Militarisation

The Yemeni authorities, facing growing internal and external pressures, are abandoning human rights in the name of security says a new Amnesty International report, Yemen: Cracking down under pressure. The role of armed Islamist militants in Yemen rose to prominence during the civil war in 1994, when they fought alongside the army of the former YAR (North Yemen) to defeat the armed forces of the former PDRY (South Yemen). The PDRY was a secular state, widely perceived to be communist and backed by the USSR. The Islamist militants siding with the YAR comprised Yemenis and other nationals, mainly from Arab countries. Many had settled in Yemen, with the encouragement of the government in the north, after taking part in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Far from calling the Saudi king on his awful record on human rights and women’s issues, the president is pushing a huge arms deal and heaping praise on the monarch. He’s not only continuing Bush’s soft Saudi policy—he’s surpassing it. In the next two months, Congress will be asked to give formal approval to a staggering new arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Valued at $30 billion, the deal includes selling the Saudis state-of-the-art missile technology, jets, ships, and helicopters. “Saudi is a key country for us and we continue to work hard,” Navy Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, director of the U.S. agency that oversees foreign military sales, said last month.

Nick Kristof observes ethnic cleansing and collective punishment first-hand: On one side of a barbed-wire fence here in the southern Hebron hills is the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, where Palestinians live in ramshackle tents and huts. They aren’t allowed to connect to the electrical grid, and Israel won’t permit them to build homes, barns for their animals or even toilets. When the villagers build permanent structures, the Israeli authorities come and demolish them, according to villagers and Israeli human rights organizations.

La situation se stabilisait lentement mardi dans le sud du Kirghizstan, a indiqué un responsable de la région d'Och, après quatre jours de violences interethniques qui ont fait au moins 170 morts et plus de 1 700 blessés. "La nuit dernière a été plus ou moins calme dans la région par rapport à la nuit précédente. De nombreux membres des forces de l'ordre (...) assurent la sécurité et le passage de convois humanitaires", a déclaré un responsable du ministère de l'intérieur. "Le grand problème reste la propagation parmi la population de rumeurs provocatrices qui créent la panique et attisent les tensions", a-t-il poursuivi.

This is getting damned strange. The Obama administration and Israel have been haggling for a week over the nature and composition of the supposedly independent commission which will investigate the Gaza flotilla disaster. We hear that the U.S. demanded that someone of judicial “stature” like a Supreme Court justice be appointed as chair. Bibi finally acquiesced and appointed Justice Yaakov Tirkel. But there’s one problem. The incoming panel chair doesn’t seem to believe in the panel.

Weeks after an UNRWA recreation center in Gaza was set alight by masked gunmen, the Sharek Youth Forum said it has suspended work in the coastal enclave, after its offices were raided several times by armed groups. A statement issued Wednesday said the youth group's equipment had been confiscated and its staff harassed. " Gazan youth are being prevented from expressing their views by unchecked armed groups.

On a side street off Mogadishu's Wadnaha Road frontline a young officer is explaining the unwritten rules of the city's intractable civil war as his men exchange fire with an unseen enemy. The fighters shooting at him are from the Hizb al-Islam, he explains. He knows this because they fight longer than al-Shabab, the other main Islamist group besieging Somalia's tiny government-held enclave, but also because they told him. "We have friends there. They tell us before they leave their base that they are going to attack. When they want to fire mortars they tells us so we can take cover." If the conflict that has turned Mogadishu into a virtual no-go zone for 19 years occasionally resembles a grim farce, there is nothing farcical about the scene around us.

Aswat-Palestinian Gay Women harshly condenms Israel's deadly raid on the Gaza humanitarian flotilla and calls for an immediate, international investigation into the flotilla assult, full accountability for those responsible, and the lifting of the Gaza blockade. 

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies called upon the United Nations to conduct immediate investigations that would comply by international law standards in relation to the appalling attacks that Israel committed against the humanitarian aid flotilla.

شدد مركز القاهرة لدراسات حقوق الإنسان على أنه يتعين على الأمم المتحدة إجراء تحقيقات فورية تنطلق من معايير القانون الدولي الأساسية بشأن الهجوم الوحشي الذي شنته إسرائيل على "أسطول الحرية"، ووضع حد لنهج الإفلات من العقاب الذي يشجع إسرائيل على مواصلة جرائمها المنافية للقانون الدولي الإنساني، مشيراً فى ذلك إلى ضرورة التنفيذ الكامل لتوصيات لتقرير جولدستون بشأن جرائم الحرب والجرائم ضد الإنسانية إبان الحرب الأخيرة على غزة

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