Turkey shuts border crossings with Syria

11 March 2015 Wednesday

Turkey has closed two border crossings with Syria as a security precaution as fighting around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo intensifies, Turkish officials said on Wednesday.

The crossings at Oncupinar and Cilvegozu in Turkey's Hatay province had been shut to vehicles and individuals crossing from Syria since March 9, officials at both told. Syrians with passports are allowed to cross back into Syria.

Turkey has kept its borders open to refugees since the start of Syria's civil war four years ago. But it has come under criticism for doing too little to keep foreign fighters crossing and joining armed groups, including ISIL.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/156443/turkey-shuts-border-crossings-with-syria.

Turkey says official Libyan gov't targeting its companies there

24 February 2015 Tuesday

Turkey accused Libya on Tuesday of targeting its companies there after the internationally recognized government said it would cancel contracts of Turkish businesses operating in the troubled north African state.

Libya's beleaguered official government, which only controls eastern parts of the country, announced a ban on Turkish firms after accusing Ankara of supporting the rival administration that seized control of the capital Tripoli last summer.

A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman on Tuesday rejected the official government's decision and appeared to question the legitimacy of its leader, Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni.

"The decision to bar Turkish companies ... carries no value, considering the political and security crisis Libya has been going through and the debate regarding legitimacy," Tanju Bilgic said in an emailed statement.

"The transitional government which is expected to make efforts for peace and stability in Libya has, on the contrary, targeted our companies, which work for the development of Libya."

But Libya's Tripoli-based government has dismissed a ban on Turkish companies imposed by the rival government based in Tobruk, saying such a ban could only be applied in the latter government's area of control in the country's east.

"The Tobruk government is using the issue of Turkish companies as a pressure tool to achieve political goals," Omar Hussein Baio, spokesman for the Tripoli government, told The Anadolu Agency.

The ban, he said, could only be applied in the Libya's eastern region, which is controlled by troops loyal to the Tobruk-based cabinet.

Last week, Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni warned Turkey of measures that could be potentially taken against Turkish companies due to what he described as Turkish "interference" in Libya's affairs.

This interference, al-Thinni said at a press conference, "negatively impacts Libya's security and stability."

Last week, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said his country's support for Libya since the country's 2011 revolution had "always been clear," especially in the form of Turkish support for Libya's reconstruction efforts and the development of the country's state institutions.

Turkey has close historic ties with Libya and Turkish businesses have traditionally had a strong presence there. But the country has been riven with conflicts since the toppling of strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The Turkey Contractors' Association said last year that $19 billion of construction projects alone have been mothballed by Turkish firms in Libya because of fighting between rival factions.

Turkey's special envoy to Syria last year became the first foreign diplomat to meet publicly with the Tripoli government.

Major world powers have boycotted the Tripoli government, but the United Nations has included lawmakers from the rival parliament in a dialogue aimed at defusing the power struggle.

Libya's official government banned Palestinians, Syrians and Sudanese from entry in January, saying their countries were undermining Libya's security.

Libya has remained in a state of turmoil since a bloody uprising ended the decades-long rule of autocratic leader Muammar Gaddafi in late 2011.

Since then, sharp political divisions have yielded two rival seats of government in the country, each of which has its own institutions.

Vying for legislative authority are the House of Representatives, which convenes in Tobruk, and the General National Congress, which – even though its mandate has ended – continues to convene in Tripoli.

The two assemblies support two different governments, respectively headquartered in the two cities. Both have substantial military capacities.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/world/155623/turkey-says-official-libyan-govt-targeting-its-companies-there.

A look at Syrian refugees in neighboring countries

March 12, 2015

The Syrian conflict, which began with peaceful protests before escalating into a grinding civil war, has touched off a humanitarian catastrophe that has inundated the region.

More than 3.8 million Syrians have fled their country in the four years since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began. Most have traveled to neighboring countries, straining the resources of those nations. There are also hundreds of thousands of unregistered refugees. Syria had a prewar population of 23 million.

