Arrests rise in Burundi protests; protesters vow to remain

May 01, 2015

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) — About 500 students spent the night outside the U.S. Embassy in Burundi's capital, asking the U.S. for protection as street protests against President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek a third term went into went into their sixth day.

A State Department spokesman said U.S. officials had met with the students, commended their peaceful behavior and were not asking them to leave. In the Musaga neighborhood, protesters marched past smoldering barricades Friday while brandishing sticks and metal bars. They tried to reach a major road but were stopped by a cordon of riot police. The demonstrators turned in their sticks, sang the national anthem and after a minute of silence marched back into the neighborhood.

Many protesters say they will not leave the streets until Nkurunziza withdraws his candidacy in the June 26 elections. Families gathered outside a jail to bring food to those who have been arrested. Carina Tertsakian, a senior Rwanda researcher with Human Rights Watch, said Friday that more than 400 people are believed to be in detention as Burundi's government tries to stop the protests.

The protests started Sunday, a day after the ruling party nominated Nkurunziza to be its candidate. Some events carried on as normal. At a local sports field, civil servants paraded in front of officials in a May Day celebration.

U.S. Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Tom Malinowski, who traveled to Burundi on Wednesday, told reporters that the government has been warned of "real consequences" if the crisis escalates.

Many see Nkurunziza's decision to run again as a violation of the Arusha Agreements that ended the civil war that killed more than 250,000 people. The fighting between Hutu rebels and a Tutsi-dominated army ended in 2003.

Nkurunziza, a Hutu, was selected by Parliament in 2005 to be president. He was re-elected unopposed in 2010. His supporters say he can seek re-election again because he was voted in by lawmakers for his first term, and was not popularly elected.

At least six people have been killed since Sunday, according to the Burundi Red Cross. A U.S. State Department spokesman, Jeff Rathke, told reporters in Washington that the U.S. embassy continues to encourage Burundi's government to reopen universities for the students. Rathke estimated that 600 students were outside the embassy.

"So, we certainly are urging that they have the opportunity to return to their studies, and we are not requesting that those students leave the vicinity of our compound as long as they remain peaceful and calm," the spokesman said.

Russia's ambassador to the U.N. confirmed Friday that his country had blocked a proposed Security Council statement on the crisis. "It's not the business of the Security Council and the U.N. Charter to get involved in constitutional matters of sovereign states," Vitaly Churkin told reporters.

AP journalist Andrew Njuguna in Bujumbura, Cara Anna at the United Nations and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report. Muhumuza reported from Kampala, Uganda.

Thai police find graves of suspected trafficking victims

May 02, 2015

HAT YAI, Thailand (AP) — Police have found dozens of shallow graves, a corpse and an ailing survivor at an abandoned jungle camp in an area of southern Thailand that is regularly used to smuggle Rohingya Muslims, as well as Bangladeshis and other migrants, to third countries.

An Associated Press reporter who visited the scene later Friday counted six bodies, including five that had recently been dug up. He said a rescue team told him 27 graves, each with a simple bamboo marker, had yet to be exhumed.

The grim discovery was a sharp reminder of the brutal human trafficking networks that operate in Thailand, despite repeated assurances by authorities that they are addressing the root causes. Acting on a tip from villagers, teams of police and rescuers were dispatched into the mountains of Padang Besar, a sub-district in Songkhla province. Reaching the camp on foot, they found a shelter with at least one corpse, said police Col. Weerasant Tharnpiem, adding that there appeared to be several other bodies as well.

Last June, the United States put Thailand in its lowest category — "Tier 3" — in its annual assessment of how governments around the world have performed in fighting human trafficking. The ranking took into account the smuggling of Myanmar's long-persecuted Rohingya community, as well as cases of migrants from neighboring countries who are forced or defrauded into working against their will in the sex industry, commercial fishing, garment production, factories and domestic work.

President Barack Obama waived invoking action under the assessment that would have allowed him to impose sanctions on Thailand, including barring imports from its lucrative seafood industry. Thailand has promised action in order to get off the blacklist, but recent revelations by the AP that its fishing vessels were treating men from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos as virtual slaves have dented the country's reputation more.

The purpose of the camp discovered Friday — comprising small bamboo huts tucked away in the forest — was not immediately clear. But similar ones found in recent years have been used to detain Rohingya. In many cases, they paid agents for passage to what they thought would be a better life and jobs in Malaysia or points beyond. Instead, they were held for weeks, sometimes months, while smugglers extorted more money from families back home.

