Rohingya crisis: UN reps to visit Rakhine; exodus expected to reach 7L

Agencies
September 28, 2017

United Nations, Sept 28: Representatives of UN agencies will be permitted to visit Rakhine state in Myanmar on Thursday for the first time since the start of a massive exodus of minority Rohingya Muslims.

The United Nations has been demanding access since its humanitarian organisations were forced to pull out of Rakhine when Myanmar's military launched operations against Rohingya rebels in late August, causing hundreds of thousands to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.

"There will be a trip organised by the government, probably on Thursday, to Rakhine," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "We hope above all that it is a first step toward much freer and wider access to the area," he said at his daily news briefing. He said the chiefs of UN agencies would take part in the trip.

The UN has drawn up a contingency plan to feed up to 7,00,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, and warned that those who fled will not be returning home soon. "All the UN agencies together have now set a plan for a new influx of 7,00,000. We can cover if the new influx reaches 7,00,000," the World Food Program's deputy chief in Bangladesh, Dipayan Bhattacharyya, said on Wednesday.

'Return will take time'

UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi said that for those who have fled to Bangladesh, "return will take time, if it happens, if the violence stops."

Myanmar's military, under fire for imposing a news blackout on the campaign around the city of Maungdaw in the country's west, on Wednesday organised a press tour in the Hindu village of Ye Baw Kyaw.

Mass graves containing 45 Hindu villagers were discovered in the area earlier this week, and the military has accused Rohingya militants of carrying out the massacre. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) "categorically" denied that its members "perpetrated murder, sexual violence, or forcible recruitment" in the area. The decomposing skeletal bodies remained laid out in rows on a grassy field outside Ye Baw Kyaw as distraught relatives wailed, according to AFP journalists at the scene.

Hindus who fled the area have told AFP that masked men stormed into their community and hacked victims to death with machetes before dumping them into freshly-dug pits.

Myanmar's army has tried to control the narrative over the crisis, restricting press access to the conflict zone while it posts regular updates that blame Rohingya militants for the bloodshed. Government and military reports have also sought to highlight the suffering of other ethnic groups, such as Rakhine Buddhists and Hindus, swept up in the communal unrest.

Ethnic cleansing accusations

The latest violence has intensified long-running religious hatreds and been complicated by a swirl of rival narratives from different ethnic groups.

Thursday's visit for the UN representatives will come on the same day that the UN Security Council meets on the situation in Myanmar. On 13 September, the council demanded "immediate steps" to end the Myanmar violence and expressed concern about "excessive force" being used by the military.

The council also called on the Myanmar government to abide by its commitment to facilitate humanitarian aid in Rakhine, but until now that request has not been met.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will address the UN Security Council during its open door session. As a former UN high commissioner on refugees, Guterres knows Rakhine and the context of the current crisis intimately.

With accusations of "ethnic cleansing" being levelled at the country, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said last week she was "ready" to organise the return of the Rohingyas.

The Rohingyas, the world's largest stateless group, are treated as foreigners in Myanmar, whose population is 90 percent Buddhist.

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Agencies
June 24,2020

Washington, Jun 24: Twitter has once again flagged a tweet from US President Donald Trump which promoted violence by saying if protesters tried to set up an "autonomous zone" in Washington, DC they would be met with "serious force".

This is the fourth time Twitter has red flagged Trump's tweet for glorifying violence or violating its policies.

Trump has been critical of the "autonomous zone" in Seattle, an area occupied by protestors for much of this month.

"We've placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behaviour, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group," Twitter's safety team tweeted late Tuesday.

Trump had tweeted: "There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone' in Washington, D.C., as long as I'm your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!"

Twitter earlier labeled a video tweeted by him which mocked CNN as manipulated media.

According to Twitter, "this Tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context".

In May, Twitter labeled two Trump tweets that made false claims about mail-in ballots in California.

Twitter later labeled another Trump tweet glorifying violence in which he said, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Facebook also removed a Trump campaign ad featuring a symbol used by Nazis for political dissenters, saying the ad violated its policies.

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News Network
June 1,2020

Washington, Jun 1: Police fired tear gas outside the White House late Sunday as major US cities were put under curfew to suppress rioting as anti-racism protestors again took to the streets to voice fury at police brutality.

With the Trump administration branding instigators of six nights of rioting as domestic terrorists, there were more confrontations between protestors and police and fresh outbreaks of looting.

