07 January 2016
Week in Brief: International
AFGHANISTAN: A Taliban suicide car bomber murdered two people and wounded fifteen others in an attack on a restaurant in Kabul. Over thirty people were wounded in two bomb attacks near Kabul airport. A Taliban attack in Helmand province killed one US soldier and injured two others.
AUSTRALIA: A royal commission on trades unions accused them of corruption. Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is determined to pass legislation curbing union power.
CHINA: The defence ministry announced that it is building an aircraft carrier. The Chinese navy has only one aircraft carrier at the moment.
Five employees (including a British passport holder) of a Hong Kong bookshop have disappeared in recent months. Hong Kong MP, Albert Ho, has suggested that they have been abducted for political reasons and are being detained on the mainland. It is thought that the publishing house associated with the bookshop is planning to publish a book about an alleged former girlfriend of President Xi.
CUBA: The authorities have rearrested and imprisoned five dissidents who were released last year under an agreement with the USA following the diplomatic entente between the two countries, according to the Cuban Commission For Human Rights (a human rights group banned by the authorities).
EU/SCHENGEN: Sweden has reversed its policy of welcoming migrants and has defied the Schengen agreement by setting up anti-migrant controls on its border with Denmark. In turn, Denmark has introduced border controls along its frontier with Germany, and Norway has also introduced border controls along its frontiers.
GERMANY: Angela Merkel’s employment minister has announced plans to reduce welfare payments to migrants.
Almost 100 women have complained of being robbed, assaulted or raped by groups of men, apparently immigrants from the Middle East or North Africa, during New Year’s Eve celebrations at Cologne’s railway station. Similar incidents were reported in other cities.
INDIA: The Muslim man who was beaten to death last year for allegedly eating beef had in fact been eating goat, according to investigators.
A two-week campaign against dangerous air pollution levels in Delhi has seen schools closed and cars barred on alternate days depending on odd or even number plates.
Militants from the banned Pakistani-based group Jaish-e-Muhammad raided the air base of Pathankot in the Punjab. At least seven soldiers and four terrorists were killed.
IRAN: The Iranian government and people protested against Saudi Arabia’s execution of the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. A violent crowd stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, ransacked it and set fire to it. Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with Iran as a result, as did its Sunni allies Bahrain and Sudan. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates withdrew their ambassador from Tehran.
Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, announced last month that he would be standing as a candidate in next month’s elections. He is a popular cleric with reformist tendencies, but hardliners in the Guardian Council have consistently barred such candidates. This week, the Guardian Council announced that he had missed a religious examination vital to his candidacy; it remains unclear whether he received the text message telling him that the exam was taking place. (See comment article.)
IRAQ: The Iraqi army recaptured the city of Ramadi from Isis, with the help of coalition air forces and local Sunni fighters. Shia militias were not used to avoid antagonising the local population which is Sunni. It’s thought that over a hundred Isis fighters remain hiding and resisting in the city, and that buildings may have been booby-trapped with explosive devices. Government forces are clearing the last areas building by building, and fighting off counter-attacks.
Prime minister Haider al-Abadi protested against the execution of the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian embassy in Baghdad is due to re-open this week after 25 years, but the largely Shia government is calling for it to remain closed.
ISRAEL: A gunman (thought to be an Arab from Wadi Ara, north Israel) murdered two Israelis and wounded seven others in an attack on a pub in Tel Aviv.
JAPAN: The Japanese government paid £5.6 million to South Korea as compensation to the survivors of the 200,000 Korean women sexually enslaved by the Japanese imperial army during World War II. Prime minister Shinzo Abe of Japan apologised to President Park of South Korea for the atrocity. Korean activists in Seoul protested that the payment and the apology were inadequate. Right-wing nationalists protested in Tokyo, claiming that the Japanese abuse of “comfort women” is a fiction and accusing the prime minister of betraying Japan.
LIBYA: Militant groups in the towns of Misrata and Ajdabiya pledged allegiance to Isis.
MEXICO: The day after she became mayor of the town of Temixco, Gisela Mota was murdered in her home by gunmen believed to be gangsters involved in the drugs trade.