National police spokesman Lt. Gen. Prawut Thawornsiri said he could only confirm the discovery of one corpse, one sick man and several graves at the site. "We are sending a team of forensic police to investigate," Prawut said in a telephone interview. "The next step is to verify their identities and nationalities. It's not clear yet who they are."

Authorities said traffickers are widely known to use the Songkhla mountains and other nearby areas for temporary camps to house Rohingya and others before smuggling them to third countries. Rohingya Muslims have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in Myanmar.

Attacks on the religious minority by Buddhist mobs in the last three years have sparked one of the biggest exoduses of boat people since the Vietnam War, sending 100,000 men, women and children fleeing, said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which has monitored the movements of Rohingya for more than a decade.

Their first stop is almost always Thailand. Instead of jungle camps, Rohingya and Bangladeshis have in recent months been taken to large ships while they wait for ransoms to be paid, said Lewa, who estimates that 7,000 to 8,000 migrants are currently parked off the coast or in nearby international waters.

Tightly confined, and with limited access to food and clean water, their health is inevitably deteriorating quickly, and increasingly there are reports of deaths, she said. "A 15-year-old who spent two months on a boat off the coast of Thailand or Malaysia says during that time, 34 people died on three different boats," said Lewa, citing one example. "He said their bodies were thrown overboard."

Lewa believes there are only around 800 people still in jungle camps. Conditions in the open-air pens, where they are vulnerable to rainy weather and get little food, continue to be grim. When authorities raid the camps, the sick and weak are often left behind to die, survivors have told the AP.

Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok and Robin McDowell in Yangon, Myanmar, contributed to this report.

Baby born in field hospital after Nepal earthquake

May 02, 2015

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — After almost a week of heartbreaking news from earthquake-hit Nepal, there was a small but beautiful moment of joy.

A baby girl was born Friday to a young Nepalese couple in one of the field hospitals set up by foreign nations to bring emergency aid to the country. Both the mother and the baby, who hasn't been named yet, are doing well.

Lata Chand, 19, was heavily pregnant when the magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck April 25. She and her husband ran out of their house in panic. Their home was undamaged, but the hospital where she was to give birth was forced to close.

On Friday, they went instead to a field hospital set up by the Israeli military, where the baby was born. The beaming midwife, Dganit Gery, said she hoped the birth would show all Nepalese women that there is hope for the future.

Lata's husband, Hariender Chand, said they were terrified the quake would cause her to miscarry. "When the quake struck, I was thinking, 'Will we survive?' because most of the pregnant women miscarried their babies," he said. "I was scared it would happen to us. Now we're safe, it's good."

May Day rallies planned across Europe; Turkey square blocked

May 01, 2015

BERLIN (AP) — Left-wing groups and trade unions are staging rallies across Europe on Friday to mark International Workers Day.

Most events are expected to be peaceful protests for workers' rights and world peace. But May 1 regularly sees clashes between police and militant groups in some cities. Here's a look at May Day events in Europe:

GERMANY

Police in Berlin say the traditional 'Walpurgis Night' protest marking the eve of May 1 was calmer than previous years. Several thousand people took part in anti-capitalist street parties in the north of the city. Fireworks and stones were thrown at police, injuring one officer. Fifteen people were detained. Elsewhere in the German capital revelers partied "extremely peacefully," police noted on Friday morning.

TURKEY

Authorities determined to keep May Day protesters out of Istanbul's Taksim Square have stationed a small army of police with water cannons in and around the iconic spot.

The square is symbolic as the center of protests in which 34 people were killed in 1977. Taksim was also the focus of massive anti-government protests that rocked Turkey in 2013.

Turkish newswires say 10,000 police are ready to enforce the government's ban on protests in the square Friday. Clashes are also expected in other Turkish cities.

The demonstrations are the first large scale protests since the government passed a security bill this year giving police expanded powers to crack down on protesters.

World's longest serving FM steps down in major Saudi reshuffle

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

The world's longest serving foreign minister has been relieved of his duties as the new Saudi King reshuffled his cabinet today.

Saud Al-Faisal, who's served as the Kingdom's foreign minister for 40 years, requested he be relieved of his duties "due to his health conditions" a request which was accepted by King Salman Bin Abdulaziz agreed.

Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel Bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir replaces Al-Faisal as foreign minister, the state-owned SPA news agency reported.

However, the veteran diplomat was appointed as a state minister, an adviser and a special envoy of the king, as well as a supervisor on foreign affairs.

Al-Faisal has been battling Parkinson's disease and chronic back pain, and he recently returned home after weeks of recovery from a back surgery in the United States, which the Saudi authorities described as "successful".

