Supreme Court Bench Headed By Chief Justice Stays Allahabad HC Order Striking Down UP Madrasa Law

New Age Islam News Bureau

5 April 2024

 

The Allahabad High Court has declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional” and violative of the principles of secularism. (HT_PRINT)

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·         Supreme Court Bench Headed By Chief Justice Stays Allahabad HC Order Striking Down UP Madrasa Law

·         Indian Government Ordered Killings In Pakistan, Indian And Pakistani Intelligence Operatives Officials Claim

·         US Threatens Policy Shift If Israeli Excesses Continue

·         2nd Saudi Cinema Nights Series Of International Film Screening Begins This Month

·         US’s Ongoing Arms Supplies For Israel Exposes Washington’s Hypocrisy: Houthi

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India

·         Lok Sabha Polls in Ramzan: Muslim Candidates Keep Meals Light, Meetings Indoors, Speeches Short

·         Congress Manifesto Has Big Promise For LGBTQ+ Couples: ‘Will Bring Law For Civil Unions’

·         SC rejects plea for bringing mortal remains of India-born Pak Sufi saint from Bangladesh

·         Mathura Mosque Matter Beyond Remit Of Waqf Tribunal, Argues Hindu Side

·         Rajasthan: Hindus Protest Against Religious Conversion, Madarsa Targeted

·         JD(S) leader Kumaraswamy says every Muslim will require protection and PM Modi will ensure it

·         India urges Israel to ensure safety and well-being of Indian workers

·         India Voices 'Concern' Over Israeli Airstrike on Iranian Consulate

·         India dismisses report claiming it ordered targeted killings of wanted terrorists in Pakistan

·         J&K: Mirwaiz Put Under 'House Arrest', Jamia Masjid Closed Ahead of Prayers

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Europe

·         Putin Dismisses Claims Russia May Come Under Attack By 'Islamic Fundamentalists'

·         Norway detains Quran blasphemer, plans to deport him to Sweden

·         Far-right Dutch politician’s journey from banning to promoting Islam

·         UK Civil Servants Request To Stop Work Over Arms Sales To Israel: Report

·         France And Its Allies Could Have Stopped The Rwandan Genocide: Macron

·         Spanish NGO halts Gaza aid work over deadly attack

·         Spanish PM warns EU may re-evaluate relations with Israel

·         East London Mosque Serves Up 1,000 Iftar Meals A Day During Ramadan

·         Kremlin Critic Examines Moscow’s Attempts To Blame Others For Islamic State Attack

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North America

·         Canadian Winnipeg Mosque Vandalized By Two Weapon-Wielding Suspects

·         Pro-Palestinian protest vote campaign in New York claims victory against Biden

·         US Muslims Angry Over Biden's Support to Israel, Turns Down White House's Iftar Dinner Invite

·         Biden finally calls for Gaza ceasefire in call with Netanyahu

·         Israel to increase Gaza aid routes after US pressure, White House says

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Arab World

·         Art Exhibition Displays Senses And Spirituality During Ramadan

·         ‘Digital Bags’ program launched at holy mosques

·         Prophet's Mosque Sees 4,700 Worshippers Observe Itikaf in Last 10 Days of Ramadan

·         Hira Cultural District in Mecca: A spiritual experience for Umrah performers and visitors

·         Over 20 million worshippers visit Prophet's Mosque in first 20 days of Ramadan

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Mideast

·         Millions Rally On Quds Day To Condemn Israeli Genocide, Support Palestinians

·         Islamic Jihad warns Israel against harming Al-Aqsa Mosque

·         Türkiye Asks NATO Members To Back Ankara's Fight Against Terrorism: Top Diplomat

·         High Court gives government six days to submit answers on Gaza humanitarian crisis

·         Israel says will allow ‘temporary’ aid through northern Gaza border

·         Hezbollah strikes Israeli troops, military vehicles in support of Gaza

·         Israeli Strike On Gaza Building Killed 106 In ‘Apparent War Crime’: HRW

·         Iran calls for full support for Palestinians on Quds Day

·         Muslim bloc calls for urgent cease-fire in Gaza ahead of Eid al-Fitr

·         Türkiye hopes to share Ramadan together ‘under the flag of a free Palestine’: Parliament speaker

·         McDonald’s to acquire franchised restaurants in Israel amid boycott calls

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Pakistan

·         Pakistan Condemns Attacks: 10 Iran Security Personnel Killed In Sistan-Baluchistan

·         Islamabad rally vandalism: Verdict on acquittal pleas of IK, others reserved

·         Foreign ministry ‘unmoved’ by cipher’s loss, lawyer Salman Safdar tells IHC

·         PM calls for global role to halt Israeli oppression against Palestinians

·         Threat letters to judges: PM promises credible probe into sensitive matter

·         Muzaffargarh Itikaf rape suspect arrested: NCRC

·         IK condemns Israel's genocide in Gaza

·         Hafiz Naeem elected new Jamaat-i-Islami emir

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South Asia

·         Spokesman: Islamic Emirate Committed to Counterterrorism in Afghanistan

·         12-year-old sacrifices childhood works to support family amid uncertain future

·         Deputy PM Calls for Expanded Demining Efforts in Afghanistan

·         Amnesty International Asks Pakistan to Reverse Refugees Expulsion Plan

·         Rights violations: Home ministry snubs two-thirds of NHRC enquiry requests

·         Arms supply to Israel must stop: foreign minister

·         BNP can't come to right track under Tarique's leadership: Quader

·         Work for people, don’t lose their trust, PM tells public representatives

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Southeast Asia

·         Myanmar’s Worst Violence Since The Military Takeover Is Intensifying The Crisis, The UN Says

·         PAS sec-gen tells interfaith council to stop being a ‘busybody’ over proposed amendments to Act 355

·         8 mosques to offer 3 sessions for Hari Raya prayers

·         Unsold, leftover food at Ramadan bazaars in Malaysia raises concerns over wastage

·         Jailed former Malaysia premier Najib Razak seeks to serve remaining sentence under house arrest

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Africa

·         Mixed Reactions In Uganda After Constitutional Court Rejects Bid To Nullify Anti-Homosexuality Laws

·         Military releases names of killed B’Haram commanders

·         Yusuf launches distribution of 4th Ramadan palliatives, warns against diversion

·         Turkish Embassy distributes food aid among vulnerable Muslims in South Sudan

Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau

URL:   https://newageislam.com/islamic-world-news/sc-cji-allahabad-hc-up-madrasa-law/d/132089

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Supreme Court Bench Headed By Chief Justice Stays Allahabad HC Order Striking Down UP Madrasa Law

 

The Allahabad High Court has declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional” and violative of the principles of secularism. (HT_PRINT)

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April 5, 2024

Weeks after the Allahabad High Court had declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional”, the Supreme Court on Friday stayed the judgment.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud also issued notices to the Centre, Uttar Pradesh government and others on the pleas against the high court order.

The High Court had stated that the Act violated “the principle of secularism” as well as fundamental rights provided under Article 14 of the Constitution.

Supreme Court stays Allahabad High Court order which declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional”. @IndianExpress

The High Court had had also directed the state government to “take steps forthwith for accommodating the madrasa students in regular schools recognised under the Primary Education Board and schools recognised under the High School and Intermediate Education Board of the state of Uttar Pradesh”.

Uttar Pradesh has a total of 16,513 recognised and 8,449 unrecognised madrasas with nearly 25 lakh students. The madrasa Act is also “violative of Section 22 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956”, the High Court bench had said.

After going through the madrasa syllabi, the court said that students are required to study Islam and its doctrines to progress to the next class and that modern subjects are either included or offered as optional, and that they have the choice to study just one optional subject.

Source: indianexpress.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/sc-stays-allahabad-high-court-order-up-madrasa-law-9252859/

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Indian Government Ordered Killings In Pakistan, Indian And Pakistani Intelligence Operatives Officials Claim

 

Saleem Rehmani being detained in 2010. His killing in 2022, previously reported as the result of a suspected armed robbery, was allegedly planned out of the UAE. Photograph: Farooq Khan/EPA

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Hannah Ellis-Petersen, Aakash Hassan and Shah Meer Baloch

4 Apr 2024

The Indian government assassinated individuals in Pakistan as part of a wider strategy to eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil, according to Indian and Pakistani intelligence operatives who spoke to the Guardian.

Interviews with intelligence officials in both countries, as well as documents shared by Pakistani investigators, shed new light on how India’s foreign intelligence agency allegedly began to carry out assassinations abroad as part of an emboldened approach to national security after 2019. The agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (Raw), is directly controlled by the office of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, who is running for a third term in office in elections later this month.

The accounts appear to give further weight to allegations that Delhi has implemented a policy of targeting those it considers hostile to India. While the new allegations refer to individuals charged with serious and violent terror offences, India has also been accused publicly by Washington and Ottawa of involvement in the murders of dissident figures including a Sikh activist in Canada and of a botched assassination attempt on another Sikh in the US last year.

The fresh claims relate to almost 20 killings since 2020, carried out by unknown gunmen in Pakistan. While India has previously been unofficially linked to the deaths, this is the first time Indian intelligence personnel have discussed the alleged operations in Pakistan, and detailed documentation has been seen alleging Raw’s direct involvement in the assassinations.

The allegations also suggest that Sikh separatists in the Khalistan movement were targeted as part of these Indian foreign operations, both in Pakistan and the west.

According to Pakistani investigators, these deaths were orchestrated by Indian intelligence sleeper-cells mostly operating out of the United Arab Emirates. The rise in killings in 2023 was credited to the increased activity of these cells, which are accused of paying millions of rupees to local criminals or poor Pakistanis to carry out the assassinations. Indian agents also allegedly recruited jihadists to carry out the shootings, making them believe they were killing “infidels”.

According to two Indian intelligence officers, the spy agency’s shift to focusing on dissidents abroad was triggered by the Pulwama attack in 2019, when a suicide bomber targeted a military convoy in Indian-administered Kashmir, killing 40 paramilitary personnel. The Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility.

Modi was running for a second term at the time and was brought back to power in the aftermath of the attack.

“After Pulwama, the approach changed to target the elements outside the country before they are able to launch an attack or create any disturbance,” one Indian intelligence operative said. “We could not stop the attacks because ultimately their safe havens were in Pakistan, so we had to get to the source.”

To conduct such operations “needed approval from the highest level of government”, he added.

The officer said India had drawn inspiration from intelligence agencies such as Israel’s the Mossad and Russia’s KGB, which have been linked to extrajudicial killings on foreign soil. He also said the killing of the Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018 in the Saudi embassy, had been directly cited by Raw officials.

“It was a few months after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi that there was a debate among the top brass of intelligence in the prime minister’s office about how something can be learned from the case. One senior officer said in a meeting that if Saudis can do this, why not us?” he recounted.

“What the Saudis did was very effective. You not only get rid of your enemy but send a chilling message, a warning to the people working against you. Every intelligence agency has been doing this. Our country cannot be strong without exerting power over our enemies.”

Senior officials from two separate Pakistani intelligence agencies said they suspected India’s involvement in up to 20 killings since 2020. They pointed to evidence relating to previously undisclosed inquiries into seven of the cases – including witness testimonies, arrest records, financial statements, WhatsApp messages and passports – which investigators say showcase in detail the operations conducted by Indian spies to assassinate targets on Pakistani soil. The Guardian has seen the documents but they could not be independently verified.

The intelligence sources claimed that targeted assassinations increased significantly in 2023, accusing India of involvement in the suspected deaths of about 15 people, most of whom were shot at close range by unknown gunmen.

In a response to the Guardian, India’s ministry of external affairs denied all the allegations, reiterating an earlier statement that they were “false and malicious anti-India propaganda”. The ministry emphasised a previous denial made by India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, that targeted killings in other countries were “not the government of India’s policy”.

In the killing of Zahid Akhund, an alias for the convicted Kashmiri terrorist Zahoor Mistry who was involved in the deadly hijacking of an Air India flight, the Pakistani documents say a Raw handler allegedly paid for information on Akhund’s movements and location over a period of months. She then allegedly contacted him directly, pretending to be a journalist who wanted to interview a terrorist, in order to confirm his identity.

“Are you Zahid? I am a journalist from the New York Post,” read messages in the dossier shown to the Guardian. Zahid is said to have responded: “For what u r messaging me?”

Millions of rupees were then allegedly paid to Afghan nationals to carry out the shooting in Karachi in March 2022. They fled over the border but their handlers were later arrested by Pakistani security agencies.

According to the evidence gathered by Pakistan, the killings were regularly coordinated out of the UAE, where Raw established sleeper cells that would separately arrange different parts of the operation and recruit the killers.

Investigators alleged that millions of rupees would often be paid to criminals or impoverished locals to carry out the murders, with documents claiming that payments were mostly done via Dubai. Meetings of Raw handlers overseeing the killings are also said to have taken also place in Nepal, the Maldives and Mauritius.

“This policy of Indian agents organising killings in Pakistan hasn’t been developed overnight,” said a Pakistani official. “We believe they have worked for around two years to establish these sleeper cells in the UAE who are mostly organising the executions. After that, we began witnessing many killings.”

In the case of Shahid Latif, the commander of Jaish-e-Mohammed and one of India’s most notorious militants, several attempts were allegedly made to kill him. In the end, the documents claim, it was an illiterate 20-year-old Pakistani who carried out the assassination in Pakistan in October, allegedly recruited by Raw in the UAE, where he was working for a minimal salary in an Amazon packing warehouse.

Pakistani investigators found that the man had allegedly been paid 1.5m Pakistani rupees (£4,000) by an undercover Indian agent to track down Latif and later was promised 15m Pakistani rupees and his own catering company in the UAE if he carried out the killing. The young man shot Latif dead in a mosque in Sialkot but was arrested soon after, along with accomplices.

The killings of Bashir Ahmad Peer, commander of the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, and Saleem Rehmani, who was on India’s most-wanted list, were also allegedly planned out of the UAE, with transaction receipts from Dubai appearing to show payments of millions of rupees to the killers. Rehmani’s death had previously been reported as the result of a suspected armed robbery.

Analysts believe Pakistani authorities have been reluctant to publicly acknowledge the killings as most of the targets are known terrorists and associates of outlawed militant groups that Islamabad has long denied sheltering.

In most cases, public information about their deaths has been scant. However, Pakistani agencies showed evidence they had conducted investigations and arrests behind closed doors.

The figures given to the Guardian match up with those collated by analysts who have been tracking unclaimed militant killings in Pakistan. Ajay Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in Delhi, said his organisation had documented 20 suspicious fatalities in Pakistan by unknown attackers since 2020, though two had been claimed by local militant groups. He emphasised that because of Pakistan’s refusal to publicly investigate the cases – or even acknowledge that these individuals had been living in their jurisdiction – “we have no way of knowing the cause”.

“If you look at the numbers, there is clearly a shift in intent by someone or other,” said Sahni. “It would be in Pakistan’s interest to say this has been done by India. Equally, one of the legitimate lines of inquiry would be possible involvement of the Indian agencies.”

Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi, publicly acknowledged two of the killings in a press conference in January, where he accused India of carrying out a “sophisticated and sinister” campaign of “extraterritorial and extrajudicial killings” in Pakistan.

Islamabad’s accusations were met with scepticism by others, due to the longstanding animosity between the two neighbouring countries who have gone to war four times and have often made unsubstantiated accusations against the other.

For decades India has accused Pakistan of bankrolling a violent militant insurgency in the disputed region of Indian-administered Kashmir and of giving a safe haven to terrorists. In the early 2000s, India was hit by successive terrorist attacks orchestrated by Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups, including the 2006 Mumbai train blasts, which killed more than 160 people, and the 2008 Mumbai bombings, which killed 172 people.

Both countries are known to have carried out cross-border intelligence operations, including small bomb blasts. However, analysts and Pakistani officials described the alleged systematic targeted killings of dissidents by Indian agents on Pakistani soil since 2020 as “new and unprecedented”.

The majority of those allegedly killed by Raw in Pakistan in the past three years have been individuals associated with militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, and in several cases have convictions or proven links to some of India’s deadliest terrorist incidents, which have killed hundreds of people. Others were seen to be “handlers” of Kashmiri militants who helped coordinate attacks and spread information from afar.

According to one of the Indian intelligence officers, the Pulwama attack in 2019 prompted fears that militant groups in Pakistan were planning a repeat of attacks such as the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

“The previous approach had been to foil terrorist attacks,” he said. “But while we were able to make significant progress in bringing the terrorist numbers down in Kashmir, the problem was the handlers in Pakistan. We could not just wait for another Mumbai or an attack on parliament when we are aware that the planners were still operating in Pakistan.”

In September, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, told parliament there were “credible allegations” that Indian agents had orchestrated the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Sikh activist who was gunned down in Vancouver. Weeks later, the US Department of Justice released an indictment vividly detailing how an Indian agent had attempted to recruit a hitman in New York to kill another Sikh activist, later named as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

Both men had been major advocates of the Khalistan movement, which seeks to create an independent Sikh state and is illegal in India. India denied any involvement in the killing of Nijjar, while according to a recent report, India’s own investigation into the Pannun plot concluded that it had been carried out by a rogue agent who was no longer working for Raw.

According to one Indian intelligence official, Delhi recently ordered the suspension of targeted killings in Pakistan after Canada and the US went public with their allegations. No suspicious killings have taken place so far this year.

Two Indian operatives separately confirmed that diaspora Khalistani activists had become a focus of India’s foreign operations after hundreds of thousands of farmers, mostly Sikhs from Punjab, descended on Delhi to protest against new farm laws. The protest ultimately forced the government into a rare policy U-turn, which was seen as an embarrassment.

The suspicion in Delhi was that firebrand Sikh activists living abroad, particularly those in Canada, the US and the UK, were fuelling the farmers’ protests and stirring up international support through their strong global networks. It stoked fears that these activists could be a destabilising force and were capable of reviving Khalistani militancy in India.

“Places were raided and people were arrested in Punjab, but things were actually being controlled from places like Canada,” said one of the Indian intelligence operatives. “Like other intelligence agencies, we had to deal with it.”

In the UK, Sikhs in the West Midlands were issued “threat to life” warnings, amid growing concern about the safety of separatist campaigners who Sikhs claim are being targeted by the Indian government.

Before the US and Canadian cases, a high-profile Khalistani leader, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, was shot dead in Lahore last May. Pakistani investigators claimed they had warned Panjwar that his life was in danger a month before he was killed and said another Khalistani activist living in Pakistan has also faced threats to his life.

Panjwar’s assassination is among those alleged to have been carried out by Indian operatives using what Pakistani agencies described as the “religious method”. According to the documents, Indian agents used social media to infiltrate networks of Islamic State (IS) and units connected to the Taliban, where they recruited and groomed Pakistani Islamist radicals to carry out hit jobs on Indian dissidents by telling them they were carrying out “sacred killings” of “infidels”.

These agents allegedly sought help from former IS fighters from the Indian state of Kerala – who had travelled to Afghanistan to fight for IS but surrendered after 2019 and were brought back through diplomatic channels – to get access to these jihadist networks.

According to an investigation by the Pakistani agencies, Panjwar’s killer, who was later caught, allegedly thought he was working on the instructions of the Pakistan Taliban affiliate Badri 313 Battalion and had to prove himself by killing an enemy of Islam.

The killing of Riyaz Ahmad, a top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander, in September last year was allegedly carried out by Raw in a similar manner. His killer, Pakistan believes, was recruited through a Telegram channel for those who wanted to fight for IS, and which had been infiltrated by Raw agents.

They have claimed the assassin was Muhammad Abdullah, a 20-year-old from Lahore. He allegedly told Pakistani investigators he was promised he would be sent to Afghanistan to fight for IS if he passed the test of killing an “infidel” in Pakistan, with Ahmed presented as the target. Abdullah shot and killed Ahmed during early morning prayers at a mosque in Rawalkot, but was later arrested by Pakistani authorities.

Walter Ladwig, a political scientist at King’s College London, said the alleged shift in strategy was in line with Modi’s more aggressive approach to foreign policy and that just as western states have been accused of extrajudicial killings abroad in the name of national security, there were those in Delhi who felt “India reserves the right to do the same”.

Daniel Markey, a senior adviser on south Asia at the United States Institute of Peace, said: “In terms of India’s involvement, it all kind of adds up. It’s utterly consistent with this framing of India having arrived on the world stage. Being willing to take this kind of action against perceived threats has been interpreted, at least by some Indians, as a marker of great power status.”

The allegations of extrajudicial killings, which would violate international law, could raise difficult questions for western countries that have pursued an increasingly close strategic and economic relationship with Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government, including pushing for intelligence-sharing agreements.

A former senior Raw official who served before Modi’s premiership denied that extrajudicial killings were part of the agency’s remit. He confirmed that nothing would be done without the knowledge of the national security adviser, who would then report it to the prime minister, and on occasion they would report directly to the prime minister. “I could not do anything without their approval,” he said.

The former Raw official claimed that the killings were more likely to have been carried out by Pakistan themselves, a view that has been echoed by others in India.

Pakistani agencies denied this, pointing to a list of more than two dozen dissidents living in Pakistan to whom they had recently issued direct warnings of threats to their lives and instructed them to go into hiding. Three individuals in Pakistan said they had been given these warnings. They claimed others who had not heeded the threats and continued their normal routines were now dead.

Source: theguardian.com

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/04/indian-government-assassination-allegations-pakistan-intelligence-officials

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US Threatens Policy Shift If Israeli Excesses Continue

 

US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this White House handout image taken in the Oval Office in Washington, US, April 4, 2024. — Reuters

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April 5, 2024

WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday issued its strongest public rebuke toward Israel since it launched an invasion of Gaza, seeking for the first time to leverage US aid to influence Israeli military behavior.

President Joe Biden, a staunch supporter of the Israeli offensive until now, called for an immediate ceasefire in a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, conditioning support for its offensive on concrete steps to address the safety of aid workers and Palestinian civilians.

The rebuke followed an attack on a World Central Kitchen charity convoy this week that killed seven food aid workers.

The White House had described Biden as outraged and heartbroken by the attack but, prior to Thursday’s call, the president had made no fundamental change in Washington’s steadfast support for Israel in its conflict against Palestinian Hamas militants.

During the call, Biden “underscored that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilise and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians,” the White House said.

It said Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers”.

He “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” the White House said in a statement.

The statement reflected a sharp change in Biden’s tone and, for what appears to be the first time, a set of strings atta­ched to continued US support. Biden staunchly supported Israel, even when other governments sought to put more pressure on it.

His comments marked the first time the US has suggested it would condition its continued support.

During a briefing with reporters after the call, White House spokesperson John Kirby declined to elaborate on what specific changes the US would make on its policy toward Israel and Gaza. He said Washington hopes to see an announcement of Israeli steps in the “coming hours and days”.

Jill Biden

US First Lady Jill Biden is reportedly one of the most ‘heartbroken’ by the civilian deaths in Gaza and has been urging her husband to end the war, the US media reported on Wednesday.

Quoting a participant at a Ramazan event that the president held on Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Mrs Biden was not happy with his backing for Israel.

The reports describe her as one of the strongest voices in the White House calling for an end to the war.

The reports also included a quote from the first lady’s communications director, Elizabeth Alexander, who said: “Just like the president, the first lady is heartbroken over the attacks on aid workers and the ongoing loss of innocent lives in Gaza. They both want Israel to do more to protect civilians.”

Earlier this week, Biden met Muslim community leaders — something the first lady reportedly said she disapproved of because of his support for Israel in the conflict, according to the New York Times.

One guest, SalimaSuswell, the founder of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, said that President Biden recounted that his wife had been urging him to, “stop it, stop it now”.

CNN and some other media outlets reported that during the Iftar dinner, a guest confronted Mr. Biden, saying that his wife had asked him not to attend the meeting due to the president’s support for Israel.

In response, Mr. Biden stated that he understood because his own wife, Jill, had put pressure on him over the matter. Another guest, Palestinian American physician Thaer Ahmad, said he raised his voice over killings in Gaza and gave President Biden a note and a picture of an 8-year-old orphan from Rafah, which Israel intends to attack next. According to Dr. Ahmad, Mr. Biden responded, saying, “I understand”.

Pressure from Democrats

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers have also increased their pressure on Mr. Biden to do more to increase humanitarian aid and end the war. They are urging him to use the leverage afforded by the billions of dollars in US military aid to persuade Israel to stop its offensive now.

“I think we’re at that point,” Chris Coons, a Biden confidant and senator from the president’s home state of Delaware, told CNN.

If Israel begins its long-threatened full-scale offensive in the southern city of Rafah without plans for the 1.5 million people sheltering there, “I would vote to condition aid to Israel,” Mr Coons said. “I’ve never said that before, I’ve never been there before,” he added.

Another Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Middle East, said that Israel “needs to pause military operations in Gaza right now.”

Yet another Democrat, Senator Elizabeth Warren, said that she would block the sale of F-15s to Israel after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers.

In an interview with CNN, she said the US Congress had a “responsibility to act” and accused Israel of violating laws that require access to humanitarian relief.

“I hope this will be the moment where the president changes course,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic Senator from Maryland.

“Netanyahu ignored the president’s requests, and yet we send 2,000-pound bombs with no restrictions on their use,” he added.

Biden, who has described himself as a Zionist, supported Israel staunchly in the early days of its retaliation. But as the Gaza death toll rose and the war widened with new fronts in Lebanon and Yemen emerging, his administration began pushing for a ceasefire and urging humanitarian aid access. Last month, the US abstained from a UN Security Council vote demanding a ceasefire, drawing Israeli anger.

Biden also faces deep Democratic anger over his handling of the Gaza war, a dynamic that could depress support in November’s election contest against Republican former president Donald Trump.

Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East analyst at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington, said the strike on WCK aid workers “was the last straw.” “This call was the long-promised ‘come to Jesus conversation’ that Biden said last month he would have with Netanyahu,” Blumenfeld said.

Source: dawn.com

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https://www.dawn.com/news/1825782/us-threatens-policy-shift-if-israeli-excesses-continue

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2nd Saudi Cinema Nights Series Of International Film Screening Begins This Month

 

The Saudi Film Commission

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April 04, 2024

RIYADH: The Saudi Film Commission’s second Saudi Cinema Nights series of international films screenings begins this month, with the itinerary expanded to take in five countries compared with just one last year.

The cultural showcase, featuring more than 20 Saudi-produced feature films and shorts, will visit Morocco in April, then move on to Australia, China and India, before concluding in Mexico next January.

In addition to the film screenings, there will be interactive discussion sessions at each location during which filmmakers will talk to the audience about their works. The aim is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of Saudi cinema on a global scale.

“Saudi Film Nights reflects our commitment to enhancing cinema culture in the Kingdom and highlights the potential of Saudi films in attracting international audiences,” said Abdullah Al-Qahtani, the CEO of the Film Commission.

The first Saudi Cinema Nights international screenings were held last year in Paris at the Institut du Monde Arabe.

Source: arabnews.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488286/saudi-arabia

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US’s Ongoing Arms Supplies For Israel Exposes Washington’s Hypocrisy: Houthi

 

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement

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 05 April 2024

The leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement denounces the United States’ uninterrupted arms supplies for the Israeli regime, which is waging a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi made the remarks during a televised address on Thursday.

“This week, the Americans announced new shipments of weapons and equipment to support the Israeli enemy with billions of dollars,” he said, adding, “The American media confirms that Israel has received the largest military aid since World War II.”

Reporting late last month, The Washington Post said the administration of US President Joe Biden had authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and warplanes to the Israeli regime in a matter of days.

Pentagon and State Department officials said the new arms packages included more than 1,800 bombs, the daily said at the time.

Reports say the Washington has quietly made more than 100 weapons sales to Tel Aviv since October 7, when the latter began the war against Gaza in response to a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance movements.

More than 33,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the brutal military onslaught so far.

Houthi said, “The announced deals represent only a small part of what America provides to the criminal Israeli enemy.”

The Ansarullah leader added that the United States’ constant flow of arms towards the Israeli regime -- which comes amid Washington’s calls for a ceasefire in Gaza -- “exposes the American hypocrisy.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Yemeni official noted that the country would continue its pro-Palestinian operations, which have seen Yemeni forces striking Israeli vessels or those belonging to the regime’s supporters.

“Our front in Yemen continues its military operations in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and even reaching as far as the Indian Ocean,” he said.

“The total number of targeted ships reached 90,” he said, noting that the US and the UK, which have been trying to counter the Yemeni strikes, had “acknowledged their complete inability to stop the attacks.”

Source: presstv.ir

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/05/723080/Yemen-United-States-Israel-war-Gaza-Houthi

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India

 

Lok Sabha Polls in Ramzan: Muslim Candidates Keep Meals Light, Meetings Indoors, Speeches Short

April 5, 2024

Lalmani Verma

As mercury starts rising just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, especially in the heartland, Muslim candidates headed for elections in western Uttar Pradesh in the first phase who are observing fast during the ongoing Ramzan are adjusting their campaigns and modifying their diets.

Instead of going for door-to-door canvassing in the sun, the candidates, cutting across party lines, are opting for indoor meetings. If they have to be outdoors during the day – when they abstain from taking any food or water – they hold nukkad (street-corner) meetings with small gatherings in tents, where they keep their speeches short, lasting for about 5 minutes on an average.

The candidates only head out to the streets or markets in the evening when the community members step out of their homes after breaking their fast at iftar.

Instead of the usual spread, on the menu of the candidates these days are light meals like khichdi and dalia (porridge) for sehri – the pre-sunrise meal — and dates, juices and fruits for instant energy at the end of the day.

Ramzan got underway on March 12 and is likely to conclude on April 10, with Eid-ul-Fitr slated for April 11 depending on the moon sighting. The nomination for the first phase of polls, on April 19, started on March 20.

Of the eight seats in western Uttar Pradesh going to polls on April 19, seven have sizeable Muslim populations. These include Rampur, Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Nagina, Moradabad and Bijnor. In Rampur, the Muslim voters make up about 52% of the electorate.

The SP’s candidate from the Rampur seat, Mohibbullah Nadvi, says he ensures he doesn’t miss his five-time daily namaz as he contests his first election. He also uses the mosque visits to interact with the community, says Mohammad Asif, Mohibbullah’s younger brother who is managing his poll campaign.

On Mohibbullah’s meals, Asif says he is not very particular about what he eats for sehri. “But if he takes a heavy meal, that can cause discomfort during canvassing… Our campaign starts from 8 am  and continues till late evening. People usually meet after namaz. He travels to villages too. He covers large areas in the evening after iftar. We also hold meetings with party workers for poll management in the evenings,” Asif says.

The BSP’s Rampur candidate, Zeeshan Khan, prefers khichdi or dalia for sehri. “I start canvassing at 10 am and address 15 to 20 meetings in the daytime. I keep my speeches short. Other party leaders step in, especially those who are not fasting, that I can save my energy,” Khan says.

Four out of six candidates in the fray in Rampur are  Muslims.

In Saharanpur, eight of 10 candidates are Muslims. The Congress’s candidate, Imran Masood, says he has a nap after sehri and eats a normal dinner.

“My campaign is not hectic and I am keeping it low profile. I mostly hold indoor meetings with smaller gathering of voters (in the daytime), and in the evening after iftar,” Masood says.

He prefers to be home at the time of namaz. “I don’t campaign at mosques. I never use a masjid for politics,” he argues. “Many people are coming to invite me for public meetings. But I hold only five to six small meetings and keep my speeches short. I avoid crowds and prefer interacting with voters while sitting comfortably.”

Apart from door-to-door canvassing in the evenings, Masood prefers talking to the people over the phone till late in the night, when he and his party colleagues draw up the campaign plan for the next day. “The campaign will pick pace after Eid,” he says.

The BSP’s Moradabad candidate, Mohd Irfan Saifi, is among those who heads to big mosques in the constituency for namaz. “In the Ramzan period, it is easy to meet people at mosques… They know me,” says Saifi, who otherwise campaigns mostly in the evening. “I eat dates and bananas in sehri and take some rest afterwards,” he says.

With the Ramzan drawing to a close, the candidates are readying to step up their campaign after Eid, after which top leaders of their parties are expected to join them for rallies in their constituencies. SP president Akhilesh Yadav is scheduled to address a rally in support of Mohibullah in Rampur, while BSP chief Mayawati is launching her campaign on April 13 from Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, where her party’s candidate is Jamil Ahmed.

On April 14, Mayawati will address rallies in Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar.

Source: indianexpress.com

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https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/ramzan-lok-sabha-polls-2024-9252757/

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Congress manifesto has big promise for LGBTQ+ couples: ‘Will bring law for civil unions’

Apr 05, 2024

The Congress on Friday released its poll manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, mapping out its strategy if it comes to power at the Centre. In its manifesto, the Congress party said it plans to bring a law to legalise civil unions between couples belonging to the LGBTQ+ community.

The Congress party said, “After wide consultation, Congress will bring a law to recognize civil unions between couples belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community.”

Last year, the Supreme Court refused to legalise same-sex marriage, but acknowledged the various forms of discrimination faced by the community and directed authorities to protect the LGBTQIA+ group.

Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, however, ruled against the Centre's claim that the concerns of the LGBTQIA+ community are an “urban elitist concept”.

CJI Chandrachud said, “Queerness is neither urban nor elite.”

While LGBTQ+ community was not granted the right to marry, the five-judge court bench said, “The freedom of all persons, including queer couples, to enter into a union is protected by Part III of the Constitution.” The bench further said, "Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation will violate Article 15."

The court ordered the central government to constitute a committee to examine the rights and entitlements of persons in queer union, without legal recognition of their relationship.

Congress releases Lok Sabha poll manifesto

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, in the presence of senior party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and AICC general secretary KC Venugopal, released the election manifesto of the party, focusing on five "pillars of justice" and 25 guarantees under them.

Right to apprenticeship, a legal guarantee for MSP, and passing a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs are among the promises made by the Congress in its manifesto on Friday.

In the manifesto titled Nyay Patra, the Congress party said it would implement a 10 per cent quota in jobs and educational institutions for economically weaker sections (EWS) for all castes and communities without discrimination if it comes to power.

The Congress will pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SC, ST and OBC if it comes to power in the general elections beginning April 19, the party promised.

Source: hindustantimes.com

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SC rejects plea for bringing mortal remains of India-born Pak Sufi saint from Bangladesh

Apr 05, 2024

New Delhi, The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea seeking a direction to the Centre to bring the mortal remains of an India-born Pakistani Sufi saint, who died in Bangladesh in 2022, for re-burial in Prayagraj to honour his wish.

The plea referred to the will executed by Hazrat Shah Muhammad Abdul Muqtadir Shah Masood Ahmad, a former native of Allahabad, now Prayagraj, who acquired Pakistani citizenship in 1992, that his mortal remains be interred at the Dargah in the Uttar Pradesh city which he presided over.

"He was a Pakistani citizen. How can you expect the Union of India to bring his mortal remains for re-burial in India. There is no such right whose enforcement can be sought," the top court said while rejecting the plea filed by Dargah Hazrat Mulla Syed of Prayagraj.

"We also have to go by the principles of enforcement of constitutional rights," the bench, comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said, adding had he been an Indian citizen the plea would have been taken note of.

The counsel, who appeared for the Dargah, said Ahmad had no family in Pakistan and, moreover, the Sufi saint was the ‘Sajjada Nasheen’ of the shrine.

In Sufi tradition, a Sajjada Nasheen is a successor of a Sufi saint who presides over a shrine.

The bench made it clear that there is no constitutionally enforceable right to seek transportation of the Sufi saint's mortal remains as he was a Pakistani citizen.

"He was elected as the Sajjada Nasheen of the shrine at Dargah Hazrat Mulla Syed Mohammad Shah in 2008 in Prayagraj. He executed his will in 2021 expressing a desire to be buried in the shrine. He died in Dhaka where he was buried. There are difficulties in entertaining such a petition.

"Hazrat Shah was a Pakistani citizen and had no constitutional right... the practical difficulties related to exhumation. As a matter of first principle, it would not be right for this court to direct the transportation of the mortal remains of a citizen of a foreign state to India," the bench said.

Source: hindustantimes.com

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Mathura Mosque Matter Beyond Remit Of Waqf Tribunal, Argues Hindu Side

April 4, 2024

The Hindu side on Thursday countered in the Allahabad High Court the Shahi Idgah committee's argument that the maintainability of the suit seeking "removal" of the mosque must be heard by a Waqf tribunal, saying that matter is beyond the ambit of the tribunal.

Ajay Kumar Singh appearing on behalf of the Hindu side submitted that the present dispute is beyond the ambit of the Waqf tribunal and only the civil court has jurisdiction to decide the present dispute.

The counsel for the Muslim side, Taslima Aziz Ahmadi, during the last hearing on April 1, had claimed, "In this way a question/dispute has been raised on Waqf property and thus provisions of the Waqf Act will apply, and in such it is the Waqf tribunal that has the jurisdiction to hear the matter and not a civil court."

On Thursday, Ahmadi appeared in the court through video conferencing and sought time to summarise her arguments in the court.

The court fixed April 18 for further hearing in the matter as the court's time was over.

Singh also mentioned a judgement of the Supreme Court of 1999, according to which religious disputes have to be decided by civil court, he argued.

Source: outlookindia.com

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Rajasthan: Hindus protest against religious conversion, madarsa targeted

4th April 2024

A group of people from the Hindu community in Rajasthan’s Beawar area protested against a madarsa claiming that it was involved in religious conversion.

A video emerged on social media platforms showing the protest. It shows the Hindu protestors using derogatory words against the Muslim community. “Bahari m***, maulwiyonko band kro (stop the entry of Islamic preachers),” they are heard sloganeering.

It is unsure where they were headed to. The incident occurred on April 2.

Siasat.com tried to contact the Beawar police station circle inspector on the authenticity of the video but received no response. This article will be updated if we receive a response.

Last month, several students of a government school in Kota district came forward against the suspension of three Muslim teachers who were removed over religious conversion allegations.

Videos surfaced on the internet showing a group of students in school uniforms arguing with government officials against the suspension.

“Bachon see galatbyaandilaraheinhaiwoh (Children are told to give false statements against the teachers).” Another student says, “Jinhonejhootheinbyaandiyeinwohpadangehameinyaphir sir padhayenge (Who will teach us now? Those who spoke gave false statements or the teachers who got suspended?)”

You can watch the video here.

The students alleged that their Muslim teachers – Shabana, Firoz Khan and Mirza Mujahid – were falsely targeted by Hindutva groups. They held a protest outside the office of the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), demanding revocation of the suspension and action against students who made the false accusations.

Source: siasat.com

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JD(S) leader Kumaraswamy says every Muslim will require protection and PM Modi will ensure it

April 4, 2024

There is an inevitable situation in the country where every Muslim will have to be given protection, JD(S) Karnataka president and former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy said on Thursday, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership would ensure “the protection in the future”.

Kumaraswamy was speaking at a rally held after he filed his nomination as the BJP-JD(S) coalition’s candidate in the Mandya Lok Sabha constituency. The rally was attended by BJP leaders BS Yediyurappa and Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.

At the end of his speech, he requested Muslims and Dalits not to vote for the Congress, accusing it of pursuing a divide-and-rule policy. “Muslim brothers, your protection in the future is under the leadership of Narendra Modi. A situation is inevitable in the country where every Muslim brother has to be given protection,” he said.