A look at Syrian refugees in neighboring countries:

LEBANON

Lebanon is home to nearly 1.2 million registered refugees, with many more not on the books scattered around the country in informal tent settlements and old construction sites. Lebanon, whose population is about 4.5 million, has the highest per capita concentration of refugees worldwide, according to the United Nations. Fearing for its own internal stability, Lebanon recently began imposing restrictions on Syrians trying to enter.

JORDAN

Jordan has nearly 625,000 registered refugees. Many are in encampments near the northern border with Syria but a large number are in urban areas. The largest of the encampments is Zaatari camp, where some 84,000 refugees live under the direct care of the U.N. and the Jordanian government. Another camp that was opened last year, Azraq, was built to host 130,000 people and currently holds around 14,000.

TURKEY

Turkey has more than 1.6 million registered refugees. Ankara has been funding and managing the refugees, who are sheltered in around 21 camps complete with schools, medical centers and other social facilities.

IRAQ

Iraq has nearly 245,000 registered refugees, the majority of them ethnic Kurds from Syria who found shelter in the largely autonomous Kurdish region in the north. Tens of thousands live in a camp of tents and cinderblock shacks near the border, while the rest have found jobs and homes in nearby towns. The regional Kurdish government allows them to move around freely.

EGYPT

Egypt is home to more than 136,000 registered refugees, although officials estimate there are hundreds of thousands who are not registered.

Syrian refugees return to Kobani from Turkey

11 March 2015 Wednesday

The refugees crossed the border from Mursitpinar border gate, located in the southern Turkish district of Suruc, after officials checked their identity papers. A registration system for the refugees was made by Turkey's emergency body, AFAD.

The refugees are allowed to cross back into northern Syria at least three days every week.

Some 200,000 Kobani residents rapidly fled to Turkey's neighboring town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province in one week in early October.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/156458/syrian-refugees-return-to-kobani-from-trukey.

Kurdish fighters rout IS militants from town near Iraq

February 28, 2015

BEIRUT (AP) — Backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, Kurdish fighters fought their way Friday into a northeastern Syrian town that was a key stronghold of Islamic State militants, only days after the group abducted dozens of Christians in the volatile region, Syrian activists and Kurdish officials said.

The victory marks a second blow to the extremist IS group in a month, highlighting the growing role of Syria's Kurds as the most effective fighting force against the Islamic State. In January, Kurdish forces drove IS militants from the town of Kobani near the Turkish border after a months-long fight, dealing a very public defeat to the extremists.

But it is also tempered by this week's horrific abductions by IS militants of more than 220 Christian Assyrians in the same area, along the fluid and fast shifting front line in Syria. The town of Tel Hamees in Syria's northeastern Hassakeh province is strategically important because it links territory controlled by IS in Syria and Iraq.

The province, which borders Turkey and Iraq, is predominantly Kurdish but also has populations of Arabs and predominantly Christian Assyrians and Armenians. "We are now combing the town for explosives and remnants of terrorists," said Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters, known as the People's Protection Units or YPG.

Speaking to The Associated Press over the phone from the outskirts of Tel Hamees, he said the town was a key stronghold for IS and had served as a staging ground for the group's operations in the Iraqi town of Sinjar and the city of Mosul.

Dislodging the group from Tel Hamees cuts a supply line from Iraq, Khalil said. The push on the town's eastern and southeastern edges came after the Kurdish troops, working with Christian militias and Arab tribal fighters, seized dozens of nearby villages from the Islamic State extremists. U.S.-led coalition forces provided cover, striking at IS infrastructure in the region for days.

More than 200 militants died in the fighting, and at least eight troops fighting alongside YPG, including an Australian national who has been with the Kurdish forces for three months, Khalil said. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said IS defenses collapsed and the militants fled after Kurdish fighters broke into Tel Hamees from the east and south.

The Observatory's director, Rami Abdurrahman, said the Kurds seized more than 100 villages around Tel Hamees and that ground battles and air strikes around the town have killed at least 175 IS fighters in the past several days in some of the latest losses for the group since Kobani.

