COVID-19 will increase humanitarian needs in 2021: UN

 

The coronavirus pandemic is pushing the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance to new highs, according to the United Nations, dramatically increasing the ranks of extreme poverty in just one year.

One in 33 people will need aid to meet basic needs like food, water and sanitation in 2021, an increase of 40 percent from this year, the UN said on Tuesday in its Global Humanitarian Overview 2021. That translates to 235 million people worldwide, with concentrations in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia, it said.

"The crisis is far from over," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement. “Humanitarian aid budgets face dire shortfalls as the impact of the global pandemic continues to worsen.

"The lives of people… already living on a knife’s edge are being hit disproportionately hard by rising food prices, falling incomes, interrupted vaccination programs and school closures."

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it hopes to reach 160 million of those people.

“The picture we're painting this year is the bleakest and darkest perspective on humanitarian needs we've ever set out, and that's because the pandemic has reaped carnage across the most fragile and vulnerable countries on the planet,” said UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock, who heads OCHA.

“For the first time since the 1990s, extreme poverty is going to increase, life expectancy will fall, the annual death toll from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria is set to double. We fear a near doubling in the number of people facing starvation. "

Lowcock said Yemen, where “a large-scale famine” is a looming threat, faces the most serious problem, primarily as a result of a drop in funding from Gulf countries who used to be major donors. The shortfall has led to cuts in aid programs and the closing down of clinics.

The Syrian crisis - and its spillover to neighboring countries where millions of Syrians fled to escape the conflict - is the subject of the biggest call for funding, according to Lowcock.

OCHA said other countries in need include Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela. Newcomers to this year’s list are Mozambique, where armed activity has increased in the north, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

Lowcock said that it was not the pandemic, but rather its economic impact that is having the greatest effect on humanitarian needs.

"These all hit the poorest people in the poorest countries hardest of all," he said. "For the poorest, the hangover from the pandemic will be long and hard."

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Car hits pedestrians in German town, killing at least four

 A car drove at high speed into a pedestrian zone in the southwestern German city of Trier on Tuesday, killing at least four people, including a child, and seriously injuring 15 others before the driver was stopped by police, officials said.

The driver, identified as a 51-year-old German man from the area, was arrested at the scene and the vehicle was impounded, Trier police said.

The man was being questioned and there was no immediate indication of his motive, authorities said.

He appears to have been suffering from “psychiatric problems”, prosecutor Peter Fritzen said later on Tuesday.

Early indications “suggest that psychiatric problems possibly played a role”, he told reporters, adding the driver was also under the influence of alcohol at the time.

Prosecutors are considering requesting that he be placed in psychiatric care, Fritzen added.

Rhineland-Palatinate state governor Malu Dreyer, who comes from Trier, said the dead included a young child and condemned it as a “brutal act”.

“It was a really, really terrible day for my hometown,” Dreyer told reporters after visiting the scene.

Police said the driver appeared to have ploughed into pedestrians indiscriminately as he drove through the city centre.

‘Simply terrible’

Roger Lewentz, the state interior minister, commended security forces on their reaction, saying that they had stopped the car and taken the suspect into custody within four minutes of receiving the first call.

Footage from the scene showed people outside a shop apparently helping someone on the ground lying among scattered debris.

“It was simply terrible,” Mayor Wolfram Leibe told n-tv television after visiting the site.

Leibe said the perpetrator “drove through the pedestrian zone, clearly at high speed, and killed several people and injured several, some of them seriously.”

The driver was alone in the car, police said.

“I don’t want to speculate, but all of us are asking ourselves … what drives a person to do something like this?” Leibe said. “Of course I don’t have an answer to this question.”

 

The city centre had been cordoned off and helicopters were circling overhead [Harald Tittel/DPA via AP]

The area was being kept shut down until at least Wednesday morning for police to collect evidence, but there was no longer any danger, Leibe said.

In a video posted by a local media outlet purportedly showing the arrest, police could be seen pinning a man down on the sidewalk next to a car with Trier license plates.

The authenticity of the video could not immediately be verified and it was taken down shortly after police tweeted a request that people do not share photos and videos of the scene.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, tweeted that the scene was “shocking.”

“Our thoughts are with the relatives of those killed and with the numerous injured, and with everyone currently on duty caring for them,” he said.

Previous incidents

Germany has tightened security on pedestrian zones across the country since a truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016 that killed 12 people and injured dozens.

In October 2019, a man opened fire on a synagogue in the city of Halle. After failing to get into the building he went on a rampage outside, killing two people.