Kumaraswamy was among the three members of former prime minister HD Deve Gowda’s family who filed their nominations on the last day. Karnataka will vote on April 26, in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections. Kumaraswamy’s brother-in-law Dr C N Manjunath filed his papers as the BJP candidate from the Bangalore Rural constituency and his nephew PrajwalRevanna filed his nomination as the JD(S) nominee in Hassan.

The JD(S) leader told the rally that he was contesting the poll owing to pressure from elders in Mandya. “They told me one thing, that people of the region want me to come (win). ‘If you lose this election we will hang ourselves at the Sanjay Theatre circle. We won’t do injustice’,” the former chief minister said.

Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya also filed his nomination on Thursday. He was flanked by Anurag Thakur, Union minister for information and broadcasting, and youth affairs and sports, and Leader of the Opposition R Ashoka.

Source: indianexpress.com

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India urges Israel to ensure safety and well-being of Indian workers

April 05, 2024

SUHASINI HAIDAR,KALLOL BHATTACHERJEE

India has urged Israel to ensure the safety and security of Indian citizens who are being flown to the conflict-hit nation under a government-to-government (G2G) agreement to work as blue-collar workers, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on April 4.

 India ‘concerned’ by Israeli attack on Iranian embassy in Syria

He added that India was “distressed” at the recent attack on Iranian diplomatic premises in Damascus that both Syria and Iran blamed on Tel Aviv.

“As you are aware, these [first batch] workers have gone to Israel as part of a mobility agreement that we have signed with the country. This agreement predates the conflict. We are conscious of their safety. We have urged the Israeli authorities to ensure their safety and well-being,” Mr. Jaiswal said, responding to a question from The Hindu at his weekly media briefing. Israel and India had signed an agreement to fly around 42,000 workers from here to various spots in Israel.

Recruiting Indian workers

Israel has been bolstering its work force by allowing more non-Arab workers from countries like Sri Lanka, India, Philippines, Nepal, Thailand and other countries. Among the victims of last year’s October 7 terror attack were several workers from Thailand, Philippines and Nepal.

In November 2023, reports had suggested that Israel was looking for at least 100,000 Indian workers to replace the Palestinian workers who were employed in various sectors of the Israeli economy prior to the Hamas attacks. “Right now we are negotiating with India. We are waiting for [the] decision of the Israeli government to approve that,” Haim Feiglin, vice president of the Israel Builders Association, told Voice of America in November, 2023.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship signed an agreement with Israel in November 2023 to send caregivers and construction workers to Israel for a three year period between 2023 and 2026. Following this, a recruitment drive took place in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, drawing a large number of workers who enrolled to go to Israel.

Dangerous workspot

Earlier this week, the first batch of 60 Indian workers flew to Israel on Tuesday. These developments have drawn attention as Indian authorities, including the Indian ambassador to Israel, had in the past highlighted the risks to personal safety in Israel because of the ongoing clashes with Hamas.

Pat Nibin Maxwell, a 31-year old Indian citizen from Kerala, became the first Indian to die in the ongoing conflict after a rocket allegedly fired by the Lebanese militia Hizbollah hit him when he was working in an orchard in northern Israel near the Lebanese border. Maxwell had travelled to Israel only two months earlier to work there.

 First batch of 64 Indian workers from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh leave for Israel

‘Distressed at escalating tensions’

On April 1, mysterious rocket strikes hit the Iranian embassy premises in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Both Iran and Syria blamed Israel for the attacks, which reportedly killed at least 12 individuals including Mohammed Reza Zahedi, who headed Iran’s military operations in Syria and Lebanon. Mr. Zahedi had decades of experience in Lebanon and was known to be a close associate of Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah. The attack also killed Zahedi’s deputy, Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, and several officers of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

On Thursday, Mr. Jaiswal expressed India’s position on the attack in Damascus, saying, “We have noted with concern the attack on Iranian diplomatic premises in Syria on 1 April 2024. India is distressed at the escalating tensions in West Asia, and their potential to fuel further violence and instability. We urge all parties to avoid actions that go against commonly accepted principles and norms of international law.”

Source: thehindu.com

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India Voices 'Concern' Over Israeli Airstrike on Iranian Consulate

 April 5, 2024

New Delhi: India on Thursday expressed “concern” at the Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria that killed senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and sparked apprehension of a widening of the ongoing Gaza war.

“We have noted with concern the attack on Iranian diplomatic premises in Syria on 1 April 2024. India is distressed at the escalating tensions in West Asia, and their potential to fuel further violence and instability,” said Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal at the weekly media briefing on Thursday.

He added that India urged “all parties to avoid actions that go against commonly accepted principles and norms of International Law”.

India’s statement, however, did not blame Israel explicitly for the attack.

Incidentally, Indian national security advisor Ajit Doval met with Iran’s secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Akbar Ahmadian on the sidelines of a SCO Security Conclave on Tuesday.

As per a readout issued by Iran’s embassy in India, the two sides “agreed that attacking diplomatic places should be costly for criminals”.

On Monday, at least 12 people, including two Iranian generals, were killed on an airstrike at Iran’s consulate in Damascus, which is widely attributed to Israel.

The Iranian embassy also claimed that “Doval, for his part, expressed condolences over the martyrdom of Iranian advisors in an Israeli strike on the building of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on Monday”.

As per reports, the highest ranking Iranian to be killed in the airstrike was IRGC Al-Quds Force’s General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who was also an Iranian military adviser in Syria.

Iran’s deputy envoy to the UN, Zahra Ershadi announced at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that while Tehran had exercised “considerable restraint, Israel had to be fear “full responsibility” for the consequences of the attack.

Ershadi also stated that Iran reserved the right under international law and the UN Charter to “to take decisive response to such reprehensible acts”.

Earlier, Iranian state media quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying that Iran “make them regretful about the crime and similar acts”.

The airstrike in Damascus has not been officially claimed by Israel, but anonymous Israeli officials cited in media reports have confirmed Tel Aviv’s involvement.

Following the Hamas terror attack on October 7, which prompted Israel’s devastating military action in Gaza resulting in thousands of civilian casualties, concerns have arisen about the potential escalation of the conflict, drawing in other nations and erupting into a regional war.

In 2020, an American drone targeted and killed the commander of IRGC’s al-Quds wing, Major General QassimSuleimani. Iran retaliated by attacking two US bases in Iraq with missiles.

This time, the United States had told Iran that Washington was not involved in the airstrike.

Following the Damascus airstrike, Israeli and US officials have said that they have detected and intercepted several drone attacks.

Anticipating strong retaliation from Iran, Israel called up its reserve troops and cancelled all leaves to boost its military air defence wings.

As per media reports, Israeli military has also intensified GPS jamming across its major cities, as a measure against guided missiles, which has also hit daily life.

Source: thewire.in

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https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-voices-concern-over-israeli-airstrike-on-iranian-consulate

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India dismisses report claiming it ordered targeted killings of wanted terrorists in Pakistan

Apr 05, 2024

The Indian government got ‘individuals' killed in Pakistan as part of Delhi's larger strategy to eliminate wanted terrorists living on foreign soil, ‘The Guardian', a renowned global newspaper, claimed in a report on Thursday quoting some “intelligence operatives of India and Pakistan”.

The London-based daily claims to have some documents that “shed light on how India's foreign intelligence agency allegedly carried out operations to eliminate the individuals abroad”.

The report says that India carried out these operations “as part of an emboldened approach to national security after 2019”.

The report comes amid allegations that India is targeting individuals whom it considers hostile to it.

According to the report, the fresh claims relate to almost 20 killings since 2020 which have been carried out by unknown gunmen in Pakistan.

'The Guardian' report says, “While India has previously been unofficially linked to the deaths, this is the first time Indian intelligence personnel have discussed the alleged operations in Pakistan, and detailed documentation has been seen alleging RAW‘s direct involvement in the assassinations”.

The fresh allegations refer to those charged with violent terror offences.

When Muhammad Riaz and Shahid Latif were gunned down in 2023 on Pakistan soil, Islamabad had accused India's intelligence agency of being behind the killings.

New Delhi was then quick to dismiss the allegations, calling them "malicious anti-India propaganda".

Referring to the details shared by the Pakistani investigators, the London-based newspaper said that “these deaths were orchestrated by Indian intelligence sleeper cells, mostly operating out of the United Arab Emirates".

“The rise in killings in 2023 was credited to the increased activity of these cells, which are accused of paying millions of rupees to local criminals or poor Pakistanis to carry out the assassinations.”

According to the report, “Indian agents also allegedly recruited jihadists to carry out the shootings.”

Similarly, the report says quoting two Indian intelligence officers that the spy agency's action was triggered by the Pulwama attack in 2019, which was perpetrated by the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The report also says that “after Pulwama, the approach changed to target the elements outside the country before they are able to launch an attack or create any disturbance".

Quoting one Indian intelligence operative, the report says, “We could not stop the attacks because ultimately their safe havens were in Pakistan, so we had to get to the source.”

The Guardian also says that in response to its queries, the Ministry of External Affairs denied all the allegations, reiterating an earlier statement that they were “false and malicious anti-India propaganda”.

The ministry emphasised a previous denial made by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar that targeted killings in other countries were “not the government of India's policy”.

According to the report, an RAW handler allegedly paid for information on Zahid Akhund, an alias for the convicted Kashmiri terrorist Zahoor Mistry who was involved in the hijacking of an Air India flight.

“Millions of rupees were then allegedly paid to Afghan nationals to carry out the shooting in Karachi in March 2022. They fled over the border but their handlers were later arrested by Pakistani security agencies,” says the report.

Jaish-e-Mohammed commander Shahid Latif was killed on Pakistan soil.

The report says that Pakistani investigators found that the man had allegedly been paid 1.5 million Pakistani rupees (£4,000) by an undercover Indian agent to track down Latif and later was promised 15 million Pakistani rupees and his own catering company in the UAE if he carried out the killing.

The young man shot Latif dead at a mosque in Sialkot, but was arrested soon after, along with his accomplices, says the report.

The killings of Bashir Ahmad Peer, commander of the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, and Saleem Rehmani, who was on India's most-wanted list, were also allegedly planned out of the UAE, with transaction receipts from Dubai appearing to show payments of millions of rupees to the killers, says the report.

Source: tribuneindia.com

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https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/india-dismisses-report-claiming-it-orders-targeted-killings-of-wanted-terrorists-in-pakistan-607642

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J&K: Mirwaiz Put Under 'House Arrest', Jamia Masjid Closed Ahead of Prayers

 April 5, 2024

New Delhi: Authorities have reportedly put Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest on Friday (April 5) while the congregational Jumat-ul-Vida prayers, which are held on the last Friday of the ongoing month of Ramzan, were disallowed at Jamia Masjid in Srinagar city of Jammu and Kashmir.

Witnesses said that the mosque was closed for worshippers while authorities prevented the mosque’s managing body from making preparations for Jumat-ul-Vida prayers on Friday morning.

Security personnel also stopped media persons from entering Mirwaiz’s residence in Nigeen locality of Srinagar after he called a press conference on Friday morning purportedly to talk about the new curbs imposed on him.

A spokesperson of Anjuman-e-Auqaf Jamia Masjid, the managing body of the historic mosque located in Nowhatta locality of downtown Srinagar, said that the authorities locked the main gates at 6 am on Friday, soon after the morning prayer session was over.

“They put padlocks on the gates of the mosque and told us that Friday prayers will not be allowed. They didn’t give any reason in writing,” said the Anjuman-e-Auqaf spokesperson.

Jumat-ul-Vida is the last Friday of the sacred Islamic month of Ramzan and thousands were anticipated to participate in the congregational prayers at Jamia Masjid where Mirwaiz was scheduled to deliver his first sermon on this occasion following the reading down of Article 370.

However, an aide of Mirwaiz said that the chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference was also put under house arrest on Friday morning and no one was allowed to come in or go out of the residence. “He was not allowed to address the press conference. They didn’t give any reason in writing,” the aide said.

A group of media-persons, who had arrived at Mirwaiz’s residence to cover the press conference, said that they were turned away from the main gate by the security personnel.

“We tried to reason with them that we had to attend the press conference. However, they didn’t allow us to enter. We didn’t had many options but to come back,” said a Srinagar-based journalist, who didn’t want to be named.

Authorities put padlocks on the gates of Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid on Friday to prevent Jumat-Ul-Vida prayers. Photo: Ubaid Mukhtar

The development comes days after Mirwaiz, who is also the chief cleric of Kashmir, was allowed to offer Friday prayers at Jamia Masjid for the first time during Ramzan post Article 370 last month and fourth time since his release in September last year, according to the Anjuman.

In his sermon, Mirwaiz had called for unity and demanded the “release of political prisoners and youth languishing in different jails” of the country.

Last month, the administration told the Jammu and Kashmir high court that the moderate Hurriyat leader was facing a “perceived threat” from terrorists due to which he was verbally “asked to limit and restrict his movement” after Article 370 was read down.

The submission came after Mirwaiz approached the court to challenge his “illegal detention” after Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded and bifurcated into two union territories on August 5, 2019.

In a habeas corpus petition, Mirwaiz told the court that curbs were imposed on him by the administration and he was not allowed to come out of his home and perform his social and religious duties as he was ‘illegally’ detained at his Srinagar residence.

However, the administration cited over two dozen instances, including a recent visit to New Delhi, when Mirwaiz was reportedly allowed to attend social and religious functions and also to medical emergencies.

Source: thewire.in

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https://thewire.in/politics/jk-mirwaiz-put-under-house-arrest-jamia-masjid-closed-ahead-of-prayers

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Europe

 

Putin dismisses claims Russia may come under attack by 'Islamic fundamentalists'

Elena Teslova

04.04.2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed on Thursday claims suggesting that Russia could be targeted by "Islamic fundamentalists," maintaining that Russia has warm relations with Muslims.

Speaking at the 12th Congress of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia in Moscow, Putin said Russia enjoys amicable relations with its domestic Muslim community and Islamic nations, asserting that there was no reason for either to target the country.

"Russia cannot be the target of attacks by "Islamic fundamentalists,' we are a country that demonstrates a unique example of interfaith harmony and unity, interreligious unity, interethnic," he stressed.

Putin said the claims sought to sow discord in Russian society along religious lines.

"We have every reason to believe that the main purpose of those who ordered the bloody, terrible terrorist act in Moscow was precisely to damage our unity. We do not see other goals. There are no other goals," he noted.

At least 144 people were killed and more than 550 others injured on March 22 when gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Oblast. Russia has charged four people for being directly involved in the attack.

Source: aa.com.tr

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Norway detains Quran blasphemer, plans to deport him to Sweden

05 April 2024

A Sweden-based Iraqi refugee, who caused international outrage by repeatedly desecrating the Quran last year, has been apprehended in Norway and is set to be deported back to Sweden.

Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee who desecrated copies of the Holy Quran during numerous protests in Sweden throughout last year, was arrested in Norway on March 28th, a day after he arrived in the Nordic country, according to a ruling by the Oslo district court.

Earlier, he had announced his intention to seek asylum in Norway after a Swedish court ruled that the extremist would be deported from the country.

Following a hearing held on March 30th, the Oslo District Courtruled to detain Momika for four weeks, pending a probable request from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) to Sweden for his return, as per EU regulations.

The court said that there are "concrete grounds for assuming that the foreigner will evade the implementation" of such a deportation, and therefore, it allowed the police's immigration unit to detain Momika.

The Oslo District Court believes that there are "concrete grounds for assuming that the foreigner will evade the implementation" of such a deportation, and therefore, it allowed the police's immigration unit to detain Momika.

In the court's ruling it said "a deportation will take place as soon as the formal and practical arrangements are in place."

According to the Oslo District Court ruling, the country's security service wrote a separate assessment of the situation the day after the arrest, stating that Momika is "considered to be a threat to fundamental national interests," local online media outlet Filter Nyheter.

Momika's actions of desecrating the Quran caused outrage and condemnation in various Muslim nations.

Demonstrators held the Swedish government responsible for granting permission to carry out such acts, in the name of free speech, that hurt the sentiments of the followers of the Islamic faith.

In July, demonstrators from Iraq forcefully entered the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on two separate occasions, setting fires inside the premises during the second incident.

In October, the Swedish Migration Agency invalidated Momika's residency permit due to inaccurate details provided in his initial application.

However, he was subsequently issued a temporary permit based on the presence of an "impediment to enforcement" of his deportation to Iraq.

In response to widespread protests across the Muslim world, Denmark enacted a law last December that criminalizes the burning of religious texts, including the Quran, in public spaces. Meanwhile, Sweden is currently deliberating legal measures that would empower the police to deny permits for demonstrations on grounds of national security.

Source: presstv.ir

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/05/723093/Norway-plans-to-repatriate-the-Quran-burner-back-to-Sweden

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Far-right Dutch politician’s journey from banning to promoting Islam

 04 April 2024

Jaron van Klaveren, former spokesman for the far-right Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration Party for Freedom (PVV), who once pushed to ban Islam from the Netherlands is now working to dismantle the lies he peddled about the religion.

Van Klaveren dramatically converted to Islam in 2018 and is presently serving as a board member of the Islam Experience Center in Rotterdam.

In an extraordinary personal and political transformation, the former senior member of PVV, said it was the party’s anti-Muslim rhetoric which led him to look more deeply into his new religion.

“The things that I helped them develop are still there, they’re still using the tools I gave them,” he said about the anti-Muslim rhetoric of PVV. “I literally hear them say things that I made up.”

“I was in anti-Islam politics for altogether 12 years, so I have to counter this narrative for at least 12 years to make it even, so to speak,” Van Klaveren said.

Asked whether he felt guilt or regret over his actions during his time with the PVV, Van Klaveren said, “Of course I feel ashamed because of what I said. I had plans, but Allah is the best of planners and my life took another direction.”

Van Klaveren, the right-hand man of the PVV leader Wilders, had pleaded for a burka ban, a ban on minarets and for the de-Islamization of the Netherlands.

Van Klaveren was working on an anti-Islamic book before his conversion to Islam. While researching for the book that was supposed to highlight the dangers posed by Muslims, he ended up writing Apostate: From Christianity to Islam in Times of Secular Terror – a book about his conversion to Islam.

Van Klaveren is not the first former member of the party to convert to Islam. In 2013, Arnoud van Doorn chose to leave the party after converting to Islam. Van Klaveren has taken back his statements on Islam, saying his views were “simply wrong.”

Van Klaveren estimates that only about 12 of the 37 seats won by the PVV in the last elections could be attributed to those who are staunchly opposed to Islam. The rest, according to him, were probably a result of voters who had become disillusioned with mainstream parties over their failure to tackle the soaring cost of living.

Source: presstv.ir

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/04/723060/Van-Klaveren

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UK civil servants request to stop work over arms sales to Israel: Report

BurakBir

05.04.2024

Civil servants in the UK overseeing arms exports to Israel have requested to "cease work immediately" over concerns that they could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza, a report said Thursday.

In correspondence seen by Sky News, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents civil servants, has requested an urgent meeting with the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) to discuss "the legal jeopardy faced by civil servants who are continuing to work on this policy."

"Given the implications for our members, we believe there are ample grounds to immediately suspend all such work. We therefore request that you meet with us urgently to discuss this matter and cease work immediately,” said the letter, with was sent on Wednesday to the DBT.

According to the report, members of the union have asked their employers to stop giving them tasks related to arms export licenses to Israel alongside other work that may be related to Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The PCS confirmed to Sky News that it is considering legal action against the government.

The correspondence showed that the PCS has been asking relevant ministers for its legal advice on arming Israel since January, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an interim ruling imposing provisional measures on Israel to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Paul O'Connor, head of bargaining at PCS, said the union agrees with the UN court and believes "that the UK government has an obligation to do all it can to halt the onslaught."

Pressure on the British government is mounting to cease arms exports to Israel, especially after the killing of seven food charity workers, including three UK citizens, in the Gaza Strip in an Israeli strike on Monday.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack in early October by the Palestinian group Hamas killed around 1,200 people.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,577 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Source: aa.com.tr

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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/uk-civil-servants-request-to-stop-work-over-arms-sales-to-israel-report/3183999

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France and its allies could have stopped the Rwandan genocide: Macron

EsraTaskin

05.04.2024

French President Emmanuel Macron said France and its allies could have stopped the Rwandan genocide but lacked the will to do so.

In a video message set to be released on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Macron stressed that "when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act," local media reported Thursday.

He said his country, "which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did not have the will" to do so.

Macron also said that France stands by the Rwandan people in memory of the 1 million men, women and children who were tortured because they were born Tutsi.

During his visit to Rwanda in 2021, he recognized France’s "responsibilities" in the genocide.

He will not accept an invitation from Rwandan President Paul Kagame to visit the country to take part in commemorative events on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the genocide.

Instead, French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne and Junior Maritime Affairs Minister HerveBerville, who was born in Rwanda, will attend the events.

Hutu extremists targeted the minority Tutsi ethnic group after the death of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart CyprienNtaryamira in a plane crash on April 6, 1994.

An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during the bloodshed, which lasted 100 days.

Source: aa.com.tr

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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/france-and-its-allies-could-have-stopped-the-rwandan-genocide-macron/3184007

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Spanish NGO halts Gaza aid work over deadly attack

April 05, 2024

BARCELONA: The Spanish NGO Open Arms, which with World Central Kitchen chartered the first boat that arrived in Gaza on a special sea corridor from Cyprus, suspended its operation after the deaths of seven aid workers in an Israeli air strike.

Open Arms, whose ship returned to the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Wednesday, condemned the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers as “an incomprehensible act of violence.”

The workers were moving food and supplies sent in a second shipload from Cyprus when their convoy was attacked on Monday.

“With the arrival yesterday of the Open Arms boat in Larnaca, Cyprus, the mission in the humanitarian corridor to the Gaza Strip with World Central Kitchen is suspended following the devastating attack suffered by the convoy,” Open Arms said in a statement.

The NGO, which said 200 tons of food and supplies were delivered in the first shipment in March, expressed sorrow over the deaths.

“We demand answers and accountability for this unacceptable attack,” Open Arms director Oscar Camps said in the statement.

World Central Kitchen, founded by Spanish-American celebrity chef Jose Andres, has suspended its work in Gaza because of the attacks. These have increased pressure on Israel over its treatement of Gaza’s civilian population.

Israel has expressed regret over the attack and promised a transparent inquiry.

But major international aid groups have said it is now nearly impossible to work in Gaza, where Israel launched its military operation in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7.

The attacks resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign to destroy Hamas has killed at least 33,037 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian territory.

Source: arabnews.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488356/middle-east

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Spanish PM warns EU may re-evaluate relations with Israel

 04 April 2024

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says the EU should rethink its strategic relation with Israel if the European Commission finds that the regime has breached humanitarian law in its war on the Gaza Strip.

"In the case of the EU, the situation would be that there's an open door to have a debate within the European Council in order to see if we continue with this strategic relation or not," Sanchez told Al Jazeera network on Thursday.

"But this is something for which we first need to have the assessment of the European Commission," he added.

In February, Sanchez and his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar asked the EU to urgently review whether Israel was complying with its human rights obligations in the Gaza Strip.

Sanchez reiterated his call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for the international recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state with full membership in the United Nations.

He said Spain would recognize Palestinian statehood by July and expressed hopes that other Western nations would follow suit.

Ireland, Malta and Slovenia also announced last month they would work toward the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Bolivia, Bahrain, Belize, Jordan, Turkey, Chad, and South Africa have suspended diplomatic relations with Israel over the campaign of death and destruction in Gaza that has killed nearly 33,000 people since early October.

Source: presstv.ir

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/04/723072/Spain-EU-relations-Israel-Gaza-

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East London Mosque serves up 1,000 iftar meals a day during Ramadan

April 04, 2024

LONDON: The East London Mosque & London Muslim Center has been serving more than 1,000 iftar meals a day during Ramadan as people in the British capital grapple with the cost of living crisis.

The holy month is a time when Muslims increase their charitable giving and worshippers at the mosque, as in previous years, have been sponsoring the iftar meals at a cost of £3 ($3.80) per head.

The meals comprise biryani, fruit and dates and have proved poplar with students, refugees and asylum-seekers, many of whom are struggling financially.

The mosque has also launched an appeal to replenish its zakat funds which are used to help people in need.

Zakat is a mandatory charity that applies to all adult Muslims who meet a specific threshold. It is the third pillar of Islam and directly translates as “that which purifies.” This refers to the belief that zakat cleanses wealth. It is paid annually at a rate of 2.5 percent on disposable income and other assets.

Many Muslims choose to pay their zakat during Ramadan as they believe that the rewards for doing good deeds are multiplied during the holy month.

Sufia Alam, head of programs at the mosque, said: “The cost of living crisis continues to put exceptional pressure on families this Ramadan, especially refugee families that we’ve been helping over the past few years.

“Our zakat welfare funds have almost dried up as we’ve distributed every single penny to those in need, and our food bank continues to see high demand.

“We’ve been working closely with Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief to ensure people are not going hungry in our community, especially the most vulnerable,” she said.

Junaid Ahmed, the mosque’s CEO, said the support of the congregation was vital in helping people in “desperate need.”

“There are so many refugees and asylum-seekers that rely on our donations to survive. We must not forget them. We will continue to work with our charity partners to deliver help to those most in need here in the UK and across the world, especially in places like Gaza, where the current situation is unimaginable.”

The mosque has temporarily opened new prayer halls in both the men’s and women’s sections this year to allow 1,000 more people to worship during Ramadan and taking its total capacity to 11,000.

Source: arabnews.com

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https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488131/world

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Kremlin Critic Examines Moscow’s Attempts To Blame Others For Islamic State Attack

April 5, 2024

IaMeurmishvili

This week, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that when U.S. officials warned their Kremlin counterparts ahead of an Islamic State terrorist attack near Moscow, they specifically told them that Crocus City Hall was a potential target.

Despite this warning, Russia did not prevent the March 22 attack that killed some 144 people. In the days since, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and other officials have suggested without evidence that Ukraine played a role in the plot. On Wednesday, the head of Russia’s national security council claimed, again without evidence, the United States shares blame because of its links to Kyiv.

For more on the Russian government’s messaging, VOA Georgian service Managing Editor IaMeurmishvili spoke with prominent Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of the Russian Anti-War Committee, former political prisoner, and former owner of the Yukos company.

Khodorkovsky spoke via Zoom from London. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. You can read the full interview with Khodorkovsky in Russian here.

VOA: Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, thank you for finding the time to talk to us. What is your assessment of the tragic Crocus City Hall terrorist attack? How do you assess the Kremlin’s first reaction to it?

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: The Kremlin’s first reaction was obvious confusion. They did not understand what to do. At first, it was not entirely clear what actually happened. But the situation became clearer quite quickly. I won’t say it’s completely clear, but it’s clearer. It is obvious that the Americans warned the Kremlin both through official channels and publicly that a terrorist attack was being prepared by ISIS, the ISIS groups.

It is obvious that on these days — precisely on the days that the Americans indicated – reconnaissance was taking place. With a high degree of probability, this terrorist attack should have happened earlier, at a concert by Shaman [a Russian singer]. But they got scared, and it happened later. Also, some of the perpetrators have been exposed – that is, the Tajiks who were captured. They were obviously present during this terrorist attack and killed [people].

It’s unclear who ordered and organized the terrorist attack because it was obviously prepared quite professionally. From the moment of entry to the moment of exit either 13 or 18 minutes passed. In general, this is not enough time to enter [the complex], shoot the guards, enter the hall, drive people into the hall and organize such a large-scale fire that it was impossible to put out.

This leads to the idea that there was a second group that no one saw, because it is not entirely clear how this first group, which was in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people, could organize such a huge fire in 18-20 minutes before they ran out, and half an hour before the Ministry of Emergency Situations arrived. The roof, located at a great height, absolutely could not just burn. Who set it on fire, and how, is thus completely unclear.

I would still treat today with great caution the notion that this was organized by Putin. I don’t love Putin, but the confusion that he displayed in the first 24 hours after this terrorist attack is traditional for him: He freezes after something strong, something unpleasant happens. In general, it does not indicate that this was something he assigned to for his own propaganda purposes.

To put it mildly, not everything in this situation is clear. It is, of course, an awful, catastrophic failure for Putin’s special services, and simply a disgrace for Putin personally, because he said [about the American warnings] that “everything is lies, blackmail and provocations.” He said this not just anywhere, but at an FSB board meeting three days before the terrorist attack. By this, de facto, he, as a commander-in-chief, gave the command to the intelligence service to relax on the topic of the warning from the Americans. No one will forget this. For him, this is a big stain on his professional reputation.

VOA: Over the past years, terrorist attacks such as those at the Nord-Ost theater and the tragedy in Beslan have occurred in Russia, but seemingly, the population has not objected to how they were handled. How do you think this attack will affect Russian society?

Khodorkovsky: I don’t think there will be any dramatic changes in the mood of Russian society. You said it absolutely correctly: we walked past the much more terrible terrorist attack in Beslan, which to this day I cannot remember without trembling. We walked past the terrible terrorist attack in Nord-Ost. Moreover, in Beslan it was quite obvious that some of the terrorists escaped. The special services demonstrated a high level of unpreparedness specifically for real terrorist challenges.

They show their “professionalism” in other areas. I would rather pay attention to a very unpleasant trend that has emerged: This is the public demonstration of torture. The fact that special services torture people, the fact that people are tortured in prisons, is well known. Sometimes even videos have leaked. But it has never been done publicly like this, live, with the encouragement of distributing this footage.

Why was this done? Well, one reason is obvious. Putin needs to change the center of public discussion away from his absolutely epic failure, and a personal failure at that. This is why they pick topics that greatly excite the public consciousness — this is torture, this is ending the moratorium on the death penalty, and so on.

But if that were all, it wouldn’t be so bad. To my deep regret, there is a “trivialization,” so to speak, of evil. People are shown these harsh examples, making them ready to accept certain deviations from the law. They are shown that this is possible, this is acceptable. It is certain that if today this is acceptable in relation to extremely unpleasant suspects, then tomorrow it will be used in relation to hundreds and thousands of completely different people.

Unfortunately, this means that Putin is preparing for an increase in repression, and in general, these repressions will not only be in the traditional forms of imprisonment, but also in a general tightening of the situation.

VOA: There are concerns that Putin will use the terrorist attack as a mechanism for a new mobilization. How realistic is this?

Khodorkovsky: They probably will use it to some extent, but this is a third-order problem. Today he still has the opportunity to recruit a sufficient number of people. Rather, he is more constrained by his ability to train people, to provide them with weapons, than by anything else. I don’t think there will be any such massive

conscription of half a million people. Rather, he will call up another 140, 150, or maybe 160 thousand, which will not be so difficult to do within the framework of the spring recruiting. And a certain number will come from prisons and volunteers. This will be enough for him to create the conditions for a summer offensive, given the current state of the front, with the current level of support or, more precisely, “non-support” [by the West] for Ukraine.

To our deepest regret, what is now happening with the supply of weapons, with the supply of ammunition from America – in fact, the only country that can currently provide the necessary volumes of supplies – and from Europe as well… This all leads to the completely obvious and dramatic weakening of Ukraine.

Ukraine does not have enough air defense systems because supplies have stopped. At the front, people die, deprived of the opportunity to even respond. All this will end very sadly if something does not change in the coming months.

Source: khodorkovsky.com

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https://khodorkovsky.com/kremlin-critic-examines-moscows-attempts-to-blame-others-for-islamic-state-attack/

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North America

 

Canadian Winnipeg Mosque Vandalized By Two Weapon-Wielding Suspects

Barry Ellsworth 

04.04.2024

The hunt continued Thursday for two weapon-wielding suspects who tried to break down the door of a Winnipeg Mosque.

About 4 a.m. Tuesday, a volunteer cleaner at the Abu Bakr Al-Siddique Community Centre in Winnipeg, the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba, heard a loud bang.

Shaqir Shaikh went to investigate and saw two people, one holding an axe and the other a knife, he told CTV News.

“I just shouted loudly and I just locked the door and I just called (emergency number) 911,” said Shaikh.

Police quickly arrived but the suspects had fled the scene, he said.

Mosque director Adnan Siddiqui said the Muslim community is concerned by the attack.

“They are really upset because we don’t know what was the purpose (of the attack),” he said.

Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said in a statement on Instagram that it serves no purpose to make suppositions on the reason for the crime.

“At this point, while we encourage Winnipeg Police to continue all angles of the investigations including as to whether this was potentially hate-motivated, we encourage our community not to speculate on the motivation of the attackers,” said the group. “We are working closely and productively with the Winnipeg Police and we will provide updates as they become available.”

Siddiqui said the mosque door needs to be replaced and security at the center will be beefed up.

Source: aa.com.tr

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Pro-Palestinian protest vote campaign in New York claims victory against Biden

LUKE TRESS

05.04.2024

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Pro-Palestinian activists claimed success in their campaign calling for voters to submit blank ballots to protest US President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in New York’s Democratic primary on Tuesday — though the actual number of protest votes is unclear.

Ahead of a series of Democratic primaries, activists across the country — particularly in swing states — have called on voters to choose “uncommitted” or an equivalent at the ballot box to register their opposition to Biden’s policy. They’ve aimed for the number of uncommitted votes to surpass Biden’s margin of victory in the 2020 election — a goal the campaign achieved in Wisconsin this week.

But in New York, the campaign faced a technical challenge because the ballot does not allow voters to choose “uncommitted.” Instead, activists launched an effort urging voters to submit blank ballots in protest.

According to one analysis by City & State, a publication focused on local politics, Tuesday’s Democratic primary saw some 39,000 blank ballots, around 12 percent of the total.

Turnout was low because the primary is already decided, and organizers have no hope of threatening a Biden loss in New York, which is expected to vote Democratic by a large margin. But the Leave It Blank campaign called the numbers “an unprecedented and historic result.”

A number of pro-Palestinian groups, including the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, the left-wing Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the progressive Working Families Party, and New York City’s chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, all backed the Leave It Blank campaign.

But while many of the blank ballots were likely protest votes, calculating the exact number is more difficult in New York than in Wisconsin, Michigan, or elsewhere. That’s because the New York Board of Elections did not include a tally of blank ballots in its preliminary results, which will take a couple of weeks.

City & State calculated them by comparing votes for candidates to total ballots for delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The discrepancy between the two figures yielded the 39,000 estimate.

In addition, the count likely includes ballots that were deliberately left blank along with those deemed “void” because voters filled out their ballot incorrectly in some way.

Comparisons with previous elections are also difficult to gauge. In 2020, blank votes made up around 8% of all ballots in the Democratic party’s presidential primary.

But the ballots that year included other races for Congress and the state legislature, so some voters may have voted for other races and left the ballot blank for the presidential primary. In both 2020 and 2024, Biden was already the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

With all of that taken into account, some areas had particularly high shares of blank or void ballots. According to City & State’s data, in New York City, the highest proportion of blank or void votes were cast in Brooklyn, amounting to nearly 25% of all ballots. The average for New York City was 15%.

The statewide figure of 12% is roughly in line with the protest vote in other states that are easier to measure.

In Wisconsin on Tuesday, 8.4% of primary voters cast “uninstructed” ballots, the equivalent of the “uncommitted” votes in other states. In Connecticut, another deep blue state, more than 7,400 Democratic voters, or 11.5% of the total, voted uncommitted. Nearly 15% of Rhode Island Democratic voters, more than 3,700 people, likewise submitted uncommitted votes.

The campaign began, and made its biggest mark, in Michigan in February, where more than 100,000 Democratic voters cast uncommitted ballots, representing 10% of voters.

Source: timesofisrael.com

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https://www.timesofisrael.com/pro-palestinian-protest-vote-campaign-in-new-york-claims-victory-against-biden/

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US Muslims Angry Over Biden's Support to Israel, Turns Down White House's Iftar Dinner Invite

APRIL 04, 2024

Upset over US President Joe Biden-led administration’s support for Israel in the Gaza war, the members of the Muslim community in the US declined the White House’s iftar dinner invitation in the holy month of Ramzan.

Many invitees expressed their unhappiness over President Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, stating that they would not attend an iftar meal with the President on Tuesday evening while so many Palestinians were under siege, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The White House held a pared-down meal just for staffers. “How can we talk to you about famine and starvation over bread and steak?” Dr Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian American doctor who was in Gaza in January was quoted as saying as per the report published in The New York Times.

Dr Ahmed attended a separate hour-long meeting of the community leaders and President Biden. Notably, the meeting on Tuesday was attended by Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Muslim advocacy group Emgage, which declined the invitation from the White House, said a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions has been unfolding with millions now facing famine and disease.

“In this moment of tremendous pain and suffering, we have asked the White House to postpone this gathering and to convene a proper policy meeting with representatives of the community’s choosing, rather than those selected by the White House,” the group said in a statement.

Emgage said in order to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the Biden administration can and should leverage its enormous support for Israel and begin to take demonstrable actions on an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

“The US should also ensure an unfettered access for humanitarian aid convoys and the resumption of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) funding; an end to any Israeli plans to invade Rafah where 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering; and the initiation of a legitimate political track that leads to Palestinian statehood,” it added.

It is important to note that the Muslim community in the US is frustrated and angry at the Biden administration for not stopping the killing of innocent people in Gaza.

In fact, many Muslim American groups in some of the critical battle ground states like Michigan have announced that they will not vote for Biden in the November general elections.

White House officials have travelled outside of Washington to meet with Muslim American community leaders in Detroit and Chicago in recent months but were not welcomed by some who were invited to participate.

The Biden campaign has also tried to engage with key Arab American voters in swing states like Michigan, where more than 100,000 people chose ’uncommitted’ on their primary ballots in February, NBC News said.

Source: news18.com

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https://www.news18.com/world/us-muslims-angry-over-bidens-support-to-israel-turns-down-white-houses-iftar-dinner-invite-8839967.html

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Biden finally calls for Gaza ceasefire in call with Netanyahu

Apr 5, 2024

TEHRAN, Apr. 05 (MNA) – US President Joe Biden finally called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as the risk of escalation mounts in the region.

In a pivotal, unforeseen phone call that has been awaited for six months, US President Joe Biden called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to start taking steps toward an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Lebanese Al Mayadeen reported.

President Biden underscored the gravity of recent developments, particularly condemning the strikes on humanitarian workers and highlighting the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

During the conversation, President Biden emphasized the imperative for "Israel" to take immediate and decisive action to mitigate civilian harm, alleviate humanitarian suffering, and ensure the safety of aid workers.

Moreover, Biden stressed the necessity for the Israeli occupation to announce and implement a series of specific, tangible, and measurable measures aimed at addressing these pressing concerns, as well as commit to a ceasefire.

Furthermore, President Biden underlined that the trajectory of US policy toward Gaza would be contingent upon the occupation's prompt implementation of these proposed steps.

He reiterated the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire to stabilize the situation and prevent further harm to innocent civilians. Additionally, he urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to authorize his negotiators to swiftly conclude a deal aimed at securing the release of the Israeli captives.

In addition to discussing the situation in Gaza, the two leaders deliberated on the public threats issued by Iran against "Israel" and its citizens.

