Israeli soldiers have been disciplined after video surfaced of them singing Hannukah songs and reciting Jewish prayers inside a mosque. The soldiers, who are conducting raids in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, have been suspended from duty.
Published On 14 Dec 2023
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The US and the UK have condemned the move as Hong Kong authorities expand crackdown under national security law.
Police in Hong Kong have offered bounties for information leading to the arrest of five activists living overseas, expanding a crackdown on those involved in the city’s once vibrant pro-democracy protest movement under a harsh national security law.
Law enforcement authorities on Thursday offered rewards of one million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) for each of the five activists, who live in countries including the United States and the United Kingdom.
“They all betrayed their own country and betrayed Hong Kong,” Steve Li, chief superintendent of the police national security department, said in a news conference. “After they fled overseas, they continued to engage in activities endangering national security.”
The move, characterised by the US and the UK as an effort to restrict democracy, added to a list of eight activists who authorities named as fugitives in July under a national security law imposed by Beijing.
The five activists are named as Simon Cheng, Frances Hui, Joey Siu, Johnny Fok and Tony Choi. Many prominent members of the 2019 protest movement moved overseas when the national security law was introduced the following year, anticipating harsh measures from authorities.
“This is a threat to our democracy and fundamental human rights,” UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in response to the announcement, adding that he had instructed officials in Hong Kong, Beijing, and London to “raise this issue as a matter of urgency”.
Hong Kong police announced bounties for eight activists living abroad in July, warning that they would be pursued for life. None of them have yet to be arrested.
In 2021, the government rounded up at least 47 opposition activists, including elected lawmakers, unionists, and academics, accusing them of contributing to unrest and undermining national security.
Closing arguments in the trial of 16 activists, Hong Kong’s largest-ever state security trial, took place in late November. If convicted, they face the possibility of life in prison.
In October, a group of United Nations human rights experts said that the mass trials could “negatively affect safeguards that ensure due process and the right to fair trial”.
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Lima, Peru – He was horrible at math. Loved to play sports. And always seemed to be smiling. When Gisela Ortiz thinks back to her older brother Luis Enrique, she remembers someone who was kind and generous, willing to lend clothes out of his own closet to classmates in need.
But when Ortiz was 20, her brother disappeared. She later learned that soldiers had burst into the university residence hall where he was staying and abducted him, along with eight other students.
Together with a professor, they were taken into a field and executed, their bodies dumped in a mass grave. Luis Enrique was only 21 years old.
Now, more than three decades later, the person Ortiz holds responsible has been released from prison — and Ortiz is among those raising their voices in protest.
On December 6, former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was freed, 16 years into a 25-year sentence.
In 2009, he had been convicted of ordering massacres between 1991 and 1992 that claimed the lives of 25 people, including Luis Enrique.
But critics have said that his record of human rights abuses stretches much further, to include allegations of torture, involuntary sterilisation and forced disappearances. The Inter-American Court had ordered Peruvian authorities to refrain from releasing Fujimori, given the severity of his crimes.
“A regime of impunity has been established,” Ortiz said after Fujimori’s release. “Ignoring the ruling of the Inter-American Court really makes us a country that does not respect human rights at the international level, and that is a step that is difficult to reverse.”
Peru is a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and is legally bound by the decisions of the Inter-American Court.
But Fujimori has remained a towering figure in Peru’s conservative politics, with a broad base of popular support. Proponents credit him with stabilising the economy, combatting armed leftist groups and launching infrastructure projects that improved transportation, education and healthcare.
The former president was first granted a humanitarian pardon in 2017, though it was later nullified. Peru’s Constitutional Court reinstated the pardon this month, partially on the basis of Fujimori’s advanced age and poor health.
Still, César Muñoz, the Americas associate director at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera that Fujimori’s release is an “extremely serious setback” for rule of law, not to mention for those harmed.
“It’s a slap in the face to the victims,” Muñoz said.
He explained that, according to international law, humanitarian pardons may indeed be granted to human rights abusers, but two conditions must first be met.
The first condition requires countries to punish human rights abusers according to a consistent standard, without discrimination or favour.
“You cannot have rules that change depending on who the person is,” said Muñoz.
The second condition requires that medical professionals render an independent, thorough and impartial determination about the need for a humanitarian release.
“Those two elements were not there” in the case of Fujimori’s pardon, Muñoz explained.
