22 October 2015
Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL
BURMA: President Thein Sein signed ceasefire agreements with eight ethnic groups after decades of civil war. Another seven ethnic groups are still fighting against the Burmese army.
A peace activist was arrested for posting online an image of a man standing on a portrait of a general. A woman has been arrested for comparing the colour of army uniforms to the colour of a skirt worn by the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
CAMEROON: A unit of US troops has arrived in west Africa to conduct unarmed drone reconnaissance missions in the struggle against Boko Haram.
CANADA: Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party won the parliamentary elections, ousting Stephen Harper’s Conservative party which has governed Canada for the last 9 years. The new prime minister is the son of Pierre Trudeau, Canadian prime minister 1968-1979 and 1980-1984.
EGYPT: Parliamentary elections began with voting in 14 of the country’s 27 districts this week. Voting in the remaining 13 will take place next month. The turn-out has been low; only 3% so far.
EU & MIGRANTS: The EU’s scheme for migrant quotas is in crisis as migrants as well as some EU countries are refusing to co-operate. Syrian asylum seekers have refused to be relocated to Luxemburg, Eritreans have absconded rather than be sent to Sweden, and others are reluctant to go to Estonia.
FRANCE: SNCF, the state railway system, is allowing migrants free travel on its trains. The move has been criticised for making people-smugglers’ criminal activities easier for them.
Calais returned to chaos as port workers went on strike again. Eurotunnel suspended services when hundreds of migrants stormed the cross-channel terminal.
GERMANY: Chancellor Merkel has proposed establishing ‘transit zone’ camps on Germany’s border to hold and process immigrants. Towns and cities are struggling to cope with rising numbers of migrants. Pegida protests, attacks on refugees and violence between different groups of refugees are becoming more frequent, and Angela Merkel is facing growing opposition. Her coalition partners have criticised her planned ‘transit zones’, comparing them to Nazi-era concentration camps.
INDIA: At least 41 writers have protested against the intolerance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hardline Hindu nationalist government by handing back the Padma Shri award, one of Indias’s highest civilian honours.
IRAN: The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved the nuclear deal struck in Vienna last July.
IRAQ: The US airforce has intensified its strikes against Isis positions in and around Ramadi, where Iraqi forces have been bogged down since their defeat earlier this year. An offensive to retake Ramadi from Isis is thought to be imminent. The Pentagon announced a fresh strategy for the fight against Isis, which would involve organising and equipping various local forces for co-ordinated attacks in both Iraq and Syria. It will be presented to Congress next week. The USA is concerned that Russia is seeking to widen its Syrian intervention into Iraq as well.
ISRAEL/WEST BANK/GAZA: Palestinian protesters attacked the sacred Jewish tomb of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph in the West Bank with petrol bombs. Random knife attacks on Israelis have continued, as have clashes between crowds of stone-throwing Palestinians and units of Israeli police and soldiers.
KOREA (NORTH & SOUTH): Hundreds of elderly South Koreans from 96 families divided since the end of the Korean War in 1953 have been allowed to travel to North Korea to be temporarily re-united over three days with brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives who they haven’t seen for over sixty years. They were selected by lottery from over 130,000 people who applied to take part. Millions were separated from family members by the division of the country.
NIGERIA: Five suicide bombers, one of them striking inside a mosque, have murdered at least 39 people and injured at least 49 others in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state. It is thought that Boko Haram was responsible.
RUSSIA: The Defence Ministry announced that a huge new military base in the north Arctic is almost complete. 150 soldiers will be able to live for up to 18 months in the Arctic Trefoil base on an island in the Franz Josef Archipeligo.
SAUDI ARABIA: A gunman murdered five Shias and wounded nine others in the city of Qatif.
The mother of Ali al-Nimr, the youth condemned to death and crucifixion for taking part in an anti-government protest when he was 17, has reported that he has been moved into solitary confinement and is not being allowed visitors. His family, who are Shia muslims, was last allowed to see him in September, for ten minutes. They say that he bears visible signs of torture and beatings. Saudi Arabia chairs the United Nations human rights committee.
SOUTH AFRICA: Oscar Pistorius was released from jail less than a year after he was sentenced to five years for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
SPAIN: Artur Mas, the Catalan independence leader, has appeared in court on charges of disobedience and abuse of public funds after presenting the recent regional election as an independence referendum.
SWITZERLAND: The anti-immigration People’s Party won the parliamentary elections with a record 30% of the votes.
SYRIA: Up to 300 troops from Cuba have arrived in Syria to support Assad by driving Russian tanks, according to reports.
Thousands of Iranian regular troops have been openly deployed on the front line in offences against rebel-held territory north of Homs and near the city of Aleppo. At least 75,000 people have fled their homes in advance of the assault.
The Archbishop of Aleppo, Jean-Clément Jeanbart, has suggested that Europe should stop attracting Syrians away from their home country, and work towards a political solution for peace instead. “We suffer when people leave our country” he said on BBC Radio 4. “It harms Syria and harms the refugees.”
The Pentagon has reported that a US air attack has killed Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi national, a financier of al-Qaeda and leader of the Khorasan group.
Russia and the USA signed an agreement to prevent clashes between their planes in Syrian air-space.
TURKEY: Chancellor Merkel visited President Erdogan to discuss Turkish help with Syrian migration. The EU has agreed on €3 billion in aid to Turkey and the lifting of visa requirements for Turks visiting the EU. She announced that Germany would no longer oppose Turkey’s attempts to join the EU. However, the Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey should not be paid by the EU to turn itself into a “concentration camp” for refugees. Chancellor Merkel was criticised by Turkish academics and by German politicians of Turkish origin for visiting the president only two weeks before Turkish general election, in case it could be misinterpreted as partisan support for his government.
Turkish authorities reported that they have shot down a drone which had strayed into Turkish airspace from Syria. They suspect it is of Russian origin.
USA: Hilary Clinton’s strong performance in the first Democrat primary debate put new momentum into her campaign for the Democratic nomination. She outshone Bernie Sanders and the other three participants.
President Obama announced that American troops will remain in Afghanistan, despite his hopes for a withdrawal by the end of his presidency.
A petition approved by the governor of Nebraska has over-ruled the vote of the state’s legislators to abolish the death penalty. The future of capital punishment in the state will be decided by a referendum next year.
Two people were shot in Tombstone, Arizona, during a re-enactment of the shoot-out at the OK Corral; live bullets were accidentally used instead of blanks. In Wyoming, a war hero dog (awarded two bronze stars in Iraq for sniffing out bombs and tracking insurgents) was shot dead in his garden by an armed cyclist. In Detroit, a pastor shot a parishioner dead in a City of God Ministry church during a service.
VANUATU: The acting leader, Marcellino Pipite, issued pardons for 14 parliamentarians facing bribery convictions – including himself.
