Kampala.
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Officials: 18 Wounded in Gaza Border Protest
Gaza health officials say 18 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli gunfire at a protest along Gaza-Israel perimeter fence.
Thousands of Palestinians protested Friday, but maintained the monthlong lower intensity of the weekly marches that began in March. Some demonstrators approached the heavily guarded barrier, hurling rocks and firebombs.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers said the protests were restrained to assess the extent to which Israel is easing the Isreali-Egyptian blockade imposed on the territory’s 2 million residents since 2007.
Recently, Israel allowed Qatar to deliver cash to Hamas’ civil servants and fuel to Gaza’s power plant, hoping to calm down months of border violence, in which 175 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed.
The Islamic militant Hamas has threated to ratchet up the marches if the blockade is not lifted.
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UN experts: South Sudan Beset by `Alarming’ Sexual Violence
South Sudan is beset by “alarming levels” of sexual and gender-based violence and a desperate humanitarian situation, including severe food shortages, as it attempts to implement the latest peace agreement in a climate of “deep distrust,” U.N. experts said.
The panel of experts said in a report to the Security Council that the world’s newest nation must deal with the fragmentation of armed groups “and grave human rights abuses, including against children,” in addition to the “profound deficit of trust” among almost all signatories to the September peace deal.
But most important, they said, is whether implementing the peace agreement improves the lives of the civilians, many of whom expressed to the experts “profound cynicism and distrust of a high-level political process that appears increasingly removed from their suffering.”
The report, which was circulated Thursday and covers a 45-day period in September and October, stressed that competition for South Sudan’s natural resources including oil, gold, teak wood and charcoal remains “central to the conflict” both locally and nationally.
There were high hopes that South Sudan would have peace and stability after its independence from neighboring Sudan in 2011. But it plunged into ethnic violence in December 2013 when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, started battling those loyal to Riek Machar, his former vice president who is a Nuer.
A peace deal signed in August 2015 didn’t stop the fighting, and neither did cessation of hostilities agreement in December 2017 and a declaration on June 27.
The Sept. 12 power-sharing agreement signed in neighboring Sudan has so far been fraught with delays, missed deadlines and continued fighting in parts of the country. The government and opposition have said they are committed to implementing it but both sides blame each other for abuses and for violating the deal.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and forced over 4 million to flee their homes — more than 1.8 million of them leaving the country in what has become one of the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis.
In July, the Security Council narrowly approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution imposing an arms embargo on the entire territory of South Sudan. It has also imposed sanctions on key figures in the conflict.
The experts said that while it’s too early to adequately assess the impact and enforcement of the arms embargo, “a number of violations have been noted by the panel.”
The panel said it also noted “repeated violations of the travel ban” against some South Sudanese on the sanctions blacklist.
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Family Says Egypt Arrested British Tourist for Military Chopper Video
The family of a 19-year-old British tourist says Egyptian authorities have arrested the young man over a video he filmed on his cellphone that showed a military helicopter in the background.
Speaking from the UK on Friday, humanitarian relief worker Shareen Nawaz told The Associated Press that her cousin, Libyan-British Muhammed Fathi AbulKasem, was arrested shortly after he arrived in Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria on Nov. 21.
She said he faced a court three times over the past week on charges of collecting intelligence on the Egyptian military. His mother, Amaal Rafiq, confirmed his arrest in a Facebook post.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The UK’s Foreign Office confirmed the arrest of a Briton in Alexandria, but didn’t elaborate.
your ad hereEgypt Says It Regrets Break of Parliamentary Ties With Italy
Egypt’s parliament says it regrets the decision of Italy’s lower house to break parliamentary ties over the lack of progress in investigations related to the torture and killing of an Italian researcher nearly three years ago.
In a Friday statement, Parliament said it was “surprised” by the Italian chamber’s “unilateral” decision and called for the non-politicization of legal issues.
Italy has been pressing Cairo for years to identify and prosecute those responsible for the 2016 killing of Giulio Regeni. Researching labor unions in Egypt at the time, Regeni’s body was found bearing marks of torture.
Italian media says prosecutors in Rome are set to launch an investigation into seven Egyptian secret service members they suspect were involved in Regeni’s abduction and murder. Egypt has long denied its authorities were involved.
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For Israel, a Rearmed Hezbollah in Lebanon is Top Concern
On a moonlit night, some two dozen Israeli soldiers in full battle gear march near a Lebanese border village with a bomb-sniffing dog, searching for explosives and infiltrators.
Suddenly the force stops. Through night-vision goggles, two suspicious men appear over the ridge, holding what looks like binoculars. Could they be undercover Hezbollah guerrillas? Lebanese soldiers on a night patrol? Or perhaps U.N. peacekeepers?
The men appear unarmed and since they are on the other side of the internationally recognized “blue line” that separates the two countries, Israeli troops move on, completing another routine foot patrol along a scenic frontier that has remained quiet but tense since the bloody battles of a 2006 summer war.
Even with attention currently focused on Gaza militants along the southern front, Israel’s main security concerns lie to the north, along the border with Lebanon.
Israeli officials have long warned the threat posed by Gaza’s Hamas rulers pales in comparison to that of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group — a heavily-armed mini-army with valuable combat experience and an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets that can reach nearly every part of Israel.