Following Fujimori’s release, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said it “rejects Peru’s decision” and called for the country “to take effective measures to guarantee the victims’ right to access justice”.
Cameras last week captured Fujimori, 85, stepping out of the prison gates and into the arms of his two children, Kenji Fujimori and Keiko Fujimori, both influential politicians.
The news left Javier Roca Obregón, also 85, feeling “indignant”. He has long since lost hope of ever seeing his son, Martin Roca Casas, again.
“I am 85 years old, and I have no hope,” Obregón told Al Jazeera. “I just want to die soon.”
In 1993, Casas was a student at the National University of Callao when he was tortured and detained by Peruvian military forces. His body has never been recovered.
Obregón and others believe Casas’s abduction was linked to his student activism. He remembers his son as a beacon of hope for other young people — “an example of overcoming” life’s obstacles.
Shortly before he went missing, Casas participated in a march against a tuition increase at his university. When two people started to film the protest, he and other students grabbed the camera and destroyed it — an act Obregón suspects precipitated his kidnapping.
“In Peru, the life of a poor person is worth nothing. The poor have no right to justice,” said Obregón, who originally hailed from the small, rural town of Yanama. “Just like a dog, they can kill it and then forget about it. That is what is being repeated.”
Critics have said Fujimori governed with relative impunity during his term in office, from 1990 to 2000. His presidency oversaw the dissolution of Congress and the suspension of Peru’s constitution, allowing him to consolidate power.
Carolina Oyague said it was a “terrible” feeling to see the video of a smiling Fujimori being released to his children.
Her older sister Dora, 21, was one of the nine students abducted from the Enrique Guzmán y Valle National University of Education in 1993, alongside Luis Enrique Ortiz.
Oyague remembers her sister as “cheerful and creative”, a budding entrepreneur who sold everything from makeup to cakes to pay for her education.
It was not until September of this year that parts of Dora’s skeletal remains were recovered and presented to her family. To watch Fujimori walk free only a few months later left Oyague furious.
“There’s no mea culpa,” she said. “He doesn’t even have a modicum of remorse.”
Fujimori has issued vague apologies in the past but has never taken direct responsibility for the military killings or the other abuses that occurred under his administration.
If anything, Fujimori’s governing style and ideology — nicknamed “Fujimorismo” — has remained a dominant political force in Peru. His daughter Keiko was one of the leading candidates in the 2021 presidential election, as part of the conservative Fuerza Popular party.
Inés Condori, president of the Association of Women Affected by Forced Sterilization of Chumbivilcas, was among the more than 200,000 Peruvians sterilised without their consent between 1996 and 2000, in what Fujimori’s government sought to portray as an anti-poverty measure.
Many of the victims were Quechua-speaking Indigenous women from rural communities, a fact that has fuelled accusations of ethnic cleansing. Condori, too, considers Fujimori’s release a miscarriage of justice.
“We have been fighting for 25 years, but there is no justice for us, the poor,” Condori wrote to Al Jazeera on WhatsApp. “[Fujimori] needs to be in prison forever.”
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The decision comes amid renewed asylum seekers arrivals that Helsinki has labelled a Russian hybrid attack.
Finland will close its eastern border with Russia, the country’s interior minister has said, just hours after the Nordic nation relaxed a two-week closure of all roads between the two countries.
Helsinki has said a recent rise in asylum seekers arriving via Russia was an orchestrated move by Moscow in retaliation for the Nordic country’s decision to increase defence cooperation with the United States, a charge the Kremlin has denied.
The arrivals stopped when Finland shut the border in late November, but resumed on Thursday when two of the eight crossings were opened, with some 36 people seeking asylum, the Finnish Border Guard said.
“The phenomenon has started again and we will close the whole border,” Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told the country’s parliament.
“This is a sign that the Russian authorities are continuing their hybrid operation against Finland. This is something that Finland will not tolerate,” Rantanen said in a statement.
Finland joined NATO in April after decades of military non-alignment and pragmatic friendly relations with Moscow. Its 1,340km (832-mile) border with Russia serves as the European Union’s external border and makes up NATO’s northeastern flank.
Approximately 900 asylum seekers from nations such as Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen entered Finland from Russia in November, an increase from fewer than one per day previously, according to the Border Guard.