King Salman also accepted a request by his Crown Prince Muqrin Bin Abdulaziz to be relieved of his duties, naming Deputy Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Nayef as the new heir to the Saudi throne.

Prince Mohamed, 30, becomes the youngest member of the royal family to serve as deputy crown prince.

King Salman has also named new ministers for health and economy.

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/18329-worlds-longest-serving-fm-steps-down-in-major-saudi-reshuffle.

UK leaders make last televised pre-election appeal to voters

April 30, 2015

LONDON (AP) — An audience of voters sent Britain's main political leaders a stark message in a bruising televised question session a week before election day: We don't trust you.

Prime Minister David Cameron of the Conservatives, Labor Party leader Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat chief Nick Clegg fielded questions at Leeds Town Hall in northern England Thursday, in a bid to win over voters ahead of an election polls say is too close to call.

The leaders didn't trade blows with each other in the BBC's "Question Time" program, but were battered by hard-hitting questions from an audience selected to include supporters of all three parties, as well as undecided voters.

Questioners said Cameron couldn't be trusted to preserve Britain's health and welfare systems and accused him of lying about cutting immigration. Miliband was charged with being economically reckless and lying about the previous Labor government's spending.

Clegg was asked how he could ever be trusted again, after reneging on a 2010 election pledge to abolish university tuition charges. He went into government with the Conservatives and tripled the fees.

"Got it wrong, I said sorry," Clegg said, in a tone of contrition adopted by all three politicians. Neither Labor nor the Conservatives appears to have the support to win a majority in the House of Commons in the May 7 election, while the Lib Dems look set to lose half their seats. Some form of coalition government appears likely.

The leaders tried to inject some certainty to the most uncertain election in decades, outlining the "red lines" they would not cross in government. For Cameron, it was an in-out referendum on European Union membership, which he has promised to hold by 2017.

"I will not lead a government that does not deliver that (referendum) pledge," Cameron said. Miliband vowed that a center-left government led by him would cut spending to get the deficit down and "live within our means."

And he ruled out in firm terms a coalition or deal with the separatist Scottish National Party, which looks set to win most of the seats in Scotland. "I am not going to sacrifice the future of our country, the unity of our country," Miliband said.

As the campaign enters its final week, British newspapers began to dole out political endorsements. The Financial Times and the Economist both said a continuation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that has governed since 2010 was in Britain's best interests.

Rupert Murdoch's tabloid Sun urged voters to back the Conservatives — unless they're in Scotland. There, it said, they should vote for the Scottish National Party. The differing endorsements raised a few eyebrows, since the London-based Sun dubbed nationalists "saboteurs" determined to wreck Britain.

But the Scottish edition — which has a separate editor — said the SNP would "fight harder for Scotland's interests" and praised leader Nicola Sturgeon as "a phenomenon." Its front page depicted her as Princess Leia from "Star Wars."

Murdoch's newspapers were long a powerful force in British politics, but their influence may be waning in the Internet age.

Austria turns down US extradition request for Ukrainian

May 01, 2015

VIENNA (AP) — An Austrian court on Thursday ruled against a U.S. extradition request for a Ukrainian oligarch suspected of paying millions of dollars in bribes to Indian officials, saying the U.S. move was at least partially politically motivated and not supported by sufficient evidence.

The ruling came after more than 12 hours of proceedings. The U.S. prosecution said it would appeal. Judge Christoph Bauer said U.S. officials did not supply all the documents requested by the court as evidence, while court spokeswoman Christina Salzborn said the case was "also politically motivated."

U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Peter Carr said in a phone interview Thursday from Washington that, "We are disappointed with the court's ruling and have filed an appeal." He declined further comment.

Firtash was indicted in Chicago by a U.S. grand jury two years ago for allegedly paying off the officials through U.S. banks in a failed attempt to secure titanium mining rights in India. Arrested a year ago in Vienna, Firtash posted bail of 125 million euros (nearly $140 million) shortly afterward, leaving him free but unable to leave Austria.

Court officials said Friday the bail would remain in effect and Firtash could leave Austria on condition that he was reachable through his lawyers. One of Ukraine's most influential businessmen, Firtash, 49 is well connected both in Moscow and with Ukrainian politicians opposed to the Kremlin. He earned millions of dollars in the natural gas trading sector under deposed pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.

His lawyers claimed that his arrest in Austria at a time of political turmoil in Ukraine was politically motivated — an argument also made Friday in court by Firtash, who described the accusations as "totally absurd."

AP video journalist Philipp Jenne in Vienna and AP writer Michael Tarm in Chicago contributed.