The United States has refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, essentially rendering it a pariah state in the international arena, especially among major powers, as it wasn't only not calling on "Israel" to commit to a ceasefire. It was vetoing any UN Resolutions aimed at urging for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Source: mehrnews.com

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https://en.mehrnews.com/news/213524/Biden-finally-calls-for-Gaza-ceasefire-in-call-with-Netanyahu

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Israel to increase Gaza aid routes after US pressure, White House says

Michael Hernandez 

05.04.2024

Israel has agreed to open additional routes for the delivery of badly-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza, the White House announced Thursday, just hours after President Joe Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that major reforms were needed.

Israel has yet to officially confirm that it has agreed to take the actions, but the White House said it will use the port at the Israeli city of Ashdod for direct aid deliveries to Gaza, open the Erez crossing point along the northern Gaza border and "significantly increase deliveries from Jordan directly into Gaza."

The actions "must now be fully and rapidly implemented," said National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

"As the President said today on the call, U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these and other steps, including steps to protect innocent civilians and the safety of aid workers," she said in a statement.

"We are prepared to work in full coordination with the Government of Israel, the Governments of Jordan and Egypt, the United Nations, and humanitarian organizations, to ensure that these important steps are implemented and result in a significant increase in humanitarian assistance reaching civilians in dire need throughout Gaza over the coming days and weeks," she added.

Prior to the White House's announcement, just the Karem Shalom and Rafah border crossings were open for aid deliveries. Both are in southern Gaza, and the flow of international assistance has remained woefully insufficient to meet the humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal enclave due to Israeli restrictions.

Biden spoke by phone with Netanyahu earlier Thursday, warning him that future US support for Israel's war on Gaza depends on Tel Aviv's implementation of major reforms following the "unacceptable" killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza.

The comments come after Israel carried out strikes Monday on a humanitarian convoy in central Gaza that killed seven aid workers with the food charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) in what its founder Chef Jose Andres called a "direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known” by the Israeli army.

The White House said Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers.”

"He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” it said.

The White House later declined to specify what steps the president is taking into consideration. But it said the US expects to see Israel take several steps "in the coming hours and days," including allowing a "dramatic increase in the humanitarian assistance" into Gaza and opening up additional border crossings for aid deliveries.

It remains to be seen if the agreements will actually result in an increased volume of aid entering Gaza.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack in early October by the Palestinian group Hamas killed around 1,200 people.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,577 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which last week asked it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

Source: aa.com.tr

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Arab World

 

Art exhibition displays senses and spirituality during Ramadan

April 04, 2024

RIYADH: Art took over the luxury fashion mall Centria this Ramadan with a display of works from 33 artists in the Kingdom’s capital. 

Curated by Saudi designer Amar Alamdar under the theme “Senses and Spirituality,” the exhibition provided a platform to show the true values of the holy month and the culture surrounding it from the perspectives of the featured artists.  

In line with the concept of charity, one of the pillars of Islam, proceeds from the exhibition’s silent auction will be donated to the Ekhaa Charitable Foundation for Orphan Care. 

Visual artist Meshal bin Diran is driven by a passion to discover the mysteries of color and composition, articulating it as a means of communicating. Brushes, paint and pen are merely tools to immortalize his emotions. His work edges on abstract surrealist art devoid of clear elements with a unique mix of color and composition. 

“Spirituality is derived from culture, whether that’s religion or ancient rituals or otherwise, so that’s difficult to target … I went back to the definition of spirituality that I resonate with, which is prayer and all its elements of reverence, serenity, concentration and cleanliness. It’s very integrated as a spiritual environment,” he told Arab News.  

His painting features soft but bright pastel colors in an almost whimsical interpretation. Set in the hub of the spiritual act, the mosque, the work features elements such as the entrance to the masjid, hearts hanging from the arches, and prayer beads reminiscent of the ones he carries around himself. 

The identical beads circularly lead the way into the entrance, signifying that any one of them could be one of us, or in turn, an imam. The element also highlights the lack of division in the Islamic religion. 

The style is rooted in movement, causing the content of the work to seem as if it is floating. 

“Spirituality is subjective to every person, so all the pages in the painting’s book are blank. It’s an idea that we believe in and pass down to generations,” he said. 

Salama Hassan, a self-taught artist who specializes in the fine arts, pushes the boundaries of Arabic calligraphy to the point where her work transcends a mere font and becomes conceptual.   

Using Chinese typography characteristics to shape various verses in the Qur’an, Hassan prompts the audience to contemplate the language and verses at hand. The artwork becomes a puzzle, demanding us to look deeper into the meaning and placement of each letter.

Hassan told Arab News previously: “I’m a fan of Arabic calligraphy … I decided to venture out of the box. I love Eastern cultures like Japanese and Chinese and their calligraphy, as well as Arabic. I wanted to prove that the Arabic letter is valid in any time and space. I’m trying to create more awareness around it.”

She traced the Qur’anic verses vertically, with each line holding one or two letters, leading the viewer to enunciate each letter and word. The method of language bridging provides an insightful opportunity for cultural exchange. 

The exhibition featured immersive works that allowed visitors to interact through their own phone screens using an app. The work of digital artist Mohammed Wahas shows an anguished woman with two crows perched on her head. One is silent and the other is screaming to express the mental instability caused by excessive thinking. As the viewer moves their lens to the painting, the two birds come alive, floating between serenity and despair.  

Artist Sarah Al-Alshaikh’s work “Peace of Mind” animates a faceless woman with her rosary to tell a much larger story. The piece was inspired by the Rumi quote: “You presume you are a small entity, but within you is enfolded the entire Universe.”

Hams Muryh used her Asiri roots as points of inspiration. Her work documents traditional southern crafts by incorporating Al-Haseer, a traditional hand-weaving technique using date palm leaves, and Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, a style of Saudi art that is usually painted by women in the southern region of the Kingdom, which she acquired from her grandmother.  

The two works on display, “Kiswa” and “Intima,” set out to encapsulate the authenticity of Saudi heritage and the depth of its culture. 

She told Arab News: “I was keen to display these two works with different materials, from the fineness of the paper to the roughness of the mats. However, the art of Al-Qatt Al-Asiri reflects both the intangible and material impact on the people of the Asir region, and how they can celebrate the renewal and decoration of walls before Eids and celebratory occasions in a distinct, modern style that reflects the artistry that’s rooted within them.” 

Artist Amal Alem featured eight paintings of prayer rugs, which are present in all Muslim homes around the globe, accompanied by the rosary that accompanies the worshippers throughout their prayers. The prayer mat has become a symbol that reminds people of the universality of Islam.  

Alamdar said: “These rugs are our elders’ and the younger generations aren’t aware of it, but we can relay our spirituality and these ideas through art.” 

The exhibition, which ended on the 24th day of Ramadan, featured numerous works interpreting the notion of spirituality.

Source: arabnews.com

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https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488336/lifestyle

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‘Digital Bags’ program launched at holy mosques

April 04, 2024

MAKKAH: The Presidency for Religious Affairs at the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque launched the “Digital Bags” program, which presents booklets by well-known scholars and Islamic preachers to Umrah visitors.

The program aims to promote moderation and religious awareness among the growing number of Umrah performers at the holy sites.

Visitors can enter the Digital Bags program by scanning the barcode of the desired booklet, accessing its entire contents and enabling sharing with other people.

The presidency has carried out numerous religious activities and programs, including donation drives, during Ramadan.

More activities are being held in the last days of the holy month, which will witness the influx of millions of Umrah performers and visitors to the two holy mosques.

The presidency is easing access to religious services by investing in technology, digitization, modern media, AI, governance and digital institutional work, spreading the moderate message of Islam globally in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.

Source: arabnews.com

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Prophet's Mosque Sees 4,700 Worshippers Observe Itikaf in Last 10 Days of Ramadan

04 Apr, 2024

The Prophet’s Mosque has welcomed 4,700 men and women performing the rite of Itikaf (seclusion for worship) in the last ten days of Ramadan for the year 1445 AH. They completed the permitted number through the “Visitors” electronic application, which is governed by the capacity of the places designated for Itikaf service.

The General Authority for the Affairs of the Prophet’s Mosque allocated sites for Itikaf observers in the men’s and women’s sections of the Prophet’s Mosque. Escalator No. 6 and Ladder 10 were designated for men to ascend to the Itikaf site, while doors 24 and 25 were designated for women entering the site.

The authority provided all necessary services and facilities for Itikaf observers, including meal and hospitality services, cupboards for storing luggage and charging devices, in addition to essential visitor services. It also allocated a medical clinic that provides health services.

The authority provided Itikaf observers with a bracelet to ensure ease of movement, access to the site, and easy access to services.

Source: alriyadhdaily.com

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Hira Cultural District in Mecca: A spiritual experience for Umrah performers and visitors

April 05, 2024

The Hira Cultural District has become a major attraction for visitors and Umrah performers during Ramadan.

More than a million visitors from over 100 countries, drawn by the district's rich Islamic history and cultural immersion, flocked to the Hira Cultural District according to Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

A key attraction is the Revelation Exhibition located at the foot of Mount Hira. This interactive exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the story of the revelation of the Quran to Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).

Visitors can explore a collection of exhibits showcasing the Islamic and historical significance of Mecca. The exhibition's use of advanced technology effectively promotes awareness and education.

Hira Cave, a revered landmark in Mecca, has also seen a surge in visitors following its recent reopening and the construction of a new pathway. Umrah performers are eager to explore the cave and experience the spiritual atmosphere where Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) received his revelations.

The climb to the cave is particularly popular during the holy month, with visitors seeking to deepen their knowledge of its historical and geographical significance.

Spread over 67,000 square meters, the Hira Cultural District is a unique cultural and tourist destination overseen by a consortium consisting of the Royal Commission for Makkah City and the Holy Sites, the Makkah Region Emirate, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Tourism, the Holy Makkah Municipality, the Pilgrim Experience Program, and the General Authority for Endowments.

The district's development plan prioritizes honoring its historical significance, reflecting the stature of the Kingdom, and upholding its role as custodian of the holy sites. The project strives to create harmony between the natural beauty and historical value of the location, while acknowledging the religious, humanitarian, and historical importance of Mecca.

Source: gulfnews.com

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Over 20 million worshippers visit Prophet's Mosque in first 20 days of Ramadan

April 05, 2024

Over 20 million worshippers visited the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah during the first 20 days of Ramadan, reported the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

According to SPA, 1,643,288 individuals visited the Prophet's grave, while Al-Rawda Al-Sharifa received a total of 358,632 men and 296,595 women during this period.

These remarkable figures underscore the commitment of the General Authority for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques to ensuring a seamless experience for visitors throughout the holy month.

Source: gulftoday.ae

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Mideast

 

Millions rally on Quds Day to condemn Israeli genocide, support Palestinians

05 April 2024

Millions of people in Iran and across the world rally on the International Quds Day, marked on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, to express their solidarity with Palestinians and condemn Israeli atrocities.

Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif, the spokesman of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and the director-general of Intifada headquarters in Tehran, said pro-Palestine rallies are held in more than 2,000 locations across the country.

In Tehran, the rallies included a funeral procession held for the martyrs of an Israeli airstrike on the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in the Mezzeh neighborhood in Damascus on Monday.

This year’s rallies take place as Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and elsewhere have come under the most unprecedented campaign after bombings and displacement by Israel.

More than 180 days into the onslaught, at least 33,037 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, with 75,668 others injured, mostly women and children.

Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.

Speaking at the news briefing, Sharif underlined that the slogan of this year's Quds Day march is, "Quds Day, from al-Aqsa Storm to al-Ahrar (freedom seekers) Storm."

Quds day is an annual pro-Palestinian event held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan to express support for Palestinians and oppose  Israel  and Zionism. The event, initiated by the late founder of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini, was first held in 1979 in Iran, shortly after the Iranian Revolution.

Source: presstv.ir

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Islamic Jihad warns Israel against harming Al-Aqsa Mosque

04 April 2024

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement has warned the Israeli regime against repercussions of harming the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Abu Hamza, spokesman for the Saraya al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, said in remarks on Thursday that the “battle will not stop at the geographical borders of Palestine” if any harm was done to the holy Islamic site.

“What is happening on the ground confirms that the resistance factions continue to wage the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood with all determination. The resistance continues to repel aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.”

“We continue, alongside the resistance factions, the enduring battle of Al-Aqsa Flood on all levels with determination, bravery, and steadfastness.”

He also underscored the support given to the Palestinian resistance fighters by the chief of the Lebanese resistance movement and the leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement.

“From the heart of the battle, we salute our brothers in Lebanon’s Hezbollah, his eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and to the leader of the Yemen revolution, SayyedAbdulmalik al-Houthi, and to the leaders of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq,” he said.

“The pure blood in Palestine has started to blossom from Jordan to Tunisia, Bahrain, and beyond.”

The Islamic Jihad and other resistance groups have repeatedly warned Israel “not to play with fire.” The regime has imposed restrictions on access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic Jihad spokesman also denounced the United States for providing the regime with advanced weapons and other military equipment.

“Gaza requires us all to stand up to our responsibilities to shed blood in the face of the Zionist-American arsenal,” he said.

“From the very first moment of the battle, our fighters were in the front lines and are still stationed at their posts,” he said, in reference to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm of October 7, 2023.

“We reject the occupation and will not allow it to settle on the land of Gaza, and the enemy must understand the message well.”

International Quds Day demos

The Islamic Jihad spokesman called on the international community, particularly Muslim countries, to fully support the oppressed Palestinian people on the International Quds Day.

“This year's Al-Quds Day was distinguished by the unity of the fields. Al-Quds has united the fronts this year.”

The International Quds Day was designated by Imam Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic. It is marked annually across the world on the last Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. This year, the event falls on April 5.

Abu Hamza also underscored the key role of Iran in supporting the Palestinian cause.

Source: presstv.ir

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Türkiye asks NATO members to back Ankara's fight against terrorism: Top diplomat

Selen Valente Rasquinho

05.04.2024

Türkiye has asked NATO members to support Ankara in its fight against terrorism, Foreign Minister HakanFidan said on Thursday.

"We underlined that NATO member countries should fully and unconditionally support Türkiye in the fight against terrorism," Fidan told reporters in Brussels.

Fidan's remarks came after a two-day NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, where he also held sideline talks with his counterparts.

During his talks, Fidan said he also emphasized that some NATO member countries should not cooperate with the terrorist organization, particularly in Syria.

"We said this is against the spirit of the NATO alliance," he added.

Stressing that it was agreed upon the appointment of a counter-terrorism coordinator at last year's Vilnius Summit, Fidan said efforts are continuing for NATO to look at the fight against terrorism "structurally."

The minister said he discussed with his counterparts the activities of the terrorist organization PKK in Europe.

"What is sad for them (European countries) is that the terrorist organization, which they have been silent about for years, is terrorizing their own streets. It is not a surprise to us that they are seeing these things now," he added.

Fidan said the countries should not only condemn the terror group's acts of violence against the Turkish nationals living in Europe, but also they should take "very serious" measures to combat it.

"I see authorities increasingly becoming more sensitive in Europe. This is actually a pleasing issue. I see that tolerance towards PKK is gradually decreasing. This is important," he added.

In its nearly 40-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US, and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian offshoot.

Next NATO secretary-general

Turning to the 75th anniversary of NATO's founding, Fidan said Türkiye has been an important member of the alliance since 1952.

"It has been contributing to NATO for 72 years. Our armed forces actively participate in NATO missions," he added.

Fidan announced that the informal NATO foreign minister meeting will be held in Türkiye next year.

About the race for being the next NATO chief, Fidan said he recently met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who announced his bid to become the next secretary-general.

"It is possible that he will visit Türkiye soon. We are working on a date," he said.

Stoltenberg’s term is scheduled to end on Oct. 1 after ten years.

Recently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Rutte in a phone call that Ankara would back a candidate to be NATO's new chief based on its expectations and needs.

Erdogan emphasized the need for the new secretary-general to best serve the security and interests of members in the fight against terrorism and other challenges, bolster the unity of the alliance, prioritize NATO's fundamental duty, and deliver convincing commitments to uphold the alliance's core values and established practices, as well as consider the sensitivities of non-EU allies.

Stressing that Türkiye clearly expressed his expectation that the process carried out with current chief Jens Stoltenberg will be put forward by the new secretary-general, Fidan said: "I think our president will also announce his decision (soon)."

Regional issues

About the restrictions on Türkiye in the defense industry, Fidan said he told his counterparts that they are not "compatible with the spirit of the alliance and that the restrictions should be removed."

Regarding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, Fidan said Ukrainian counterpart DmytroKuleba gave information about the war during the meeting.

Türkiye emphasized that it stands by Ukraine's security and sovereignty, and underlined that alternative ways to peace and cease-fire should be sought to stop the war, he added.

Fidan also said he discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip with his counterparts on the sidelines of the NATO meeting and voiced concern over the "unbearable" situation in the enclave.

"In particular, we have repeatedly raised the need for a cease-fire, urgent humanitarian aid and a two-state solution perspective. Here's the good thing. Now, all our counterparts almost agree with us.

"It is important for the international community to reach this understanding during the process in terms of diplomatic gains, but more needs to be done in terms of changing something on the ground. Our determination on this issue continues," he added.

President Erdogan's visit to US

During his sideline meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Brussels, Fidan said they also discussed the upcoming visit of Erdogan to the US upon the invitation of his counterpart Joe Biden.

Fidan said Erdogan's agenda will include different issues, including bilateral and regional relations, with Gaza coming first among these.

Stressing that the Ukraine issue will also be on the agenda, Fidan said: "These two wars concern our region. At the same time, they both trigger global fault lines and there are other risk areas that they will trigger. Our president will continue to draw attention to them and emphasize our sensitivities on these issues."

Fidan said enhancement of the relations in other areas, such as economy, technology, and trade, will also be on the agenda.

Erdogan's perspective is to remove Turkish-American relations from being "solely security-oriented" and to create a "more balanced and broader" set of relations, he added.

Source: aa.com.tr

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High Court gives government six days to submit answers on Gaza humanitarian crisis

JEREMY SHARON

4 April 2024

The High Court of Justice instructed the state on Thursday to provide answers within six days to key questions over government policies for the supply of aid to the Gaza Strip, which were raised during a court hearing regarding the dire humanitarian situation in the territory.

The order by the court for more complete answers to these issues came after tough questions were raised during Thursday’s hearing over a petition filed by the Gisha human rights NGO and several other organizations, asking the court to compel the government to increase the supply of humanitarian aid to alleviate civilian suffering in Gaza amid the months-long war there.

The attorney for the petitioners asked in particular why additional border crossings are not being opened, especially to supply northern Gaza; why the Port of Ashdod is not being used to supply Gaza; and why supplies are not being sourced from Israel and the West Bank.

She also pointed to claims by the United Nations in February that 51 percent of missions planned by humanitarian organizations to deliver aid to northern Gaza were denied by Israeli authorities, arguing that this was a key cause of the humanitarian crisis, despite the fact that Israel is allowing aid to cross the border.

Supreme Court Acting President Uzi Vogelman appeared attentive to the petitioners, acknowledging the severe nature of the humanitarian crisis and insisting that the state must offer answers.

The attorney representing the state stressed, as the government has done for months, that there is no limit on the amount of aid that can enter the Strip, although he was challenged on this claim by the Gisha attorney who asserted that logistical restrictions imposed by the government within the enclave had led to a severe lack of food and humanitarian supplies, particularly in northern Gaza.

The court gave the state until April 10 to submit a supplementary filing answering some of the key questions raised in the petition and hearing.

Israel declared war on Hamas in Gaza after the terror organization carried out the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis and took 253 people hostage during a savage invasion of southern Israel.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 32,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that is unverified, and which Israel says includes some 13,000 terror operatives. Tens of thousands have been injured.

The UN says some 346,000 children are at high risk of malnutrition in Gaza, while the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification organization found in March that famine is “projected and imminent in the North Gaza and Gaza Governorates.” Israel contested the findings, noting its lack of accurate data.

The petition was filed by the Gisha organization together with HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah, and has requested that the court order the government to “significantly increase the volume of aid to Gaza, including by opening land crossings between Gaza and Israel, and to provide for all the needs of the civilian population in keeping with Israel’s obligations as the occupying power.”

The petitioners assert that Israeli policy constitutes “a flagrant violation” of international law and violates the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice in January and March that Israel ensure the unfettered entry of humanitarian aid to the war-torn territory.

“Israel is violating international law and is leading to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the spread of famine, thirst and disease,” said Attorney OsnatLipshitz-Cohen for Gisha in court.

Citing numerous UN agencies and international aid organizations, Lipshitz-Cohen said that the health system had collapsed, that thousands of sick and injured people were not getting necessary treatment, and pointed to reports of amputations being performed without anesthetic.

“Many sick and injured people are losing their lives because there is not enough medicine, equipment and medical staff,” she said.

“We’re not talking about a tsunami or an earthquake, we’re talking about a war that is the work of man.”

Challenged by both Vogelman and Justice Noam Sohlberg on the reliability of the information coming out of Gaza, Lipshitz-Cohen acknowledged that obtaining reliable data was problematic, but insisted that some of the information was coming from aid agencies on the ground, including UNICEF and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, among others.

She pointed in particular to a UNICEF report from early March following a field mission to the Al-Shifa, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, which stated that “distressing levels of malnutrition and child fatalities from starvation were reported.”

Lipshitz-Cohen also noted several incidents in Gaza in which civilians have died during efforts to distribute food, including an incident in February, when dozens of people died in a stampede as they rushed at aid trucks, as well as several incidents of drowning as people sought to reach airdropped supplies that fell into the sea.

These scenes, she said, demonstrated how desperate people were for food in Gaza.

Attorney Yonatan Berman, representing the state, acknowledged that the humanitarian situation in the coastal enclave was bad, especially in northern Gaza, but insisted that Israel has not restricted the supply of humanitarian goods.

“We do not dispute the fact that as a result of the war in Gaza, there has been great suffering to the civilian population in Gaza. This is because the terror organizations are operating among population centers in Gaza, the use of human shields, and using civilian structures for terror activities,” said Berman.

But he was challenged by Lipshitz-Cohen on several issues. She demanded to know why Crossing 96, close to Kibbutz Be’eri, has only recently been opened and why only 60 trucks had passed through it.

She also demanded to know why the Israeli government has blocked the use of Ashdod Port for supplying humanitarian aid to Gaza, opting instead for Port Said in Egypt, which is over 200 kilometers (124 miles) away from Gaza, whereas Ashdod is just some 37 kilometers (23 miles) away.

And she questioned why Israel has blocked the private sector in Gaza from bringing in food from Israel, since 91% of goods entering Gaza from the Kerem Shalom goods crossing before October 7 came through the private sector in the territory from Israel and the West Bank.

Vogelman said explicitly that these questions needed to be properly addressed by the state.

“Northern Gaza is where the humanitarian situation is the most severe, and so there is importance to hear explanations [why aid is lacking in that region],” said the acting court president.

A representative of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories agency (COGAT), a division of the Defense Ministry, noted that 400 trucks of humanitarian supplies had reached northern Gaza in March, though Lipshitz-Cohen pointed out that the World Health Organization has said 300 trucks a day are required there to address the current humanitarian crisis.

“We are in daily coordination with the international aid organizations to determine where the needs are, what needs to be delivered and how much,” said Berman.

“We do a daily evaluation of the situation, which also deals with the tactical coordination of activities, learning lessons and identifying how things can be improved for the next day.”

Berman said that using Crossing 96 was “more complicated in terms of security” than using other crossings, and told the court that he could only expand on this issue behind closed doors.

He also said he would address the issues with supplying aid from Ashdod in a supplementary submission to the court, as well as the restrictions on the Gaza private sector acting to import supplies from Israel and the West Bank.

In its decision following the hearing, the High Court told the government to state how much aid is needed to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza; what the bottlenecks are limiting the provision of humanitarian aid; and what it intends to do to increase the entry and supply of aid.

Source: timesofisrael.com

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Israel says will allow ‘temporary’ aid through northern Gaza border

April 05, 2024

JERUSALEM: Israel will allow “temporary” aid deliveries via its border with the northern Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced Friday, reopening the Erez crossing into the famine-threatened territory for the first time since the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.

“Israel will allow the temporary delivery of humanitarian aid through Ashdod and the Erez checkpoint,” said a government statement released hours after a warning from US President Joe Biden.

“This increased aid will prevent a humanitarian crisis and is necessary to ensure the continuation of the fighting and to achieve the goals of the war,” the statement added.

The announcement comes as international pressure mounts on Israel after it took responsibility for a strike that killed seven aid workers.

In a tense, 30-minute call with Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza” will be determined based on “specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” according to a White House statement.

According to Israel’s statement, in addition to allowing aid through the Erez border crossing and the port of Ashdod, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Gaza, the authorities will also allow “increased Jordanian aid through Kerem Shalom,” a border crossing in southern Israel.

Source: arabnews.com

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Hezbollah strikes Israeli troops, military vehicles in support of Gaza

 05 April 2024

Fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement have carried out a series of new attacks, targeting Israeli military positions along Lebanon's border with the northern part of the 1948-occupied territories in solidarity with Palestinians amid the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, citing a Hezbollah statement, reported that the group struck Israeli soldiers and military vehicles at the al-Malikiyah site early Friday with a salvo of artillery shells and missiles.

The statement added that the projectiles hit the designated targets precisely, and caused casualties among the Israeli soldiers.

Moreover, Hezbollah forces targeted an Israeli military vehicle at the entrance to Metula town, destroying it and inflicting casualties upon the occupants.

The statement noted that the operations came in support of steadfast Palestinians in Gaza and resistance factions fighting off Israeli offensives.

Late on Thursday, the Lebanese resistance fighters pummeled Israeli soldiers stationed at Ruwaisat al-Alam and Ruwaisat al-Qarn sites with rockets and artillery shells.

Earlier in the day, Hezbollah had targeted a command center in Liman as Israeli warplanes struck the southern Lebanese border towns of Yaroun and Ainata.

Hezbollah later attacked groups of soldiers near the Jal al-Alam outpost.

The Israeli regime has repeatedly attacked southern Lebanon since October 7, when it launched a genocidal war on Gaza that has killed at least 33,037 Palestinians, most of them women and children, so far. Another 75,668 individuals have also been injured in the onslaught.

In retaliation, Hezbollah has launched near-daily rocket attacks on Israeli positions.

At least 349 people have been killed on the Lebanese border, including 68 civilians.

Israel says at least ten soldiers and eight settlers have been killed in the area.

The fighting has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands from the northern part of the occupied territories, amid rocket fire and shelling carried out by Hezbollah and allied Palestinian groups.

Hezbollah has already fought off two Israeli wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. The resistance forced the regime to retreat in both conflicts.

Source: presstv.ir

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Israeli strike on Gaza building killed 106 in ‘apparent war crime’: HRW

April 04, 2024

JERUSALEM:A Human Rights Watch investigation published on Thursday said an Israeli attack on a Gaza building in October had no apparent militant target, but killed 106 civilians, including 54 children, making it an “apparent war crime.”

International law prohibits attacks on military targets that will likely cause disproportionate harm to civilians.

The Oct. 31 attack was one of the deadliest since the start of the war nearly six months ago.

Human Rights Watch says four separate strikes collapsed the Engineer’s Building in central Gaza, which was housing some 350 people, around a third of whom had fled their homes elsewhere in the territory.

Those killed included children playing soccer outside and residents charging phones in the first-floor grocery store, it said.

Thirty-four women, 18 men and 54 children were killed in the strike, according to the group, which says it corroborated its list of the dead with Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor.

The dead came from 22 families. One extended family, the Abu Said family, lost 23 relatives in the strike, it said.

Journalists reported on four siblings who had been killed in the strike in October, including 18-month-old twin boys.

“They had no time here,” Sami Abu Sultan, their uncle, said a day after the building was destroyed. “It was God’s will.”

While putting together the report, Human Rights Watch says it interviewed 16 people, including relatives of those killed in the attack, and analyzed satellite imagery, 35 photographs and 45 videos of the aftermath.

It was unable to visit the site because Israel heavily restricts access to Gaza.

Witnesses told the rights group there was no warning ahead of the attack.

Human Rights Watch says Israeli authorities have not published any information about the purported target and did not respond to its requests for information.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Israel has faced mounting international criticism over its wartime conduct after its strikes killed seven aid workers earlier this week.

Its bombardment of the strip is one of the most intense aerial campaigns of the 21st century.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan said there has been no progress in Gaza ceasefire talks despite the Palestinian group showing flexibility.

Hamdan said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was placing obstacles hindering both parties from reaching an agreement, and that he is “not interested” in releasing Israeli hostages.

“The occupation government is still evading, and negotiations are stuck in a vicious circle,” Hamdan said at a press conference held in Beirut.

Egyptian and Qatari efforts, backed by the US, have so far failed to achieve a ceasefire.

While Hamas wants any ceasefire agreement to secure an end to the Israeli military offensive, Israel prefers a prisoners-for-hostage release deal, refusing to commit to ending its military campaign.

The Israeli military released 101 Palestinians who had been detained by forces during the ground offensive in the past weeks and months. The detainees, many of whom complained of ill-treatment in Israeli jails, were freed through the Israeli Kerem Shalom crossing into the southern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military halted leave for all combat units on Thursday amid concerns of a possible escalation in violence after the killing of Iranian generals in Damascus this week drew threats of retaliation.

“In accordance with the situational assessment, it has been decided that leave will be temporarily paused for all IDF (Israel Defense Forces) combat units,” the military said in a statement.

“The IDF is at war and the deployment of forces is under continuous assessment according to requirements,” it said.

On Wednesday, the military said it had drafted reservists to boost aerial defenses. Journalists and Tel Aviv residents said that GPS services had been disrupted, an apparent measure meant to ward off guided missiles.

Iran has vowed revenge for the killing of two of its generals along with five military advisers in an airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday.

Israel has been pressing its war on Hamas for six months.

Source: arabnews.com

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Iran calls for full support for Palestinians on Quds Day

Apr 4, 2024

TEHRAN, Apr. 04 (MNA) – Iran has called on the international community, particularly Muslim countries, to fully support the oppressed Palestinian people on International Quds Day, urging them to confront the "cancerous tumor" of Israel in the region.

In a statement released on the eve of International Quds Day, Iran's Foreign Ministry “vehemently condemned the Zionist regime’s blatant violation of international law and regulations, human rights, and international humanitarian law” in the war-torn Gaza Strip since October 7.

“The Government and the noble people of the Islamic Republic of Iran once again remind the international community and world governments, especially of Muslim countries, of their responsibility to provide all-out support for the oppressed Palestinian people, particularly the besieged inhabitants and war-stricken people of the Gaza Strip,” it added, according to Press TV.

International Quds Day was designated by Imam Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic. It is marked annually across the world on the last Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. This year, the event falls on April 5.

The ministry further called for “effective, decisive, and immediate action by governments and international legal and human rights institutions to stop these crimes and to lodge a criminal case for prosecuting and trying the commanders, perpetrators, and supporters of such human tragedies.”

International Quds Day in the current year comes amid the ongoing brutal war against inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Since October 7 last year, Israel has killed more than 32,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured nearly 75,500 others in Gaza since October 7.

According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the Israeli military has so far killed more than 14,400 children in Gaza, meaning children make up more than one-third of the people Israel has killed in the territory.

“Hundreds of millions of justice-seeking and conscientious people” across the globe, and even in the Western cities, “will raise louder than ever before the cry of innocence and courage and anti-oppressiveness of the heroic Palestinian nation and the truth and reality of what is transpiring in the Palestinian territory on this year's International Quds Day as they demand the liberation of Palestine from the yoke of oppression, tyranny, occupation, and genocide, not only as the ‘first issue’ of the World of Islam, but as the issue of the world of humanity and the most flagrant example of gross violation of human rights and international laws and regulations,” the statement further said.

Israel has cut off fuel, electricity, food and water to the Palestinians living in the coastal territory. It is also deliberately starving the people in Gaza by destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian goods.

Last year, tens of thousands of Iranians took part in the annual International Quds Day rallies in the capital, Tehran, in a major show of support for Palestine. Similar marches and events happened in more than 900 cities and villages nationwide, according to officials.

On the eve of this International Quds Day, Iran’s foreign ministry “emphasizes the continuation of the principled and constant policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in supporting the liberation struggles and legitimate resistance of the Palestinian nation and the necessity of effective, comprehensive, and deterrent counteraction against the crimes of the occupying and child-killing Zionist regime."

It also "calls on all Muslim governments and nations and the freedom- and truth-seekers of the world to stand in unity and solidarity so as to confront this ‘cancerous tumor’ and disruptor of regional and international stability and security and to provide real and practical aid and support to the oppressed Palestinian people.”

In conclusion, the ministry called on the international and human rights organizations and institutions to keep in mind their legal duties in supporting the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people “in ending the occupation, stopping the brutal crimes of the Zionists in the Holy al-Quds and other occupied regions in Palestine, and in putting an end to the aggressive and escalating actions of the Zionists in the region.”

Source: mehrnews.com

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Muslim bloc calls for urgent cease-fire in Gaza ahead of Eid al-Fitr

Anadolu staff 

04.04.2024

The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) on Thursday called on the "free world" to strive for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip before the blessed Muslim festival Eid al-Fitr.

The Israeli crimes in Gaza constitute genocide and represent a serious abuse, demolishing all human values, the union said in a statement.

The statement condemned "the killing of innocents and the torture of children, women, the elderly, and scholars" in Gaza, considering it "a heinous violation of all human values.”

"We call on the free world to immediately and urgently cease fire before the Eid al-Fitr (April 10),” the statement added.

Additionally, the statement urged international human rights groups to "take immediate actions to stop the humanitarian bleeding in Gaza Strip.”

The statement also called for the opening of crossings with the enclave to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

Israel has been pounding the Palestinian enclave since Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.

Over 33,000 Palestinians have since been killed and nearly 75,700 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which last week asked it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

Source: aa.com.tr

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Türkiye hopes to share Ramadan together ‘under the flag of a free Palestine’: Parliament speaker

AynurEkiz, Ali Kemal Akan 

05.04.2024

Turkish Parliament Speaker NumanKurtulmus said Thursday that he hopes to visit Gazans during Ramadan and have a fast-breaking dinner (iftar) together under the flag of a free Palestine.

"You are guests at our table, and just as you have honored us with your presence, we hope to visit your tables in Gaza under the flag of a free Palestine in the upcoming Ramadan, and we will share iftar together," Kurtulmus said during a fast-breaking dinner at the Turkish Grand National Assembly hosting Gazan Muslims.

Kurtulmus said Türkiye aims to alleviate the pain, show brotherhood, pray for martyred Gazan brothers, keep them in their memories and increase determination for the Palestinian cause.

He also noted that the Gaza issue revealed great pains and human drama but also opened the door to new developments worldwide, pointing out that a great massacre is taking place in Gaza while a great example of resistance is also being demonstrated.

"It is one of the most important epics of resistance in human history...We do not forget AhedTamimi standing up against Israeli soldiers when she was only 11 years old, her mujahideen and defiant attitude. Similarly, we do not forget the photograph of Muhammad al-Durrah being martyred by Israeli soldiers behind his father when he was 12 years old.

“You have experienced it firsthand, and there are still members of your family remaining there. The heroes of the Palestinian cause continue to grow, new heroes emerge, and from among the martyrs of Gaza, new heroes sprout, and the resistance continues to strengthen. Israel wanted to test the people of Palestine, especially Gazans, by bombing hospitals and dropping bombs on people waiting for aid,” he said.

Kurtulmus also said the spirit behind this resistance was not understandable to Zionists and materialistic worldly people.

"The father who kisses his child from under the rubble knows that our brothers in Palestine await the moment of victory after every martyr and struggle with this heart and courage. Otherwise, there is no other meaning to people in Gaza, who have no shelter, not even a wall to seek refuge, to have such a great spirit of resistance; being tested with hunger, deprivation and oppression."

Kurtulmus stressed that interest in the Palestinian cause had increased significantly worldwide, noting that what happened in Palestine and especially in Gaza served as guidance for all humanity.

He also said that despite the pressures from governments and their supportive attitudes toward Israel in many parts of the world, it was not an easy task for millions of people to go out and stand by the people of Gaza.

"A human front has been established everywhere in the world that stands for justice, fairness, compassion and conscience. This human front is one of the most beautiful heralds of new quests for the establishment of a new world. Thus, millions of people who do not resemble us in their religions, languages, cultures and civilizations but who meet on the common ground of humanity have become the millions who embrace Gaza more than the silent majorities of the Muslim world. Hopefully, at the end of this test of patience, anguish, tolerance and submission, there is great good news."

"First and foremost, to our Gazan brothers and sisters, and to all Palestinians and all Muslims, the good news that will come will hopefully be realized with the awakening of this human front; a sovereign, free Palestine State with the capital Jerusalem will be established, ensuring complete territorial integrity, and this Palestinian State will be recognized by the nations of the world in the shortest time possible," he noted.

He also said that all of Israel's calculations had gone astray, and those who committed these massacres and oppression would not find any country to support them in the world anymore, noting that the establishment of the Palestinian state would take place soon.

Kurtulmus concluded that since the beginning of Israel's attacks on Gaza, he had held meetings with many heads of state, presidents and parliament speakers from various countries.

"Almost everyone now sees that there is no way other than a two-state solution. The Palestinian state will definitely be established," he said.

After his speech, Kurtulmus conversed with Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya and the Gazan guests.

Source: aa.com.tr

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McDonald’s to acquire franchised restaurants in Israel amid boycott calls

05.04.2024

NEW YORK — McDonald’s Corporation said Thursday it will acquire Alonyal, the owner 225 McDonald’s restaurants in Israel, which have been hit by calls for a boycott over the war with Hamas in Gaza.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. McDonald’s said in a statement the deal was subject to conditions that it did not identify.

Alonyal has operated McDonald’s restaurants in Israel for more than 30 years, today owning 225 franchised properties with more than 5,000 employees, who will be retained after the sale.

In presenting its 2023 earnings report in February, McDonald’s said the war in Gaza that began in October with the Hamas massacre in Israel was weighing on its results.

McDonald’s was targeted with boycott calls after the franchised restaurants in Israel offered thousands of free meals to Israeli soldiers.

“We recognize that families in their communities in the region continue to be tragically impacted by the war and our thoughts are with them at this time,” Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski said in an analyst call.

He said the impact of the boycott was “meaningful,” without elaborating.

McDonald’s fourth-quarter sales disappointed analysts. In franchised restaurants outside the United States, comparable sales fell 0.7 percent.

“Obviously the place that we’re seeing the most pronounced impact is in the Middle East. We are seeing some impact in other Muslim countries like Malaysia, Indonesia,” said Kempczinski.

This also happened in countries with large Muslim populations such as France, especially for restaurants in heavily Muslim neighborhoods, he said.

McDonald’s shares were down nearly 2% in after-market trading Thursday.

Source: timesofisrael.com

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Pakistan

 

Pakistan condemns attacks: 10 Iran security personnel killed in Sistan-Baluchistan

2024-04-05

TEHRAN: Jihadist attacks in southeastern Iran near Pakistan killed 10 Iranian security personnel, state media reported on Thursday. Jaish al-Adl, or Army of Justice, claimed the attacks.

The number of dead is almost as large as from a similar attack in December, which the same group claimed and which was followed by tit-for-tat air strikes with Pakistan.

The attacks hit Sistan-Baluchistan province which has for years faced unrest involving drug-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremists.