In a letter published on Monday, the Council of Europe said it was “concerned about the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants” following the temporary border closure, and asked Finland to ensure it remained possible to seek protection.
Rantanen, who represents the anti-immigration Finns Party, on Monday told the news agency Reuters there was no cause for human rights concerns, however, as asylum could be sought at other entry points.
“Undoubtedly Russia is instrumentalising migrants” as part of its “hybrid warfare” against Finland, Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said last month.
“At the EU border with Finland, Russian border guards have been letting people through without Schengen visas or EU residence permits. People who are being misled. People who are being used by Russia,” said EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson.
At the end of November, the European Union’s border protection agency, Frontex, deployed 50 officers to Finland, and said it would send equipment such as patrol cars “to bolster Finland’s border control activities”.
In 2021, 3,000 to 4,000 asylum seekers became stranded in a no-man’s land on the border between Poland and Belarus as Warsaw deployed security forces to stop people from entering amid freezing winter temperatures.
The EU and Warsaw said Minsk was deliberately enticing migrants and refugees to Belarus and then pushing them westwards with promises of easy entry into the bloc, and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of masterminding the crisis.
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Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar says there is ‘some truth’ to accusations that EU employs a double-standard on Gaza.
A growing number of countries in the European Union have expressed support for a humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war as Israel’s assault on Gaza plunges the Palestinian territory into a dire humanitarian crisis.
In remarks on Tuesday at an EU summit focused largely on Ukraine, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar urged his colleagues to take a firmer stance and call for an end to the fighting between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“I think the European Union has lost credibility because of our inability to take a stronger and more united position on Israel and Palestine,” Varadkar said.
“We’ve lost credibility at the Global South, which actually is most of the world, because of what is perceived to be double standards. And there’s some truth in that, quite frankly.”
Before the summit, Varadkar and the prime ministers of Spain, Belgium, and Malta wrote to European Council President Charles Michel asking him to host a “serious debate” about the Israel-Hamas war and the “humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.”
“We must call urgently for all the parties to declare a lasting humanitarian cease-fire that can lead to an end of hostilities,” the four leaders wrote.
The comments came several days after a large majority of nations represented at the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire and the number of Palestinians killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza passed 18,000, most of them women and children. The resolution passed with 153 nations in support, 23 abstaining, and 10 voting against it.
In Tuesday’s UN vote, 17 EU countries were among those that backed the call for a ceasefire. In October, only eight had backed a resolution calling for a truce.
Varadkar insisted that a ceasefire could lead “to a new peace process and Palestinian statehood, which is the only way to secure justice and security for everyone living in the region.”
Spanish Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, backed his Irish colleague.
“Europe has to speak out … in a clear, strong, firm and unified voice,” he said.
The current round of fighting began on October 7 when Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 others captive.
Israel responded with a devastating assault on Gaza, bombarding the territory and launching a ground offensive, claiming that it seeks to topple Hamas.
The Hamas attack was widely condemned, and Israel received strong international backing for its war against Hamas from the United States and several European countries.
But as the Israeli assault continued, leading to dire humanitarian conditions and displacing more than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, some allies have tempered their support with growing warnings about the toll on civilians.
Western countries have also been accused of employing a double-standard, chastising Russia for violations of international law during its invasion of Ukraine but relatively muted when faced with similar acts by Israel.
Speaking on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden said that Israel risks losing support due to “indiscriminate bombing” in a rare moment of sharp criticism.
But despite mounting international pressure, Israel has shown no signs of scaling down its fighting in Gaza, where UN officials have described conditions as “hell on earth”.
On Thursday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that the fighting in Gaza would last “more than several months”.
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The Republican-led United States House of Representatives has voted to formally authorise its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Up until this point, the House had not had enough votes to legitimise the ongoing inquiry, but on Wednesday, lawmakers voted 221-212 in favour, with every Republican voting for it and every member of Biden’s Democratic Party against.
The decision to hold a vote came as Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and his team faced growing pressure to demonstrate progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe into the business dealings of Biden’s family members.
The vote took place hours after his son Hunter Biden defied a congressional subpoena by failing to appear for a private deposition at the House of Representatives. He refused to testify behind closed doors, saying he would testify only in public because he feared his words would otherwise be misrepresented.
Here is what you need to know:
An impeachment inquiry is a formal investigation into possible wrongdoing by a federal official, such as the president, cabinet officials or judges.