In February this year, a gunman killed nine migrants in Hanau near Frankfurt before killing his mother and himself. Only about a week later, a local man ploughed his car into a carnival parade in the town of Volkmarsen, injuring 61.

Germany has tightened measures to fight the coronavirus, with bars and restaurants closed, but shops and schools are still open.

SOURCE : NEWS AGENCIES

Iraqi Kurdish authorities accused of torturing jailed journalist

 Imprisoned Kurdish journalist Sherwan Amin Sherwani has been held in solitary confinement for nearly two months and was allegedly tortured by security forces in Erbil on “politically motivated charges”, his lawyer, wife and rights groups say.

Sherwani - editor-in-chief of monthly magazine Bashur, which is critical of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region’s political elite - was arrested at his home in Sebiran, a village on the outskirts of the capital Erbil, on October 7.

He was critical of authorities in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq on social media, especially the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the powerful Barzani family based in Erbil and Duhok provinces.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has been called out by international watchdogs for abusing human rights, restricting the civil liberties, freedom of expression, and freedom of the media.

Muhamad Abdulla, a lawyer defending Sherwani, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview his psychological state is deteriorating after being held in solitary confinement for more than 50 days.

"I met my client at Erbil General Security Directorate for only several minutes where Sherwani told me he has been tortured," Abdulla said.

“His imprisonment has no legal basis. It is rather politically motivated since he is writing about the corruption of the Kurdistan region’s authorities. "

'Injustice'

Abdulla said Sherwani was being accused of “endangering the Kurdistan region’s security”, attempting to participate in protests in 2018, and publishing confidential information.

He faces five years to life imprisonment if convicted, he added.

Abdulla accused KRG security authorities in Erbil of "injustice" in their nearly two-month interrogation of Sherwani. He said they mistranslated alleged confessions from Kurdish into Arabic and did not allow him to see the full list of charges against his client.

Dindar Zebari, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s coordinator for international advocacy, said Sherwani was arrested and detained based on a court warrant and he is subject to due process of the law.

“It is important to note that Mr Sherwani was arrested outside journalistic capacity. He is involved in libel, defamation, and other acts that endanger public safety, ”Zebari said.

Al Jazeera contacted Tariq Nuri, spokesperson for Erbil’s security forces, but he declined to comment on Sherwani’s case.

Sherwani is accused of ‘endangering the Kurdistan region’s security’ and publishing classified information [Courtesy: Rugash Izzaddin Muheiadin]

‘Physical and psychological torture’

The Rights and Freedoms Advocacy Committee, an NGO, published a statement on November 22 accusing the government of abuses after more than 280 people were arrested in August after a peaceful protest demanding civil servants’ salaries be paid.

“Among them were teachers, civil servants, journalists and human rights activists, some of whom have been subjected to physical and psychological torture, prolonged solitary confinement, and denied access to legal aid and visitations,” it said.

Rugash Izzaddin Muheiadin, Sherwani’s wife, said her son has been traumatised after witnessing his father being taken away forcefully by police. She accused security forces in Erbil of forcing him to sign altered confessions.

“My husband has been beaten and tortured since he refused to give his laptop’s password to the KRG security forces. His arrest is politically motivated as he was a critical journalist writing about corruption of the ruling parties, especially Erbil authorities,” Muheiadin told Al Jazeera.

Gulstan Saed, deputy chairwoman of the parliament’s human rights committee, said she has pressed KRG officials on Sherwani’s case as well as others in detention but has received no information from authorities.

“I have also sent a letter to the speaker of the parliament in which I disclosed there are beatings at the KRG detention facilities, and detainees did not have access to families and lawyers’ visits. These are all breaches of the law,” Saed told Al Jazeera.

‘Freed on bail’

Zana Khalid, another member of the human rights committee, said: “We did not hear those allegations of torture from formal sides. If those allegations are true then they are regarded as abuses against human rights. We are treating these with formal procedures, not what is being said on media.”

Rahman Gharib from the Metro Center for Journalists’ Rights and Advocacy said Sherwani’s arrest was the result of him expressing his opinions.

“Since Sherwani was a critical journalist, his case should have been treated according to the region’s code for regulating journalism. He should have been freed on bail,” Gharib said.

He called on international human rights organisations to call on the KRG authorities to free the journalist.

Nasiriya: City at the heart of Iraq’s uprisings and rebellion

 

From ancient battles to last week’s deadly clashes between protesters and supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq’s Dhi Qar governorate has often been referred to as the centre of the country’s rebellion and uprisings.