“The case of the terrorist attacks was closed with the martyrdom of 10 members of the security forces,” and the killing of 18 “terrorists”, state television said.

Majid Mirahmadi, vice-minister of the interior, had earlier told the channel that five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the police died during two night-time attacks against a Guards base in Rask and a police post in Chabahar.

“The terrorists had planned to seize military bases,” Mirahmadi later told state television, adding that “none of them survived” the clashes.

He added that the assailants appeared to be foreigners, without providing further details.

The number of assailants killed in the clashes also rose from the 15 which General Mohammad Pakpour, who heads the Guards’ land forces, had announced on television.

The group Jaish al-Adl claimed the attacks on its Telegram channel. Formed in 2012, it is listed as a “terrorist” group by Iran and also by the United States.

“Pakistan unequivocally condemns the heinous and dastardly terrorist attacks at police and security installations,” the foreign ministry in Islamabad said.

“We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and pray for the recovery of the injured.”

It added that Pakistan “is deeply concerned about the growing acts of terrorism in our region”.

Jaish al-Adl claimed an attack in December that killed 11 officers at a police station in Rask, one of the deadliest in years.

The group claimed another Rask police station attack that killed one officer on January 10.

A week later, Iran said it retaliated with drone and missile strikes against Jaish al-Adl targets over the border in Pakistan.

In response, Pakistan said it carried out air strikes against Baluchi separatists inside Iran.

The Iranian strikes killed at least two children, according to Pakistan, while Pakistan’s strikes killed at least nine people in Iran, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Source: brecorder.com

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Islamabad rally vandalism: Verdict on acquittal pleas of IK, others reserved

2024-04-05

ISLAMABAD: A local court, on Thursday, reserved its judgement on the acquittal applications of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founding Chairman Imran Khan, PTI vice chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Awami Muslim League (AML) chief Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, and others in a case registered against them regarding vandalism during PTI’s Haqeeqi Azadi March.

Judicial Magistrate Malik Imran, while hearing the acquittal pleas, reserved its verdict, following the completion of arguments of both parties. The case was registered at the Industrial Area police station during the Azadi March.

The other accused in the case include PTI leader Asad Qaiser, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, as well as, PTI former leaders Ali Nawaz Awan, Sadaqat Abbasi, and Pervaiz Khattak.

Former Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed, Awan, and Abbasi appeared before the court.

PTI’s lawyers Sardar Masroof advocate, Amna Ali, Rizwan Akhtar Awan, and Mirza Asim advocate appeared before the court.

Sardar Masroof advocate told the court that an acquittal petition was filed in February last year, we want to present arguments today on the acquittal petition in this case.

The judge remarked that the challans of Sadaqat Abbasi, Ali Nawaz Awan, and Sheikh Rasheed have been submitted before the court.

Masroof argued that this First Information Report (FIR) has been registered under Section 144, there is no evidence or CCTV footage in this case, and the case was not registered by the concerned person. The court after hearing arguments reserved its verdict.

Source: brecorder.com

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Foreign ministry ‘unmoved’ by cipher’s loss, lawyer Salman Safdar tells IHC

 April 5, 2024

ISLAMABAD: A lawyer representing former prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday raised concerns over the handling of the cipher case, alleging that the foreign ministry was seemingly unbothered by the document’s disappearance, despite being its custodian, and that the interior ministry had “hijacked the case for no reason”.

Presenting arguments before a division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), comprising Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, Barrister Salman Safdar sought the suspension of Imran Khan and Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s sentences in the cipher case.

However, the bench declined the request, opting instead for a swift decision on their appeals.

Mr Khan is accused of misusing the cipher — a confidential diplomatic communication — for political gain and endangering national security by disclosing and misplacing it. Mr Safdar contended that the cipher still exists in Foreign Office records, and its transcribed version has been shared with eight individuals.

Mr Safdar said the Foreign Office sent a copy of the cipher to Azam Khan, the principal secretary to the then-prime minister, Imran Khan. Mr Azam alleged he handed over a copy to Mr Khan, who failed to return it. The counsel said this might be negligence, not a crime, adding that Mr Khan could not be convicted for mere negligence.

He said that when the cipher went missing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not show any concern, nor did it issue any letter to the Prime Minister’s Office.

He said that when the PMO informed the foreign ministry that their copy of the cipher was missing, the foreign secretary replied that a copy of this confidential document could not be issued and advised the PMO staff to try to find the cipher.

Mr Safdar also pointed out that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) issued a notice to Mr Khan seven months after the receipt of the cipher, whereas the former PM could have retained it for a year.

Justice Aurangzeb noted that if Azam Khan was the only witness of handing over the cipher’s copy to Mr Khan, in case his testimony is excluded, there would be no evidence that the cipher was misplaced from the former premier’s custody.

The judge also inquired under what law the copy of the cipher could be retained for a year. Mr Safdar replied that the prosecution had taken this stance during the initial hearings.

When the court inquired how long the counsel would take to conclude the arguments, the former prime minister’s counsel replied that he would conclude it by the next session.

The court set the next hearing for April 16.

Source: dawn.com

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PM calls for global role to halt Israeli oppression against Palestinians

April 05, 2024

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called upon international community to pressurize Israel to stop its oppression against Palestinians.

In his message on the International Day of Al-Quds and Juma tulWida, he strongly denounced the Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

He said since October last year, thirty two thousand Palestinians including seventeen thousand children have been martyred and seventy thousand others injured in Gaza. Hospitals, refugee camps and children's schools have deliberately been targeted and access to humanitarian aid has been blocked.

He regretted that despite the ceasefire resolution by the UN security council, the unprovoked bombing on innocent civilians in Gaza is still continuing.

The Prime Minister said Pakistan will continue to provide moral and diplomatic support to armless Palestinian brothers and sisters until the liberation of the Palestinians from the Israeli occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state according to the pre-1967 borders.

The Prime Minister appealed the Muslims across the world including in Pakistan to remember their Palestinian and Kashmiri brothers and sisters on the occasion of Juma tulWida  and pray to God Almighty for the ease of their difficulties.

He also appealed the nation to pray for the peace and security and development and prosperity of Pakistan on the occasion of Juma tulWida.

Source: radio.gov.pk

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Threat letters to judges: PM promises credible probe into sensitive matter

April 05, 2024

 Muhammad Anis& Shakeel Anjum

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif Thursday promised the government would probe the matter of threat letters received by judges with suspicious powder, with a sense of responsibility to uncover the reality.

Addressing the federal cabinet, the prime minister observed that the sensitive matter should not be given a political colour. He pointed out the government had fulfilled its responsibility with respect to the formation of an inquiry commission, led by former chief justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani to probe the issue of the letter written by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) judges. When the former CJ refused to head the commission, the Supreme Court took suo moto notice of the issue, he said.

The PM said the new programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was crucial and important to consolidate the country’s economy. “The government is planning to enter into a new programme with the IMF, which is crucial and very important to consolidate the country’s economy,” he added. Shehbaz said the new IMF programme would enhance international financial institutions’ trust in Pakistan, help it move towards the agenda of development and prosperity.

The PM, however, said although the terms of the new deal would not be so easy, the government would certainly shift the burden of tough conditions from the less privileged to privileged and wealthier sections of the society. He informed the cabinet members that the finance minister would discuss details of the new programme at the IMF spring meetings as head of the Pakistani delegation later this month. The PM was hopeful that after the IMF board meeting, the last tranche of existing standby agreement of $1.1 billion would be disbursed to Pakistan this month.

PM Shehbaz said he recently chaired a meeting of Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) in which details of various sectors including finance, investment, exports, information technology (IT), agriculture, power and petroleum were discussed. He said after the meeting, it was decided that he would personally review the sector-wise performance to solve the problems being faced by the said sectors and to streamline the country’s economy.

Regarding the PIA divestment, he said the privatisation process of Pakistan Airlines was on track and the schedule set for the process would be fully implemented. For the outsourcing of airports, a Turkish company was arriving in Islamabad on April 6, which would negotiate the outsourcing process with the Pakistani authorities.

About digitalisation of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), the PM said consultants for the digitalisation process would be appointed by the end of the current month.

Regarding security of Chinese workers and engineers, he said the government was evolving a fool-proof system.

The prime minister said the cabinet presented the Finance Division’s fiscal policy statement for the financial year 2022-23, debt policy statement for the financial year 2022-23 and year-end government performance monitoring report in the meeting. The federal cabinet approved submission of the above statements/ report to the National Assembly under the laws, he said.

The meeting of the cabinet, on the recommendation of Foreign Affairs Division, allowed former chief of naval staff Admiral Muhammad Amjad Khan Niazi to receive the “King Abdul Aziz Medal Badge of Honour of Excellent Class” on behalf of the Government of Saudi Arabia and “DarjahKepahlawanAngkatanTentera” on behalf of the Government of Malaysia.

On the recommendation of Human Rights Division, the cabinet approved the appointment of members of National Commission for Status of Women.

On the recommendation of Ministry of Human Rights, it approved abolition of the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development, National Child Protection Centre and Implementation of National Line of Action for Children, which are offices working under the Ministry of Human Rights. All employees of these departments, who are civil servants, would be included in the surplus pool.

Meanwhile, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) received forensic report of the mysterious white powder claimed to be anthrax initially, the CTD said on Thursday night.

Sources disclosed that arsenic mixed in white powder was found from the letters; a small quantity of 10 per cent ratio of arsenic poison was mixed in white paper, which is not very harmful compared to powder carrying 70pc arsenic that can affect nerves, added sources.

The anthrax-type white powder was recovered from the mysterious intimidating letters posted to judges of high courts and the Supreme Court of Pakistan, including chief justices of high courts and the apex court the other day.

The CTD lodged two FIRs against unknown people involved in creating fear in the judiciary.

The CTD made some headway on Thursday as the officials engaged in the investigation discovered the location of miscreants and places of mailbox where the letters were dropped. The investigators are heading in the right direction, the CTD claimed.

Earlier, the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) investigating the matter had said that most of the closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras around the post boxes were found out of order.

On March 3, the IHC chief justice among eight judges had received the mysterious letters.

According to sources, a report on the progress made so far had been communicated to the registrars of the Supreme Court and IHC.

Sources said an examination of post boxes located within the Satellite Town, Rawalpindi, is under way. The Islamabad police expanded the scope of investigation, using alternative means, including questioning individuals working in shops and offices in the area of post boxes. Furthermore, all staff at the Satellite Town post office were included in the investigation process.

SABAH adds: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ataullah Tarar has said economy is showing positive indicators as a result of prudent policies introduced by the government. He warned that no politics should be done on national economy, adding that all should have to play role for strengthening the country.

Talking to the media along with Prime Minister’s Coordinator Romina Khurshid Alam in Islamabad on Thursday, Tarar said the Pak Rupee was gaining strength and exchange rate was now more stable. He said the nation today witnessed an upward trajectory in the stock exchange with an increase of record points.

The information minister said the FBR was being digitalised as per the vision of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to improve revenue collection. He said the government was committed to youth empowerment and it would soon launch a comprehensive programme in that regard.

Tarar said international leading financial rating agency Bloomberg had predicted 15 per cent reduction in inflation rate next year. He commended the role of media for positively reporting the privatisation of PIA, as there was no other option to avoid the loss of Rs80 billion being incurred by the airline annually. He said the process of PIA privatisation was moving forward.

Source: thenews.com.pk

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Muzaffargarh Itikaf rape suspect arrested: NCRC

April 04, 2024

The suspect who allegedly raped a minor boy while he was observing Itikaf in Muzaffargarh has been arrested, the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC) said on Thursday.

In a Facebook post, the NCRC said the suspect was taken into custody by the local police. “Taking cognisance of the case, NCRC followed up with the district police office Muzaffargarh and it has been informed that the culprit has been arrested."

The NCRC assured that it would “ensure that justice prevails and the perpetrator is held accountable”.

The 13-year-old boy was observing Itikaf when another individual, who was also observing Itikaf, allegedly raped him. The suspect reportedly managed to escape after the incident and the mosque iman claimed he was threatened with dire consequences.

A medical examination of the survivor was then conducted, with local police assuring that the suspect would be arrested soon.

Earlier, a grade III student seeking medical help was allegedly sexually assaulted by a quack at a local clinic in ChahSewewalaMakhan Chowk.

The young student, experiencing tooth pain, visited a nearby clinic where Dr Zafar Bhakkal administered treatment, including an injection. Exploiting her vulnerability, the doctor sexually assaulted her while she was alone.

A week later, the student's worsening pain led her to confide in her mother, Samira Bibi, who promptly reported the incident to the Saddar Police.

The accused was arrested, and Deputy District Health Officer Dr Muhammad Raza took action by sealing the quack clinic.

Source: tribune.com.pk

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https://tribune.com.pk/story/2461627/muzaffargarh-itikaf-rape-suspect-arrested-ncrc

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IK condemns Israel's genocide in Gaza

 2024-04-05

ISLAMABAD: The former prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday called upon the Muslim leadership to take an effective lead as the people of Gaza are counting on the Muslim World to speak up and act.

In a message from notorious Adiala Jail, he said that “despite people across the world demanding an immediate ceasefire, the powerful continue to remain unmoved as all humanitarian laws, laws of war, the UN Genocide Convention, the Geneva & Vienna Conventions continue to be violated with impunity by Israel”.

He strongly condemned Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza in which over 40,000 innocent Palestinians have been killed and many others are being deliberately starved to death.

“It is high time world leaders not only call for an immediate, total ceasefire but ensure its implementation also”.

“I stand with Gaza,” he concluded.

Source: brecorder.com

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https://www.brecorder.com/news/40297309/ik-condemns-israels-genocide-in-gaza

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Hafiz Naeem elected new Jamaat-i-Islami emir

 April 4, 2024

Hafiz Naeemur Rehman on Thursday was elected as the sixth emir of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) for a five-year term, the party said in an announcement on its official account on X.

It said that he would serve as the party chief from April 2024 to April 2029. He had previously served as the chief of the party’s Karachi chapter.

The party said he was “unanimously elected” by its members for the role and wished him well.

JI Election Commission President Rashid Naseem also announced the results during a press conference in Lahore. He said the party had no definitive candidate for the post of emir but three names had appeared in the press for the slot. Subsequently, the party’s consultative body decided to suggest three names while members were free to choose anyone else they wanted, he said.

Naseem said the voter turnout was 82 per cent and the result was finalised earlier today. He prayed for Rehman’s success and the ability to fulfil the responsibility of his new post.

Hafiz Naeem is the sixth man to occupy the post, following Maulana Abul A’la Maududi (1941-72), Mian Tufail Muhammad (1972-87), Qazi Hussain Ahmed (1987-2008), Munawer Hassan (2008-2013) and Sirajul Haq (2013-2024).

Hafiz Naeem’s predecessor, Sirajul Haq, had initially ended his decade-long run as the head of the party following a humbling defeat in the Feb 8 general elections.

The Jamaat had fielded 243 candidates for the National Assembly and failed to win even one seat. It had given 531 provincial tickets and only managed to secure six — three in KP, two in Sindh and one in Balochistan.

“Despite my best and tireless efforts, the party has not been able to achieve desired results. Workers put in best efforts. God may reward them for those efforts. I accept the responsibility of the defeat and hereby resign as party head,” his resignation letter said.

He had later withdrawn his resignation after the Jamaat Shura, a 100-member governing body, refused to accept it.

In a message congratulating Hafiz Naeem on his win today, Haq prayed that his election would be a source of blessings for the country, the party and the Muslim community.

Former president Arif Alvi prayed for the new JI emir’s success.

“Naeemur Rehman is a positive face of Pakistani politics who has done politics of values ??and principles instead of power, “ PTI leader Asad Qaiser said.

“JI is our main ally in the movement for the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law in the country. It is hoped that the alliance between PTI and JI under the leadership of Hafiz Naeemur Rahman will become stronger,” he said.

PTI’s Haleem Adil Sheikh also congratulated the new JI emir.

Who is Hafiz Naeem?

Hafiz Naeem had won a provincial assembly in the Feb 8 general elections but gave it up on the pretext that it was actually won by the PTI-backed independent candidate and that he was declared the winner only to defuse the pressure of the JI’s resistance and protest against the poll results.

“We don’t want a single vote which is not ours and we won’t give up a single one which was ours,” Hafiz Naeem had told a press conference at the party’s Karachi headquarters.

Despite this, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had notified his victory after an inordinate delay on Monday for the provincial assembly constituency.

Last year, Hafiz Naeem had also contested against PPP’s Murtaza Wahab for Karachi mayor in the Sindh local government elections but lost with 160 votes to Wahab’s 173.

Hafiz Naeem earned a civil engineering degree from NED university and a masters degree from Karachi University in Islamic history. In his formative years, he twice served as the president of the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT), the student wing of the JI.

In 2000, he became a member of JI and in October 2013, he was appointed as the chief of the party’s Karachi chapter. He also serves as the president of the Al-Khidmat Karachi chapter, an NGO associated with the JI.

Water shortage and drainage issues are of significant importance to the JI mayoral candidate. He vowed to see the K-IV project — which hopes to supply 260 million gallons per day (MGD) of water to Karachi — to completion, just like his predecessor Naimatullah Khan had done with the K-III project, 17 years ago.

He has been a vocal critic of the privatisation of public institutions such as K-Electric (KE) and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB). In the latter case, he has threatened to file court cases to prevent such privatisation. In 2021, he opposed subsidies from the government to KE, claiming that the now-private company was making large net profits, while the people of Karachi still suffered from load-shedding and over-billing. He has held protests against KE on multiple occasions over the years.

Source: dawn.com

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South Asia

 

Spokesman: Islamic Emirate Committed to Counterterrorism in Afghanistan

SodabaNazhand

April 4, 2024

The Islamic Emirate considers the concern of some countries at the meeting of the National Security Advisors of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to be misplaced.

The Islamic Emirate denies the presence of terrorist groups in the country and adds that they have undertaken a serious fight against terrorist groups.

HamdullahFetrat, the deputy spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, said, "Some countries claim that there are terrorist groups in Afghanistan and it is a threat, but the Islamic Emirate is committed to fighting terrorist groups and does not allow its territory to be used against any country."

In the 19th meeting of the National Security Advisors of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, some countries including India, Russia, and Kazakhstan expressed their concerns about the presence of terrorist groups and their threats from Afghanistan to the countries in the region.

The Russian news agency TASS, quoting the National Security Advisor of Russia, wrote that these countries have asked the Taliban to fulfill their commitments in the fight against terrorist groups.

"The heads of delegations called on the de facto authorities of Afghanistan to consistently fulfill their obligations in the field of counterterrorism, especially in preventing the activities of international terrorist organizations and other groups based on Afghan soil that pose a serious threat to the SCO space,” Nikolai Patrushev said.

Tariq Farhadi, an international relations expert, told TOLOnews, "ISIS is a group that is an enemy to all, but thank God, the attackers in Moscow did not have any Afghan passports."

According to some Indian media, at this meeting, the National Security Advisor of India also assured that focusing on establishing an inclusive government, preserving the rights of women and minorities are among the immediate priorities of this organization in Afghanistan.

Najib Rahman Shamal, an expert in international relations, said, "In the recent meeting of this organization, the issue of security threats from Afghanistan was discussed again, and the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have asked Afghanistan to take necessary actions regarding the terrorist sanctuaries present in Afghanistan."

The meeting, which was held for two days in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, ended on Thursday. Previously, the United States Department of State had also emphasized the fight of the caretaker government against terrorist groups, adding that their country must ensure that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for terrorists.

Source: tolonews.com

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https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-188153

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12-year-old sacrifices childhood works to support family amid uncertain future

Fidel Rahmati

April 4, 2024

The child is young, but she has taken on the responsibility of providing for her family like adults. At twelve years old, she is in the second grade. However, unaware of the future, she spends half of her day working outside the home.

In the street where Mezhgan is busy polishing shoes, one can see children (both girls and boys) engaged in street work. Mezhgan and other children working alongside her are typically busy with street work from early morning until around seven in the evening, pushed into the streets by various factors, seeking bread. In this report, you’ll read why Mezhgan has become a victim of street work.

Mezhgan works on one of the streets in the fourth district of Kabul city. When asked about her place of residence, she says she lives in this area. According to her, they live in one of the houses known as “Zurabad” by the people.

Most child laborers are forced into hard work on the streets due to economic poverty and the loss of a family breadwinner. However, the reason Mezhgan works is a large number of family members and the expenses of her family: Mezhgan lives in a family of twelve, a result of her parent’s marriage producing nine children, and they live in a rented house.

Other members of Mezhgan’s family also work on the streets like her, but the amount of money they earn is not sufficient for the twelve-member family.

Mezhgan’s father and elder brother, around 16 years old, also work in shoe coloring. However, Mezhgan and her brother lack much skill in this area, so most of the money people give them is in the form of charity. Alongside the items needed for shoe coloring, there are plastic goods, sunshades, and childish trinkets available for sale, from which she earns 3 Afghani for herself.

Mezhgan is twelve years old, but the adverse effects of poverty on children’s growth have made even children of her age appear very weak and small. Living in a poverty-stricken family has brought a high level of stress to Mezhgan, as she is responsible for meeting her family’s expenses or at least bearing part of the burden of providing for her family.

From Mezhgan’s words, it seems she doesn’t have much desire to continue her education because she knows she is expected to stop going to school after the sixth grade. She says her elder sister is the only literate person in the family because she studied until the sixth grade and sometimes helps Mezhgan, but after the Taliban came, she was also deprived of going to school.

The circumstances she finds herself in have deprived her of imagining any kind of future she desires. When asked about her wishes, she responded without hesitation: “I have no wishes.” She has worked for 30 Afghani in half a day’s work. When asked what she does with her money, whether she spends it herself or her parents take it, she responded again without hesitation: “No, I give it all to my family.”

There isn’t much time left until Eid al-Fitr, and people are preparing for this occasion by giving clothes to their children, especially their daughters. The initial preparations start almost fifteen or twenty days in advance, but Mezhgan is supposed to sit in the same place even on the day of Eid, selling goods and items.

Mezhgan smiles as she recalls an Eid when she was sitting by the street, and a wealthy person in a black-windowed car passed by and gifted her 5,000 Afghanis at once.

She says, “I was very happy and got this much for the first time, and it was mine. I quickly went home to the point of being out of breath and gave the money to the family urgently. Then we paid the rent and bought the rest for food, and this Eid was a very happy Eid for us.”

Poverty and destitution in the country have led many children in the capital to engage in hard work instead of going to school. However, the ban on education for girls and the fact that they are left out of education have exacerbated this crisis even further.

Source: khaama.com

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https://www.khaama.com/12-year-old-sacrifices-childhood-works-to-support-family-amid-uncertain-future/

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Deputy PM Calls for Expanded Demining Efforts in Afghanistan

April 4, 2024

April 4 marks the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.

The head of the Demining Department of State Ministry for Disaster Management in a mine awareness program and assistant in demining affairs, says that in the past year, 308 explosion incidents have occurred, resulting in 555 casualties.

NooruddinRostamkhil adds that identifying vulnerable points necessitates serious cooperation from demining organizations and institutions.

The head of the Demining Department of State Ministry for Disaster Management, NooruddinRostamkhil, said: “308 incidents of explosion recorded in 2023 which had 555 casualties across Afghanistan,”

The General Director of Finance and Administration of State Ministry for Disaster Management Abdul Rahman Zahid, said on the matter: “The time has come for Afghanistan to develop through plannings, different plans, programs and implementation of projects,”

Speaking at the program, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Islamic Emirate for political affairs said that Afghanistan is among the countries that, despite fighting this phenomenon, the dangers of mines have not yet been reduced to zero.

Mawlawi Abdul Kabir also asks demining organizations and institutions to expand their activities using the current security situation.

Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, said: “The Islamic Emirate supports demining and asks for implementation of such projects using the current secure situation,”

On the other hand, the acting head of the general directorate of the Islamic Emirate in Administrative Affairs said that the entry of mines and explosive materials into Afghanistan has been prevented and there is no risk of an increase.

Noorulhaq Anwar also adds that the Islamic Emirate is striving to ensure unity in the country.

“The current government’s behavior is to ensure unity, love and affection among people. And that cruelty and barbarism be ended,” he said.

Representative of demining institutions in Afghanistan, Mohammad Shahab Hakimi said: “Not only here but Afghan youth are talented deminers abroad as well,”

Based on the information from demining institutions, eighty percent of Afghanistan's territory has been cleared of unexploded mines, and ten million people have been given awareness about this.

Source: tolonews.com

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https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-188159

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Amnesty International Asks Pakistan to Reverse Refugees Expulsion Plan

Hadiya Ziaye

April 4, 2024

Amnesty International has called for the immediate cancellation of the plan to expel Afghan migrants from Pakistan through a statement.

The organization quoted one of its refugees and migrants campaigners as saying, this plan violates international human rights laws and refugee laws, and is against all international norms.

“The Pakistan authorities’ callous disregard for the persecution, serious human rights violations and humanitarian catastrophe that await Afghan refugees if deported to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is heart-breaking. Instead of heeding repeated global calls to halt deportations, the newly elected Pakistani government has disappointingly now extended the deportation drive to Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders as well,” said James Jennion

On the other hand, the Islamic Emirate's consulate in Pakistan has also reported the release of over 50 Afghan migrants and their return to the country.

Sayed Abdul Jabbar Takhari, the acting consul of the Islamic Emirate in Pakistan’s Karachi said: "Currently, we have around fifty detainees in the prisons of Sindh state. Efforts are ongoing to get them released and returned to country as soon as possible."

As the expulsion of the second round of Afghan migrants from Pakistan is about to begin, some Afghan migrants in that country are worried about their uncertain future.

They criticize the arrest and beating of Afghan migrants by the Pakistani police.

Stanikzai, an Afghan migrant in Pakistan, said: "This is an injustice to us. Whatever agency does this, whether the Pakistani government or the Afghan government, it's an injustice. Our request from everyone is to show mercy on us, we want to return to our homeland at the right time."

Shinwari, another Afghan migrant in Pakistan, says: "This is bad news for Afghan migrants because our businesses are here, and we cannot wrap everything up in a short time."

The first phase of expelling undocumented Afghan migrants from Pakistan began in November 2023, and the second phase, under the name of the repatriation plan which also includes those holding citizenship cards, is set to start on April 10th of the current year.

Source: tolonews.com

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https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-188162

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Rights violations: Home ministry snubs two-thirds of NHRC enquiry requests

Apr 5, 2024

Zyma Islam

Nearly two-thirds of the enquiry requests made by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to the home ministry regarding cases of human rights violations by law enforcement agencies have gone unheeded.

The commission now seeks the power to investigate the disciplined forces itself and has proposed that the law be amended to that end.

The founding law of the organisation, National Human Rights Commission Act-2009, restricts the commission from investigating any disciplined forces, including police and Rab.

The law only allows the NHRC to request reports and information from the home ministry, or recommend that the ministry conduct investigations.

Since 2012, the NHRC had made 122 such requests to the home ministry for reports, of which only 44 were adequately responded to, shows the commission's annual report.

In 24 cases, the NHRC had did not find the responses to be acceptable and returned the reports asking for reassessment.

"The commission is waiting for reports in 71 cases. Out of them, the commission has urged multiple times in the case of 27 complaints, but has not received any form of response," said the report. 

"We want section 18 of the NHRC act, which restricts the commission, to be done away with. We have proposed an amendment to the law. The commission should be able to investigate any and all for human rights violations," NHRC Chairman Kamal Uddin Ahmed told The Daily Star.

"The state does not shelter anyone who does wrong."

He went on to say that while the disciplined forces have their own investigation mechanisms, the NHRC can focus particularly on whether human rights violations have taken place.

"This will not harm anyone in the forces, but rather help identify wrongdoers."

The annual report shows that over the past year, the NHRC questioned the home ministry about 53 cases of human rights violations, in which accusations arose against the law enforcement agencies, and 33 of those are yet to be responded to. In about half of these incidents, the rights body had conducted suomotu (voluntary) interventions.

They noted that in six cases of custodial deaths and five cases of extrajudicial killings picked up from the media, there were no records of legal cases being filed.

This legal shortcoming has been one of the reasons why Bangladesh's NHRC is considered a "Category B" organisation by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI).

All the national human rights institutions of the world are assessed by GANHRI on how compliant they are with the Paris Principles, which are the international benchmark for national human rights institutions.

Category A is given to fully compliant institutions.

In addition to section 18, the NHRC also seeks to institute regulations concerning enquiry, investigation and settlements. It also regularises the posts at the commission and allows its staffers government pensions.

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/serve-people-secure-their-votes-future-3582351

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Arms supply to Israel must stop: foreign minister

Apr 4, 2024

Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud today hoped that those who supply weapons to Israel, used for killing innocent people, will realise their wrongdoing and stop the arms supply.

"We expect the Western world will realise and take steps against Israel. We, the government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, were beside Palestinians, we are with them, and we will continue to stand beside them," he told reporters, reacting to the Israeli air strike on aid workers in Gaza that also killed three British citizens.

The foreign minister said that people, including innocent children and women, are being killed in Gaza with the arms supplied by the Western countries.

"Even, aid workers are being killed. This is something beyond imagination. We expect arms supply to Israel will be stopped," Hasan said.

He said brutality and killings continue in Gaza by the Israeli forces who are not even taking the UN resolution into consideration.

Israeli airstrikes that killed seven aid workers in Gaza reverberated around the world, as friends and relatives mourned the losses of those who were delivering food to besieged Palestinians with the charity, World Central Kitchen.

Among those killed were three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish citizen, an American-Canadian, and a Palestinian. Some had traveled the world, participating in aid efforts in the aftermath of wars, earthquakes, and wildfires.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has recently written to president of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, and reiterated her pledge to support his endeavors in obtaining full membership of Palestine in the United Nations through advocacy in all international forums and beyond.

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/diplomacy/news/arms-supply-israel-must-stop-foreign-minister-3582186

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BNP can't come to right track under Tarique's leadership: Quader

Apr 4, 2024

Awami League General Secretary and Road Transport and Bridges Minister ObaidulQuader today said as long as BNP will remain under the leadership of its acting chairman Tarique Rahman, it cannot come to right track.

"Fugitive convict Tarique Rahman is the curse of BNP. As long as he will lead the BNP, the party cannot come to right path. It will remain stuck in the quicksand of errors," he told a view-exchange meeting at AL's Bangabandhu Avenue central office here.

The meeting was held as part of taking preparation for observing Mujibnagar Day on April 17. Khulna divisional leaders of the party also joined the meeting.

Quader said it has become painful for BNP leaders to accept the "free style" leadership of Tarique Rahman who is giving order from London.

The BNP leaders are now realising that as long as Tarique leads the party, it will stay stuck in the quicksand of mistakes.

The AL general secretary asked Tarique Rahman to come home if he has courage to do politics. "If you have courage, come home and do politics. Have the courage to go to jail. The people will not respond to your call from London," he said.

Even some BNP leaders also dub the party's call for movement as fake, he said.

The minister said BNP has failed in movement and elections while their call for boycotting Indian products has also failed.

"Indian products are in bedrooms and kitchens of BNP leaders. That is why BNP's so-called call for boycotting Indian products is hypocrisy," he said.

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/politics/news/bnp-cant-come-right-track-under-tariques-leadership-quader-3582171

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Work for people, don’t lose their trust, PM tells public representatives

Apr 4, 2024

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today asked public representatives of local government bodies to work with utmost sincerity for the welfare of the people.

"Don't lose public trust and confidence in any way. So, work for the people accordingly, standing by them," she said.

The premier was addressing the oath-taking ceremony of newly elected mayors of Cumilla and Mymensingh city corporations and chairmen of five zillaparishads, and councillors of Mymensingh City Corporation at Shapla Hall of her office in the morning.

She said her government made development in every area of the country and the grassroots people are in the focus of the development works.

"Every village would be transformed into a township. A radical change has already been there, which you can see," she said.

The prime minister asked the public representatives to work for the continuation of the current development trend by keeping the promises they made to the people.

She cited that Bangladesh would finally be graduated as a developing country in 2026.

"In this context, I'm urging you to stand beside the people with sincerity, serve them and work for them in a bid to continue the current trend of socio-economic development," she said.

Earlier, she administered oaths to the first female mayor-elect of Cumilla City Corporation Tahsin Bahar Suchona and elected mayor of Mymensingh City Corporation Ekramul Haque Titu.

The PM also administered oaths to the newly elected chairmen of five ZilaParishads -- Kurigram, Thakurgaon, Sirajganj, Brahmanbaria and Habiganj – in the same function. The five chairman of ZilaParishads are ANM Obaidur Rahman of Kurigram, Abdul Majid of Thakurgaon, Shamim Talukder of Sirajganj, Billal Miah of Brahmanbaria and Aleya Akhter of Habigan

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/work-people-dont-lose-their-trust-pm-tells-public-representatives-3581891

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Southeast Asia

 

Myanmar’s worst violence since the military takeover is intensifying the crisis, the UN says

April 05, 2024

UNITED NATIONS: Myanmar’s escalating conflict and worst violence since the military takeover in 2021 are having a devastating impact on human rights, fundamental freedoms and basic needs of millions of people — as well as “alarming spillover effects” in the region, UN officials said Thursday.

Assistant Secretary-General for political affairs Khaled Khiari told the UN Security Council that “the civilian toll keeps rising” amid reports of indiscriminate bombing by Myanmar’s armed forces and artillery shelling by various parties.

The nationwide armed conflict in Myanmar began after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule.

Thousands of young people fled to jungles and mountains in remote border areas as a result of the military’s suppression and made common cause with ethnic guerrilla forces battle-hardened by decades of combat with the army in pursuit of autonomy.

Despite its great advantage in armaments and manpower, the military has been unable to quell the resistance movement. Over the past five months, the army has been routed in northern Shan state, is conceding swaths of territory in Rakhine state in the west, and is under growing attack elsewhere.

Myanmar’s main pro-democracy resistance group said Thursday its armed wing launched drone attacks on the airport and a military headquarters in the capital, Naypyitaw, but the ruling military said it destroyed the drones as they attacked. It wasn’t possible to independently verify most details of the incident, but the military’s acknowledgement that it had taken place

in one of the country’s most heavily guarded locations will be seen by many as the latest indication that it is losing the initiative.

Khiari did not mention the attack but said the National Unity Consultative Council — formed after the 2021 military takeover to promote a return to democracy and comprising ethnic, political, civil society and resistance groups — convened its Second People’s Assembly on Thursday “to further define their common vision for the future of Myanmar.”

He singled out the fighting between the Arakan Army and the military in Rakhine State, Myanmar’s poorest, which he said “has reached an unprecedented level of violence.”

“The Arakan Army has reportedly gained territorial control over most of central Rakhine and seeks to expand to northern Rakhine” where many minority Rohingya Muslims still live, he said.

The Buddhist Rakhine are the majority ethnic group in Rakhine, which is also known by its older name of Arakan, and have long sought autonomy. They have set up their own well-trained and well-armed force called the Arakan Army.

Members of the Rohingya minority have long been persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. About 740,000 fled from Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh when the military in August 2017 launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in response to attacks in Rakhine by a guerrilla group claiming to represent the Rohingya.

Khiari urged all parties in Rakhine to support the Rohingya, who are caught in the middle of the conflict and continue to experience “significant restrictions” on their freedom of movement as well as denial of citizenship and disproportionate vulnerability to abduction or forced recruitment.

The crisis continues to spill over the borders and added that conflicts in key border areas have weakened security, Khiari said. The breakdown in the rule of law has enabled illicit economies to thrive, with criminal networks preying on vulnerable people with no livelihoods.

“Myanmar has become a global epicenter of methamphetamine and opium production, along with a rapid expansion of global cyber-scam operations, particularly in border areas,” he said. “What began as a regional crime threat in Southeast Asia is now a rampant human trafficking and illicit trade crisis with global implications.”

Senior UN humanitarian official Lisa Doughten said the ongoing escalation has left 12.9 million people — nearly 25 percent of Myanmar’s population — without enough food, stressing that children and pregnant women face malnutrition.

“Across Myanmar, the humanitarian community estimates that some 18.6 million people will need humanitarian assistance in 2024 — a nineteen-fold increase since February 2021,” she said.

Doughten said the health system is also in turmoil, with medicines running out. She appealed for urgent funding to assist millions in need, saying the 2023 appeal for $887 million was only 44 percent funded, causing 1.1 million people to be cut off from aid.

Both Khiari and Doughten echoed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a unified international response to the escalating conflict, and for neighboring countries especially to use their influence to open humanitarian channels, end the violence, and seek a political solution.

Khiari said Guterres intends to appoint a new UN special envoy for Myanmar soon to engage with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and other key parties toward those goals.

Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the council, however, that “the Myanmar military refuses to engage meaningfully with international efforts to reach a peaceful solution to the crisis.”

But she stressed, “We will not allow Myanmar to become a forgotten crisis.”

Calling Myanmar “our longstanding friend and close partner,” Russia’s UN Ambassador VassilyNebenzia objected to the meeting, saying the country doesn’t threaten international peace and security.

He accused Western nations of supporting armed opposition groups and destabilizing Rakhine and camps for the displaced “for the advancement of their own geopolitical concerns in the region.”

Source: arabnews.com

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https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488361/world

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PAS sec-gen tells interfaith council to stop being a ‘busybody’ over proposed amendments to Act 355

05 Apr 2024

KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 — PAS secretary-general Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan today slammed an interfaith council for saying the proposed amendments to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (Act 355), which includes the proposal to increase penalties for Shariah criminal offences, would be unconstitutional.

Takiyuddin said the statement by the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) was misguided and problematic.

He said that the proposed amendments to Act 355 do not contradict any provision or basic premise of the Federal Constitution (FC), and therefore, are valid and constitutional.

“The council views the proposed amendments as unconstitutional and against the basic principles of the Federal Constitution on the grounds that the related criminal offences are already part of existing criminal laws under the Federal Constitution.

“First of all, as an organisation that aims to create understanding, mutual respect and cooperation between followers of various religions, MCCBCHST should not interfere in Islamic affairs and their administration, which has a special position as the Federal Religion.

“The religious rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution for religions in Malaysia also cover the Islamic religion and must be obeyed and respected by all parties and groups,” he said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Malay Mail reported MCCBCHST as saying that the amendments to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (Act 355) will be unconstitutional as such offences are already part of existing criminal laws enumerated under the Federal Constitution.

MCCBCHST said that the enhanced sentencing powers granted to Shariah Courts would allow for hudud-related offences — like theft, robbery, adultery, sodomy and intoxication — to be tried under Islamic criminal law.

Takiyuddin said that the “contradiction or legal polemic” raised by MCCBCHST is completely unrelated to its legal position and role as a religious consultation council.

He also pointed out that the council did not provide any evidence or examples of how the amendments to the Islamic law would have an impact on the practice of non-Islamic religions in the country.

“Does MCCBCHST playing the role of busybodies or ghost intermeddlers (orang hantutengah) now?” he asked.

Takiyuddin also said that MCCBCHST’s statement could be interpreted as the council standing in the way of Muslims strengthening their religious bonds with irrelevant objections and misguided narratives.

“Once again, the actual motive and agenda of the council is called into question; thus, potentially creating an atmosphere of disharmony between races and religions,” he said.