Violent clashes erupted repeatedly in a small park next to the White House, with authorities using tear gas, pepper spray and flash bang grenades to disperse crowds who lit several large fires and damaged property.

Local US leaders appealed to citizens to give constructive outlet to their rage over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, while night-time curfews were imposed in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and Houston.

One closely watched protest was outside the state capitol in Minneapolis' twin city of St. Paul, where several thousand people gathered before marching down a highway.

"We have black sons, black brothers, black friends, we don't want them to die. We are tired of this happening, this generation is not having it, we are tired of oppression," said Muna Abdi, a 31-year-old black woman who joined the protest.

"I want to make sure he stays alive," she added in reference to her son, aged three.

Hundreds of police and National Guard troops were deployed ahead of the protest.

At one point, some of the protestors who had reached a bridge were forced to scramble for cover when a truck drove at speed after having apparently breached a barricade.

The driver was later taken to hospital after the protestors hauled him from the vehicle, although there were no immediate reports of other casualties.

There were other large-scale protests in cities including New York and Miami.

Washington's mayor ordered a curfew from 11:00 pm until 6:00 am, as a report in the New York Times said that President Donald Trump had been rushed by Secret Service agents into an underground bunker at the White House on Friday night during an earlier protest.

Stores ransacked

Large-scale violence has rocked many US cities in recent days, and looters ransacked stores in a neighborhood of Philadelphia on Sunday.

In the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, looting was reported at stores in a popular beachside shopping center.

Officials in LA -- a city scarred by the 1992 riots over the police beating of Rodney King, an African-American man -- imposed a curfew from 4:00 pm Sunday until dawn.

"Please, use your discretion and go early, go home, stay home and help us make sure that those who want to change this conversation from being about racial justice to be about burning things and looting things, don't win the day," the city's mayor Eric Garcetti said on CNN.

The shocking videotaped death last Monday of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis ignited the nationwide wave of outrage over law enforcement's repeated use of lethal force against unarmed African Americans.

Floyd stopped breathing after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and is due to make his first appearance in court on Monday. Three other officers with him have been fired but for now face no charges.

Governor Tim Walz has mobilized all of Minnesota's National Guard troops  -- the state guard's biggest mobilization ever -- to help restore order.

Police fired tear gas and stun grenades to clear streets of curfew violators Saturday night in Minneapolis.

Walz extended a curfew for a third night Sunday and praised police and guardsmen for holding down violence. "They did so in a professional manner. They did so without a single loss of life and minimal property damage," he said.

"Congratulations to our National Guard for the great job they did immediately upon arriving in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last night," President Donald Trump tweeted, adding that they "should be used in other States before it is too late!"

The Department of Defense said that around 5,000 National Guard troops had been mobilized in 15 states as well as the capital Washington, with another 2,000 on standby.

The widespread resort to uniformed National Guards units is rare, and it evoked disturbing memories of the rioting in US cities in 1967 and 1968 in a turbulent time of protest over racial and economic disparities.

Trump blamed the extreme left for the violence, saying he planned to designate a group known as Antifa as a terrorist organization.

"The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly," added Attorney General Bill Barr.

'A nation in pain'

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Trump, who has often urged police to use tough tactics, was not helping matters.

"We are beyond a tipping point in this country, and his rhetoric only enflames that," she said on CBS.

Joe Biden, Trump's likely Democratic opponent in November's presidential election, visited the scene of one anti-racism protest.

"We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us," Biden tweeted, posting a picture of him speaking with an African-American family at the site where protesters had gathered in Delaware late Saturday.

Floyd's death has triggered protests beyond the United States, with hundreds rallying outside the US embassy in London in solidarity.

"I'm here because I'm tired, I'm fed up with it. When does this stop?" Doreen Pierre told AFP at the protest.

In Germany, England football international Jadon Sancho marked one of his three goals for Borussia Dortmund against Paderborn by lifting his jersey to reveal a T-shirt bearing the words "Justice for George Floyd".

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News Network
June 9,2020

Jun 9: The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is “rare,” despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO''s technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms.

But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.

Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type of spread is not a driver of the pandemic and is probably accounts for about 6 per cent of spread, at most.

Numerous studies have suggested that the virus is spreading from people without symptoms, but many of those are either anecdotal reports or based on modeling.

Van Kerkhove said that based on data from countries, when people with no symptoms of COVID-19 are tracked over a long period to see if they spread the disease, there are very few cases of spread.

“We are constantly looking at this data and we''re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,” she said. “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward.”

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