NORTH KOREA: State media claims that North Korea has successfully completed underground hydrogen bomb tests.
Kim Yang Gon, a senior figure behind successful diplomatic negotiations with South Korea, has been killed in a car accident, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
PAKISTAN: A Taliban suicide bomber murdered more than 25 people and wounded scores more in Mardan.
POLAND: The right-wing government of the nationalist Law and Justice party passed a law which would give the government, rather than an independent broadcasting authority, control of the appointment of the heads of the state’s TV station, radio station and press agency. The Journalists’ Association of the Republic of Poland has already accused the government of undermining a free press.
RUSSIA: The foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition politician, Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP).
Gunmen killed a border guard and wounded ten tourists at the Unesco world heritage site of Naryn-Kala fortress in the city of Derbent, Dagestan.
RWANDA: President Paul Kagame confirmed that he will be running for a third term in elections later this year. 98% of voters in a recent referendum elected to change the constitution to allow a third, fourth and fifth presidential term.
SAUDI ARABIA: Forty-seven judicial executions brought the total for the year to a two-decade high of 158 (according to Human Rights watch). The executed had been found guilty of terrorist offences. Most of them were Sunni militants associated with al-Qaeda, but one was the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr (a spokesman, anti-government protestor and activist for Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority). He was accused of terrorism, but “by most assessments he was a dissident, not a terrorist” (The Times). His execution prompted protests against Saudi Arabia among Shia believers throughout the Islamic world. Violent crowds protested in Iran, attacking and burning the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia has broken off diplomatic relations and trade links with Iran as a result. Saudi’s Sunni allies Bahrain and Sudan also broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates withdrew their ambassadors from Tehran. This week, the Saudi Arabian embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, was due to re-open after 25 years, but Iraq’s largely Shia government is now calling for it to remain closed.
SYRIA: An Isis leader suspected of planning the Paris attacks was killed by an American airstrike, according to the Pentagon.
An Isis propaganda video showing the murder of five Syrians featured an English-speaking masked terrorist threatening Britain, and an English speaking child threatening “the kuffar” (non-Muslims).
THAILAND: The two Burmese migrant workers convicted of murdering two British backpackers have been sentenced to death. Demonstrators in Burma protested against the conviction and sentence.
TURKEY: President Erdogan told a journalist to “look at Hitler’s Germany” when asked what sort of presidential system he hopes to replace Turkey’s parliamentary system with.
Government sources say that 261 Kurdish PKK militants have been killed in the last month during the army’s offensive against the Kurdish insurgency in the cities of Sur, Silopi and Cizre in south eastern Turkey. Kurdish sources say that at least 97 women and children have been killed in the city of Sur alone.
USA: President Obama announced plans to pass gun control legislation by Presidential executive action, by-passing Congress. The legislation would make licensing for gun dealers and background checks on customers more rigorous, and encourage investment in gun-safety technology. But even these modest proposals have been denounced by the Republican opposition and the National Rifle Association. Congress recently defeated a measure to help prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns. This week, the state of Texas allowed the open display of handguns (prohibited since 1870).
Brigadier General Diana Holland was sworn in as the first female commandant of West Point military academy.
A week of tornadoes and extreme weather killed twenty-nine people and destroyed property across Texas and other southern states.
VENEZUELA: Following a legal challenge by President Maduro against the results in some seats in last month’s parliamentary elections, the Supreme Court has blocked three opposition candidates, giving no legal reason for its decision, thus removing the opposition’s two-thirds majority (without which it will be unable to challenge the socialist president’s control of state apparatus, including the Supreme Court). Opposition spokesman called it a “judicial coup d’etat” and the three blocked MPs have been sworn in regardless. It emerged that President Maduro has also passed emergency powers giving him control of the central bank. (See comment article.)
YEMEN: Following the attack on its embassy in Tehran by Iranian protestors demonstrating against the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, Saudi Arabia has officially ended the Yemen truce (only sporadically observed by both sides since it came into effect last month) and increased its airstrikes against Houthi rebels (whom it considers to be backed by Iran).