He also said the council failed to understand the current climate of sensitivity and had raised the issue at an inappropriate time as Muslims regard the last 10 days of Ramadan as the holiest and most meaningful throughout the fasting month.

“During this period, Muslims focus on increasing their acts of worship, be it by reading the Quran, meditating in the mosque, doing charity or performing all kinds of good deeds in pursuit of the rewards promised by God.

“But unfortunately, this period was deliberately singled out as a time to lobby objections and polemics at the Muslim community without considering the effect it will have on their peace and well-being when performing acts of worship,” he said.

Takiyuddin then urged Putrajaya to take appropriate action and immediately respond to MCCBCHST’s statement, which he said was outrageous and provocative.

Source: malaymail.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2024/04/05/pas-sec-gen-tells-interfaith-council-to-stop-being-a-busybody-over-proposed-amendments-to-act-355/127414

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8 mosques to offer 3 sessions for Hari Raya prayers

 APR 05, 2024

SINGAPORE – Over two-thirds of the 68 mosques that will accommodate prayers on the morning of Hari Raya Aidilfitri will offer more than one session, said the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis) on April 4.

Out of these mosques, 19 will conduct one session, 41 will offer two sessions, and eight will have three sessions.

The session timings are 7.20am, 8.45am and 9.45am.

Hari Raya Aidilfitri falls on April 10.

Additionally, 34 mosque-affiliated qaryahs, or community groups, will offer supplementary spaces to Muslims seeking prayer sessions closer to their homes.

The two qaryah sessions will be at 8.15am and 9.30am. The second session will take place only at QaryahPandan Gardens. The list of venues for the supplementary spaces can be found on Muis’ website here.

The 68 mosques are expected to accommodate up to 228,760 people, the council added.

The only session where booking is required is for the first session at Darul Ghufran mosque in Tampines. The booking can be done at https://book.masjids.sg/ from 10am on April 5, according to the booking website and Muis’ website.

Sultan Mosque in Kampong Glam will also be the only mosque to conduct prayers at 8.45am for the first session, with the second session there beginning at 9.45am.

Mosques with prayer sessions at 9.45am may require a 15-minute grace period, and start at 10am instead, Muis said.

A full list of the mosques and details on the sessions they are holding can be found on Muis’ website here.

Source: straitstimes.com

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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/8-mosques-to-offer-3-sessions-for-hari-raya-prayers

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Unsold, leftover food at Ramadan bazaars in Malaysia raises concerns over wastage

05 Apr 2024

AfifahAriffin

KUALA LUMPUR: Tonnes of excess food left unsold at Ramadan bazaars in Malaysia have raised concerns over food wastage in the country.

These bazaars, popular among locals and tourists, bustle with life during the holy month of Ramadan. Vendors prepare and sell a vibrant array of delicacies and traditional dishes daily.

But amidst the festive atmosphere lies the hidden challenge of food waste.

INCREASE IN WASTE DURING FASTING MONTH

If nothing is done to reduce wastage, Malaysia would waste around 75,000 tonnes of food during Ramadan, or about 15 to 20 per cent more compared to other months, according to the Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation last year.

The wastage pollutes the environment, and also raises concerns about food security and ethical consumption, said observers.

Various organisations have since stepped up to address the problem of Ramadan food waste.

Volunteers from the MySaveFood programme, for instance, collect surplus food from more than 130 bazaars across the country, organise it and then distribute it to the underprivileged.

“If we don't save the excess food, it will be wasted and end up in landfills,” said MySaveFood deputy director AniadilaKamaruddin.

“The programme has had a significant impact on the lower-income recipients, who are touched by the donations as many struggle to afford the food due to high prices.”

Since MySaveFood was launched in 2016, it has made great strides. Last year, it saved 20 tonnes of food from these bazaars.

In the first three weeks of this year’s Ramadan, MySaveFood has already saved more than 54 tonnes of food, worth around US$126,000.

The programme, which now has more than 2,000 volunteers, urged bazaar-goers to plan ahead and buy only what they need.

Vendors can also reduce waste by adjusting the quantities they sell and preserving the food sustainably, it added.

Volunteer Adamsyam Daniel said he wanted to give back to the community by helping to salvage bazaar food for charity purposes.

“Right now, I feel we have two main problems in our daily lives, which are excess food and many who are in hunger,” he added.

“We want to raise awareness among all communities about these food issues.”

Some organisations are also mobilising their staff and volunteers to visit Ramadan bazaars to hand out flyers on overbuying and wasting food.

Despite the challenges, the collective efforts of various stakeholders are making a difference in tackling the food waste issue in the country, said observers.

They noted that by promoting a culture of responsible consumption and sustainable practices, Malaysia’s Ramadan bazaars can continue to be a symbol of community spirit while reducing their environmental footprint.

Source: channelnewsasia.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/unsold-leftover-excess-food-malaysia-ramadan-bazaars-wastage-impact-environment-volunteer-needy-4244751

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Jailed former Malaysia premier Najib Razak seeks to serve remaining sentence under house arrest

April 05, 2024

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Najib Razak is seeking to serve the rest of his prison term under house arrest, two months after his sentence in a corruption case was reduced by half.

His surprise application filed Wednesday said he had “clear information” that then-king Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah issued an order during the Jan. 29 pardon’s board meeting, which cut his 12-year jail sentence by half and sharply reduced a fine, allowing him to finish his sentence under house arrest.

Najib asked the court to have the government verify and carry out the order. His application was due to be heard Thursday but was postponed to April 17.

Sultan Abdullah hails from Najib’s hometown of Pahang. He ended his five-year reign on Jan. 30 under Malaysia’s unique rotating monarchy system. A new king took office on Jan. 31.

Najib, 70, has served less than two years of his sentence, supposed to end on Aug. 23, 2028, after his sentence was commuted. He was charged and found guilty in a corruption case linked to the multibillion-dollar looting of state fund 1MDB.

In his application, he accused the pardons board, home minister and the attorney-general among seven entities of concealing the sultan’s order “in bad faith.”

Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told reporters later Thursday that he has “no knowledge” of such an order, adding that he wasn’t a member of the pardons board.

The others named in the application couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

Najib set up the 1MDB development fund shortly after he took office in 2009. Investigators allege at least $4.5 billion was stolen from the fund and laundered by Najib’s associates through layers of bank accounts in the US and other countries and financed Hollywood films and extravagant purchases that included hotels, a luxury yacht, art and jewelry. More than $700 million landed in Najib’s bank accounts.

The national outrage over the scandal led to the shocking 2018 election defeat of the party that had governed Malaysia since independence. Najib was sentenced in 2020 and two years later, he lost his final appeal in court, becoming the country’s first former premier to be imprisoned.

Despite his conviction, Najib still holds clout in his party, the United Malays National Organization, which is part of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government that took power after the 2022 elections.

Najib has maintained his innocence, alleging that Malaysian financier Low TaekJho duped him. Low, thought to be the mastermind of the scandal, remains at large.

The former premier’s separate graft trial over the 1MDB scandal is ongoing.

Source: arabnews.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488416/world

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Africa

 

Mixed reactions in Uganda after constitutional court rejects bid to nullify anti-homosexuality laws

APRIL 04, 2024

People in Uganda reacted with mixed views after the country’s Constitutional Court upheld Wednesday an anti-gay law that allows the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality".

The law in question defines “aggravated homosexuality” as cases of homosexual relations involving a minor and other categories of vulnerable people, or when the perpetrator is infected with HIV.

The court in the Ugandan capital Kampala rejected the petitioners' request to quash the law despite widespread condemnation from rights groups and others abroad.

President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill into law in May last year.

The law is supported by many in the East African country, where some see it as behaviour imported from abroad and not a sexual orientation.

Constitutional Court judges said the law was legally passed by parliament and does not violate the constitution.

Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda under a colonial-era law criminalizing sexual activity “against the order of nature.”

The punishment for that offense is life imprisonment.

A suspect convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” can be imprisoned for up to 14 years, and the offense of “attempted homosexuality” is punishable by up to 10 years.

The court, however, ruled that members of the gay community should not be discriminated against when seeking medication.

Uganda was one of the earliest and hardest hit countries when AIDS emerged, and public health experts have long warned against letting stigma or fear of punishment impede access to care.

In Kampala, many Ugandans expressed mixed feelings over the ruling.

But members of the LGBTQI community were quick to cast a dark shadow on the court’s decision, saying it will worsen their already desperate situation.

Some lawyers for the petitioners said after the judgment that they will now turn to the Supreme Court, hoping it will overturn the law.

omosexuality is criminalized in more than 30 of Africa’s 54 countries.

Source: africanews.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://www.africanews.com/2024/04/04/mixed-reactions-in-uganda-after-constitutional-court-rejects-bid-to-nullify-anti-homosexua/

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Military releases names of killed B’Haram commanders

5th April 2024

Solomon Odeniyi

The Defence Headquarters on Thursday released the names of terrorist kingpins killed during different operations in the northern part of the country.

The DHQ noted that the terrorist commanders were killed in operations between January and March 2024.

The names of the terror kingpins are Abu Bilal Minuki (aka AbubakarMainok) – Head of Is-Al Furqan Province (ISGS and ISWAP) and HarunaIsiyaBoderi. He was described as a notorious terrorist who operated along BirninGwari Forest in Kaduna State, as well as the Abuja-Kaduna highway.

The military said he was killed by troops on February 24.

SPORTS EXTRA: Arsenal, Man city, And Liverpool In Tough Title Race0:00 / 1:01

Others were KachallahDamina, neutralised on March 24 by troops, alongside over 50 combatants; KachallahAlhaji Dayi, Kachallah Idi (Namaidaro), KachallahKabiru (Doka), KachallahAzarailu (Farin-Ruwa), KachallahBalejo, Ubangida, AlhajiBaldu, among several others.

Director, Defence Media Operations, Maj. Gen. Edward Buba, revealed the names to journalists during a briefing in Abuja.

“The above was achieved through synchronised strikes between the ground and air forces on terrorist enclaves. For instance, immediately upon acquisition of vital targets, fighter jets are scrambled to carry out major bombarding raids on significant terrorist enclaves,” Buba added.

He said a total of 2,351 terrorists were killed, 2,308 arrested and 1,241 kidnap hostages rescued during the period under review.

Buba said, “Troops equally conducted ambushes, raids, fighting patrols and offensive against the terrorists. The attacks and offensive actions by troops during the period led to 2,351 terrorists neutralised, 2,308 terrorists arrested and 1,241 kidnap hostages rescued. Furthermore, troops recovered 2,847 weapons and 58,492 caches of ammunition.”

On the operations against crude oil theft, Buba said stolen products worth N20bn were recovered by troops between January and March.

He said, “Troops denied the oil theft of an estimated sum over N20,331,713,910. About 21,573,310 litres of stolen crude oil, 2,723,430 litres of illegally refined AGO, 53,300 litres of DPK and 52,730 litres of PMS, amongst other items, were recovered.”

Source: punchng.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://punchng.com/military-releases-names-of-killed-bharam-commanders/

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Yusuf launches distribution of 4th Ramadan palliatives, warns against diversion

April 4, 2024

FavourLashem

Gov. Abba Yusuf of Kano State has inaugurated the fourth distribution of Ramadan palliatives in 44 local government areas of the state, warning against diversion of the foodstuff.

Yusuf launched the exercise for the needy and the vulnerable on Wednesday at the Tiamin Rice Mill in Dawakin Kudu Local Government Area of the state.

He warned that anyone of those in charge of distribution of the palliatives found diverting them, would be dealt with according to the law.

“I swear to God that anyone found diverting the palliatives will be dealt with decisively and according to the law. This government will not allow anyone to sabotage this exercise,” he said.

National growth LS

The governor said the palliatives were made of 25 kilogramme bags of rice meant to ease the hardships being faced by the intended beneficiaries, during the current Ramadan fasting.

He said 224,440 bags of the commodity would be distributed to the three senatorial districts in the state for onward sharing to the target beneficiaries.

He apologised to the people of the state for their patience as the rice was being processed and bagged for distribution.

Yusuf said that his administration would continue to intervene “until hunger is eradicated among our people”.

He thanked the Aliko Dangote Foundation, other groups and individuals for distributing their own palliatives to the needy during the holy month, and prayed Allah to reward them abundantly.

The governor also thanked the people for their support and prayers, especially during the 2023 governorship election and the ensuing legal battles “which to the glory of God, we won emphatically”.

Earlier, Chairman of the state Palliatives Distribution and Compliance Committee, Dr AbdullahiBichi, said the exercise was the fourth in the series of distribution of palliatives to the people.

Bichi, also the Secretary to the State Government, commended Yusuf for the gesture, which he said would immensely alleviate their hardships. (NAN)

Source: newsdiaryonline.com

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https://newsdiaryonline.com/yusuf-launches-distribution-of-4th-ramadan-palliatives-warns-against-diversion/

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Turkish Embassy distributes food aid among vulnerable Muslims in South Sudan

Benjamin Takpiny

04.04.2024

JUBA, South Sudan (AA) – The Turkish Embassy in South Sudan on Thursday distributed food aid among vulnerable Muslims in South Sudan as part of aid provided during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The food packages containing cooking oil, maize flour, tea, sugar, rice, soap, and lentils were handed over to about 400 Muslims in South Sudan by the Turkish Embassy in coordination with the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) and South Sudan Islamic Council.

Turkish ambassador to South Sudan, ErdemMutaf, said that since the start of Ramadan, Turkish aid agencies and charities are active in South Sudan, reaching out to those in need.

“Türkiye always stands with South Sudanese on every occasion,” he said, adding that assistance and humanitarian aid are not limited to Ramadan only.

He said that since he assumed his duty in South Sudan, they have very good cooperation with the South Sudan Islamic Council.

“We thank TIKA director Abdullah Sari, as with their efforts and contributions, we organized today’s event of food distribution.”

He said that for the last two weeks, the Turkish Diyanet Foundation distributed food packages to 10,000 families in five different areas in Juba.

The Turkish Embassy, in cooperation with South Sudan Refugee Council, will be reaching out to people in Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile in the future, he said.

Abdallah Baraj, the secretary-general of the South Sudan Islamic Council, thanked the Turkish government and its humanitarian and charity organizations for their support in South Sudan.

Khamis Jaden, one of the beneficiaries, thanked the Turkish government for giving them food during this difficult time when they don’t have anything to eat.

“I have now received food from Türkiye for the Ramadan. I thank the ambassador and the TIKA for reaching out to us.”

Fatma Ahmed Silliman, another aid recipient, said they are very happy about the support given to them by the Turkish Embassy.

Source: aa.com.tr

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/turkish-embassy-distributes-food-aid-among-vulnerable-muslims-in-south-sudan/3183944

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URL:

New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism

 

 New Age Islam News Bureau

5 April 2024

 

The Allahabad High Court has declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional” and violative of the principles of secularism. (HT_PRINT)

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·         Supreme Court Bench Headed By Chief Justice Stays Allahabad HC Order Striking Down UP Madrasa Law

·         Indian Government Ordered Killings In Pakistan, Indian And Pakistani Intelligence Operatives Officials Claim

·         US Threatens Policy Shift If Israeli Excesses Continue

·         2nd Saudi Cinema Nights Series Of International Film Screening Begins This Month

·         US’s Ongoing Arms Supplies For Israel Exposes Washington’s Hypocrisy: Houthi

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India

·         Lok Sabha Polls in Ramzan: Muslim Candidates Keep Meals Light, Meetings Indoors, Speeches Short

·         Congress Manifesto Has Big Promise For LGBTQ+ Couples: ‘Will Bring Law For Civil Unions’

·         SC rejects plea for bringing mortal remains of India-born Pak Sufi saint from Bangladesh

·         Mathura Mosque Matter Beyond Remit Of Waqf Tribunal, Argues Hindu Side

·         Rajasthan: Hindus Protest Against Religious Conversion, Madarsa Targeted

·         JD(S) leader Kumaraswamy says every Muslim will require protection and PM Modi will ensure it

·         India urges Israel to ensure safety and well-being of Indian workers

·         India Voices 'Concern' Over Israeli Airstrike on Iranian Consulate

·         India dismisses report claiming it ordered targeted killings of wanted terrorists in Pakistan

·         J&K: Mirwaiz Put Under 'House Arrest', Jamia Masjid Closed Ahead of Prayers

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Europe

·         Putin Dismisses Claims Russia May Come Under Attack By 'Islamic Fundamentalists'

·         Norway detains Quran blasphemer, plans to deport him to Sweden

·         Far-right Dutch politician’s journey from banning to promoting Islam

·         UK Civil Servants Request To Stop Work Over Arms Sales To Israel: Report

·         France And Its Allies Could Have Stopped The Rwandan Genocide: Macron

·         Spanish NGO halts Gaza aid work over deadly attack

·         Spanish PM warns EU may re-evaluate relations with Israel

·         East London Mosque Serves Up 1,000 Iftar Meals A Day During Ramadan

·         Kremlin Critic Examines Moscow’s Attempts To Blame Others For Islamic State Attack

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North America

·         Canadian Winnipeg Mosque Vandalized By Two Weapon-Wielding Suspects

·         Pro-Palestinian protest vote campaign in New York claims victory against Biden

·         US Muslims Angry Over Biden's Support to Israel, Turns Down White House's Iftar Dinner Invite

·         Biden finally calls for Gaza ceasefire in call with Netanyahu

·         Israel to increase Gaza aid routes after US pressure, White House says

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Arab World

·         Art Exhibition Displays Senses And Spirituality During Ramadan

·         ‘Digital Bags’ program launched at holy mosques

·         Prophet's Mosque Sees 4,700 Worshippers Observe Itikaf in Last 10 Days of Ramadan

·         Hira Cultural District in Mecca: A spiritual experience for Umrah performers and visitors

·         Over 20 million worshippers visit Prophet's Mosque in first 20 days of Ramadan

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Mideast

·         Millions Rally On Quds Day To Condemn Israeli Genocide, Support Palestinians

·         Islamic Jihad warns Israel against harming Al-Aqsa Mosque

·         Türkiye Asks NATO Members To Back Ankara's Fight Against Terrorism: Top Diplomat

·         High Court gives government six days to submit answers on Gaza humanitarian crisis

·         Israel says will allow ‘temporary’ aid through northern Gaza border

·         Hezbollah strikes Israeli troops, military vehicles in support of Gaza

·         Israeli Strike On Gaza Building Killed 106 In ‘Apparent War Crime’: HRW

·         Iran calls for full support for Palestinians on Quds Day

·         Muslim bloc calls for urgent cease-fire in Gaza ahead of Eid al-Fitr

·         Türkiye hopes to share Ramadan together ‘under the flag of a free Palestine’: Parliament speaker

·         McDonald’s to acquire franchised restaurants in Israel amid boycott calls

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Pakistan

·         Pakistan Condemns Attacks: 10 Iran Security Personnel Killed In Sistan-Baluchistan

·         Islamabad rally vandalism: Verdict on acquittal pleas of IK, others reserved

·         Foreign ministry ‘unmoved’ by cipher’s loss, lawyer Salman Safdar tells IHC

·         PM calls for global role to halt Israeli oppression against Palestinians

·         Threat letters to judges: PM promises credible probe into sensitive matter

·         Muzaffargarh Itikaf rape suspect arrested: NCRC

·         IK condemns Israel's genocide in Gaza

·         Hafiz Naeem elected new Jamaat-i-Islami emir

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South Asia

·         Spokesman: Islamic Emirate Committed to Counterterrorism in Afghanistan

·         12-year-old sacrifices childhood works to support family amid uncertain future

·         Deputy PM Calls for Expanded Demining Efforts in Afghanistan

·         Amnesty International Asks Pakistan to Reverse Refugees Expulsion Plan

·         Rights violations: Home ministry snubs two-thirds of NHRC enquiry requests

·         Arms supply to Israel must stop: foreign minister

·         BNP can't come to right track under Tarique's leadership: Quader

·         Work for people, don’t lose their trust, PM tells public representatives

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Southeast Asia

·         Myanmar’s Worst Violence Since The Military Takeover Is Intensifying The Crisis, The UN Says

·         PAS sec-gen tells interfaith council to stop being a ‘busybody’ over proposed amendments to Act 355

·         8 mosques to offer 3 sessions for Hari Raya prayers

·         Unsold, leftover food at Ramadan bazaars in Malaysia raises concerns over wastage

·         Jailed former Malaysia premier Najib Razak seeks to serve remaining sentence under house arrest

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Africa

·         Mixed Reactions In Uganda After Constitutional Court Rejects Bid To Nullify Anti-Homosexuality Laws

·         Military releases names of killed B’Haram commanders

·         Yusuf launches distribution of 4th Ramadan palliatives, warns against diversion

·         Turkish Embassy distributes food aid among vulnerable Muslims in South Sudan

Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau

URL:

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Supreme Court Bench Headed By Chief Justice Stays Allahabad HCOrder Striking Down UP Madrasa Law

 

The Allahabad High Court has declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional” and violative of the principles of secularism. (HT_PRINT)

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April 5, 2024

Weeks after the Allahabad High Court had declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional”, the Supreme Court on Friday stayed the judgment.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud also issued notices to the Centre, Uttar Pradesh government and others on the pleas against the high court order.

The High Court had stated that the Act violated “the principle of secularism” as well as fundamental rights provided under Article 14 of the Constitution.

Supreme Court stays Allahabad High Court order which declared the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, “unconstitutional”. @IndianExpress

The High Court had had also directed the state government to “take steps forthwith for accommodating the madrasa students in regular schools recognised under the Primary Education Board and schools recognised under the High School and Intermediate Education Board of the state of Uttar Pradesh”.

Uttar Pradesh has a total of 16,513 recognised and 8,449 unrecognised madrasas with nearly 25 lakh students. The madrasa Act is also “violative of Section 22 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956”, the High Court bench had said.

After going through the madrasa syllabi, the court said that students are required to study Islam and its doctrines to progress to the next class and that modern subjects are either included or offered as optional, and that they have the choice to study just one optional subject.

Source: indianexpress.com

Please click the following URL to read the text of the original Story

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/sc-stays-allahabad-high-court-order-up-madrasa-law-9252859/

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Indian Government Ordered Killings In Pakistan, Indian And Pakistani Intelligence Operatives Officials Claim

 

Saleem Rehmani being detained in 2010. His killing in 2022, previously reported as the result of a suspected armed robbery, was allegedly planned out of the UAE. Photograph: Farooq Khan/EPA

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Hannah Ellis-Petersen, Aakash Hassan and Shah Meer Baloch

4 Apr 2024

The Indian government assassinated individuals in Pakistan as part of a wider strategy to eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil, according to Indian and Pakistani intelligence operatives who spoke to the Guardian.

Interviews with intelligence officials in both countries, as well as documents shared by Pakistani investigators, shed new light on how India’s foreign intelligence agency allegedly began to carry out assassinations abroad as part of an emboldened approach to national security after 2019. The agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (Raw), is directly controlled by the office of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, who is running for a third term in office in elections later this month.

The accounts appear to give further weight to allegations that Delhi has implemented a policy of targeting those it considers hostile to India. While the new allegations refer to individuals charged with serious and violent terror offences, India has also been accused publicly by Washington and Ottawa of involvement in the murders of dissident figures including a Sikh activist in Canada and of a botched assassination attempt on another Sikh in the US last year.

The fresh claims relate to almost 20 killings since 2020, carried out by unknown gunmen in Pakistan. While India has previously been unofficially linked to the deaths, this is the first time Indian intelligence personnel have discussed the alleged operations in Pakistan, and detailed documentation has been seen alleging Raw’s direct involvement in the assassinations.

The allegations also suggest that Sikh separatists in the Khalistan movement were targeted as part of these Indian foreign operations, both in Pakistan and the west.

According to Pakistani investigators, these deaths were orchestrated by Indian intelligence sleeper-cells mostly operating out of the United Arab Emirates. The rise in killings in 2023 was credited to the increased activity of these cells, which are accused of paying millions of rupees to local criminals or poor Pakistanis to carry out the assassinations. Indian agents also allegedly recruited jihadists to carry out the shootings, making them believe they were killing “infidels”.

According to two Indian intelligence officers, the spy agency’s shift to focusing on dissidents abroad was triggered by the Pulwama attack in 2019, when a suicide bomber targeted a military convoy in Indian-administered Kashmir, killing 40 paramilitary personnel. The Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility.

Modi was running for a second term at the time and was brought back to power in the aftermath of the attack.

“After Pulwama, the approach changed to target the elements outside the country before they are able to launch an attack or create any disturbance,” one Indian intelligence operative said. “We could not stop the attacks because ultimately their safe havens were in Pakistan, so we had to get to the source.”

To conduct such operations “needed approval from the highest level of government”, he added.

The officer said India had drawn inspiration from intelligence agencies such as Israel’s the Mossad and Russia’s KGB, which have been linked to extrajudicial killings on foreign soil. He also said the killing of the Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018 in the Saudi embassy, had been directly cited by Raw officials.

“It was a few months after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi that there was a debate among the top brass of intelligence in the prime minister’s office about how something can be learned from the case. One senior officer said in a meeting that if Saudis can do this, why not us?” he recounted.

“What the Saudis did was very effective. You not only get rid of your enemy but send a chilling message, a warning to the people working against you. Every intelligence agency has been doing this. Our country cannot be strong without exerting power over our enemies.”

Senior officials from two separate Pakistani intelligence agencies said they suspected India’s involvement in up to 20 killings since 2020. They pointed to evidence relating to previously undisclosed inquiries into seven of the cases – including witness testimonies, arrest records, financial statements, WhatsApp messages and passports – which investigators say showcase in detail the operations conducted by Indian spies to assassinate targets on Pakistani soil. The Guardian has seen the documents but they could not be independently verified.

The intelligence sources claimed that targeted assassinations increased significantly in 2023, accusing India of involvement in the suspected deaths of about 15 people, most of whom were shot at close range by unknown gunmen.

In a response to the Guardian, India’s ministry of external affairs denied all the allegations, reiterating an earlier statement that they were “false and malicious anti-India propaganda”. The ministry emphasised a previous denial made by India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, that targeted killings in other countries were “not the government of India’s policy”.

In the killing of Zahid Akhund, an alias for the convicted Kashmiri terrorist Zahoor Mistry who was involved in the deadly hijacking of an Air India flight, the Pakistani documents say a Raw handler allegedly paid for information on Akhund’s movements and location over a period of months. She then allegedly contacted him directly, pretending to be a journalist who wanted to interview a terrorist, in order to confirm his identity.

“Are you Zahid? I am a journalist from the New York Post,” read messages in the dossier shown to the Guardian. Zahid is said to have responded: “For what u r messaging me?”

Millions of rupees were then allegedly paid to Afghan nationals to carry out the shooting in Karachi in March 2022. They fled over the border but their handlers were later arrested by Pakistani security agencies.

According to the evidence gathered by Pakistan, the killings were regularly coordinated out of the UAE, where Raw established sleeper cells that would separately arrange different parts of the operation and recruit the killers.

Investigators alleged that millions of rupees would often be paid to criminals or impoverished locals to carry out the murders, with documents claiming that payments were mostly done via Dubai. Meetings of Raw handlers overseeing the killings are also said to have taken also place in Nepal, the Maldives and Mauritius.

“This policy of Indian agents organising killings in Pakistan hasn’t been developed overnight,” said a Pakistani official. “We believe they have worked for around two years to establish these sleeper cells in the UAE who are mostly organising the executions. After that, we began witnessing many killings.”

In the case of Shahid Latif, the commander of Jaish-e-Mohammed and one of India’s most notorious militants, several attempts were allegedly made to kill him. In the end, the documents claim, it was an illiterate 20-year-old Pakistani who carried out the assassination in Pakistan in October, allegedly recruited by Raw in the UAE, where he was working for a minimal salary in an Amazon packing warehouse.

Pakistani investigators found that the man had allegedly been paid 1.5m Pakistani rupees (£4,000) by an undercover Indian agent to track down Latif and later was promised 15m Pakistani rupees and his own catering company in the UAE if he carried out the killing. The young man shot Latif dead in a mosque in Sialkot but was arrested soon after, along with accomplices.

The killings of Bashir Ahmad Peer, commander of the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, and Saleem Rehmani, who was on India’s most-wanted list, were also allegedly planned out of the UAE, with transaction receipts from Dubai appearing to show payments of millions of rupees to the killers. Rehmani’s death had previously been reported as the result of a suspected armed robbery.

Analysts believe Pakistani authorities have been reluctant to publicly acknowledge the killings as most of the targets are known terrorists and associates of outlawed militant groups that Islamabad has long denied sheltering.

In most cases, public information about their deaths has been scant. However, Pakistani agencies showed evidence they had conducted investigations and arrests behind closed doors.

The figures given to the Guardian match up with those collated by analysts who have been tracking unclaimed militant killings in Pakistan. Ajay Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in Delhi, said his organisation had documented 20 suspicious fatalities in Pakistan by unknown attackers since 2020, though two had been claimed by local militant groups. He emphasised that because of Pakistan’s refusal to publicly investigate the cases – or even acknowledge that these individuals had been living in their jurisdiction – “we have no way of knowing the cause”.

“If you look at the numbers, there is clearly a shift in intent by someone or other,” said Sahni. “It would be in Pakistan’s interest to say this has been done by India. Equally, one of the legitimate lines of inquiry would be possible involvement of the Indian agencies.”

Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi, publicly acknowledged two of the killings in a press conference in January, where he accused India of carrying out a “sophisticated and sinister” campaign of “extraterritorial and extrajudicial killings” in Pakistan.

Islamabad’s accusations were met with scepticism by others, due to the longstanding animosity between the two neighbouring countries who have gone to war four times and have often made unsubstantiated accusations against the other.

For decades India has accused Pakistan of bankrolling a violent militant insurgency in the disputed region of Indian-administered Kashmir and of giving a safe haven to terrorists. In the early 2000s, India was hit by successive terrorist attacks orchestrated by Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups, including the 2006 Mumbai train blasts, which killed more than 160 people, and the 2008 Mumbai bombings, which killed 172 people.

Both countries are known to have carried out cross-border intelligence operations, including small bomb blasts. However, analysts and Pakistani officials described the alleged systematic targeted killings of dissidents by Indian agents on Pakistani soil since 2020 as “new and unprecedented”.

The majority of those allegedly killed by Raw in Pakistan in the past three years have been individuals associated with militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, and in several cases have convictions or proven links to some of India’s deadliest terrorist incidents, which have killed hundreds of people. Others were seen to be “handlers” of Kashmiri militants who helped coordinate attacks and spread information from afar.

According to one of the Indian intelligence officers, the Pulwama attack in 2019 prompted fears that militant groups in Pakistan were planning a repeat of attacks such as the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

“The previous approach had been to foil terrorist attacks,” he said. “But while we were able to make significant progress in bringing the terrorist numbers down in Kashmir, the problem was the handlers in Pakistan. We could not just wait for another Mumbai or an attack on parliament when we are aware that the planners were still operating in Pakistan.”

In September, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, told parliament there were “credible allegations” that Indian agents had orchestrated the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Sikh activist who was gunned down in Vancouver. Weeks later, the US Department of Justice released an indictment vividly detailing how an Indian agent had attempted to recruit a hitman in New York to kill another Sikh activist, later named as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

Both men had been major advocates of the Khalistan movement, which seeks to create an independent Sikh state and is illegal in India. India denied any involvement in the killing of Nijjar, while according to a recent report, India’s own investigation into the Pannun plot concluded that it had been carried out by a rogue agent who was no longer working for Raw.

According to one Indian intelligence official, Delhi recently ordered the suspension of targeted killings in Pakistan after Canada and the US went public with their allegations. No suspicious killings have taken place so far this year.

Two Indian operatives separately confirmed that diaspora Khalistani activists had become a focus of India’s foreign operations after hundreds of thousands of farmers, mostly Sikhs from Punjab, descended on Delhi to protest against new farm laws. The protest ultimately forced the government into a rare policy U-turn, which was seen as an embarrassment.

The suspicion in Delhi was that firebrand Sikh activists living abroad, particularly those in Canada, the US and the UK, were fuelling the farmers’ protests and stirring up international support through their strong global networks. It stoked fears that these activists could be a destabilising force and were capable of reviving Khalistani militancy in India.

“Places were raided and people were arrested in Punjab, but things were actually being controlled from places like Canada,” said one of the Indian intelligence operatives. “Like other intelligence agencies, we had to deal with it.”

In the UK, Sikhs in the West Midlands were issued “threat to life” warnings, amid growing concern about the safety of separatist campaigners who Sikhs claim are being targeted by the Indian government.

Before the US and Canadian cases, a high-profile Khalistani leader, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, was shot dead in Lahore last May. Pakistani investigators claimed they had warned Panjwar that his life was in danger a month before he was killed and said another Khalistani activist living in Pakistan has also faced threats to his life.

Panjwar’s assassination is among those alleged to have been carried out by Indian operatives using what Pakistani agencies described as the “religious method”. According to the documents, Indian agents used social media to infiltrate networks of Islamic State (IS) and units connected to the Taliban, where they recruited and groomed Pakistani Islamist radicals to carry out hit jobs on Indian dissidents by telling them they were carrying out “sacred killings” of “infidels”.

These agents allegedly sought help from former IS fighters from the Indian state of Kerala – who had travelled to Afghanistan to fight for IS but surrendered after 2019 and were brought back through diplomatic channels – to get access to these jihadist networks.

According to an investigation by the Pakistani agencies, Panjwar’s killer, who was later caught, allegedly thought he was working on the instructions of the Pakistan Taliban affiliate Badri 313 Battalion and had to prove himself by killing an enemy of Islam.

The killing of Riyaz Ahmad, a top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander, in September last year was allegedly carried out by Raw in a similar manner. His killer, Pakistan believes, was recruited through a Telegram channel for those who wanted to fight for IS, and which had been infiltrated by Raw agents.

They have claimed the assassin was Muhammad Abdullah, a 20-year-old from Lahore. He allegedly told Pakistani investigators he was promised he would be sent to Afghanistan to fight for IS if he passed the test of killing an “infidel” in Pakistan, with Ahmed presented as the target. Abdullah shot and killed Ahmed during early morning prayers at a mosque in Rawalkot, but was later arrested by Pakistani authorities.

Walter Ladwig, a political scientist at King’s College London, said the alleged shift in strategy was in line with Modi’s more aggressive approach to foreign policy and that just as western states have been accused of extrajudicial killings abroad in the name of national security, there were those in Delhi who felt “India reserves the right to do the same”.

Daniel Markey, a senior adviser on south Asia at the United States Institute of Peace, said: “In terms of India’s involvement, it all kind of adds up. It’s utterly consistent with this framing of India having arrived on the world stage. Being willing to take this kind of action against perceived threats has been interpreted, at least by some Indians, as a marker of great power status.”

The allegations of extrajudicial killings, which would violate international law, could raise difficult questions for western countries that have pursued an increasingly close strategic and economic relationship with Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government, including pushing for intelligence-sharing agreements.

A former senior Raw official who served before Modi’s premiership denied that extrajudicial killings were part of the agency’s remit. He confirmed that nothing would be done without the knowledge of the national security adviser, who would then report it to the prime minister, and on occasion they would report directly to the prime minister. “I could not do anything without their approval,” he said.

The former Raw official claimed that the killings were more likely to have been carried out by Pakistan themselves, a view that has been echoed by others in India.

Pakistani agencies denied this, pointing to a list of more than two dozen dissidents living in Pakistan to whom they had recently issued direct warnings of threats to their lives and instructed them to go into hiding. Three individuals in Pakistan said they had been given these warnings. They claimed others who had not heeded the threats and continued their normal routines were now dead.

Source: theguardian.com

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US Threatens Policy Shift If Israeli Excesses Continue

 

US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this White House handout image taken in the Oval Office in Washington, US, April 4, 2024. — Reuters

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April 5, 2024

WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday issued its strongest public rebuke toward Israel since it launched an invasion of Gaza, seeking for the first time to leverage US aid to influence Israeli military behavior.

President Joe Biden, a staunch supporter of the Israeli offensive until now, called for an immediate ceasefire in a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, conditioning support for its offensive on concrete steps to address the safety of aid workers and Palestinian civilians.

The rebuke followed an attack on a World Central Kitchen charity convoy this week that killed seven food aid workers.

The White House had described Biden as outraged and heartbroken by the attack but, prior to Thursday’s call, the president had made no fundamental change in Washington’s steadfast support for Israel in its conflict against Palestinian Hamas militants.

During the call, Biden “underscored that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilise and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians,” the White House said.

It said Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers”.

He “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” the White House said in a statement.

The statement reflected a sharp change in Biden’s tone and, for what appears to be the first time, a set of strings atta­ched to continued US support. Biden staunchly supported Israel, even when other governments sought to put more pressure on it.

His comments marked the first time the US has suggested it would condition its continued support.

During a briefing with reporters after the call, White House spokesperson John Kirby declined to elaborate on what specific changes the US would make on its policy toward Israel and Gaza. He said Washington hopes to see an announcement of Israeli steps in the “coming hours and days”.

Jill Biden

US First Lady Jill Biden is reportedly one of the most ‘heartbroken’ by the civilian deaths in Gaza and has been urging her husband to end the war, the US media reported on Wednesday.

Quoting a participant at a Ramazan event that the president held on Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Mrs Biden was not happy with his backing for Israel.

The reports describe her as one of the strongest voices in the White House calling for an end to the war.

The reports also included a quote from the first lady’s communications director, Elizabeth Alexander, who said: “Just like the president, the first lady is heartbroken over the attacks on aid workers and the ongoing loss of innocent lives in Gaza. They both want Israel to do more to protect civilians.”

Earlier this week, Biden met Muslim community leaders — something the first lady reportedly said she disapproved of because of his support for Israel in the conflict, according to the New York Times.

One guest, SalimaSuswell, the founder of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, said that President Biden recounted that his wife had been urging him to, “stop it, stop it now”.

CNN and some other media outlets reported that during the Iftar dinner, a guest confronted Mr. Biden, saying that his wife had asked him not to attend the meeting due to the president’s support for Israel.

In response, Mr. Biden stated that he understood because his own wife, Jill, had put pressure on him over the matter. Another guest, Palestinian American physician Thaer Ahmad, said he raised his voice over killings in Gaza and gave President Biden a note and a picture of an 8-year-old orphan from Rafah, which Israel intends to attack next. According to Dr. Ahmad, Mr. Biden responded, saying, “I understand”.

Pressure from Democrats

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers have also increased their pressure on Mr. Biden to do more to increase humanitarian aid and end the war. They are urging him to use the leverage afforded by the billions of dollars in US military aid to persuade Israel to stop its offensive now.

“I think we’re at that point,” Chris Coons, a Biden confidant and senator from the president’s home state of Delaware, told CNN.

If Israel begins its long-threatened full-scale offensive in the southern city of Rafah without plans for the 1.5 million people sheltering there, “I would vote to condition aid to Israel,” Mr Coons said. “I’ve never said that before, I’ve never been there before,” he added.

Another Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Middle East, said that Israel “needs to pause military operations in Gaza right now.”

Yet another Democrat, Senator Elizabeth Warren, said that she would block the sale of F-15s to Israel after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers.

In an interview with CNN, she said the US Congress had a “responsibility to act” and accused Israel of violating laws that require access to humanitarian relief.

“I hope this will be the moment where the president changes course,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic Senator from Maryland.