It’s along this northern front that Israeli soldiers come face-to-face with Hezbollah guerrillas and where any skirmish could spark an all-out war.
“The rules of the game are very clear. They know I’m here and I know they’re there,” said Lt. Col. Aviv, a regional battalion commander. “But if they break that equation, they are going to get hit.”
From his base along the border near the Israeli farming community of Avivim, he can see the hilltop Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras, a U.N. observer outpost and a new square house inside an agricultural field, assumed to be a Hezbollah lookout.
Under the U.N.-brokered cease-fire that ended the 2006 war, Hezbollah’s troops are prohibited from approaching the border. But Israeli intelligence says Hezbollah men operate freely, generally unarmed and in civilian clothes. Sometimes they come within just a few meters (feet) of the Israeli troops, it says. Only a coil of barbed wire separates them but there are no interactions.
“They are very disciplined soldiers. They won’t initiate anything,” said Aviv, who can only be identified by his first name under military regulations.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently decided against a full-scale offensive in Gaza, he cited the current “security-sensitive period” in what was widely assumed to be a reference to the northern front.
Israel has generally refrained from engaging in Syria’s civil war, where Hezbollah has fought fiercely alongside President Bashar Assad’s troops, though it has carried out scores of airstrikes against what Israel says were Iranian shipments of advanced weapons bound for Hezbollah.
Until recently, Israel flew its jets through Syrian skies with impunity. But that was severely restricted after a Russian plane was downed in September by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli air strike, a friendly fire incident that stoked Russian anger toward Israel and hastened the delivery of sophisticated S-300 air defense systems to Syria.
With Syria’s civil war winding down, an empowered Hezbollah is now free to re-establish itself back home in Lebanon and refocus on Israel, said Eyal Ben-Reuven, a lawmaker and retired general who commanded Israeli ground troops in the 2006 war. Armed with more exact rockets and munitions, Hezbollah now poses a far more dangerous threat, he said.
“A terror organization, unlike a country, doesn’t stockpile weapons for deterrence but in order to use them one day,” he said. “I suspect they will now try to goad Israel. … The war the Israeli military has to prepare for is the one against Hezbollah.”
Neither side appears interested quite yet in another full-fledged confrontation like the monthlong 2006 war, which ended in stalemate and in which more than 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis were killed.
With a lagging economy and a paralyzed government, Lebanon appears unlikely to have the stomach for another war. Though emboldened politically from the Syria war and having surged in power in Lebanese parliamentary elections earlier this year, Hezbollah is going through a financial crunch. It also is recovering after having hundreds of fighters killed or wounded in Syria.
Still, Israel accuses it of ratchetting up tensions.
The military says it recently uncovered militant surveillance outposts along the border, set up under the guise of a tree-planting campaign by an environmental advocacy group, “Green Without Borders.” The group acknowledges its affiliation with Hezbollah but says its work is purely environmental.
Netanyahu also accused Hezbollah of setting up secret rocket launching sites near Beirut’s international airport. The military says Hezbollah is establishing new launching sites among civilians — a trap that could make it difficult for Israel to respond forcefully.
But the military says its major concern is Iranian-backed efforts to convert some of Hezbollah’s unguided rockets into precision munitions that could wreak far more devastation on Israeli targets.
Hezbollah declined to respond to the accusations. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said recently the group is “more confident than ever” and ready for war at any time.
On the ground, the potential for trouble is clear. Israel occupied parts of southern Lebanon before withdrawing in 2000 to the U.N.-demarcated “blue line.” But Lebanon and Hezbollah have disputed parts of the U.N. map, and an official border has never been agreed on by the two enemy countries.
Due to the uneven terrain, Israel’s sophisticated northern fence does not run precisely along the border, creating enclaves of Israeli territory that are inside the blue line but beyond the fence.
Israel had previously neglected these areas and its troops were ambushed there in 2006. Now it’s stepping up its presence, fortifying fences and clearing away brush to improve observation.
It’s also sending a signal that violations won’t be tolerated — even on a night patrol, Israeli troops don’t hide their presence.
“I have an interest that they see I’m here,” said Lt. Col. Aviv, a bullet loaded in the chamber of his modified M-16 rifle. “There are no surprises.”
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Brussels Police Water-cannon ‘yellow vest’ Protesters
Belgian police fired water-cannon and teargas in central Brussels on Friday to drive back protesters inspired by France’s “yellow vest” anti-tax movement who hurled rocks at the prime minister’s office.
For nearly three hours, crowds of people complaining about fuel prices and a squeeze on living standards had disrupted traffic and walked the streets in an unauthorized demonstration that lacked clear leadership, largely promoted via social media.
Several hundred people wearing the fluorescent safety vests drivers must carry in their vehicles eventually converged on the office of Prime Minister Charles Michel. Dozens, many of them masked, threw rocks, firecrackers and road signs at police who doused them with high-pressure water jets and fired gas rounds.
Protests in Belgium, notably around fuel depots in the French-speaking south, have been inspired by the yellow vest — or “gilet jaune” — actions in France against increases in fuel duty imposed by President Emmanuel Macron’s government as part of efforts to reduce emissions causing global warming.
“Michel, resign!” people chanted on Friday. Michel, a liberal ally of Macron, voiced sympathy for people’s troubles on Thursday, but added: “Money doesn’t fall from the sky.”
His center-right coalition faces an election in May.
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