In November 2019, at the height of the countrywide anti-government protests, its capital Nasiriya was referred to as the heart of the uprising. A symbolic move that for some holds true to this day.

“Nasiriya is the fire of the revolution,” protester Ahmed al-Tamimi said over the telephone from the city’s main protest site, Haboubi Square.

“The martyrs went with a flag and they were killed in cold blood – this is the revolution of the martyrs,” he said, referring to the 129 protesters from Dhi Qar who lost their lives over the course of one year.

Last week eight more demonstrators were killed on the streets of Nasiriya when clashes broke out between protesters and followers of the popular al-Sadr

The violence coincided with the one-year anniversary of the killing of dozens of protesters in what became Dhi Qar’s bloodiest incident since the beginning of the demonstrations.

Al-Tamimi, who has been at the centre of Nasiriya’s uprising since October 2019, admitted fault on both sides.

“They [al-Sadr supporters] had bad people and we had bad people. I cannot say that everyone at [Haboubi] square is innocent, some belong to parties [and] infiltrated the square,” said al-Tamimi. “What happened was a mistake on both sides.”

‘Comparative neglect’

By Tuesday, Nasiriya protesters were back at the site, albeit surrounded by federal police and at the mercy of a curfew. But unlike Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, where in October tents were cleared out and roads reopened, Haboubi Square is still alive with demonstrators.

“The people of Nasiriya have always been praised for their revolutionary belief,” said Sheikh Imad Rikaby of the Rikaby tribe. Like him, Iraq commentators have frequently alluded to Nasiriya’s long history of rebellion and revolutionary politics to explain Dhi Qar’s central role in the protests.

“I think the real explanation is likely more mundane and reflects primarily the comparative neglect of the province by the federal government when compared with Basra,” said Ben Robin-D’Cruz, a researcher on Iraqi politics at the University of Edinburgh.

Iraqis rally to mark the first anniversary of massive anti-government protests in the southern city of Nasiriya in Dhi Qar province in October [Asaad Niazi/AFP]

But in a nationwide uprising that has seen the killing of more than 600 people at the hands of security forces, collective myths are key in fuelling morale. Nasiriya is known across Iraq for its humble and battle-hardened people.However, argued Robin-D’Cruz, their “heroic resistance to extreme violence … doesn’t mean the protest movement was at the heart of the October 2019 movement in terms of organisation and strategic decision-making”.

Instead, protesters in the province were the most reluctant to “engage in the political process or forge alliances with other political forces”.

‘Reform and restructure’

But some hope a corner was turned this week, opening the way for the Haboubi Square movement to play a role in local decision-making.

On Monday, the leaders of Dhi Qar’s protest movement handed a list of 13 demands to the team sent to Nasiriya by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi following the clashes on Friday.

“We will reform our organisation,” said protester al-Tamimi. “We will restructure and clear out the unruly members.”

One of the demands, said al-Tamimi, was that the camp would only be removed if mutually agreed upon by both protesters and local authorities. Another point, he added, was the overhaul of the local government.

“Our dreams were stolen, the dreams of our children were stolen,” said al-Tamimi. “There is nothing we have that is functional. No hospital, no school … Everything has been destroyed.”

On Tuesday afternoon, al-Tamimi was back in what he said was a “calm” square, intent on rebuilding what had been lost in Friday’s clashes.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA

Puerto Rico’s Arecibo telescope, once world’s largest, collapses

 The massive telescope on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico - located at the Arecibo Observatory and deteriorating since August - collapsed on Tuesday, officials said, after 57 years of astronomical discoveries.

The radio telescope's 900-tonne instrument platform, suspended by cables 137m (450 feet) above a 305-meter-wide (1,000-foot) bowl-shaped reflector dish, fell on Tuesday morning, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) said. No injuries were reported, it added.

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The telescope, one of the largest in the world, had been used by scientists around the globe for decades to study distant planets, find potentially hazardous asteroids and hunt for potential signatures of extraterrestrial life.

It was also featured in two US films, GoldenEye starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond and released in 1995, and Contact, with actors Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey two years later.

The Arecibo Observatory space telescope, seen in a satellite image taken over Arecibo, Puerto Rico [File: Planet/Handout via Reuters]

Two cables supporting the reflector dish had broken since August, leaving a gash in the dish and making the site unsafe, forcing officials to close the observatory. The NSF, which helped manage the telescope, said in November that efforts to repair the structure would be too dangerous and therefore it would have to be demolished.“NSF is saddened by this development,” the independent federal agency wrote on Twitter. “As we move forward, we will be looking for ways to assist the scientific community and maintain our strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico.”