“Netanyahu ignored the president’s requests, and yet we send 2,000-pound bombs with no restrictions on their use,” he added.

Biden, who has described himself as a Zionist, supported Israel staunchly in the early days of its retaliation. But as the Gaza death toll rose and the war widened with new fronts in Lebanon and Yemen emerging, his administration began pushing for a ceasefire and urging humanitarian aid access. Last month, the US abstained from a UN Security Council vote demanding a ceasefire, drawing Israeli anger.

Biden also faces deep Democratic anger over his handling of the Gaza war, a dynamic that could depress support in November’s election contest against Republican former president Donald Trump.

Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East analyst at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington, said the strike on WCK aid workers “was the last straw.” “This call was the long-promised ‘come to Jesus conversation’ that Biden said last month he would have with Netanyahu,” Blumenfeld said.

Source: dawn.com

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2nd Saudi Cinema Nights Series Of International Film Screening Begins This Month

 

The Saudi Film Commission

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April 04, 2024

RIYADH: The Saudi Film Commission’s second Saudi Cinema Nights series of international films screenings begins this month, with the itinerary expanded to take in five countries compared with just one last year.

The cultural showcase, featuring more than 20 Saudi-produced feature films and shorts, will visit Morocco in April, then move on to Australia, China and India, before concluding in Mexico next January.

In addition to the film screenings, there will be interactive discussion sessions at each location during which filmmakers will talk to the audience about their works. The aim is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of Saudi cinema on a global scale.

“Saudi Film Nights reflects our commitment to enhancing cinema culture in the Kingdom and highlights the potential of Saudi films in attracting international audiences,” said Abdullah Al-Qahtani, the CEO of the Film Commission.

The first Saudi Cinema Nights international screenings were held last year in Paris at the Institut du Monde Arabe.

Source: arabnews.com

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US’s Ongoing Arms Supplies For Israel Exposes Washington’s Hypocrisy: Houthi

 

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement

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 05 April 2024

The leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement denounces the United States’ uninterrupted arms supplies for the Israeli regime, which is waging a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi made the remarks during a televised address on Thursday.

“This week, the Americans announced new shipments of weapons and equipment to support the Israeli enemy with billions of dollars,” he said, adding, “The American media confirms that Israel has received the largest military aid since World War II.”

Reporting late last month, The Washington Post said the administration of US President Joe Biden had authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and warplanes to the Israeli regime in a matter of days.

Pentagon and State Department officials said the new arms packages included more than 1,800 bombs, the daily said at the time.

Reports say the Washington has quietly made more than 100 weapons sales to Tel Aviv since October 7, when the latter began the war against Gaza in response to a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance movements.

More than 33,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the brutal military onslaught so far.

Houthi said, “The announced deals represent only a small part of what America provides to the criminal Israeli enemy.”

The Ansarullah leader added that the United States’ constant flow of arms towards the Israeli regime -- which comes amid Washington’s calls for a ceasefire in Gaza -- “exposes the American hypocrisy.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Yemeni official noted that the country would continue its pro-Palestinian operations, which have seen Yemeni forces striking Israeli vessels or those belonging to the regime’s supporters.

“Our front in Yemen continues its military operations in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and even reaching as far as the Indian Ocean,” he said.

“The total number of targeted ships reached 90,” he said, noting that the US and the UK, which have been trying to counter the Yemeni strikes, had “acknowledged their complete inability to stop the attacks.”

Source: presstv.ir

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India

 

Lok Sabha Polls in Ramzan: Muslim Candidates Keep Meals Light, Meetings Indoors, Speeches Short

April 5, 2024

Lalmani Verma

As mercury starts rising just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, especially in the heartland, Muslim candidates headed for elections in western Uttar Pradesh in the first phase who are observing fast during the ongoing Ramzan are adjusting their campaigns and modifying their diets.

Instead of going for door-to-door canvassing in the sun, the candidates, cutting across party lines, are opting for indoor meetings. If they have to be outdoors during the day – when they abstain from taking any food or water – they hold nukkad (street-corner) meetings with small gatherings in tents, where they keep their speeches short, lasting for about 5 minutes on an average.

The candidates only head out to the streets or markets in the evening when the community members step out of their homes after breaking their fast at iftar.

Instead of the usual spread, on the menu of the candidates these days are light meals like khichdi and dalia (porridge) for sehri – the pre-sunrise meal — and dates, juices and fruits for instant energy at the end of the day.

Ramzan got underway on March 12 and is likely to conclude on April 10, with Eid-ul-Fitr slated for April 11 depending on the moon sighting. The nomination for the first phase of polls, on April 19, started on March 20.

Of the eight seats in western Uttar Pradesh going to polls on April 19, seven have sizeable Muslim populations. These include Rampur, Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Nagina, Moradabad and Bijnor. In Rampur, the Muslim voters make up about 52% of the electorate.

The SP’s candidate from the Rampur seat, Mohibbullah Nadvi, says he ensures he doesn’t miss his five-time daily namaz as he contests his first election. He also uses the mosque visits to interact with the community, says Mohammad Asif, Mohibbullah’s younger brother who is managing his poll campaign.

On Mohibbullah’s meals, Asif says he is not very particular about what he eats for sehri. “But if he takes a heavy meal, that can cause discomfort during canvassing… Our campaign starts from 8 am  and continues till late evening. People usually meet after namaz. He travels to villages too. He covers large areas in the evening after iftar. We also hold meetings with party workers for poll management in the evenings,” Asif says.

The BSP’s Rampur candidate, Zeeshan Khan, prefers khichdi or dalia for sehri. “I start canvassing at 10 am and address 15 to 20 meetings in the daytime. I keep my speeches short. Other party leaders step in, especially those who are not fasting, that I can save my energy,” Khan says.

Four out of six candidates in the fray in Rampur are  Muslims.

In Saharanpur, eight of 10 candidates are Muslims. The Congress’s candidate, Imran Masood, says he has a nap after sehri and eats a normal dinner.

“My campaign is not hectic and I am keeping it low profile. I mostly hold indoor meetings with smaller gathering of voters (in the daytime), and in the evening after iftar,” Masood says.

He prefers to be home at the time of namaz. “I don’t campaign at mosques. I never use a masjid for politics,” he argues. “Many people are coming to invite me for public meetings. But I hold only five to six small meetings and keep my speeches short. I avoid crowds and prefer interacting with voters while sitting comfortably.”

Apart from door-to-door canvassing in the evenings, Masood prefers talking to the people over the phone till late in the night, when he and his party colleagues draw up the campaign plan for the next day. “The campaign will pick pace after Eid,” he says.

The BSP’s Moradabad candidate, Mohd Irfan Saifi, is among those who heads to big mosques in the constituency for namaz. “In the Ramzan period, it is easy to meet people at mosques… They know me,” says Saifi, who otherwise campaigns mostly in the evening. “I eat dates and bananas in sehri and take some rest afterwards,” he says.

With the Ramzan drawing to a close, the candidates are readying to step up their campaign after Eid, after which top leaders of their parties are expected to join them for rallies in their constituencies. SP president Akhilesh Yadav is scheduled to address a rally in support of Mohibullah in Rampur, while BSP chief Mayawati is launching her campaign on April 13 from Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, where her party’s candidate is Jamil Ahmed.

On April 14, Mayawati will address rallies in Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar.

Source: indianexpress.com

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https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/ramzan-lok-sabha-polls-2024-9252757/

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Congress manifesto has big promise for LGBTQ+ couples: ‘Will bring law for civil unions’

Apr 05, 2024

The Congress on Friday released its poll manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, mapping out its strategy if it comes to power at the Centre. In its manifesto, the Congress party said it plans to bring a law to legalise civil unions between couples belonging to the LGBTQ+ community.

The Congress party said, “After wide consultation, Congress will bring a law to recognize civil unions between couples belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community.”

Last year, the Supreme Court refused to legalise same-sex marriage, but acknowledged the various forms of discrimination faced by the community and directed authorities to protect the LGBTQIA+ group.

Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, however, ruled against the Centre's claim that the concerns of the LGBTQIA+ community are an “urban elitist concept”.

CJI Chandrachud said, “Queerness is neither urban nor elite.”

While LGBTQ+ community was not granted the right to marry, the five-judge court bench said, “The freedom of all persons, including queer couples, to enter into a union is protected by Part III of the Constitution.” The bench further said, "Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation will violate Article 15."

The court ordered the central government to constitute a committee to examine the rights and entitlements of persons in queer union, without legal recognition of their relationship.

Congress releases Lok Sabha poll manifesto

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, in the presence of senior party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and AICC general secretary KC Venugopal, released the election manifesto of the party, focusing on five "pillars of justice" and 25 guarantees under them.

Right to apprenticeship, a legal guarantee for MSP, and passing a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs are among the promises made by the Congress in its manifesto on Friday.

In the manifesto titled Nyay Patra, the Congress party said it would implement a 10 per cent quota in jobs and educational institutions for economically weaker sections (EWS) for all castes and communities without discrimination if it comes to power.

The Congress will pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SC, ST and OBC if it comes to power in the general elections beginning April 19, the party promised.

Source: hindustantimes.com

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SC rejects plea for bringing mortal remains of India-born Pak Sufi saint from Bangladesh

Apr 05, 2024

New Delhi, The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea seeking a direction to the Centre to bring the mortal remains of an India-born Pakistani Sufi saint, who died in Bangladesh in 2022, for re-burial in Prayagraj to honour his wish.

The plea referred to the will executed by Hazrat Shah Muhammad Abdul Muqtadir Shah Masood Ahmad, a former native of Allahabad, now Prayagraj, who acquired Pakistani citizenship in 1992, that his mortal remains be interred at the Dargah in the Uttar Pradesh city which he presided over.

"He was a Pakistani citizen. How can you expect the Union of India to bring his mortal remains for re-burial in India. There is no such right whose enforcement can be sought," the top court said while rejecting the plea filed by Dargah Hazrat Mulla Syed of Prayagraj.

"We also have to go by the principles of enforcement of constitutional rights," the bench, comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said, adding had he been an Indian citizen the plea would have been taken note of.

The counsel, who appeared for the Dargah, said Ahmad had no family in Pakistan and, moreover, the Sufi saint was the ‘Sajjada Nasheen’ of the shrine.

In Sufi tradition, a Sajjada Nasheen is a successor of a Sufi saint who presides over a shrine.

The bench made it clear that there is no constitutionally enforceable right to seek transportation of the Sufi saint's mortal remains as he was a Pakistani citizen.

"He was elected as the Sajjada Nasheen of the shrine at Dargah Hazrat Mulla Syed Mohammad Shah in 2008 in Prayagraj. He executed his will in 2021 expressing a desire to be buried in the shrine. He died in Dhaka where he was buried. There are difficulties in entertaining such a petition.

"Hazrat Shah was a Pakistani citizen and had no constitutional right... the practical difficulties related to exhumation. As a matter of first principle, it would not be right for this court to direct the transportation of the mortal remains of a citizen of a foreign state to India," the bench said.

Source: hindustantimes.com

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Mathura Mosque Matter Beyond Remit Of Waqf Tribunal, Argues Hindu Side

April 4, 2024

The Hindu side on Thursday countered in the Allahabad High Court the Shahi Idgah committee's argument that the maintainability of the suit seeking "removal" of the mosque must be heard by a Waqf tribunal, saying that matter is beyond the ambit of the tribunal.

Ajay Kumar Singh appearing on behalf of the Hindu side submitted that the present dispute is beyond the ambit of the Waqf tribunal and only the civil court has jurisdiction to decide the present dispute.

The counsel for the Muslim side, Taslima Aziz Ahmadi, during the last hearing on April 1, had claimed, "In this way a question/dispute has been raised on Waqf property and thus provisions of the Waqf Act will apply, and in such it is the Waqf tribunal that has the jurisdiction to hear the matter and not a civil court."

On Thursday, Ahmadi appeared in the court through video conferencing and sought time to summarise her arguments in the court.

The court fixed April 18 for further hearing in the matter as the court's time was over.

Singh also mentioned a judgement of the Supreme Court of 1999, according to which religious disputes have to be decided by civil court, he argued.

Source: outlookindia.com

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Rajasthan: Hindus protest against religious conversion, madarsa targeted

4th April 2024

A group of people from the Hindu community in Rajasthan’s Beawar area protested against a madarsa claiming that it was involved in religious conversion.

A video emerged on social media platforms showing the protest. It shows the Hindu protestors using derogatory words against the Muslim community. “Bahari m***, maulwiyonko band kro (stop the entry of Islamic preachers),” they are heard sloganeering.

It is unsure where they were headed to. The incident occurred on April 2.

Siasat.com tried to contact the Beawar police station circle inspector on the authenticity of the video but received no response. This article will be updated if we receive a response.

Last month, several students of a government school in Kota district came forward against the suspension of three Muslim teachers who were removed over religious conversion allegations.

Videos surfaced on the internet showing a group of students in school uniforms arguing with government officials against the suspension.

“Bachon see galatbyaandilaraheinhaiwoh (Children are told to give false statements against the teachers).” Another student says, “Jinhonejhootheinbyaandiyeinwohpadangehameinyaphir sir padhayenge (Who will teach us now? Those who spoke gave false statements or the teachers who got suspended?)”

You can watch the video here.

The students alleged that their Muslim teachers – Shabana, Firoz Khan and Mirza Mujahid – were falsely targeted by Hindutva groups. They held a protest outside the office of the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), demanding revocation of the suspension and action against students who made the false accusations.

Source: siasat.com

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JD(S) leader Kumaraswamy says every Muslim will require protection and PM Modi will ensure it

April 4, 2024

There is an inevitable situation in the country where every Muslim will have to be given protection, JD(S) Karnataka president and former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy said on Thursday, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership would ensure “the protection in the future”.

Kumaraswamy was speaking at a rally held after he filed his nomination as the BJP-JD(S) coalition’s candidate in the Mandya Lok Sabha constituency. The rally was attended by BJP leaders BS Yediyurappa and Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.

At the end of his speech, he requested Muslims and Dalits not to vote for the Congress, accusing it of pursuing a divide-and-rule policy. “Muslim brothers, your protection in the future is under the leadership of Narendra Modi. A situation is inevitable in the country where every Muslim brother has to be given protection,” he said.

Kumaraswamy was among the three members of former prime minister HD Deve Gowda’s family who filed their nominations on the last day. Karnataka will vote on April 26, in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections. Kumaraswamy’s brother-in-law Dr C N Manjunath filed his papers as the BJP candidate from the Bangalore Rural constituency and his nephew PrajwalRevanna filed his nomination as the JD(S) nominee in Hassan.

The JD(S) leader told the rally that he was contesting the poll owing to pressure from elders in Mandya. “They told me one thing, that people of the region want me to come (win). ‘If you lose this election we will hang ourselves at the Sanjay Theatre circle. We won’t do injustice’,” the former chief minister said.

Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya also filed his nomination on Thursday. He was flanked by Anurag Thakur, Union minister for information and broadcasting, and youth affairs and sports, and Leader of the Opposition R Ashoka.

Source: indianexpress.com

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https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/bangalore/jds-kumaraswamy-muslim-will-require-protection-pm-modi-will-ensure-it-9251745/

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India urges Israel to ensure safety and well-being of Indian workers

April 05, 2024

SUHASINI HAIDAR,KALLOL BHATTACHERJEE

India has urged Israel to ensure the safety and security of Indian citizens who are being flown to the conflict-hit nation under a government-to-government (G2G) agreement to work as blue-collar workers, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on April 4.

 India ‘concerned’ by Israeli attack on Iranian embassy in Syria

He added that India was “distressed” at the recent attack on Iranian diplomatic premises in Damascus that both Syria and Iran blamed on Tel Aviv.

“As you are aware, these [first batch] workers have gone to Israel as part of a mobility agreement that we have signed with the country. This agreement predates the conflict. We are conscious of their safety. We have urged the Israeli authorities to ensure their safety and well-being,” Mr. Jaiswal said, responding to a question from The Hindu at his weekly media briefing. Israel and India had signed an agreement to fly around 42,000 workers from here to various spots in Israel.

Recruiting Indian workers

Israel has been bolstering its work force by allowing more non-Arab workers from countries like Sri Lanka, India, Philippines, Nepal, Thailand and other countries. Among the victims of last year’s October 7 terror attack were several workers from Thailand, Philippines and Nepal.

In November 2023, reports had suggested that Israel was looking for at least 100,000 Indian workers to replace the Palestinian workers who were employed in various sectors of the Israeli economy prior to the Hamas attacks. “Right now we are negotiating with India. We are waiting for [the] decision of the Israeli government to approve that,” Haim Feiglin, vice president of the Israel Builders Association, told Voice of America in November, 2023.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship signed an agreement with Israel in November 2023 to send caregivers and construction workers to Israel for a three year period between 2023 and 2026. Following this, a recruitment drive took place in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, drawing a large number of workers who enrolled to go to Israel.

Dangerous workspot

Earlier this week, the first batch of 60 Indian workers flew to Israel on Tuesday. These developments have drawn attention as Indian authorities, including the Indian ambassador to Israel, had in the past highlighted the risks to personal safety in Israel because of the ongoing clashes with Hamas.

Pat Nibin Maxwell, a 31-year old Indian citizen from Kerala, became the first Indian to die in the ongoing conflict after a rocket allegedly fired by the Lebanese militia Hizbollah hit him when he was working in an orchard in northern Israel near the Lebanese border. Maxwell had travelled to Israel only two months earlier to work there.

 First batch of 64 Indian workers from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh leave for Israel

‘Distressed at escalating tensions’

On April 1, mysterious rocket strikes hit the Iranian embassy premises in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Both Iran and Syria blamed Israel for the attacks, which reportedly killed at least 12 individuals including Mohammed Reza Zahedi, who headed Iran’s military operations in Syria and Lebanon. Mr. Zahedi had decades of experience in Lebanon and was known to be a close associate of Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah. The attack also killed Zahedi’s deputy, Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, and several officers of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

On Thursday, Mr. Jaiswal expressed India’s position on the attack in Damascus, saying, “We have noted with concern the attack on Iranian diplomatic premises in Syria on 1 April 2024. India is distressed at the escalating tensions in West Asia, and their potential to fuel further violence and instability. We urge all parties to avoid actions that go against commonly accepted principles and norms of international law.”

Source: thehindu.com

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https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/mea-urges-israel-to-ensure-safety-and-well-

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India Voices 'Concern' Over Israeli Airstrike on Iranian Consulate

 April 5, 2024

New Delhi: India on Thursday expressed “concern” at the Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria that killed senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and sparked apprehension of a widening of the ongoing Gaza war.

“We have noted with concern the attack on Iranian diplomatic premises in Syria on 1 April 2024. India is distressed at the escalating tensions in West Asia, and their potential to fuel further violence and instability,” said Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal at the weekly media briefing on Thursday.

He added that India urged “all parties to avoid actions that go against commonly accepted principles and norms of International Law”.

India’s statement, however, did not blame Israel explicitly for the attack.

Incidentally, Indian national security advisor Ajit Doval met with Iran’s secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Akbar Ahmadian on the sidelines of a SCO Security Conclave on Tuesday.

As per a readout issued by Iran’s embassy in India, the two sides “agreed that attacking diplomatic places should be costly for criminals”.

On Monday, at least 12 people, including two Iranian generals, were killed on an airstrike at Iran’s consulate in Damascus, which is widely attributed to Israel.

The Iranian embassy also claimed that “Doval, for his part, expressed condolences over the martyrdom of Iranian advisors in an Israeli strike on the building of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on Monday”.

As per reports, the highest ranking Iranian to be killed in the airstrike was IRGC Al-Quds Force’s General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who was also an Iranian military adviser in Syria.

Iran’s deputy envoy to the UN, Zahra Ershadi announced at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that while Tehran had exercised “considerable restraint, Israel had to be fear “full responsibility” for the consequences of the attack.

Ershadi also stated that Iran reserved the right under international law and the UN Charter to “to take decisive response to such reprehensible acts”.

Earlier, Iranian state media quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying that Iran “make them regretful about the crime and similar acts”.

The airstrike in Damascus has not been officially claimed by Israel, but anonymous Israeli officials cited in media reports have confirmed Tel Aviv’s involvement.

Following the Hamas terror attack on October 7, which prompted Israel’s devastating military action in Gaza resulting in thousands of civilian casualties, concerns have arisen about the potential escalation of the conflict, drawing in other nations and erupting into a regional war.

In 2020, an American drone targeted and killed the commander of IRGC’s al-Quds wing, Major General QassimSuleimani. Iran retaliated by attacking two US bases in Iraq with missiles.

This time, the United States had told Iran that Washington was not involved in the airstrike.

Following the Damascus airstrike, Israeli and US officials have said that they have detected and intercepted several drone attacks.

Anticipating strong retaliation from Iran, Israel called up its reserve troops and cancelled all leaves to boost its military air defence wings.

As per media reports, Israeli military has also intensified GPS jamming across its major cities, as a measure against guided missiles, which has also hit daily life.

Source: thewire.in

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https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-voices-concern-over-israeli-airstrike-on-iranian-consulate

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India dismisses report claiming it ordered targeted killings of wanted terrorists in Pakistan

Apr 05, 2024

The Indian government got ‘individuals' killed in Pakistan as part of Delhi's larger strategy to eliminate wanted terrorists living on foreign soil, ‘The Guardian', a renowned global newspaper, claimed in a report on Thursday quoting some “intelligence operatives of India and Pakistan”.

The London-based daily claims to have some documents that “shed light on how India's foreign intelligence agency allegedly carried out operations to eliminate the individuals abroad”.

The report says that India carried out these operations “as part of an emboldened approach to national security after 2019”.

The report comes amid allegations that India is targeting individuals whom it considers hostile to it.

According to the report, the fresh claims relate to almost 20 killings since 2020 which have been carried out by unknown gunmen in Pakistan.

'The Guardian' report says, “While India has previously been unofficially linked to the deaths, this is the first time Indian intelligence personnel have discussed the alleged operations in Pakistan, and detailed documentation has been seen alleging RAW‘s direct involvement in the assassinations”.

The fresh allegations refer to those charged with violent terror offences.

When Muhammad Riaz and Shahid Latif were gunned down in 2023 on Pakistan soil, Islamabad had accused India's intelligence agency of being behind the killings.

New Delhi was then quick to dismiss the allegations, calling them "malicious anti-India propaganda".

Referring to the details shared by the Pakistani investigators, the London-based newspaper said that “these deaths were orchestrated by Indian intelligence sleeper cells, mostly operating out of the United Arab Emirates".

“The rise in killings in 2023 was credited to the increased activity of these cells, which are accused of paying millions of rupees to local criminals or poor Pakistanis to carry out the assassinations.”

According to the report, “Indian agents also allegedly recruited jihadists to carry out the shootings.”

Similarly, the report says quoting two Indian intelligence officers that the spy agency's action was triggered by the Pulwama attack in 2019, which was perpetrated by the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The report also says that “after Pulwama, the approach changed to target the elements outside the country before they are able to launch an attack or create any disturbance".

Quoting one Indian intelligence operative, the report says, “We could not stop the attacks because ultimately their safe havens were in Pakistan, so we had to get to the source.”

The Guardian also says that in response to its queries, the Ministry of External Affairs denied all the allegations, reiterating an earlier statement that they were “false and malicious anti-India propaganda”.

The ministry emphasised a previous denial made by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar that targeted killings in other countries were “not the government of India's policy”.

According to the report, an RAW handler allegedly paid for information on Zahid Akhund, an alias for the convicted Kashmiri terrorist Zahoor Mistry who was involved in the hijacking of an Air India flight.

“Millions of rupees were then allegedly paid to Afghan nationals to carry out the shooting in Karachi in March 2022. They fled over the border but their handlers were later arrested by Pakistani security agencies,” says the report.

Jaish-e-Mohammed commander Shahid Latif was killed on Pakistan soil.

The report says that Pakistani investigators found that the man had allegedly been paid 1.5 million Pakistani rupees (£4,000) by an undercover Indian agent to track down Latif and later was promised 15 million Pakistani rupees and his own catering company in the UAE if he carried out the killing.

The young man shot Latif dead at a mosque in Sialkot, but was arrested soon after, along with his accomplices, says the report.

The killings of Bashir Ahmad Peer, commander of the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, and Saleem Rehmani, who was on India's most-wanted list, were also allegedly planned out of the UAE, with transaction receipts from Dubai appearing to show payments of millions of rupees to the killers, says the report.

Source: tribuneindia.com

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https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/india-dismisses-report-claiming-it-orders-targeted-killings-of-wanted-terrorists-in-pakistan-607642

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J&K: Mirwaiz Put Under 'House Arrest', Jamia Masjid Closed Ahead of Prayers

 April 5, 2024

New Delhi: Authorities have reportedly put Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest on Friday (April 5) while the congregational Jumat-ul-Vida prayers, which are held on the last Friday of the ongoing month of Ramzan, were disallowed at Jamia Masjid in Srinagar city of Jammu and Kashmir.

Witnesses said that the mosque was closed for worshippers while authorities prevented the mosque’s managing body from making preparations for Jumat-ul-Vida prayers on Friday morning.

Security personnel also stopped media persons from entering Mirwaiz’s residence in Nigeen locality of Srinagar after he called a press conference on Friday morning purportedly to talk about the new curbs imposed on him.

A spokesperson of Anjuman-e-Auqaf Jamia Masjid, the managing body of the historic mosque located in Nowhatta locality of downtown Srinagar, said that the authorities locked the main gates at 6 am on Friday, soon after the morning prayer session was over.

“They put padlocks on the gates of the mosque and told us that Friday prayers will not be allowed. They didn’t give any reason in writing,” said the Anjuman-e-Auqaf spokesperson.

Jumat-ul-Vida is the last Friday of the sacred Islamic month of Ramzan and thousands were anticipated to participate in the congregational prayers at Jamia Masjid where Mirwaiz was scheduled to deliver his first sermon on this occasion following the reading down of Article 370.

However, an aide of Mirwaiz said that the chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference was also put under house arrest on Friday morning and no one was allowed to come in or go out of the residence. “He was not allowed to address the press conference. They didn’t give any reason in writing,” the aide said.

A group of media-persons, who had arrived at Mirwaiz’s residence to cover the press conference, said that they were turned away from the main gate by the security personnel.

“We tried to reason with them that we had to attend the press conference. However, they didn’t allow us to enter. We didn’t had many options but to come back,” said a Srinagar-based journalist, who didn’t want to be named.

Authorities put padlocks on the gates of Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid on Friday to prevent Jumat-Ul-Vida prayers. Photo: Ubaid Mukhtar

The development comes days after Mirwaiz, who is also the chief cleric of Kashmir, was allowed to offer Friday prayers at Jamia Masjid for the first time during Ramzan post Article 370 last month and fourth time since his release in September last year, according to the Anjuman.

In his sermon, Mirwaiz had called for unity and demanded the “release of political prisoners and youth languishing in different jails” of the country.

Last month, the administration told the Jammu and Kashmir high court that the moderate Hurriyat leader was facing a “perceived threat” from terrorists due to which he was verbally “asked to limit and restrict his movement” after Article 370 was read down.

The submission came after Mirwaiz approached the court to challenge his “illegal detention” after Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded and bifurcated into two union territories on August 5, 2019.

In a habeas corpus petition, Mirwaiz told the court that curbs were imposed on him by the administration and he was not allowed to come out of his home and perform his social and religious duties as he was ‘illegally’ detained at his Srinagar residence.

However, the administration cited over two dozen instances, including a recent visit to New Delhi, when Mirwaiz was reportedly allowed to attend social and religious functions and also to medical emergencies.

Source: thewire.in

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Europe

 

Putin dismisses claims Russia may come under attack by 'Islamic fundamentalists'

Elena Teslova

04.04.2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed on Thursday claims suggesting that Russia could be targeted by "Islamic fundamentalists," maintaining that Russia has warm relations with Muslims.

Speaking at the 12th Congress of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia in Moscow, Putin said Russia enjoys amicable relations with its domestic Muslim community and Islamic nations, asserting that there was no reason for either to target the country.

"Russia cannot be the target of attacks by "Islamic fundamentalists,' we are a country that demonstrates a unique example of interfaith harmony and unity, interreligious unity, interethnic," he stressed.

Putin said the claims sought to sow discord in Russian society along religious lines.

"We have every reason to believe that the main purpose of those who ordered the bloody, terrible terrorist act in Moscow was precisely to damage our unity. We do not see other goals. There are no other goals," he noted.

At least 144 people were killed and more than 550 others injured on March 22 when gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Oblast. Russia has charged four people for being directly involved in the attack.

Source: aa.com.tr

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Norway detains Quran blasphemer, plans to deport him to Sweden

05 April 2024

A Sweden-based Iraqi refugee, who caused international outrage by repeatedly desecrating the Quran last year, has been apprehended in Norway and is set to be deported back to Sweden.

Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee who desecrated copies of the Holy Quran during numerous protests in Sweden throughout last year, was arrested in Norway on March 28th, a day after he arrived in the Nordic country, according to a ruling by the Oslo district court.

Earlier, he had announced his intention to seek asylum in Norway after a Swedish court ruled that the extremist would be deported from the country.

Following a hearing held on March 30th, the Oslo District Courtruled to detain Momika for four weeks, pending a probable request from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) to Sweden for his return, as per EU regulations.

The court said that there are "concrete grounds for assuming that the foreigner will evade the implementation" of such a deportation, and therefore, it allowed the police's immigration unit to detain Momika.

The Oslo District Court believes that there are "concrete grounds for assuming that the foreigner will evade the implementation" of such a deportation, and therefore, it allowed the police's immigration unit to detain Momika.

In the court's ruling it said "a deportation will take place as soon as the formal and practical arrangements are in place."

According to the Oslo District Court ruling, the country's security service wrote a separate assessment of the situation the day after the arrest, stating that Momika is "considered to be a threat to fundamental national interests," local online media outlet Filter Nyheter.

Momika's actions of desecrating the Quran caused outrage and condemnation in various Muslim nations.

Demonstrators held the Swedish government responsible for granting permission to carry out such acts, in the name of free speech, that hurt the sentiments of the followers of the Islamic faith.

In July, demonstrators from Iraq forcefully entered the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on two separate occasions, setting fires inside the premises during the second incident.

In October, the Swedish Migration Agency invalidated Momika's residency permit due to inaccurate details provided in his initial application.

However, he was subsequently issued a temporary permit based on the presence of an "impediment to enforcement" of his deportation to Iraq.

In response to widespread protests across the Muslim world, Denmark enacted a law last December that criminalizes the burning of religious texts, including the Quran, in public spaces. Meanwhile, Sweden is currently deliberating legal measures that would empower the police to deny permits for demonstrations on grounds of national security.

Source: presstv.ir

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/05/723093/Norway-plans-to-repatriate-the-Quran-burner-back-to-Sweden

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Far-right Dutch politician’s journey from banning to promoting Islam

 04 April 2024

Jaron van Klaveren, former spokesman for the far-right Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration Party for Freedom (PVV), who once pushed to ban Islam from the Netherlands is now working to dismantle the lies he peddled about the religion.

Van Klaveren dramatically converted to Islam in 2018 and is presently serving as a board member of the Islam Experience Center in Rotterdam.

In an extraordinary personal and political transformation, the former senior member of PVV, said it was the party’s anti-Muslim rhetoric which led him to look more deeply into his new religion.

“The things that I helped them develop are still there, they’re still using the tools I gave them,” he said about the anti-Muslim rhetoric of PVV. “I literally hear them say things that I made up.”

“I was in anti-Islam politics for altogether 12 years, so I have to counter this narrative for at least 12 years to make it even, so to speak,” Van Klaveren said.

Asked whether he felt guilt or regret over his actions during his time with the PVV, Van Klaveren said, “Of course I feel ashamed because of what I said. I had plans, but Allah is the best of planners and my life took another direction.”

Van Klaveren, the right-hand man of the PVV leader Wilders, had pleaded for a burka ban, a ban on minarets and for the de-Islamization of the Netherlands.

Van Klaveren was working on an anti-Islamic book before his conversion to Islam. While researching for the book that was supposed to highlight the dangers posed by Muslims, he ended up writing Apostate: From Christianity to Islam in Times of Secular Terror – a book about his conversion to Islam.

Van Klaveren is not the first former member of the party to convert to Islam. In 2013, Arnoud van Doorn chose to leave the party after converting to Islam. Van Klaveren has taken back his statements on Islam, saying his views were “simply wrong.”

Van Klaveren estimates that only about 12 of the 37 seats won by the PVV in the last elections could be attributed to those who are staunchly opposed to Islam. The rest, according to him, were probably a result of voters who had become disillusioned with mainstream parties over their failure to tackle the soaring cost of living.

Source: presstv.ir

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UK civil servants request to stop work over arms sales to Israel: Report

BurakBir

05.04.2024

Civil servants in the UK overseeing arms exports to Israel have requested to "cease work immediately" over concerns that they could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza, a report said Thursday.

In correspondence seen by Sky News, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents civil servants, has requested an urgent meeting with the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) to discuss "the legal jeopardy faced by civil servants who are continuing to work on this policy."

"Given the implications for our members, we believe there are ample grounds to immediately suspend all such work. We therefore request that you meet with us urgently to discuss this matter and cease work immediately,” said the letter, with was sent on Wednesday to the DBT.

According to the report, members of the union have asked their employers to stop giving them tasks related to arms export licenses to Israel alongside other work that may be related to Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The PCS confirmed to Sky News that it is considering legal action against the government.

The correspondence showed that the PCS has been asking relevant ministers for its legal advice on arming Israel since January, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an interim ruling imposing provisional measures on Israel to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Paul O'Connor, head of bargaining at PCS, said the union agrees with the UN court and believes "that the UK government has an obligation to do all it can to halt the onslaught."

Pressure on the British government is mounting to cease arms exports to Israel, especially after the killing of seven food charity workers, including three UK citizens, in the Gaza Strip in an Israeli strike on Monday.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack in early October by the Palestinian group Hamas killed around 1,200 people.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,577 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Source: aa.com.tr

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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/uk-civil-servants-request-to-stop-work-over-arms-sales-to-israel-report/3183999

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France and its allies could have stopped the Rwandan genocide: Macron

EsraTaskin

05.04.2024

French President Emmanuel Macron said France and its allies could have stopped the Rwandan genocide but lacked the will to do so.

In a video message set to be released on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Macron stressed that "when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act," local media reported Thursday.

He said his country, "which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did not have the will" to do so.

Macron also said that France stands by the Rwandan people in memory of the 1 million men, women and children who were tortured because they were born Tutsi.

During his visit to Rwanda in 2021, he recognized France’s "responsibilities" in the genocide.

He will not accept an invitation from Rwandan President Paul Kagame to visit the country to take part in commemorative events on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the genocide.

Instead, French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne and Junior Maritime Affairs Minister HerveBerville, who was born in Rwanda, will attend the events.

Hutu extremists targeted the minority Tutsi ethnic group after the death of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart CyprienNtaryamira in a plane crash on April 6, 1994.

An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during the bloodshed, which lasted 100 days.

Source: aa.com.tr

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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/france-and-its-allies-could-have-stopped-the-rwandan-genocide-macron/3184007

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Spanish NGO halts Gaza aid work over deadly attack

April 05, 2024

BARCELONA: The Spanish NGO Open Arms, which with World Central Kitchen chartered the first boat that arrived in Gaza on a special sea corridor from Cyprus, suspended its operation after the deaths of seven aid workers in an Israeli air strike.

Open Arms, whose ship returned to the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Wednesday, condemned the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers as “an incomprehensible act of violence.”

The workers were moving food and supplies sent in a second shipload from Cyprus when their convoy was attacked on Monday.

“With the arrival yesterday of the Open Arms boat in Larnaca, Cyprus, the mission in the humanitarian corridor to the Gaza Strip with World Central Kitchen is suspended following the devastating attack suffered by the convoy,” Open Arms said in a statement.

The NGO, which said 200 tons of food and supplies were delivered in the first shipment in March, expressed sorrow over the deaths.

“We demand answers and accountability for this unacceptable attack,” Open Arms director Oscar Camps said in the statement.

World Central Kitchen, founded by Spanish-American celebrity chef Jose Andres, has suspended its work in Gaza because of the attacks. These have increased pressure on Israel over its treatement of Gaza’s civilian population.

Israel has expressed regret over the attack and promised a transparent inquiry.

But major international aid groups have said it is now nearly impossible to work in Gaza, where Israel launched its military operation in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7.

The attacks resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign to destroy Hamas has killed at least 33,037 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian territory.

Source: arabnews.com

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https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488356/middle-east

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Spanish PM warns EU may re-evaluate relations with Israel

 04 April 2024

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says the EU should rethink its strategic relation with Israel if the European Commission finds that the regime has breached humanitarian law in its war on the Gaza Strip.

"In the case of the EU, the situation would be that there's an open door to have a debate within the European Council in order to see if we continue with this strategic relation or not," Sanchez told Al Jazeera network on Thursday.

"But this is something for which we first need to have the assessment of the European Commission," he added.

In February, Sanchez and his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar asked the EU to urgently review whether Israel was complying with its human rights obligations in the Gaza Strip.

Sanchez reiterated his call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for the international recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state with full membership in the United Nations.

He said Spain would recognize Palestinian statehood by July and expressed hopes that other Western nations would follow suit.

Ireland, Malta and Slovenia also announced last month they would work toward the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Bolivia, Bahrain, Belize, Jordan, Turkey, Chad, and South Africa have suspended diplomatic relations with Israel over the campaign of death and destruction in Gaza that has killed nearly 33,000 people since early October.

Source: presstv.ir

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/04/723072/Spain-EU-relations-Israel-Gaza-

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East London Mosque serves up 1,000 iftar meals a day during Ramadan

April 04, 2024

LONDON: The East London Mosque & London Muslim Center has been serving more than 1,000 iftar meals a day during Ramadan as people in the British capital grapple with the cost of living crisis.

The holy month is a time when Muslims increase their charitable giving and worshippers at the mosque, as in previous years, have been sponsoring the iftar meals at a cost of £3 ($3.80) per head.

The meals comprise biryani, fruit and dates and have proved poplar with students, refugees and asylum-seekers, many of whom are struggling financially.

The mosque has also launched an appeal to replenish its zakat funds which are used to help people in need.

Zakat is a mandatory charity that applies to all adult Muslims who meet a specific threshold. It is the third pillar of Islam and directly translates as “that which purifies.” This refers to the belief that zakat cleanses wealth. It is paid annually at a rate of 2.5 percent on disposable income and other assets.

Many Muslims choose to pay their zakat during Ramadan as they believe that the rewards for doing good deeds are multiplied during the holy month.

Sufia Alam, head of programs at the mosque, said: “The cost of living crisis continues to put exceptional pressure on families this Ramadan, especially refugee families that we’ve been helping over the past few years.

“Our zakat welfare funds have almost dried up as we’ve distributed every single penny to those in need, and our food bank continues to see high demand.

“We’ve been working closely with Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief to ensure people are not going hungry in our community, especially the most vulnerable,” she said.

Junaid Ahmed, the mosque’s CEO, said the support of the congregation was vital in helping people in “desperate need.”

“There are so many refugees and asylum-seekers that rely on our donations to survive. We must not forget them. We will continue to work with our charity partners to deliver help to those most in need here in the UK and across the world, especially in places like Gaza, where the current situation is unimaginable.”