Some 15,000 villagers have fled the fighting, he added. The Kurds in Syria and Iraq have emerged as the most effective force fighting IS, which controls about a third of Iraq and Syria — much of it captured in a lighting blitz last spring and summer, as Iraqi army forces melted away in the face of the militant onslaught.

In Syria, they have teamed up with moderate rebels for territorial gains against the group. Elsewhere in Hassakeh, IS fighters this week captured dozens of mostly Christian villages to the west of Tel Hamees — taking at least 220 Assyrian Christians hostage, according to activists. The fate of those abducted was still unknown.

On Thursday, video emerged of IS militants smashing ancient Mesopotamian artifacts in a museum in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the ongoing "barbaric terrorist acts" by the Islamic State group including attacks "and the deliberate destruction of irreplaceable religious and cultural artifacts housed in the Mosul Museum and burning of thousands of books and rare manuscripts from the Mosul Library."

A council statement said income from looted cultural items in Iraq and Syria is being used to support the group's recruitment efforts and strengthen its ability to organize and carry out terrorism acts.

"The members of the Security Council stressed again that ISIL must be defeated and that the intolerance, violence, and hatred it espouses must be stamped out," the statement said, using one of several alternative acronyms for the group.

Irina Bokova, the head of the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, denounced the group's destruction of ancient statues and artifacts as "cultural cleansing" and a war crime that the world must punish. From Paris, where the agency is based, Bokova said she could not watch to the end the Islamic State video posted Thursday that shows men using sledgehammers to smash Mesopotamian artworks in Iraq's northern city of Mosul. She called the video "a real shock."

The Louvre Museum in Paris said the destruction "marks a new stage in the violence and horror, because all of humanity's memory is being targeted in this region that was the cradle of civilization, the written word, and history."

French President Francois Hollande also condemned the "barbarity" of the destructions. "What the terrorists want is to destroy all that makes humanity," he said Friday during a visit to the Philippines.

Elsewhere in Syria, at least eight civilians were killed in a car bomb that exploded outside the Bilal Mosque in the rebel-held town of Dumeir, east of Damascus. Many others were wounded in the blast, which occurred as worshippers were leaving the mosque following Friday prayers.

Another car bomb went off outside a mosque in Nasseriya, near Dumeir, also causing multiple casualties. It was not immediately clear who was behind the bombings.

Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil in Beirut and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

Saudi Arabia recalls ambassador from Stockholm

11 March 2015 Wednesday

Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador to Sweden after a diplomatic row between the two countries, Sweden's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

"We have received information that Saudi Arabia has called its ambassador home," Erik Boman, spokesman for Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, said.

He said the reason given for the action was Sweden's criticism of Saudi Arabia's record on human rights and democracy.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/156434/saudi-arabia-recalls-ambassador-from-stockholm.

What's at stake in Spain's controversial security law

March 12, 2015

MADRID (AP) — Spain's senate approved a tough new security law Thursday that includes stiff fines for people who take part in violent anti-austerity protests. Critics slam the package as a blatant attack on free assembly and expression. The measures come three years after Spaniards defied authorities with rallies that spiraled into violence, with demonstrators fighting police in rage against austerity measures and in solidarity with those facing eviction.

Media advocates are concerned that the government's Public Security Law, expected to be finalized later in the country's lower house, could stifle journalists because of a clause authorizing fines for "unauthorized use of images" of police.

The bill pressed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party has been dubbed the "Gag Law" by critics, including a panel of U.N. experts. But it is virtually guaranteed passage, because Rajoy's party has a majority in both houses of Parliament. The Senate vote was 134-84.

Here's a look at the law and what's at stake:

BIG FINES FOR UNAUTHORIZED PROTESTS

Rajoy's administration was enraged in 2012 when tens of thousands of protesters surrounded Parliament in downtown Madrid to rail against tax hikes and government cutbacks.

