Thousands of non-Muslims evacuated as violence flares in northwest Myanmar

Agencies
August 27, 2017

Yangon/Cox's Bazar, Aug 27: Myanmar's government said it has evacuated at least 4,000 non-Muslim villagers amid ongoing clashes in northwestern Rakhine state, as thousands more Rohingya Muslims sought to flee across the border to Bangladesh on Sunday.

The death toll from the violence that erupted on Friday with coordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents has climbed to 98, including some 80 insurgents and 12 members of the security forces, the government said.

Fighting involving the military and hundreds of Rohingya across northwestern Rakhine continued on Saturday with the fiercest clashes taking place near the major town of Maungdaw, according to residents and the government.

Bracing for more violence, thousands of Rohingya - mostly women and children - were trying to forge the Naf river separating Myanmar and Bangladesh and the land border. Reuters reporters at the border could hear gunfire from the Myanmar side on Sunday.

Around 2,000 people have been able to cross into Bangladesh since Friday, according to estimates by Rohingya refugees living in the makeshift camps on the Bangladeshi side of the border.

The violence marked a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered in the region since last October, when a similar but much smaller Rohingya attack prompted a brutal military operation beset by allegations of serious human rights abuses.

While the chaos and lack of access made detailed assessments difficult, experts said the latest attacks were so widespread they appeared to be more akin to a movement or an uprising, rather than a regular insurgent offensive.

One army source said the military was also struggling to differentiate.

"All the villagers become insurgents, what they're doing is like a revolution," said the source in Rakhine. "They don't care if they die or not. We can't tell who of them are insurgents."

CHALLENGE FOR SUU KYI

The treatment of approximately 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya in mainly Buddhist Myanmar has emerged as the biggest challenge for national leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi on Friday condemned the raids in which insurgents wielding guns, sticks and homemade bombs assaulted 30 police stations and an army base.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been accused by some Western critics of not speaking out for the long-persecuted Muslim minority.

Win Myat Aye, Myanmar's minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement, told Reuters late on Saturday that 4,000 "ethnic villagers" who had fled their villages had been evacuated, referring to non-Muslim residents of the area.

The ministry is arranging facilities for them in places including Buddhist monasteries, government offices and local police stations in major cities.

"We are providing food to the people cooperating with the state government and local authorities," said Win Myat Aye. He was unable to describe the government's plans to help Rohingya civilians.

Rakhine residents in ethnically mixed or non-Muslim towns have readied knives and sticks to defend themselves. Many were stranded in their villages located in Muslim-majority areas as clashes continued and some roads had been mined, residents said.

People from Maungdaw and another town, Buthidaung, said on Sunday they worried food supply routes had been temporarily cut off.

"Buthidaung will face shortages of food, because no ships have arrived since the fighting started. It is also difficult to send food to the villagers stuck in other areas," Arakan National Party regional lawmaker, Tun Aung Thein, told Reuters by telephone from the town.

"BREAKING POINT"

The Myanmar army operation following attacks last year was heavily criticised internationally amid reports of civilian killings, rape and arson that a United Nations investigation said probably constituted crimes against humanity. Suu Kyi is blocking the U.N.-mandated probe into the allegations.

The Rohingya have for years endured apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar - they are denied citizenship and face severe restrictions on their movements. Many Myanmar Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Observers worry that the latest attacks, across a wider area than October's violence and with many more people involved, represent a "breaking point" many Rohingya reached with the help of a charismatic insurgent leader, Ata Ullah.

Ata Ullah leads the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) which instigated the October attacks and claimed responsibility for the latest offensive.

Myanmar declared ARSA, previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, a terrorist organisation in the wake of the attacks.

Across the border, Bangladesh's foreign ministry said it was concerned thousands of "unarmed Myanmar nationals" were planning to enter the country.

Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar to Bangladesh since the early 1990s and there are now around 400,000 in the country, where they are a source of tension between the two nations who both regard them as the other country's citizens.

The Myanmar army operation following attacks last year was heavily criticised internationally amid reports of civilian killings, rape and arson that a United Nations investigation said probably constituted crimes against humanity. Suu Kyi is blocking the U.N.-mandated probe into the allegations.

The Rohingya have for years endured apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar - they are denied citizenship and face severe restrictions on their movements. Many Myanmar Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Observers worry that the latest attacks, across a wider area than October's violence and with many more people involved, represent a "breaking point" many Rohingya reached with the help of a charismatic insurgent leader, Ata Ullah.

Ata Ullah leads the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) which instigated the October attacks and claimed responsibility for the latest offensive.

Myanmar declared ARSA, previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, a terrorist organisation in the wake of the attacks.

Across the border, Bangladesh's foreign ministry said it was concerned thousands of "unarmed Myanmar nationals" were planning to enter the country.

Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar to Bangladesh since the early 1990s and there are now around 400,000 in the country, where they are a source of tension between the two nations who both regard them as the other country's citizens.

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mark sebastin
 - 
Sunday, 27 Aug 2017

line up everyone and shoot on their head . they are jihadists ....