The mosque has temporarily opened new prayer halls in both the men’s and women’s sections this year to allow 1,000 more people to worship during Ramadan and taking its total capacity to 11,000.

Source: arabnews.com

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Kremlin Critic Examines Moscow’s Attempts To Blame Others For Islamic State Attack

April 5, 2024

IaMeurmishvili

This week, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that when U.S. officials warned their Kremlin counterparts ahead of an Islamic State terrorist attack near Moscow, they specifically told them that Crocus City Hall was a potential target.

Despite this warning, Russia did not prevent the March 22 attack that killed some 144 people. In the days since, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and other officials have suggested without evidence that Ukraine played a role in the plot. On Wednesday, the head of Russia’s national security council claimed, again without evidence, the United States shares blame because of its links to Kyiv.

For more on the Russian government’s messaging, VOA Georgian service Managing Editor IaMeurmishvili spoke with prominent Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of the Russian Anti-War Committee, former political prisoner, and former owner of the Yukos company.

Khodorkovsky spoke via Zoom from London. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. You can read the full interview with Khodorkovsky in Russian here.

VOA: Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, thank you for finding the time to talk to us. What is your assessment of the tragic Crocus City Hall terrorist attack? How do you assess the Kremlin’s first reaction to it?

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: The Kremlin’s first reaction was obvious confusion. They did not understand what to do. At first, it was not entirely clear what actually happened. But the situation became clearer quite quickly. I won’t say it’s completely clear, but it’s clearer. It is obvious that the Americans warned the Kremlin both through official channels and publicly that a terrorist attack was being prepared by ISIS, the ISIS groups.

It is obvious that on these days — precisely on the days that the Americans indicated – reconnaissance was taking place. With a high degree of probability, this terrorist attack should have happened earlier, at a concert by Shaman [a Russian singer]. But they got scared, and it happened later. Also, some of the perpetrators have been exposed – that is, the Tajiks who were captured. They were obviously present during this terrorist attack and killed [people].

It’s unclear who ordered and organized the terrorist attack because it was obviously prepared quite professionally. From the moment of entry to the moment of exit either 13 or 18 minutes passed. In general, this is not enough time to enter [the complex], shoot the guards, enter the hall, drive people into the hall and organize such a large-scale fire that it was impossible to put out.

This leads to the idea that there was a second group that no one saw, because it is not entirely clear how this first group, which was in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people, could organize such a huge fire in 18-20 minutes before they ran out, and half an hour before the Ministry of Emergency Situations arrived. The roof, located at a great height, absolutely could not just burn. Who set it on fire, and how, is thus completely unclear.

I would still treat today with great caution the notion that this was organized by Putin. I don’t love Putin, but the confusion that he displayed in the first 24 hours after this terrorist attack is traditional for him: He freezes after something strong, something unpleasant happens. In general, it does not indicate that this was something he assigned to for his own propaganda purposes.

To put it mildly, not everything in this situation is clear. It is, of course, an awful, catastrophic failure for Putin’s special services, and simply a disgrace for Putin personally, because he said [about the American warnings] that “everything is lies, blackmail and provocations.” He said this not just anywhere, but at an FSB board meeting three days before the terrorist attack. By this, de facto, he, as a commander-in-chief, gave the command to the intelligence service to relax on the topic of the warning from the Americans. No one will forget this. For him, this is a big stain on his professional reputation.

VOA: Over the past years, terrorist attacks such as those at the Nord-Ost theater and the tragedy in Beslan have occurred in Russia, but seemingly, the population has not objected to how they were handled. How do you think this attack will affect Russian society?

Khodorkovsky: I don’t think there will be any dramatic changes in the mood of Russian society. You said it absolutely correctly: we walked past the much more terrible terrorist attack in Beslan, which to this day I cannot remember without trembling. We walked past the terrible terrorist attack in Nord-Ost. Moreover, in Beslan it was quite obvious that some of the terrorists escaped. The special services demonstrated a high level of unpreparedness specifically for real terrorist challenges.

They show their “professionalism” in other areas. I would rather pay attention to a very unpleasant trend that has emerged: This is the public demonstration of torture. The fact that special services torture people, the fact that people are tortured in prisons, is well known. Sometimes even videos have leaked. But it has never been done publicly like this, live, with the encouragement of distributing this footage.

Why was this done? Well, one reason is obvious. Putin needs to change the center of public discussion away from his absolutely epic failure, and a personal failure at that. This is why they pick topics that greatly excite the public consciousness — this is torture, this is ending the moratorium on the death penalty, and so on.

But if that were all, it wouldn’t be so bad. To my deep regret, there is a “trivialization,” so to speak, of evil. People are shown these harsh examples, making them ready to accept certain deviations from the law. They are shown that this is possible, this is acceptable. It is certain that if today this is acceptable in relation to extremely unpleasant suspects, then tomorrow it will be used in relation to hundreds and thousands of completely different people.

Unfortunately, this means that Putin is preparing for an increase in repression, and in general, these repressions will not only be in the traditional forms of imprisonment, but also in a general tightening of the situation.

VOA: There are concerns that Putin will use the terrorist attack as a mechanism for a new mobilization. How realistic is this?

Khodorkovsky: They probably will use it to some extent, but this is a third-order problem. Today he still has the opportunity to recruit a sufficient number of people. Rather, he is more constrained by his ability to train people, to provide them with weapons, than by anything else. I don’t think there will be any such massive

conscription of half a million people. Rather, he will call up another 140, 150, or maybe 160 thousand, which will not be so difficult to do within the framework of the spring recruiting. And a certain number will come from prisons and volunteers. This will be enough for him to create the conditions for a summer offensive, given the current state of the front, with the current level of support or, more precisely, “non-support” [by the West] for Ukraine.

To our deepest regret, what is now happening with the supply of weapons, with the supply of ammunition from America – in fact, the only country that can currently provide the necessary volumes of supplies – and from Europe as well… This all leads to the completely obvious and dramatic weakening of Ukraine.

Ukraine does not have enough air defense systems because supplies have stopped. At the front, people die, deprived of the opportunity to even respond. All this will end very sadly if something does not change in the coming months.

Source: khodorkovsky.com

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North America

 

Canadian Winnipeg Mosque Vandalized By Two Weapon-Wielding Suspects

Barry Ellsworth 

04.04.2024

The hunt continued Thursday for two weapon-wielding suspects who tried to break down the door of a Winnipeg Mosque.

About 4 a.m. Tuesday, a volunteer cleaner at the Abu Bakr Al-Siddique Community Centre in Winnipeg, the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba, heard a loud bang.

Shaqir Shaikh went to investigate and saw two people, one holding an axe and the other a knife, he told CTV News.

“I just shouted loudly and I just locked the door and I just called (emergency number) 911,” said Shaikh.

Police quickly arrived but the suspects had fled the scene, he said.

Mosque director Adnan Siddiqui said the Muslim community is concerned by the attack.

“They are really upset because we don’t know what was the purpose (of the attack),” he said.

Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said in a statement on Instagram that it serves no purpose to make suppositions on the reason for the crime.

“At this point, while we encourage Winnipeg Police to continue all angles of the investigations including as to whether this was potentially hate-motivated, we encourage our community not to speculate on the motivation of the attackers,” said the group. “We are working closely and productively with the Winnipeg Police and we will provide updates as they become available.”

Siddiqui said the mosque door needs to be replaced and security at the center will be beefed up.

Source: aa.com.tr

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Pro-Palestinian protest vote campaign in New York claims victory against Biden

LUKE TRESS

05.04.2024

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Pro-Palestinian activists claimed success in their campaign calling for voters to submit blank ballots to protest US President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in New York’s Democratic primary on Tuesday — though the actual number of protest votes is unclear.

Ahead of a series of Democratic primaries, activists across the country — particularly in swing states — have called on voters to choose “uncommitted” or an equivalent at the ballot box to register their opposition to Biden’s policy. They’ve aimed for the number of uncommitted votes to surpass Biden’s margin of victory in the 2020 election — a goal the campaign achieved in Wisconsin this week.

But in New York, the campaign faced a technical challenge because the ballot does not allow voters to choose “uncommitted.” Instead, activists launched an effort urging voters to submit blank ballots in protest.

According to one analysis by City & State, a publication focused on local politics, Tuesday’s Democratic primary saw some 39,000 blank ballots, around 12 percent of the total.

Turnout was low because the primary is already decided, and organizers have no hope of threatening a Biden loss in New York, which is expected to vote Democratic by a large margin. But the Leave It Blank campaign called the numbers “an unprecedented and historic result.”

A number of pro-Palestinian groups, including the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, the left-wing Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the progressive Working Families Party, and New York City’s chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, all backed the Leave It Blank campaign.

But while many of the blank ballots were likely protest votes, calculating the exact number is more difficult in New York than in Wisconsin, Michigan, or elsewhere. That’s because the New York Board of Elections did not include a tally of blank ballots in its preliminary results, which will take a couple of weeks.

City & State calculated them by comparing votes for candidates to total ballots for delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The discrepancy between the two figures yielded the 39,000 estimate.

In addition, the count likely includes ballots that were deliberately left blank along with those deemed “void” because voters filled out their ballot incorrectly in some way.

Comparisons with previous elections are also difficult to gauge. In 2020, blank votes made up around 8% of all ballots in the Democratic party’s presidential primary.

But the ballots that year included other races for Congress and the state legislature, so some voters may have voted for other races and left the ballot blank for the presidential primary. In both 2020 and 2024, Biden was already the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

With all of that taken into account, some areas had particularly high shares of blank or void ballots. According to City & State’s data, in New York City, the highest proportion of blank or void votes were cast in Brooklyn, amounting to nearly 25% of all ballots. The average for New York City was 15%.

The statewide figure of 12% is roughly in line with the protest vote in other states that are easier to measure.

In Wisconsin on Tuesday, 8.4% of primary voters cast “uninstructed” ballots, the equivalent of the “uncommitted” votes in other states. In Connecticut, another deep blue state, more than 7,400 Democratic voters, or 11.5% of the total, voted uncommitted. Nearly 15% of Rhode Island Democratic voters, more than 3,700 people, likewise submitted uncommitted votes.

The campaign began, and made its biggest mark, in Michigan in February, where more than 100,000 Democratic voters cast uncommitted ballots, representing 10% of voters.

Source: timesofisrael.com

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US Muslims Angry Over Biden's Support to Israel, Turns Down White House's Iftar Dinner Invite

APRIL 04, 2024

Upset over US President Joe Biden-led administration’s support for Israel in the Gaza war, the members of the Muslim community in the US declined the White House’s iftar dinner invitation in the holy month of Ramzan.

Many invitees expressed their unhappiness over President Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, stating that they would not attend an iftar meal with the President on Tuesday evening while so many Palestinians were under siege, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The White House held a pared-down meal just for staffers. “How can we talk to you about famine and starvation over bread and steak?” Dr Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian American doctor who was in Gaza in January was quoted as saying as per the report published in The New York Times.

Dr Ahmed attended a separate hour-long meeting of the community leaders and President Biden. Notably, the meeting on Tuesday was attended by Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Muslim advocacy group Emgage, which declined the invitation from the White House, said a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions has been unfolding with millions now facing famine and disease.

“In this moment of tremendous pain and suffering, we have asked the White House to postpone this gathering and to convene a proper policy meeting with representatives of the community’s choosing, rather than those selected by the White House,” the group said in a statement.

Emgage said in order to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the Biden administration can and should leverage its enormous support for Israel and begin to take demonstrable actions on an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

“The US should also ensure an unfettered access for humanitarian aid convoys and the resumption of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) funding; an end to any Israeli plans to invade Rafah where 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering; and the initiation of a legitimate political track that leads to Palestinian statehood,” it added.

It is important to note that the Muslim community in the US is frustrated and angry at the Biden administration for not stopping the killing of innocent people in Gaza.

In fact, many Muslim American groups in some of the critical battle ground states like Michigan have announced that they will not vote for Biden in the November general elections.

White House officials have travelled outside of Washington to meet with Muslim American community leaders in Detroit and Chicago in recent months but were not welcomed by some who were invited to participate.

The Biden campaign has also tried to engage with key Arab American voters in swing states like Michigan, where more than 100,000 people chose ’uncommitted’ on their primary ballots in February, NBC News said.

Source: news18.com

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Biden finally calls for Gaza ceasefire in call with Netanyahu

Apr 5, 2024

TEHRAN, Apr. 05 (MNA) – US President Joe Biden finally called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as the risk of escalation mounts in the region.

In a pivotal, unforeseen phone call that has been awaited for six months, US President Joe Biden called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to start taking steps toward an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Lebanese Al Mayadeen reported.

President Biden underscored the gravity of recent developments, particularly condemning the strikes on humanitarian workers and highlighting the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

During the conversation, President Biden emphasized the imperative for "Israel" to take immediate and decisive action to mitigate civilian harm, alleviate humanitarian suffering, and ensure the safety of aid workers.

Moreover, Biden stressed the necessity for the Israeli occupation to announce and implement a series of specific, tangible, and measurable measures aimed at addressing these pressing concerns, as well as commit to a ceasefire.

Furthermore, President Biden underlined that the trajectory of US policy toward Gaza would be contingent upon the occupation's prompt implementation of these proposed steps.

He reiterated the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire to stabilize the situation and prevent further harm to innocent civilians. Additionally, he urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to authorize his negotiators to swiftly conclude a deal aimed at securing the release of the Israeli captives.

In addition to discussing the situation in Gaza, the two leaders deliberated on the public threats issued by Iran against "Israel" and its citizens.

The United States has refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, essentially rendering it a pariah state in the international arena, especially among major powers, as it wasn't only not calling on "Israel" to commit to a ceasefire. It was vetoing any UN Resolutions aimed at urging for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Source: mehrnews.com

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Israel to increase Gaza aid routes after US pressure, White House says

Michael Hernandez 

05.04.2024

Israel has agreed to open additional routes for the delivery of badly-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza, the White House announced Thursday, just hours after President Joe Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that major reforms were needed.

Israel has yet to officially confirm that it has agreed to take the actions, but the White House said it will use the port at the Israeli city of Ashdod for direct aid deliveries to Gaza, open the Erez crossing point along the northern Gaza border and "significantly increase deliveries from Jordan directly into Gaza."

The actions "must now be fully and rapidly implemented," said National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

"As the President said today on the call, U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these and other steps, including steps to protect innocent civilians and the safety of aid workers," she said in a statement.

"We are prepared to work in full coordination with the Government of Israel, the Governments of Jordan and Egypt, the United Nations, and humanitarian organizations, to ensure that these important steps are implemented and result in a significant increase in humanitarian assistance reaching civilians in dire need throughout Gaza over the coming days and weeks," she added.

Prior to the White House's announcement, just the Karem Shalom and Rafah border crossings were open for aid deliveries. Both are in southern Gaza, and the flow of international assistance has remained woefully insufficient to meet the humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal enclave due to Israeli restrictions.

Biden spoke by phone with Netanyahu earlier Thursday, warning him that future US support for Israel's war on Gaza depends on Tel Aviv's implementation of major reforms following the "unacceptable" killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza.

The comments come after Israel carried out strikes Monday on a humanitarian convoy in central Gaza that killed seven aid workers with the food charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) in what its founder Chef Jose Andres called a "direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known” by the Israeli army.

The White House said Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers.”

"He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” it said.

The White House later declined to specify what steps the president is taking into consideration. But it said the US expects to see Israel take several steps "in the coming hours and days," including allowing a "dramatic increase in the humanitarian assistance" into Gaza and opening up additional border crossings for aid deliveries.

It remains to be seen if the agreements will actually result in an increased volume of aid entering Gaza.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack in early October by the Palestinian group Hamas killed around 1,200 people.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,577 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which last week asked it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

Source: aa.com.tr

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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/israel-to-increase-gaza-aid-routes-after-us-pressure-white-house-says/3184013

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Arab World

 

Art exhibition displays senses and spirituality during Ramadan

April 04, 2024

RIYADH: Art took over the luxury fashion mall Centria this Ramadan with a display of works from 33 artists in the Kingdom’s capital. 

Curated by Saudi designer Amar Alamdar under the theme “Senses and Spirituality,” the exhibition provided a platform to show the true values of the holy month and the culture surrounding it from the perspectives of the featured artists.  

In line with the concept of charity, one of the pillars of Islam, proceeds from the exhibition’s silent auction will be donated to the Ekhaa Charitable Foundation for Orphan Care. 

Visual artist Meshal bin Diran is driven by a passion to discover the mysteries of color and composition, articulating it as a means of communicating. Brushes, paint and pen are merely tools to immortalize his emotions. His work edges on abstract surrealist art devoid of clear elements with a unique mix of color and composition. 

“Spirituality is derived from culture, whether that’s religion or ancient rituals or otherwise, so that’s difficult to target … I went back to the definition of spirituality that I resonate with, which is prayer and all its elements of reverence, serenity, concentration and cleanliness. It’s very integrated as a spiritual environment,” he told Arab News.  

His painting features soft but bright pastel colors in an almost whimsical interpretation. Set in the hub of the spiritual act, the mosque, the work features elements such as the entrance to the masjid, hearts hanging from the arches, and prayer beads reminiscent of the ones he carries around himself. 

The identical beads circularly lead the way into the entrance, signifying that any one of them could be one of us, or in turn, an imam. The element also highlights the lack of division in the Islamic religion. 

The style is rooted in movement, causing the content of the work to seem as if it is floating. 

“Spirituality is subjective to every person, so all the pages in the painting’s book are blank. It’s an idea that we believe in and pass down to generations,” he said. 

Salama Hassan, a self-taught artist who specializes in the fine arts, pushes the boundaries of Arabic calligraphy to the point where her work transcends a mere font and becomes conceptual.   

Using Chinese typography characteristics to shape various verses in the Qur’an, Hassan prompts the audience to contemplate the language and verses at hand. The artwork becomes a puzzle, demanding us to look deeper into the meaning and placement of each letter.

Hassan told Arab News previously: “I’m a fan of Arabic calligraphy … I decided to venture out of the box. I love Eastern cultures like Japanese and Chinese and their calligraphy, as well as Arabic. I wanted to prove that the Arabic letter is valid in any time and space. I’m trying to create more awareness around it.”

She traced the Qur’anic verses vertically, with each line holding one or two letters, leading the viewer to enunciate each letter and word. The method of language bridging provides an insightful opportunity for cultural exchange. 

The exhibition featured immersive works that allowed visitors to interact through their own phone screens using an app. The work of digital artist Mohammed Wahas shows an anguished woman with two crows perched on her head. One is silent and the other is screaming to express the mental instability caused by excessive thinking. As the viewer moves their lens to the painting, the two birds come alive, floating between serenity and despair.  

Artist Sarah Al-Alshaikh’s work “Peace of Mind” animates a faceless woman with her rosary to tell a much larger story. The piece was inspired by the Rumi quote: “You presume you are a small entity, but within you is enfolded the entire Universe.”

Hams Muryh used her Asiri roots as points of inspiration. Her work documents traditional southern crafts by incorporating Al-Haseer, a traditional hand-weaving technique using date palm leaves, and Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, a style of Saudi art that is usually painted by women in the southern region of the Kingdom, which she acquired from her grandmother.  

The two works on display, “Kiswa” and “Intima,” set out to encapsulate the authenticity of Saudi heritage and the depth of its culture. 

She told Arab News: “I was keen to display these two works with different materials, from the fineness of the paper to the roughness of the mats. However, the art of Al-Qatt Al-Asiri reflects both the intangible and material impact on the people of the Asir region, and how they can celebrate the renewal and decoration of walls before Eids and celebratory occasions in a distinct, modern style that reflects the artistry that’s rooted within them.” 

Artist Amal Alem featured eight paintings of prayer rugs, which are present in all Muslim homes around the globe, accompanied by the rosary that accompanies the worshippers throughout their prayers. The prayer mat has become a symbol that reminds people of the universality of Islam.  

Alamdar said: “These rugs are our elders’ and the younger generations aren’t aware of it, but we can relay our spirituality and these ideas through art.” 

The exhibition, which ended on the 24th day of Ramadan, featured numerous works interpreting the notion of spirituality.

Source: arabnews.com

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https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488336/lifestyle

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‘Digital Bags’ program launched at holy mosques

April 04, 2024

MAKKAH: The Presidency for Religious Affairs at the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque launched the “Digital Bags” program, which presents booklets by well-known scholars and Islamic preachers to Umrah visitors.

The program aims to promote moderation and religious awareness among the growing number of Umrah performers at the holy sites.

Visitors can enter the Digital Bags program by scanning the barcode of the desired booklet, accessing its entire contents and enabling sharing with other people.

The presidency has carried out numerous religious activities and programs, including donation drives, during Ramadan.

More activities are being held in the last days of the holy month, which will witness the influx of millions of Umrah performers and visitors to the two holy mosques.

The presidency is easing access to religious services by investing in technology, digitization, modern media, AI, governance and digital institutional work, spreading the moderate message of Islam globally in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.

Source: arabnews.com

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Prophet's Mosque Sees 4,700 Worshippers Observe Itikaf in Last 10 Days of Ramadan

04 Apr, 2024

The Prophet’s Mosque has welcomed 4,700 men and women performing the rite of Itikaf (seclusion for worship) in the last ten days of Ramadan for the year 1445 AH. They completed the permitted number through the “Visitors” electronic application, which is governed by the capacity of the places designated for Itikaf service.

The General Authority for the Affairs of the Prophet’s Mosque allocated sites for Itikaf observers in the men’s and women’s sections of the Prophet’s Mosque. Escalator No. 6 and Ladder 10 were designated for men to ascend to the Itikaf site, while doors 24 and 25 were designated for women entering the site.

The authority provided all necessary services and facilities for Itikaf observers, including meal and hospitality services, cupboards for storing luggage and charging devices, in addition to essential visitor services. It also allocated a medical clinic that provides health services.

The authority provided Itikaf observers with a bracelet to ensure ease of movement, access to the site, and easy access to services.

Source: alriyadhdaily.com

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Hira Cultural District in Mecca: A spiritual experience for Umrah performers and visitors

April 05, 2024

The Hira Cultural District has become a major attraction for visitors and Umrah performers during Ramadan.

More than a million visitors from over 100 countries, drawn by the district's rich Islamic history and cultural immersion, flocked to the Hira Cultural District according to Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

A key attraction is the Revelation Exhibition located at the foot of Mount Hira. This interactive exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the story of the revelation of the Quran to Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).

Visitors can explore a collection of exhibits showcasing the Islamic and historical significance of Mecca. The exhibition's use of advanced technology effectively promotes awareness and education.

Hira Cave, a revered landmark in Mecca, has also seen a surge in visitors following its recent reopening and the construction of a new pathway. Umrah performers are eager to explore the cave and experience the spiritual atmosphere where Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) received his revelations.

The climb to the cave is particularly popular during the holy month, with visitors seeking to deepen their knowledge of its historical and geographical significance.

Spread over 67,000 square meters, the Hira Cultural District is a unique cultural and tourist destination overseen by a consortium consisting of the Royal Commission for Makkah City and the Holy Sites, the Makkah Region Emirate, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Tourism, the Holy Makkah Municipality, the Pilgrim Experience Program, and the General Authority for Endowments.

The district's development plan prioritizes honoring its historical significance, reflecting the stature of the Kingdom, and upholding its role as custodian of the holy sites. The project strives to create harmony between the natural beauty and historical value of the location, while acknowledging the religious, humanitarian, and historical importance of Mecca.

Source: gulfnews.com

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https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/hira-cultural-district-in-mecca--a-spiritual-experience-for-umrah-performers-and-visitors-1.1712295986549

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Over 20 million worshippers visit Prophet's Mosque in first 20 days of Ramadan

April 05, 2024

Over 20 million worshippers visited the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah during the first 20 days of Ramadan, reported the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

According to SPA, 1,643,288 individuals visited the Prophet's grave, while Al-Rawda Al-Sharifa received a total of 358,632 men and 296,595 women during this period.

These remarkable figures underscore the commitment of the General Authority for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques to ensuring a seamless experience for visitors throughout the holy month.

Source: gulftoday.ae

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https://www.gulftoday.ae/news/2024/04/05/over-20-million-worshippers-visit-prophets-mosque-in-first-20-days-of-ramadan

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Mideast

 

Millions rally on Quds Day to condemn Israeli genocide, support Palestinians

05 April 2024

Millions of people in Iran and across the world rally on the International Quds Day, marked on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, to express their solidarity with Palestinians and condemn Israeli atrocities.

Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif, the spokesman of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and the director-general of Intifada headquarters in Tehran, said pro-Palestine rallies are held in more than 2,000 locations across the country.

In Tehran, the rallies included a funeral procession held for the martyrs of an Israeli airstrike on the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in the Mezzeh neighborhood in Damascus on Monday.

This year’s rallies take place as Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and elsewhere have come under the most unprecedented campaign after bombings and displacement by Israel.

More than 180 days into the onslaught, at least 33,037 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, with 75,668 others injured, mostly women and children.

Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.

Speaking at the news briefing, Sharif underlined that the slogan of this year's Quds Day march is, "Quds Day, from al-Aqsa Storm to al-Ahrar (freedom seekers) Storm."

Quds day is an annual pro-Palestinian event held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan to express support for Palestinians and oppose  Israel  and Zionism. The event, initiated by the late founder of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini, was first held in 1979 in Iran, shortly after the Iranian Revolution.

Source: presstv.ir

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Islamic Jihad warns Israel against harming Al-Aqsa Mosque

04 April 2024

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement has warned the Israeli regime against repercussions of harming the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Abu Hamza, spokesman for the Saraya al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, said in remarks on Thursday that the “battle will not stop at the geographical borders of Palestine” if any harm was done to the holy Islamic site.

“What is happening on the ground confirms that the resistance factions continue to wage the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood with all determination. The resistance continues to repel aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.”

“We continue, alongside the resistance factions, the enduring battle of Al-Aqsa Flood on all levels with determination, bravery, and steadfastness.”

He also underscored the support given to the Palestinian resistance fighters by the chief of the Lebanese resistance movement and the leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement.

“From the heart of the battle, we salute our brothers in Lebanon’s Hezbollah, his eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and to the leader of the Yemen revolution, SayyedAbdulmalik al-Houthi, and to the leaders of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq,” he said.

“The pure blood in Palestine has started to blossom from Jordan to Tunisia, Bahrain, and beyond.”

The Islamic Jihad and other resistance groups have repeatedly warned Israel “not to play with fire.” The regime has imposed restrictions on access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic Jihad spokesman also denounced the United States for providing the regime with advanced weapons and other military equipment.

“Gaza requires us all to stand up to our responsibilities to shed blood in the face of the Zionist-American arsenal,” he said.

“From the very first moment of the battle, our fighters were in the front lines and are still stationed at their posts,” he said, in reference to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm of October 7, 2023.

“We reject the occupation and will not allow it to settle on the land of Gaza, and the enemy must understand the message well.”

International Quds Day demos

The Islamic Jihad spokesman called on the international community, particularly Muslim countries, to fully support the oppressed Palestinian people on the International Quds Day.

“This year's Al-Quds Day was distinguished by the unity of the fields. Al-Quds has united the fronts this year.”

The International Quds Day was designated by Imam Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic. It is marked annually across the world on the last Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. This year, the event falls on April 5.

Abu Hamza also underscored the key role of Iran in supporting the Palestinian cause.

Source: presstv.ir

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Türkiye asks NATO members to back Ankara's fight against terrorism: Top diplomat

Selen Valente Rasquinho

05.04.2024

Türkiye has asked NATO members to support Ankara in its fight against terrorism, Foreign Minister HakanFidan said on Thursday.

"We underlined that NATO member countries should fully and unconditionally support Türkiye in the fight against terrorism," Fidan told reporters in Brussels.

Fidan's remarks came after a two-day NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, where he also held sideline talks with his counterparts.

During his talks, Fidan said he also emphasized that some NATO member countries should not cooperate with the terrorist organization, particularly in Syria.

"We said this is against the spirit of the NATO alliance," he added.

Stressing that it was agreed upon the appointment of a counter-terrorism coordinator at last year's Vilnius Summit, Fidan said efforts are continuing for NATO to look at the fight against terrorism "structurally."

The minister said he discussed with his counterparts the activities of the terrorist organization PKK in Europe.

"What is sad for them (European countries) is that the terrorist organization, which they have been silent about for years, is terrorizing their own streets. It is not a surprise to us that they are seeing these things now," he added.

Fidan said the countries should not only condemn the terror group's acts of violence against the Turkish nationals living in Europe, but also they should take "very serious" measures to combat it.

"I see authorities increasingly becoming more sensitive in Europe. This is actually a pleasing issue. I see that tolerance towards PKK is gradually decreasing. This is important," he added.

In its nearly 40-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US, and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian offshoot.

Next NATO secretary-general

Turning to the 75th anniversary of NATO's founding, Fidan said Türkiye has been an important member of the alliance since 1952.

"It has been contributing to NATO for 72 years. Our armed forces actively participate in NATO missions," he added.

Fidan announced that the informal NATO foreign minister meeting will be held in Türkiye next year.

About the race for being the next NATO chief, Fidan said he recently met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who announced his bid to become the next secretary-general.

"It is possible that he will visit Türkiye soon. We are working on a date," he said.

Stoltenberg’s term is scheduled to end on Oct. 1 after ten years.

Recently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Rutte in a phone call that Ankara would back a candidate to be NATO's new chief based on its expectations and needs.

Erdogan emphasized the need for the new secretary-general to best serve the security and interests of members in the fight against terrorism and other challenges, bolster the unity of the alliance, prioritize NATO's fundamental duty, and deliver convincing commitments to uphold the alliance's core values and established practices, as well as consider the sensitivities of non-EU allies.

Stressing that Türkiye clearly expressed his expectation that the process carried out with current chief Jens Stoltenberg will be put forward by the new secretary-general, Fidan said: "I think our president will also announce his decision (soon)."

Regional issues

About the restrictions on Türkiye in the defense industry, Fidan said he told his counterparts that they are not "compatible with the spirit of the alliance and that the restrictions should be removed."

Regarding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, Fidan said Ukrainian counterpart DmytroKuleba gave information about the war during the meeting.

Türkiye emphasized that it stands by Ukraine's security and sovereignty, and underlined that alternative ways to peace and cease-fire should be sought to stop the war, he added.

Fidan also said he discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip with his counterparts on the sidelines of the NATO meeting and voiced concern over the "unbearable" situation in the enclave.

"In particular, we have repeatedly raised the need for a cease-fire, urgent humanitarian aid and a two-state solution perspective. Here's the good thing. Now, all our counterparts almost agree with us.

"It is important for the international community to reach this understanding during the process in terms of diplomatic gains, but more needs to be done in terms of changing something on the ground. Our determination on this issue continues," he added.

President Erdogan's visit to US

During his sideline meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Brussels, Fidan said they also discussed the upcoming visit of Erdogan to the US upon the invitation of his counterpart Joe Biden.

Fidan said Erdogan's agenda will include different issues, including bilateral and regional relations, with Gaza coming first among these.

Stressing that the Ukraine issue will also be on the agenda, Fidan said: "These two wars concern our region. At the same time, they both trigger global fault lines and there are other risk areas that they will trigger. Our president will continue to draw attention to them and emphasize our sensitivities on these issues."

Fidan said enhancement of the relations in other areas, such as economy, technology, and trade, will also be on the agenda.

Erdogan's perspective is to remove Turkish-American relations from being "solely security-oriented" and to create a "more balanced and broader" set of relations, he added.

Source: aa.com.tr

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High Court gives government six days to submit answers on Gaza humanitarian crisis

JEREMY SHARON

4 April 2024

The High Court of Justice instructed the state on Thursday to provide answers within six days to key questions over government policies for the supply of aid to the Gaza Strip, which were raised during a court hearing regarding the dire humanitarian situation in the territory.

The order by the court for more complete answers to these issues came after tough questions were raised during Thursday’s hearing over a petition filed by the Gisha human rights NGO and several other organizations, asking the court to compel the government to increase the supply of humanitarian aid to alleviate civilian suffering in Gaza amid the months-long war there.

The attorney for the petitioners asked in particular why additional border crossings are not being opened, especially to supply northern Gaza; why the Port of Ashdod is not being used to supply Gaza; and why supplies are not being sourced from Israel and the West Bank.

She also pointed to claims by the United Nations in February that 51 percent of missions planned by humanitarian organizations to deliver aid to northern Gaza were denied by Israeli authorities, arguing that this was a key cause of the humanitarian crisis, despite the fact that Israel is allowing aid to cross the border.

Supreme Court Acting President Uzi Vogelman appeared attentive to the petitioners, acknowledging the severe nature of the humanitarian crisis and insisting that the state must offer answers.

The attorney representing the state stressed, as the government has done for months, that there is no limit on the amount of aid that can enter the Strip, although he was challenged on this claim by the Gisha attorney who asserted that logistical restrictions imposed by the government within the enclave had led to a severe lack of food and humanitarian supplies, particularly in northern Gaza.

The court gave the state until April 10 to submit a supplementary filing answering some of the key questions raised in the petition and hearing.

Israel declared war on Hamas in Gaza after the terror organization carried out the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis and took 253 people hostage during a savage invasion of southern Israel.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 32,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that is unverified, and which Israel says includes some 13,000 terror operatives. Tens of thousands have been injured.

The UN says some 346,000 children are at high risk of malnutrition in Gaza, while the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification organization found in March that famine is “projected and imminent in the North Gaza and Gaza Governorates.” Israel contested the findings, noting its lack of accurate data.

The petition was filed by the Gisha organization together with HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah, and has requested that the court order the government to “significantly increase the volume of aid to Gaza, including by opening land crossings between Gaza and Israel, and to provide for all the needs of the civilian population in keeping with Israel’s obligations as the occupying power.”

The petitioners assert that Israeli policy constitutes “a flagrant violation” of international law and violates the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice in January and March that Israel ensure the unfettered entry of humanitarian aid to the war-torn territory.

“Israel is violating international law and is leading to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the spread of famine, thirst and disease,” said Attorney OsnatLipshitz-Cohen for Gisha in court.

Citing numerous UN agencies and international aid organizations, Lipshitz-Cohen said that the health system had collapsed, that thousands of sick and injured people were not getting necessary treatment, and pointed to reports of amputations being performed without anesthetic.

“Many sick and injured people are losing their lives because there is not enough medicine, equipment and medical staff,” she said.

“We’re not talking about a tsunami or an earthquake, we’re talking about a war that is the work of man.”

Challenged by both Vogelman and Justice Noam Sohlberg on the reliability of the information coming out of Gaza, Lipshitz-Cohen acknowledged that obtaining reliable data was problematic, but insisted that some of the information was coming from aid agencies on the ground, including UNICEF and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, among others.

She pointed in particular to a UNICEF report from early March following a field mission to the Al-Shifa, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, which stated that “distressing levels of malnutrition and child fatalities from starvation were reported.”

Lipshitz-Cohen also noted several incidents in Gaza in which civilians have died during efforts to distribute food, including an incident in February, when dozens of people died in a stampede as they rushed at aid trucks, as well as several incidents of drowning as people sought to reach airdropped supplies that fell into the sea.

These scenes, she said, demonstrated how desperate people were for food in Gaza.

Attorney Yonatan Berman, representing the state, acknowledged that the humanitarian situation in the coastal enclave was bad, especially in northern Gaza, but insisted that Israel has not restricted the supply of humanitarian goods.

“We do not dispute the fact that as a result of the war in Gaza, there has been great suffering to the civilian population in Gaza. This is because the terror organizations are operating among population centers in Gaza, the use of human shields, and using civilian structures for terror activities,” said Berman.

But he was challenged by Lipshitz-Cohen on several issues. She demanded to know why Crossing 96, close to Kibbutz Be’eri, has only recently been opened and why only 60 trucks had passed through it.

She also demanded to know why the Israeli government has blocked the use of Ashdod Port for supplying humanitarian aid to Gaza, opting instead for Port Said in Egypt, which is over 200 kilometers (124 miles) away from Gaza, whereas Ashdod is just some 37 kilometers (23 miles) away.

And she questioned why Israel has blocked the private sector in Gaza from bringing in food from Israel, since 91% of goods entering Gaza from the Kerem Shalom goods crossing before October 7 came through the private sector in the territory from Israel and the West Bank.

Vogelman said explicitly that these questions needed to be properly addressed by the state.

“Northern Gaza is where the humanitarian situation is the most severe, and so there is importance to hear explanations [why aid is lacking in that region],” said the acting court president.

A representative of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories agency (COGAT), a division of the Defense Ministry, noted that 400 trucks of humanitarian supplies had reached northern Gaza in March, though Lipshitz-Cohen pointed out that the World Health Organization has said 300 trucks a day are required there to address the current humanitarian crisis.

“We are in daily coordination with the international aid organizations to determine where the needs are, what needs to be delivered and how much,” said Berman.

“We do a daily evaluation of the situation, which also deals with the tactical coordination of activities, learning lessons and identifying how things can be improved for the next day.”

Berman said that using Crossing 96 was “more complicated in terms of security” than using other crossings, and told the court that he could only expand on this issue behind closed doors.

He also said he would address the issues with supplying aid from Ashdod in a supplementary submission to the court, as well as the restrictions on the Gaza private sector acting to import supplies from Israel and the West Bank.

In its decision following the hearing, the High Court told the government to state how much aid is needed to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza; what the bottlenecks are limiting the provision of humanitarian aid; and what it intends to do to increase the entry and supply of aid.

Source: timesofisrael.com

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Israel says will allow ‘temporary’ aid through northern Gaza border

April 05, 2024

JERUSALEM: Israel will allow “temporary” aid deliveries via its border with the northern Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced Friday, reopening the Erez crossing into the famine-threatened territory for the first time since the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.

“Israel will allow the temporary delivery of humanitarian aid through Ashdod and the Erez checkpoint,” said a government statement released hours after a warning from US President Joe Biden.

“This increased aid will prevent a humanitarian crisis and is necessary to ensure the continuation of the fighting and to achieve the goals of the war,” the statement added.

The announcement comes as international pressure mounts on Israel after it took responsibility for a strike that killed seven aid workers.

In a tense, 30-minute call with Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza” will be determined based on “specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” according to a White House statement.

According to Israel’s statement, in addition to allowing aid through the Erez border crossing and the port of Ashdod, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Gaza, the authorities will also allow “increased Jordanian aid through Kerem Shalom,” a border crossing in southern Israel.

Source: arabnews.com

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Hezbollah strikes Israeli troops, military vehicles in support of Gaza

 05 April 2024

Fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement have carried out a series of new attacks, targeting Israeli military positions along Lebanon's border with the northern part of the 1948-occupied territories in solidarity with Palestinians amid the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, citing a Hezbollah statement, reported that the group struck Israeli soldiers and military vehicles at the al-Malikiyah site early Friday with a salvo of artillery shells and missiles.

The statement added that the projectiles hit the designated targets precisely, and caused casualties among the Israeli soldiers.

Moreover, Hezbollah forces targeted an Israeli military vehicle at the entrance to Metula town, destroying it and inflicting casualties upon the occupants.

The statement noted that the operations came in support of steadfast Palestinians in Gaza and resistance factions fighting off Israeli offensives.