The process is written into the US Constitution and is the most powerful check that Congress has on the executive branch. It is a first step towards a potential impeachment, which means essentially that charges are brought against an official.
The US founders included impeachment in the constitution as an option for the removal of presidents, vice presidents and civil officers. Under the constitution, they can be removed from office for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.
While the House of Representatives wields the power to impeach an official, only the Senate has the ability to convict and remove an individual from office. This played out recently when former President Donald Trump was impeached twice by the House but acquitted in the Senate.
To date, no president has ever been forced out of the White House through impeachment, but Joe Biden is the eighth president to face an impeachment inquiry. Only three other presidents have been impeached after an inquiry: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Trump.
The House of Representatives started an impeachment inquiry in September, but the process has now been formalised.
In November, a top White House attorney claimed the investigation was illegitimate because the House had not yet formalised the impeachment inquiry through a vote. The White House questioned the legal and constitutional basis for the Republican lawmakers’ requests for information.
The constitution does not require a vote to start an impeachment inquiry, and neither do the rules governing the House, but authorising resolutions have been passed in previous presidential impeachments.
Most of the Republicans who were initially reluctant to back the impeachment push due to the lack of concrete evidence against the president have also been swayed by their leadership’s more recent argument that authorising the inquiry will give them better legal standing and would convince the White House to cooperate fully in the investigation by providing more information.
“This vote is not a vote to impeach President Biden,” Johnson said at a news conference on Tuesday. “This is a vote to continue the inquiry of impeachment. … I believe we’ll get every vote that we have.”
Congressional investigators have already obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including from several high-ranking Department of Justice officials currently tasked with investigating Hunter Biden.
Republicans have accused the president and his family of profiting from his time as vice president from 2009 to 2017 and have zeroed in on his son’s business activities.
Conservatives accuse Hunter Biden of “influence peddling”, effectively trading on the family name in “pay-to-play” schemes in his business dealings in Ukraine and China.
They have pointed to an FBI document from 2020 in which an informant claims the head of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm that included Hunter Biden on its board of directors, said: “It cost 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another Biden.”
This bribery claim relates to the Republican allegation that President Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor to stop an investigation into Burisma.
Democrats have reiterated that the Justice Department investigated the Burisma claim when Trump was president and closed the matter after eight months, finding “insufficient evidence” to pursue it further.
The head of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, has said nobody from the company had any contact with Joe Biden or his staff and that the elder Biden “did not help the firm”.
Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden, told the House Oversight Committee in July that the younger Biden had sought to create “an illusion of access to his father” and put his father on the phone with foreign associates “maybe 20 times” over the course of about 10 years.
Archer said those conversations did not involve any business dealings, however, and he was not aware of any wrongdoing by President Biden.
Hunter Biden faces an array of legal woes. In September, prosecutors with US Special Counsel David Weiss’s office charged him with making false statements about illegal drug use while buying a firearm. And last week, a grand jury indicted Hunter Biden for tax offences.
He has pleaded not guilty to the three federal gun charges, and his lawyer says he has paid his taxes in full.
“There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen,” Hunter Biden told reporters outside the US Capitol on Wednesday.
After he defied their subpoena, members of the House Oversight Committee said they would take steps to hold him in contempt of Congress, which could potentially result in prison time.
Analysts said the Republican effort will almost certainly fail to remove Joe Biden from office. Even if the House achieves the simple majority required to impeach the president, the Senate would then have to vote to convict him on the charges by a two-thirds vote – a near impossibility in a chamber where the Democrats hold a 51-49 majority.
But going through the process of an impeachment investigation could help Republicans highlight their allegations of corruption through much of the 2024 election campaign, in which President Biden is running for re-election. It will also allow the three Republican-controlled House committees leading the inquiry to subpoena documents and testimony – and allow judges to enforce those requests.
“Since September, the House has been engaged in an impeachment inquiry,” Representative Tom Cole said on Wednesday. “Today’s resolution simply formalises that inquiry and grants the House full authority to enforce its subpoenas that have been denied as recently as today.”
President Biden also responded to Wednesday’s vote: “Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies. Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”
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Putin remains tight-lipped on Russian athletes’ participation in the 2024 Olympics under the conditions imposed by the IOC.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of trying to bury the Olympic movement by imposing rules on Russian athletes for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Last week, the IOC said Russian and Belarusian athletes who qualify in their sport for the Paris Games can take part as neutrals without flags, emblems or anthems.