Spaniards must seek government permission to hold protests, but the movement to "encircle" Parliament was unauthorized — and protesters ended up clashing with police. Images of the violence in the heart of the capital shot around the world, spooking investors already concerned about Spain's stability.

The bill sets fines of up to 30,000 euros ($33,000) for protests near Parliament and Spain's regional lawmaking buildings when there is a "serious disturbance of public safety." That means protesters even if they don't participate in violence could face fines.

Human Rights Watch said the "measure is intended to discourage protests that target national and regional legislative bodies" and urged the government to find ways for protesters to express themselves near the sites.

A whopping fine of 600,000 euros ($638,000) is included for unauthorized protests near key infrastructure — including transportation hubs, nuclear power plants, refineries and telecommunications installations.

Spanish government records show riot police intervened in only 1 percent of the thousands of demonstrations during the height of the country's economic crisis in 2012 and 2013, prompting opponents to say the law is disproportionate and unnecessary.

EVICTION DEMONSTRATIONS

Spain's most emotional protests often happen when demonstrators try to halt court-ordered forced evictions of families who cannot pay their mortgages. These people end up not only homeless but still obliged to pay back lenders.

Nearly 35,000 primary residence evictions were carried out last year, a 7 percent rise from 2013. And 11 people were arrested last month after allegedly throwing gasoline at police during a Madrid eviction. Protesters also clambered onto heavy equipment brought in to demolish part of the home; they were dragged away by riot police.

The bill doesn't mention evictions by name, but specifies fines of up to 30,000 euros for preventing government employees from enforcing administrative or judicial orders, even if protesters don't commit a crime.

"This provision appears tailor-made to suppress organized gatherings to prevent evictions for mortgage default and rent arrears," Human Rights Watch said.

RESTRICTIONS ON IMAGES OF WORKING POLICE

Spain's government says beaming pictures of police cracking down on protests could prevent them from doing their jobs or put them at risk of reprisals.

People could face fines of up to 30,000 euros when they disseminate images of officers "that would endanger their safety or that of protected areas or put at risk the success of a (police) operation," the bill says.

Unions representing journalists and Human Rights Watch are worried that the prospect of fines will cause journalists to self-censor their work at protests.

The impact of the possible fines on journalists probably won't be clear until authorities impose them, and the journalists appeal. At that point, courts will have to determine whether disclosure of the images is protected under freedom of information laws, or if the dissemination hurt national security or the safety or privacy of individual officers, said Alejandro Tourino, a Madrid-based media lawyer with the Ecija firm who has done work for The Associated Press.

EXPULSIONS FOR FENCE

STORMING MIGRANTS

Every week last year, hundreds of mostly sub-Saharan African men stormed towering, barbed-wire fences that separate Spain's North African enclave of Melilla from Morocco. The migrants live in rudimentary camps on a nearby mountain before staging well-organized, pre-dawn attacks on the fences.

At least 2,100 made it across in 70 attempts, but many more were intercepted by Spanish and Moroccan police amid accusations by activists that they were expelled even though they touched Spanish soil and should have been allowed to stay and seek asylum.

The original bill sought to legalize summary expulsions. It was amended to set up a process for asylum seekers to have their cases considered if they enter Spain via official Moroccan checkpoints — not over fences.

Critics of the bill say the amendment was a positive step, but they still fear asylum seekers may continue to climb the fences and face expulsion if they can't get through official checkpoints.

THE GOVERNMENT'S TAKE

Rajoy's administration insists the bill was crafted mainly to update a 23-year-old law drafted when the opposition Socialist Party was in power. The government says it will provide more effective security by rooting out protesters prone to violence.

It also allows fines for sex workers if they seek clients near areas where children are present and for drug users who consume in public.

The Socialist Party has vowed to repeal the law if it wins future elections.

But Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz has said the bill provides a balance between security and citizens' rights by setting fines and sanctions for offenses that are otherwise unpunishable.

"It's a law for the 21st century," Fernandez Diaz told law enforcement officials. "It provides better guarantees for people's security and more judicial security for people's rights."

Associated Press writer Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this story.