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News Network
February 16,2020

Munich, Feb 16: Iran's foreign minister said Saturday that US President Donald Trump is receiving bad advice if he believes an American "maximum pressure" campaign against his country will cause the government in Tehran to collapse.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a group of top defense officials and diplomats at the Munich Security Conference that the information provided to the president has dissuaded Trump from accepting offers from other leaders to mediate between Washington and Tehran.

"President Trump has been convinced that we are about to collapse so he doesn't want to talk to a collapsing regime," Zarif said.

To support his argument, the Iranian minister cited Trump's decision to pull out unilaterally in 2018 from Iran's nuclear deal with the US and other world powers. Trump said the landmark 2015 accord didn't address Iran's ballistic missile program or regional activities and needed to be renegotiated.

Since then, the Trump administration's re-imposition of US sanctions in a campaign of so-called "maximum pressure" have taken a severe toll on the Iranian economy and sent Iran's currency plunging.

"I believe President Trump, unfortunately, does not have good advisers," Zarif said. "He's been wanting for Iran to collapse since he withdrew from the nuclear deal." Zarif also said the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3 was a miscalculation by Washington that has galvanized support for Iran instead of increasing pressure on the regime.

The Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, promised Iran economic incentives in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. It was intended to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb, which Iran insists it does not want to do.

Since the US withdrawal, the deal's other signatories - Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China - have unsuccessfully struggled to come up with ways to offset the effects of the new American sanctions.

Washington has pressured the other countries - so far without success - to abandon the deal entirely US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the Munich Security Conference earlier Saturday that while there may be disagreements on what to do with the JCPOA, "when I talk to my counterparts here in Europe, everybody gets it."

"Everyone understands that these are folks who continue to build out their nuclear program," Pompeo said. "So there's a common understanding about the threat; we have tactical differences on how to proceed."

In recent months, Iran has steadily violated the limitations the deal placed on the amount of enriched uranium and heavy water it can stockpile, the number and type of centrifuges it can operate, and the purity of the uranium it enriches.

Iranian officials insist the moves are intended only to put pressure on the countries that remain part of the deal to provide economic help to Iran and that all the measures taken are fully reversible.

Zarif rejected Trump's suggestion of negotiating a new deal, saying the one negotiated during the Obama administration was the only vehicle for talks on Iran's nuclear program.

"There is no point in talking over something you already talked about. You don't buy a horse twice," he said.

"It's not about opening talks with the United States. It's about bringing the United States to the negotiating table that's already there," Zarif said.

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News Network
May 20,2020

May 20: The novel coronavirus is behaving differently in patients in northeast China who have contracted it recently compared with early cases, indicating it is changing as it spreads, a prominent doctor said.

China, which has largely brought the virus under control, has found new clusters of infections in the northeastern border provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang in recent weeks, raising concern about a second wave.

Qiu Haibo, an expert in critical care medicine who is part of a National Health Commission expert group, said the incubation period of the virus in patients in the northeast was longer than that of patients in Wuhan, the central city, where the virus emerged late last year.

COVID-19 Pandemic Tracker: 15 countries with the highest number of coronavirus cases, deaths

"This causes a problem, as they don't have any symptoms. So when they gather with their families they don't care about this issue and we see family cluster infections," Qiu told state broadcaster CCTV in a programme broadcast late on Tuesday.

Patients in the northeastern clusters were also carrying the virus for longer than earlier cases in Wuhan, and they were taking longer to recover, as defined by a negative nucleic acid test, he said.

Patients in the northeast also rarely exhibited fever and tended to suffer damage to the lungs rather than across multiple organs, he said.

He said the virus found in the northeastern clusters was probably imported from abroad, which could account for the differences.

He did not say where he though they might have come from but both Jilin and Heilongjiang border Russia.

China reported five new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, down from six a day earlier.

Four of the new cases were local transmissions and one was imported by a traveller coming from abroad, the commission said in a statement, compared with three imported cases reported the previous day.

China's total number of coronavirus infections stands at 82,965, while the death toll 4,634. 

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News Network
July 27,2020

Chengdu, China, Jul 27: The American flag was lowered at the United States consulate in Chengdu on Monday, days after Beijing ordered it to close in retaliation for the shuttering of the Chinese consulate in Houston.

Footage on state broadcaster CCTV from outside the consulate showed the flag being slowly lowered early Monday morning, after diplomatic tensions soared between the two powers with both alleging the other had endangered national security.

Relations deteriorated in recent weeks in a Cold War-style standoff, with the Chengdu mission Friday ordered to shut in retaliation for the forced closure of Beijing's consulate in Houston, Texas.

The deadline for the Americans to exit Chengdu has been unclear, but the Chinese consulate in Houston was given 72 hours to close after the original order was made.

On Saturday news agency reporters saw workers removing the US insignia from the front of the consulate.

Over the weekend, removals trucks entered the US consulate and cleaners were seen carting large black rubbish bags from the building.

Beijing says closing the Chengdu consulate was a "legitimate and necessary response to the unreasonable measures by the United States", and has alleged that staff at the diplomatic mission endangered China's security and interests.

Washington officials, meanwhile, said there had been unacceptable efforts by the Chinese consulate in Houston to steal US corporate secrets.

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