Russians and Belarusians had initially been banned from competing internationally following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, for which Belarus has been used as a staging ground.
“If they continue to act this way, they will bury the Olympic movement,” Putin said on Thursday.
While he promised to support Russians competing in Paris, he said his country should ponder whether it should compete if the event is designed to portray Russian sport as “dying” and not give a clear answer if Russian athletes should go to Paris.
“To go or not to go? … The conditions must be closely analysed,” Putin said.
“If they are politically motivated, artificial conditions aimed at cutting off our [political] leaders … and to weaken our team, then the Ministry of Sport and the Russian Olympic Committee should make an informed decision,” he added.
Speaking at his annual year-end news conference, Putin said a further assessment was needed of what the neutral status would mean for the country’s athletes.
“They have been training for years … and that’s why I supported our athletes going to such competitions, but we still need to carefully analyse the conditions the IOC has put forward,” Putin said.
“If the IOC’s artificial conditions are designed to cut off the best Russian athletes and portray at the Olympics that Russian sport is dying, then you need to decide whether to go there at all,” Putin said.
The IOC said neutral athletes will compete only in individual sports and no teams for the two countries will be allowed. Athletes who actively support the war in Ukraine are not eligible, nor are those contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military.
Putin accused sports officials of acting “under the pressure of Western elites”.
Russia has vigorously protested against the restrictions on its athletes, arguing that they go against the spirit of the games.
“Everything that international officials do in relation to Russian sports is a complete contradiction and distortion of the ideas of Pierre de Coubertin,” Putin said, referring to the founder of the Olympic movement.
Russian athletes have taken part in successive Olympics without their flag or anthem in the wake of major doping scandals.
During the Cold War, the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union and its allies retaliated with a boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
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President Vladimir Putin says he hopes for agreement with US on prisoner swap but admits ‘it’s not simple’.
An American reporter jailed in Russia must stay behind bars into the new year as he awaits trial on espionage charges, a Russian court has ruled.
Evan Gershkovich, a Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been in jail since March on accusations of spying – charges that he, his employer and the United States government reject.
A Moscow city court on Thursday upheld a November ruling extending Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention to January 30, 2024, as it rejected his appeal to be released.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, at his end-of-year news conference on Thursday, said he hoped an agreement could be reached with the US about a possible prisoner swap for Gershkovich as well as former US marine and security executive Paul Whelan, also jailed on espionage charges.
While Russia had ongoing contacts with the US over the issue, Putin said: “It is not simple, I will not go into details now, but in general, it seems to me that we speak a language that is understandable to each other. I hope we will find a solution. But, I repeat, the American side must hear us and make an appropriate decision, one that suits the Russian side.”
US ambassador Lynne Tracy, speaking outside the court, said: “Evan’s ordeal has now stretched on for over 250 days. His life has been put on hold for over eight months for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“It is not acceptable that Russian authorities have chosen to use him as a political pawn.”
Gershkovich was detained by Russian authorities on March 29 in the city of Yekaterinburg, some 2,000km (1,243 miles) east of Moscow, and accused of spying, making him the first Western reporter to be held on such charges in Russia since the Soviet era.
Russia’s Federal Security Service claims the reporter was “caught red-handed” trying to obtain secret information about a Russian arms factory. He faces 20 years in prison if convicted.
Gershkovich’s legal team and his supporters have dismissed the charges as baseless – and Russia has not publicly provided evidence.
The US has declared Gershkovich to be “wrongfully detained” and accused Russia of using him for “hostage diplomacy”.
This month, Washington said Russia had rejected a “significant proposal” to release Gershkovich and Whelan.
However, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the setback would not “deter” the US government from “continuing to do everything we can to try and bring both of them home”.
On Tuesday, Sullivan said Gershkovich’s release was a top priority for the White House.
Gershkovich’s detention has unfolded amid heightened tensions between the US and Russia over the war in Ukraine and what Russia’s critics say is an expansive crackdown on independent media.
The US is also looking into the detention of US-Russian dual citizen Alsu Kurmasheva, who was arrested in the central city of Kazan in October for failing to register as a “foreign agent”.