When it announced the closure last month, the NSF said that “the telescope serves as an inspiration for Puerto Ricans considering education and employment in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics]”.

In the same statement, Michael Wiltberger, head of NSF’s Geospace Section, said the observatory “has helped transform our understanding of the ionosphere, showing us how density, composition and other factors interact to shape this critical region where Earth’s atmosphere meets space”.

The NSF’s original plan was to dismantle the site with “aims to retain as much as possible of the remaining infrastructure of Arecibo Observatory, so that it remains available for future research and educational missions”.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

ANGOLA SUBMITS REPORT ON MBANZA KONGO AT UNESCO

 Angola presented Tuesday a Report on Historic Site of Mbanza Kongo at the UNESCO World Heritage Center, in Paris, France.

The preparation of the document took into account Annex 13 of the World Heritage Committee which determines the presentation by Angola, as a State Party, of the Report on the Implementation of the Recommendations of the World Heritage Committee to the World Heritage Center, until 1 December 2020.

This is the first time Angolan State has submitted the report on the state of conservation of the property, a document that reflects the situation of Mbanza Kongo.

A National Multi-sector Commission for Safeguarding of World Cultural Heritage, coordinated by the Vice President of the Republic, Bornito de Sousa, has been created under Presidential Order 25/18 of 5 March.

The objective is to preserve and promote participatory management of the National Cultural Heritage and to adapt the legal instruments aimed to protect the goods classified as National and World Cultural Heritage.

The Historic Center of Mbanza Kongo was raised to the category of world heritage during the 41st session of UNESCO held in Kraków, Poland.

Mbanza Kongo is the capital of the former Kingdom of Congo, founded in the 13th century. The historic area grew around the royal residence, the court and the sacred tree.

ANGOLA MARKS 44 YEARS AS UN MEMBER

 Angola commemorated on December 1st the 44th anniversary of its admission as a full member of the United Nations (UN).

44 years ago, the former People's Republic of Angola (RPA) was admitted as a full UN member, siding with the major nations.

Angola's admission to the UN was recommended to the General Assembly by the Security Council, through resolution 397/76, with the favorable votes of the majority of the Permanent Members of the Security Council.

Independent since November 11, 1975, Angola has been attending sessions on discussion of major world issues.

Angola has already been to the UN Security Council twice, as a non-permanent member (2003-2004 and 2015-2016).

In the first time (2003-2004), the country presided over the organ in a rotating regime (November 2003), and in the second (2015-2016) the presidency took place in March 2016.

In recognition of the success of its Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) process, as well as that of peace consolidation and national reconciliation, in 2006, Angola was trusted by UN Member States and chaired the first Peacebuilding Commission (Organization's PBC).

The country has recently submitted three legal instruments for Adherence to International Treaties, after being approved by the National Assembly and signed by the President of the Republic, João Lourenço.

They are the Letters of Accession to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and Accession to the Statutes of the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

The third is the Letter of Adhesion to the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on the Protection of the Ozone Layer, which lays down a commitment to reduce consumption and production of hydro-fluorocarbons by all countries.

These instruments were referred by Permanent Mission of Angola to the UN in New York to the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, in compliance with the necessary legal formalities after ratification by the States Parties.

The Accession Letters reaffirm the country's commitment to participation in global affairs, in favor of peace, cooperation and sustainable international development.

COVID-19: ANGOLA REPORTS 112 NEW INFECTIONS, 81 RECOVERIES

 Angolan health authorities announced Tuesday the registration of 112 new infections, 81 patients recovered and two deaths in the last 24 hours.

According to the Secretary of State for Public Health, Franco Mufinda, who was speaking at the country's usual Covid-19 data update session, 68 new cases were diagnosed in Luanda, 20 in Huambo, 12 in when Cubango, eight in Cabinda, two in Zaire, one in Benguela.

The list of new patients, whose ages range from two to 70 years, is composed of 76 men and 36 women.

He reported that 81 patients were recovered, 37 from Luanda, 18 from Cunene, 16 from Uíge, seven from Huambo and three from Namibe, aged one to 63.

In relation to the deaths, Franco Mufinda said that these were two Angolan men, one resident in Benguela and another in Luanda, aged 79 and 87, respectively.

Angola has a record of 15,251 cases, with 350 deaths, 7,932 recovered and 6,969 active people.

Of the active cases, three are in critical condition with invasive mechanical ventilation, 11 severe, 172 moderate, 176 with mild symptoms and 6,607 asymptomatic.