Kurmasheva’s employer, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), this week denounced the new charges filed against her after reports that she has also been accused of violating rules against Ukraine war criticism.
Russia and the US have agreed to several high-profile prisoner exchanges in recent years, including swapping jailed US women’s basketball star Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022.
The Russian foreign ministry has said it would consider a swap for Gershkovich only after a verdict in his trial, which could last for more than a year.
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US and allies in talks to form multinational task force to address attacks by Iran-aligned Houthis on ships in Red Sea.
Iran’s Defence Minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani has warned that a planned United States-backed multinational task force to protect shipping in the Red Sea would face “extraordinary problems”.
Ashtiani’s comments came after the US said last week it was in talks with other countries to set up a task force following a spate of attacks by the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen on ships in the Red Sea, Iranian state media reported on Thursday.
“If they make such an irrational move, they will be faced with extraordinary problems,” Ashtiani told the official Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).
“Nobody can make a move in a region where we have predominance,” he said, referring to the Red Sea.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters last week that Washington was in talks with “other countries” over forming a “maritime task force … to ensure safe passage of ships in the Red Sea”, but did not give further details.
Washington’s 12-nation coalition task force would reportedly involve warships from at least four countries’ navies: the US, France, the United Kingdom and Israel.
With a coalition, the number of warships would increase and they could attack targets inside Yemen like launch sites, command facilities and missile storage sites.
In response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, following the October 7 Hamas offensive, Yemen’s Houthis have been attacking vessels sailing through the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean – a narrow passage that is the world’s third-largest choke point for oil shipments after the straits of Hormuz and Malacca.
More than six million barrels pass through here every day, mainly on their way to Europe.
Attacks on international shipping escalated with the capture of the Galaxy Leader in November and then culminated in rocket and drone attacks against unarmed commercial cargo ships and heavily armed naval vessels of several countries.
In response, American and French navies have already strengthened their presence in the Red Sea to protect vessels from the risk of seizure or attack by the Houthis.
Yet, Houthis have a history of attacking ships in the Red Sea. In January 2017, during their conflict with a Saudi-led coalition, they attacked the frigate Al Madinah using three remote-controlled unmanned explosive boats, forcing the Royal Saudi Navy to withdraw from Yemeni waters.
Encouraged by their success, in May and July 2018, they attacked two huge Saudi oil tankers with Iranian-built cruise missiles, similar to those used in recent attacks. Neutral-flagged ships were also attacked in the same period.
Following the seizure of the Galaxy Leader, the US was reported to be considering designating the Houthi movement, a “terror group” for involvement in “piracy of a ship in international waters”, and has targeted their funding networks.
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More than 450,000 Afghans have left the country since Pakistani authorities launched a deportation drive in October.
Islamabad, Pakistan – The Pakistani government has announced that undocumented Afghans awaiting paperwork to resettle to a third country will be allowed to stay in Pakistan for two more months.
The extension of the deadline on Wednesday from the end of this year to February 29 comes amid Pakistan’s drive to expel more than one million foreigners living in the country without paperwork.
According to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 450,000 people have returned to neighbouring Afghanistan since the deportation campaign began in early October. Ninety percent of them did so “voluntarily”, according to the Pakistani government, but the UNHCR says they cited fear of arrest as the primary reason for their decision to leave.
Announcing the extension, interim information minister Murtaza Solangi said anybody overstaying the new deadline would be fined $100 monthly, with a cap set at $800.
“These measures were aimed at encouraging the Afghans residing illegally in Pakistan to obtain legal documents or finalise evacuation agreements as soon as possible in a third country,” Solangi added.
The announcement followed a visit to Pakistan by US State Department officials to discuss the issue of Afghan refugees. It is estimated that nearly 25,000 Afghans require paperwork for resettlement in the United States.
Pakistan estimates that more than 1.7 million Afghan nationals have long lived in the country without documents, with the majority arriving in different waves since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
The last such major influx of an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people took place two years ago after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities have cited a dramatic surge in violence this year – there have been more than 600 attacks in the first 11 months of 2023 – for the deportation drive.
Interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said in October that 14 out of 24 suicide attacks in the country over that period were carried out by Afghan nationals. He did not provide any evidence.
The Taliban has denied any accusations of providing shelter to fighters, maintaining their position that Afghanistan’s soil is not being used for cross-border violence.
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