Late on Thursday, the Lebanese resistance fighters pummeled Israeli soldiers stationed at Ruwaisat al-Alam and Ruwaisat al-Qarn sites with rockets and artillery shells.

Earlier in the day, Hezbollah had targeted a command center in Liman as Israeli warplanes struck the southern Lebanese border towns of Yaroun and Ainata.

Hezbollah later attacked groups of soldiers near the Jal al-Alam outpost.

The Israeli regime has repeatedly attacked southern Lebanon since October 7, when it launched a genocidal war on Gaza that has killed at least 33,037 Palestinians, most of them women and children, so far. Another 75,668 individuals have also been injured in the onslaught.

In retaliation, Hezbollah has launched near-daily rocket attacks on Israeli positions.

At least 349 people have been killed on the Lebanese border, including 68 civilians.

Israel says at least ten soldiers and eight settlers have been killed in the area.

The fighting has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands from the northern part of the occupied territories, amid rocket fire and shelling carried out by Hezbollah and allied Palestinian groups.

Hezbollah has already fought off two Israeli wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. The resistance forced the regime to retreat in both conflicts.

Source: presstv.ir

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Israeli strike on Gaza building killed 106 in ‘apparent war crime’: HRW

April 04, 2024

JERUSALEM:A Human Rights Watch investigation published on Thursday said an Israeli attack on a Gaza building in October had no apparent militant target, but killed 106 civilians, including 54 children, making it an “apparent war crime.”

International law prohibits attacks on military targets that will likely cause disproportionate harm to civilians.

The Oct. 31 attack was one of the deadliest since the start of the war nearly six months ago.

Human Rights Watch says four separate strikes collapsed the Engineer’s Building in central Gaza, which was housing some 350 people, around a third of whom had fled their homes elsewhere in the territory.

Those killed included children playing soccer outside and residents charging phones in the first-floor grocery store, it said.

Thirty-four women, 18 men and 54 children were killed in the strike, according to the group, which says it corroborated its list of the dead with Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor.

The dead came from 22 families. One extended family, the Abu Said family, lost 23 relatives in the strike, it said.

Journalists reported on four siblings who had been killed in the strike in October, including 18-month-old twin boys.

“They had no time here,” Sami Abu Sultan, their uncle, said a day after the building was destroyed. “It was God’s will.”

While putting together the report, Human Rights Watch says it interviewed 16 people, including relatives of those killed in the attack, and analyzed satellite imagery, 35 photographs and 45 videos of the aftermath.

It was unable to visit the site because Israel heavily restricts access to Gaza.

Witnesses told the rights group there was no warning ahead of the attack.

Human Rights Watch says Israeli authorities have not published any information about the purported target and did not respond to its requests for information.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Israel has faced mounting international criticism over its wartime conduct after its strikes killed seven aid workers earlier this week.

Its bombardment of the strip is one of the most intense aerial campaigns of the 21st century.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan said there has been no progress in Gaza ceasefire talks despite the Palestinian group showing flexibility.

Hamdan said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was placing obstacles hindering both parties from reaching an agreement, and that he is “not interested” in releasing Israeli hostages.

“The occupation government is still evading, and negotiations are stuck in a vicious circle,” Hamdan said at a press conference held in Beirut.

Egyptian and Qatari efforts, backed by the US, have so far failed to achieve a ceasefire.

While Hamas wants any ceasefire agreement to secure an end to the Israeli military offensive, Israel prefers a prisoners-for-hostage release deal, refusing to commit to ending its military campaign.

The Israeli military released 101 Palestinians who had been detained by forces during the ground offensive in the past weeks and months. The detainees, many of whom complained of ill-treatment in Israeli jails, were freed through the Israeli Kerem Shalom crossing into the southern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military halted leave for all combat units on Thursday amid concerns of a possible escalation in violence after the killing of Iranian generals in Damascus this week drew threats of retaliation.

“In accordance with the situational assessment, it has been decided that leave will be temporarily paused for all IDF (Israel Defense Forces) combat units,” the military said in a statement.

“The IDF is at war and the deployment of forces is under continuous assessment according to requirements,” it said.

On Wednesday, the military said it had drafted reservists to boost aerial defenses. Journalists and Tel Aviv residents said that GPS services had been disrupted, an apparent measure meant to ward off guided missiles.

Iran has vowed revenge for the killing of two of its generals along with five military advisers in an airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday.

Israel has been pressing its war on Hamas for six months.

Source: arabnews.com

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Iran calls for full support for Palestinians on Quds Day

Apr 4, 2024

TEHRAN, Apr. 04 (MNA) – Iran has called on the international community, particularly Muslim countries, to fully support the oppressed Palestinian people on International Quds Day, urging them to confront the "cancerous tumor" of Israel in the region.

In a statement released on the eve of International Quds Day, Iran's Foreign Ministry “vehemently condemned the Zionist regime’s blatant violation of international law and regulations, human rights, and international humanitarian law” in the war-torn Gaza Strip since October 7.

“The Government and the noble people of the Islamic Republic of Iran once again remind the international community and world governments, especially of Muslim countries, of their responsibility to provide all-out support for the oppressed Palestinian people, particularly the besieged inhabitants and war-stricken people of the Gaza Strip,” it added, according to Press TV.

International Quds Day was designated by Imam Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic. It is marked annually across the world on the last Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. This year, the event falls on April 5.

The ministry further called for “effective, decisive, and immediate action by governments and international legal and human rights institutions to stop these crimes and to lodge a criminal case for prosecuting and trying the commanders, perpetrators, and supporters of such human tragedies.”

International Quds Day in the current year comes amid the ongoing brutal war against inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Since October 7 last year, Israel has killed more than 32,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured nearly 75,500 others in Gaza since October 7.

According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the Israeli military has so far killed more than 14,400 children in Gaza, meaning children make up more than one-third of the people Israel has killed in the territory.

“Hundreds of millions of justice-seeking and conscientious people” across the globe, and even in the Western cities, “will raise louder than ever before the cry of innocence and courage and anti-oppressiveness of the heroic Palestinian nation and the truth and reality of what is transpiring in the Palestinian territory on this year's International Quds Day as they demand the liberation of Palestine from the yoke of oppression, tyranny, occupation, and genocide, not only as the ‘first issue’ of the World of Islam, but as the issue of the world of humanity and the most flagrant example of gross violation of human rights and international laws and regulations,” the statement further said.

Israel has cut off fuel, electricity, food and water to the Palestinians living in the coastal territory. It is also deliberately starving the people in Gaza by destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian goods.

Last year, tens of thousands of Iranians took part in the annual International Quds Day rallies in the capital, Tehran, in a major show of support for Palestine. Similar marches and events happened in more than 900 cities and villages nationwide, according to officials.

On the eve of this International Quds Day, Iran’s foreign ministry “emphasizes the continuation of the principled and constant policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in supporting the liberation struggles and legitimate resistance of the Palestinian nation and the necessity of effective, comprehensive, and deterrent counteraction against the crimes of the occupying and child-killing Zionist regime."

It also "calls on all Muslim governments and nations and the freedom- and truth-seekers of the world to stand in unity and solidarity so as to confront this ‘cancerous tumor’ and disruptor of regional and international stability and security and to provide real and practical aid and support to the oppressed Palestinian people.”

In conclusion, the ministry called on the international and human rights organizations and institutions to keep in mind their legal duties in supporting the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people “in ending the occupation, stopping the brutal crimes of the Zionists in the Holy al-Quds and other occupied regions in Palestine, and in putting an end to the aggressive and escalating actions of the Zionists in the region.”

Source: mehrnews.com

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Muslim bloc calls for urgent cease-fire in Gaza ahead of Eid al-Fitr

Anadolu staff 

04.04.2024

The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) on Thursday called on the "free world" to strive for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip before the blessed Muslim festival Eid al-Fitr.

The Israeli crimes in Gaza constitute genocide and represent a serious abuse, demolishing all human values, the union said in a statement.

The statement condemned "the killing of innocents and the torture of children, women, the elderly, and scholars" in Gaza, considering it "a heinous violation of all human values.”

"We call on the free world to immediately and urgently cease fire before the Eid al-Fitr (April 10),” the statement added.

Additionally, the statement urged international human rights groups to "take immediate actions to stop the humanitarian bleeding in Gaza Strip.”

The statement also called for the opening of crossings with the enclave to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

Israel has been pounding the Palestinian enclave since Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.

Over 33,000 Palestinians have since been killed and nearly 75,700 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which last week asked it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

Source: aa.com.tr

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Türkiye hopes to share Ramadan together ‘under the flag of a free Palestine’: Parliament speaker

AynurEkiz, Ali Kemal Akan 

05.04.2024

Turkish Parliament Speaker NumanKurtulmus said Thursday that he hopes to visit Gazans during Ramadan and have a fast-breaking dinner (iftar) together under the flag of a free Palestine.

"You are guests at our table, and just as you have honored us with your presence, we hope to visit your tables in Gaza under the flag of a free Palestine in the upcoming Ramadan, and we will share iftar together," Kurtulmus said during a fast-breaking dinner at the Turkish Grand National Assembly hosting Gazan Muslims.

Kurtulmus said Türkiye aims to alleviate the pain, show brotherhood, pray for martyred Gazan brothers, keep them in their memories and increase determination for the Palestinian cause.

He also noted that the Gaza issue revealed great pains and human drama but also opened the door to new developments worldwide, pointing out that a great massacre is taking place in Gaza while a great example of resistance is also being demonstrated.

"It is one of the most important epics of resistance in human history...We do not forget AhedTamimi standing up against Israeli soldiers when she was only 11 years old, her mujahideen and defiant attitude. Similarly, we do not forget the photograph of Muhammad al-Durrah being martyred by Israeli soldiers behind his father when he was 12 years old.

“You have experienced it firsthand, and there are still members of your family remaining there. The heroes of the Palestinian cause continue to grow, new heroes emerge, and from among the martyrs of Gaza, new heroes sprout, and the resistance continues to strengthen. Israel wanted to test the people of Palestine, especially Gazans, by bombing hospitals and dropping bombs on people waiting for aid,” he said.

Kurtulmus also said the spirit behind this resistance was not understandable to Zionists and materialistic worldly people.

"The father who kisses his child from under the rubble knows that our brothers in Palestine await the moment of victory after every martyr and struggle with this heart and courage. Otherwise, there is no other meaning to people in Gaza, who have no shelter, not even a wall to seek refuge, to have such a great spirit of resistance; being tested with hunger, deprivation and oppression."

Kurtulmus stressed that interest in the Palestinian cause had increased significantly worldwide, noting that what happened in Palestine and especially in Gaza served as guidance for all humanity.

He also said that despite the pressures from governments and their supportive attitudes toward Israel in many parts of the world, it was not an easy task for millions of people to go out and stand by the people of Gaza.

"A human front has been established everywhere in the world that stands for justice, fairness, compassion and conscience. This human front is one of the most beautiful heralds of new quests for the establishment of a new world. Thus, millions of people who do not resemble us in their religions, languages, cultures and civilizations but who meet on the common ground of humanity have become the millions who embrace Gaza more than the silent majorities of the Muslim world. Hopefully, at the end of this test of patience, anguish, tolerance and submission, there is great good news."

"First and foremost, to our Gazan brothers and sisters, and to all Palestinians and all Muslims, the good news that will come will hopefully be realized with the awakening of this human front; a sovereign, free Palestine State with the capital Jerusalem will be established, ensuring complete territorial integrity, and this Palestinian State will be recognized by the nations of the world in the shortest time possible," he noted.

He also said that all of Israel's calculations had gone astray, and those who committed these massacres and oppression would not find any country to support them in the world anymore, noting that the establishment of the Palestinian state would take place soon.

Kurtulmus concluded that since the beginning of Israel's attacks on Gaza, he had held meetings with many heads of state, presidents and parliament speakers from various countries.

"Almost everyone now sees that there is no way other than a two-state solution. The Palestinian state will definitely be established," he said.

After his speech, Kurtulmus conversed with Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya and the Gazan guests.

Source: aa.com.tr

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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/turkiye-hopes-to-share-ramadan-together-under-the-flag-of-a-free-palestine-parliament-speaker/3184010

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McDonald’s to acquire franchised restaurants in Israel amid boycott calls

05.04.2024

NEW YORK — McDonald’s Corporation said Thursday it will acquire Alonyal, the owner 225 McDonald’s restaurants in Israel, which have been hit by calls for a boycott over the war with Hamas in Gaza.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. McDonald’s said in a statement the deal was subject to conditions that it did not identify.

Alonyal has operated McDonald’s restaurants in Israel for more than 30 years, today owning 225 franchised properties with more than 5,000 employees, who will be retained after the sale.

In presenting its 2023 earnings report in February, McDonald’s said the war in Gaza that began in October with the Hamas massacre in Israel was weighing on its results.

McDonald’s was targeted with boycott calls after the franchised restaurants in Israel offered thousands of free meals to Israeli soldiers.

“We recognize that families in their communities in the region continue to be tragically impacted by the war and our thoughts are with them at this time,” Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski said in an analyst call.

He said the impact of the boycott was “meaningful,” without elaborating.

McDonald’s fourth-quarter sales disappointed analysts. In franchised restaurants outside the United States, comparable sales fell 0.7 percent.

“Obviously the place that we’re seeing the most pronounced impact is in the Middle East. We are seeing some impact in other Muslim countries like Malaysia, Indonesia,” said Kempczinski.

This also happened in countries with large Muslim populations such as France, especially for restaurants in heavily Muslim neighborhoods, he said.

McDonald’s shares were down nearly 2% in after-market trading Thursday.

Source: timesofisrael.com

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Pakistan

 

Pakistan condemns attacks: 10 Iran security personnel killed in Sistan-Baluchistan

2024-04-05

TEHRAN: Jihadist attacks in southeastern Iran near Pakistan killed 10 Iranian security personnel, state media reported on Thursday. Jaish al-Adl, or Army of Justice, claimed the attacks.

The number of dead is almost as large as from a similar attack in December, which the same group claimed and which was followed by tit-for-tat air strikes with Pakistan.

The attacks hit Sistan-Baluchistan province which has for years faced unrest involving drug-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremists.

“The case of the terrorist attacks was closed with the martyrdom of 10 members of the security forces,” and the killing of 18 “terrorists”, state television said.

Majid Mirahmadi, vice-minister of the interior, had earlier told the channel that five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the police died during two night-time attacks against a Guards base in Rask and a police post in Chabahar.

“The terrorists had planned to seize military bases,” Mirahmadi later told state television, adding that “none of them survived” the clashes.

He added that the assailants appeared to be foreigners, without providing further details.

The number of assailants killed in the clashes also rose from the 15 which General Mohammad Pakpour, who heads the Guards’ land forces, had announced on television.

The group Jaish al-Adl claimed the attacks on its Telegram channel. Formed in 2012, it is listed as a “terrorist” group by Iran and also by the United States.

“Pakistan unequivocally condemns the heinous and dastardly terrorist attacks at police and security installations,” the foreign ministry in Islamabad said.

“We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and pray for the recovery of the injured.”

It added that Pakistan “is deeply concerned about the growing acts of terrorism in our region”.

Jaish al-Adl claimed an attack in December that killed 11 officers at a police station in Rask, one of the deadliest in years.

The group claimed another Rask police station attack that killed one officer on January 10.

A week later, Iran said it retaliated with drone and missile strikes against Jaish al-Adl targets over the border in Pakistan.

In response, Pakistan said it carried out air strikes against Baluchi separatists inside Iran.

The Iranian strikes killed at least two children, according to Pakistan, while Pakistan’s strikes killed at least nine people in Iran, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Source: brecorder.com

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Islamabad rally vandalism: Verdict on acquittal pleas of IK, others reserved

2024-04-05

ISLAMABAD: A local court, on Thursday, reserved its judgement on the acquittal applications of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founding Chairman Imran Khan, PTI vice chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Awami Muslim League (AML) chief Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, and others in a case registered against them regarding vandalism during PTI’s Haqeeqi Azadi March.

Judicial Magistrate Malik Imran, while hearing the acquittal pleas, reserved its verdict, following the completion of arguments of both parties. The case was registered at the Industrial Area police station during the Azadi March.

The other accused in the case include PTI leader Asad Qaiser, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, as well as, PTI former leaders Ali Nawaz Awan, Sadaqat Abbasi, and Pervaiz Khattak.

Former Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed, Awan, and Abbasi appeared before the court.

PTI’s lawyers Sardar Masroof advocate, Amna Ali, Rizwan Akhtar Awan, and Mirza Asim advocate appeared before the court.

Sardar Masroof advocate told the court that an acquittal petition was filed in February last year, we want to present arguments today on the acquittal petition in this case.

The judge remarked that the challans of Sadaqat Abbasi, Ali Nawaz Awan, and Sheikh Rasheed have been submitted before the court.

Masroof argued that this First Information Report (FIR) has been registered under Section 144, there is no evidence or CCTV footage in this case, and the case was not registered by the concerned person. The court after hearing arguments reserved its verdict.

Source: brecorder.com

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Foreign ministry ‘unmoved’ by cipher’s loss, lawyer Salman Safdar tells IHC

 April 5, 2024

ISLAMABAD: A lawyer representing former prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday raised concerns over the handling of the cipher case, alleging that the foreign ministry was seemingly unbothered by the document’s disappearance, despite being its custodian, and that the interior ministry had “hijacked the case for no reason”.

Presenting arguments before a division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), comprising Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, Barrister Salman Safdar sought the suspension of Imran Khan and Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s sentences in the cipher case.

However, the bench declined the request, opting instead for a swift decision on their appeals.

Mr Khan is accused of misusing the cipher — a confidential diplomatic communication — for political gain and endangering national security by disclosing and misplacing it. Mr Safdar contended that the cipher still exists in Foreign Office records, and its transcribed version has been shared with eight individuals.

Mr Safdar said the Foreign Office sent a copy of the cipher to Azam Khan, the principal secretary to the then-prime minister, Imran Khan. Mr Azam alleged he handed over a copy to Mr Khan, who failed to return it. The counsel said this might be negligence, not a crime, adding that Mr Khan could not be convicted for mere negligence.

He said that when the cipher went missing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not show any concern, nor did it issue any letter to the Prime Minister’s Office.

He said that when the PMO informed the foreign ministry that their copy of the cipher was missing, the foreign secretary replied that a copy of this confidential document could not be issued and advised the PMO staff to try to find the cipher.

Mr Safdar also pointed out that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) issued a notice to Mr Khan seven months after the receipt of the cipher, whereas the former PM could have retained it for a year.

Justice Aurangzeb noted that if Azam Khan was the only witness of handing over the cipher’s copy to Mr Khan, in case his testimony is excluded, there would be no evidence that the cipher was misplaced from the former premier’s custody.

The judge also inquired under what law the copy of the cipher could be retained for a year. Mr Safdar replied that the prosecution had taken this stance during the initial hearings.

When the court inquired how long the counsel would take to conclude the arguments, the former prime minister’s counsel replied that he would conclude it by the next session.

The court set the next hearing for April 16.

Source: dawn.com

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https://www.dawn.com/news/1825788/foreign-ministry-unmoved-by-ciphers-loss-lawyer-salman-safdar-tells-ihc

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PM calls for global role to halt Israeli oppression against Palestinians

April 05, 2024

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called upon international community to pressurize Israel to stop its oppression against Palestinians.

In his message on the International Day of Al-Quds and Juma tulWida, he strongly denounced the Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

He said since October last year, thirty two thousand Palestinians including seventeen thousand children have been martyred and seventy thousand others injured in Gaza. Hospitals, refugee camps and children's schools have deliberately been targeted and access to humanitarian aid has been blocked.

He regretted that despite the ceasefire resolution by the UN security council, the unprovoked bombing on innocent civilians in Gaza is still continuing.

The Prime Minister said Pakistan will continue to provide moral and diplomatic support to armless Palestinian brothers and sisters until the liberation of the Palestinians from the Israeli occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state according to the pre-1967 borders.

The Prime Minister appealed the Muslims across the world including in Pakistan to remember their Palestinian and Kashmiri brothers and sisters on the occasion of Juma tulWida  and pray to God Almighty for the ease of their difficulties.

He also appealed the nation to pray for the peace and security and development and prosperity of Pakistan on the occasion of Juma tulWida.

Source: radio.gov.pk

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https://www.radio.gov.pk/05-04-2024/pm-for-global-role-to-halt-israeli-oppression-against-palestinians

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Threat letters to judges: PM promises credible probe into sensitive matter

April 05, 2024

 Muhammad Anis& Shakeel Anjum

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif Thursday promised the government would probe the matter of threat letters received by judges with suspicious powder, with a sense of responsibility to uncover the reality.

Addressing the federal cabinet, the prime minister observed that the sensitive matter should not be given a political colour. He pointed out the government had fulfilled its responsibility with respect to the formation of an inquiry commission, led by former chief justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani to probe the issue of the letter written by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) judges. When the former CJ refused to head the commission, the Supreme Court took suo moto notice of the issue, he said.

The PM said the new programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was crucial and important to consolidate the country’s economy. “The government is planning to enter into a new programme with the IMF, which is crucial and very important to consolidate the country’s economy,” he added. Shehbaz said the new IMF programme would enhance international financial institutions’ trust in Pakistan, help it move towards the agenda of development and prosperity.

The PM, however, said although the terms of the new deal would not be so easy, the government would certainly shift the burden of tough conditions from the less privileged to privileged and wealthier sections of the society. He informed the cabinet members that the finance minister would discuss details of the new programme at the IMF spring meetings as head of the Pakistani delegation later this month. The PM was hopeful that after the IMF board meeting, the last tranche of existing standby agreement of $1.1 billion would be disbursed to Pakistan this month.

PM Shehbaz said he recently chaired a meeting of Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) in which details of various sectors including finance, investment, exports, information technology (IT), agriculture, power and petroleum were discussed. He said after the meeting, it was decided that he would personally review the sector-wise performance to solve the problems being faced by the said sectors and to streamline the country’s economy.

Regarding the PIA divestment, he said the privatisation process of Pakistan Airlines was on track and the schedule set for the process would be fully implemented. For the outsourcing of airports, a Turkish company was arriving in Islamabad on April 6, which would negotiate the outsourcing process with the Pakistani authorities.

About digitalisation of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), the PM said consultants for the digitalisation process would be appointed by the end of the current month.

Regarding security of Chinese workers and engineers, he said the government was evolving a fool-proof system.

The prime minister said the cabinet presented the Finance Division’s fiscal policy statement for the financial year 2022-23, debt policy statement for the financial year 2022-23 and year-end government performance monitoring report in the meeting. The federal cabinet approved submission of the above statements/ report to the National Assembly under the laws, he said.

The meeting of the cabinet, on the recommendation of Foreign Affairs Division, allowed former chief of naval staff Admiral Muhammad Amjad Khan Niazi to receive the “King Abdul Aziz Medal Badge of Honour of Excellent Class” on behalf of the Government of Saudi Arabia and “DarjahKepahlawanAngkatanTentera” on behalf of the Government of Malaysia.

On the recommendation of Human Rights Division, the cabinet approved the appointment of members of National Commission for Status of Women.

On the recommendation of Ministry of Human Rights, it approved abolition of the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development, National Child Protection Centre and Implementation of National Line of Action for Children, which are offices working under the Ministry of Human Rights. All employees of these departments, who are civil servants, would be included in the surplus pool.

Meanwhile, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) received forensic report of the mysterious white powder claimed to be anthrax initially, the CTD said on Thursday night.

Sources disclosed that arsenic mixed in white powder was found from the letters; a small quantity of 10 per cent ratio of arsenic poison was mixed in white paper, which is not very harmful compared to powder carrying 70pc arsenic that can affect nerves, added sources.

The anthrax-type white powder was recovered from the mysterious intimidating letters posted to judges of high courts and the Supreme Court of Pakistan, including chief justices of high courts and the apex court the other day.

The CTD lodged two FIRs against unknown people involved in creating fear in the judiciary.

The CTD made some headway on Thursday as the officials engaged in the investigation discovered the location of miscreants and places of mailbox where the letters were dropped. The investigators are heading in the right direction, the CTD claimed.

Earlier, the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) investigating the matter had said that most of the closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras around the post boxes were found out of order.

On March 3, the IHC chief justice among eight judges had received the mysterious letters.

According to sources, a report on the progress made so far had been communicated to the registrars of the Supreme Court and IHC.

Sources said an examination of post boxes located within the Satellite Town, Rawalpindi, is under way. The Islamabad police expanded the scope of investigation, using alternative means, including questioning individuals working in shops and offices in the area of post boxes. Furthermore, all staff at the Satellite Town post office were included in the investigation process.

SABAH adds: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ataullah Tarar has said economy is showing positive indicators as a result of prudent policies introduced by the government. He warned that no politics should be done on national economy, adding that all should have to play role for strengthening the country.

Talking to the media along with Prime Minister’s Coordinator Romina Khurshid Alam in Islamabad on Thursday, Tarar said the Pak Rupee was gaining strength and exchange rate was now more stable. He said the nation today witnessed an upward trajectory in the stock exchange with an increase of record points.

The information minister said the FBR was being digitalised as per the vision of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to improve revenue collection. He said the government was committed to youth empowerment and it would soon launch a comprehensive programme in that regard.

Tarar said international leading financial rating agency Bloomberg had predicted 15 per cent reduction in inflation rate next year. He commended the role of media for positively reporting the privatisation of PIA, as there was no other option to avoid the loss of Rs80 billion being incurred by the airline annually. He said the process of PIA privatisation was moving forward.

Source: thenews.com.pk

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https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1175830-threat-letters-to-judges-pm-promises-credible-probe-into-sensitive-matter

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Muzaffargarh Itikaf rape suspect arrested: NCRC

April 04, 2024

The suspect who allegedly raped a minor boy while he was observing Itikaf in Muzaffargarh has been arrested, the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC) said on Thursday.

In a Facebook post, the NCRC said the suspect was taken into custody by the local police. “Taking cognisance of the case, NCRC followed up with the district police office Muzaffargarh and it has been informed that the culprit has been arrested."

The NCRC assured that it would “ensure that justice prevails and the perpetrator is held accountable”.

The 13-year-old boy was observing Itikaf when another individual, who was also observing Itikaf, allegedly raped him. The suspect reportedly managed to escape after the incident and the mosque iman claimed he was threatened with dire consequences.

A medical examination of the survivor was then conducted, with local police assuring that the suspect would be arrested soon.

Earlier, a grade III student seeking medical help was allegedly sexually assaulted by a quack at a local clinic in ChahSewewalaMakhan Chowk.

The young student, experiencing tooth pain, visited a nearby clinic where Dr Zafar Bhakkal administered treatment, including an injection. Exploiting her vulnerability, the doctor sexually assaulted her while she was alone.

A week later, the student's worsening pain led her to confide in her mother, Samira Bibi, who promptly reported the incident to the Saddar Police.

The accused was arrested, and Deputy District Health Officer Dr Muhammad Raza took action by sealing the quack clinic.

Source: tribune.com.pk

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https://tribune.com.pk/story/2461627/muzaffargarh-itikaf-rape-suspect-arrested-ncrc

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IK condemns Israel's genocide in Gaza

 2024-04-05

ISLAMABAD: The former prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday called upon the Muslim leadership to take an effective lead as the people of Gaza are counting on the Muslim World to speak up and act.

In a message from notorious Adiala Jail, he said that “despite people across the world demanding an immediate ceasefire, the powerful continue to remain unmoved as all humanitarian laws, laws of war, the UN Genocide Convention, the Geneva & Vienna Conventions continue to be violated with impunity by Israel”.

He strongly condemned Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza in which over 40,000 innocent Palestinians have been killed and many others are being deliberately starved to death.

“It is high time world leaders not only call for an immediate, total ceasefire but ensure its implementation also”.

“I stand with Gaza,” he concluded.

Source: brecorder.com

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https://www.brecorder.com/news/40297309/ik-condemns-israels-genocide-in-gaza

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Hafiz Naeem elected new Jamaat-i-Islami emir

 April 4, 2024

Hafiz Naeemur Rehman on Thursday was elected as the sixth emir of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) for a five-year term, the party said in an announcement on its official account on X.

It said that he would serve as the party chief from April 2024 to April 2029. He had previously served as the chief of the party’s Karachi chapter.

The party said he was “unanimously elected” by its members for the role and wished him well.

JI Election Commission President Rashid Naseem also announced the results during a press conference in Lahore. He said the party had no definitive candidate for the post of emir but three names had appeared in the press for the slot. Subsequently, the party’s consultative body decided to suggest three names while members were free to choose anyone else they wanted, he said.

Naseem said the voter turnout was 82 per cent and the result was finalised earlier today. He prayed for Rehman’s success and the ability to fulfil the responsibility of his new post.

Hafiz Naeem is the sixth man to occupy the post, following Maulana Abul A’la Maududi (1941-72), Mian Tufail Muhammad (1972-87), Qazi Hussain Ahmed (1987-2008), Munawer Hassan (2008-2013) and Sirajul Haq (2013-2024).

Hafiz Naeem’s predecessor, Sirajul Haq, had initially ended his decade-long run as the head of the party following a humbling defeat in the Feb 8 general elections.

The Jamaat had fielded 243 candidates for the National Assembly and failed to win even one seat. It had given 531 provincial tickets and only managed to secure six — three in KP, two in Sindh and one in Balochistan.

“Despite my best and tireless efforts, the party has not been able to achieve desired results. Workers put in best efforts. God may reward them for those efforts. I accept the responsibility of the defeat and hereby resign as party head,” his resignation letter said.

He had later withdrawn his resignation after the Jamaat Shura, a 100-member governing body, refused to accept it.

In a message congratulating Hafiz Naeem on his win today, Haq prayed that his election would be a source of blessings for the country, the party and the Muslim community.

Former president Arif Alvi prayed for the new JI emir’s success.

“Naeemur Rehman is a positive face of Pakistani politics who has done politics of values ??and principles instead of power, “ PTI leader Asad Qaiser said.

“JI is our main ally in the movement for the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law in the country. It is hoped that the alliance between PTI and JI under the leadership of Hafiz Naeemur Rahman will become stronger,” he said.

PTI’s Haleem Adil Sheikh also congratulated the new JI emir.

Who is Hafiz Naeem?

Hafiz Naeem had won a provincial assembly in the Feb 8 general elections but gave it up on the pretext that it was actually won by the PTI-backed independent candidate and that he was declared the winner only to defuse the pressure of the JI’s resistance and protest against the poll results.

“We don’t want a single vote which is not ours and we won’t give up a single one which was ours,” Hafiz Naeem had told a press conference at the party’s Karachi headquarters.

Despite this, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had notified his victory after an inordinate delay on Monday for the provincial assembly constituency.

Last year, Hafiz Naeem had also contested against PPP’s Murtaza Wahab for Karachi mayor in the Sindh local government elections but lost with 160 votes to Wahab’s 173.

Hafiz Naeem earned a civil engineering degree from NED university and a masters degree from Karachi University in Islamic history. In his formative years, he twice served as the president of the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT), the student wing of the JI.

In 2000, he became a member of JI and in October 2013, he was appointed as the chief of the party’s Karachi chapter. He also serves as the president of the Al-Khidmat Karachi chapter, an NGO associated with the JI.

Water shortage and drainage issues are of significant importance to the JI mayoral candidate. He vowed to see the K-IV project — which hopes to supply 260 million gallons per day (MGD) of water to Karachi — to completion, just like his predecessor Naimatullah Khan had done with the K-III project, 17 years ago.

He has been a vocal critic of the privatisation of public institutions such as K-Electric (KE) and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB). In the latter case, he has threatened to file court cases to prevent such privatisation. In 2021, he opposed subsidies from the government to KE, claiming that the now-private company was making large net profits, while the people of Karachi still suffered from load-shedding and over-billing. He has held protests against KE on multiple occasions over the years.

Source: dawn.com

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South Asia

 

Spokesman: Islamic Emirate Committed to Counterterrorism in Afghanistan

SodabaNazhand

April 4, 2024

The Islamic Emirate considers the concern of some countries at the meeting of the National Security Advisors of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to be misplaced.

The Islamic Emirate denies the presence of terrorist groups in the country and adds that they have undertaken a serious fight against terrorist groups.

HamdullahFetrat, the deputy spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, said, "Some countries claim that there are terrorist groups in Afghanistan and it is a threat, but the Islamic Emirate is committed to fighting terrorist groups and does not allow its territory to be used against any country."

In the 19th meeting of the National Security Advisors of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, some countries including India, Russia, and Kazakhstan expressed their concerns about the presence of terrorist groups and their threats from Afghanistan to the countries in the region.

The Russian news agency TASS, quoting the National Security Advisor of Russia, wrote that these countries have asked the Taliban to fulfill their commitments in the fight against terrorist groups.

"The heads of delegations called on the de facto authorities of Afghanistan to consistently fulfill their obligations in the field of counterterrorism, especially in preventing the activities of international terrorist organizations and other groups based on Afghan soil that pose a serious threat to the SCO space,” Nikolai Patrushev said.

Tariq Farhadi, an international relations expert, told TOLOnews, "ISIS is a group that is an enemy to all, but thank God, the attackers in Moscow did not have any Afghan passports."

According to some Indian media, at this meeting, the National Security Advisor of India also assured that focusing on establishing an inclusive government, preserving the rights of women and minorities are among the immediate priorities of this organization in Afghanistan.

Najib Rahman Shamal, an expert in international relations, said, "In the recent meeting of this organization, the issue of security threats from Afghanistan was discussed again, and the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have asked Afghanistan to take necessary actions regarding the terrorist sanctuaries present in Afghanistan."

The meeting, which was held for two days in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, ended on Thursday. Previously, the United States Department of State had also emphasized the fight of the caretaker government against terrorist groups, adding that their country must ensure that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for terrorists.

Source: tolonews.com

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https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-188153

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12-year-old sacrifices childhood works to support family amid uncertain future

Fidel Rahmati

April 4, 2024

The child is young, but she has taken on the responsibility of providing for her family like adults. At twelve years old, she is in the second grade. However, unaware of the future, she spends half of her day working outside the home.

In the street where Mezhgan is busy polishing shoes, one can see children (both girls and boys) engaged in street work. Mezhgan and other children working alongside her are typically busy with street work from early morning until around seven in the evening, pushed into the streets by various factors, seeking bread. In this report, you’ll read why Mezhgan has become a victim of street work.

Mezhgan works on one of the streets in the fourth district of Kabul city. When asked about her place of residence, she says she lives in this area. According to her, they live in one of the houses known as “Zurabad” by the people.

Most child laborers are forced into hard work on the streets due to economic poverty and the loss of a family breadwinner. However, the reason Mezhgan works is a large number of family members and the expenses of her family: Mezhgan lives in a family of twelve, a result of her parent’s marriage producing nine children, and they live in a rented house.

Other members of Mezhgan’s family also work on the streets like her, but the amount of money they earn is not sufficient for the twelve-member family.

Mezhgan’s father and elder brother, around 16 years old, also work in shoe coloring. However, Mezhgan and her brother lack much skill in this area, so most of the money people give them is in the form of charity. Alongside the items needed for shoe coloring, there are plastic goods, sunshades, and childish trinkets available for sale, from which she earns 3 Afghani for herself.

Mezhgan is twelve years old, but the adverse effects of poverty on children’s growth have made even children of her age appear very weak and small. Living in a poverty-stricken family has brought a high level of stress to Mezhgan, as she is responsible for meeting her family’s expenses or at least bearing part of the burden of providing for her family.

From Mezhgan’s words, it seems she doesn’t have much desire to continue her education because she knows she is expected to stop going to school after the sixth grade. She says her elder sister is the only literate person in the family because she studied until the sixth grade and sometimes helps Mezhgan, but after the Taliban came, she was also deprived of going to school.

The circumstances she finds herself in have deprived her of imagining any kind of future she desires. When asked about her wishes, she responded without hesitation: “I have no wishes.” She has worked for 30 Afghani in half a day’s work. When asked what she does with her money, whether she spends it herself or her parents take it, she responded again without hesitation: “No, I give it all to my family.”

There isn’t much time left until Eid al-Fitr, and people are preparing for this occasion by giving clothes to their children, especially their daughters. The initial preparations start almost fifteen or twenty days in advance, but Mezhgan is supposed to sit in the same place even on the day of Eid, selling goods and items.

Mezhgan smiles as she recalls an Eid when she was sitting by the street, and a wealthy person in a black-windowed car passed by and gifted her 5,000 Afghanis at once.

She says, “I was very happy and got this much for the first time, and it was mine. I quickly went home to the point of being out of breath and gave the money to the family urgently. Then we paid the rent and bought the rest for food, and this Eid was a very happy Eid for us.”

Poverty and destitution in the country have led many children in the capital to engage in hard work instead of going to school. However, the ban on education for girls and the fact that they are left out of education have exacerbated this crisis even further.

Source: khaama.com

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Deputy PM Calls for Expanded Demining Efforts in Afghanistan

April 4, 2024

April 4 marks the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.

The head of the Demining Department of State Ministry for Disaster Management in a mine awareness program and assistant in demining affairs, says that in the past year, 308 explosion incidents have occurred, resulting in 555 casualties.

NooruddinRostamkhil adds that identifying vulnerable points necessitates serious cooperation from demining organizations and institutions.

The head of the Demining Department of State Ministry for Disaster Management, NooruddinRostamkhil, said: “308 incidents of explosion recorded in 2023 which had 555 casualties across Afghanistan,”

The General Director of Finance and Administration of State Ministry for Disaster Management Abdul Rahman Zahid, said on the matter: “The time has come for Afghanistan to develop through plannings, different plans, programs and implementation of projects,”

Speaking at the program, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Islamic Emirate for political affairs said that Afghanistan is among the countries that, despite fighting this phenomenon, the dangers of mines have not yet been reduced to zero.

Mawlawi Abdul Kabir also asks demining organizations and institutions to expand their activities using the current security situation.

Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, said: “The Islamic Emirate supports demining and asks for implementation of such projects using the current secure situation,”

On the other hand, the acting head of the general directorate of the Islamic Emirate in Administrative Affairs said that the entry of mines and explosive materials into Afghanistan has been prevented and there is no risk of an increase.

Noorulhaq Anwar also adds that the Islamic Emirate is striving to ensure unity in the country.

“The current government’s behavior is to ensure unity, love and affection among people. And that cruelty and barbarism be ended,” he said.

Representative of demining institutions in Afghanistan, Mohammad Shahab Hakimi said: “Not only here but Afghan youth are talented deminers abroad as well,”

Based on the information from demining institutions, eighty percent of Afghanistan's territory has been cleared of unexploded mines, and ten million people have been given awareness about this.

Source: tolonews.com

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https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-188159

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Amnesty International Asks Pakistan to Reverse Refugees Expulsion Plan

Hadiya Ziaye

April 4, 2024

Amnesty International has called for the immediate cancellation of the plan to expel Afghan migrants from Pakistan through a statement.

The organization quoted one of its refugees and migrants campaigners as saying, this plan violates international human rights laws and refugee laws, and is against all international norms.

“The Pakistan authorities’ callous disregard for the persecution, serious human rights violations and humanitarian catastrophe that await Afghan refugees if deported to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is heart-breaking. Instead of heeding repeated global calls to halt deportations, the newly elected Pakistani government has disappointingly now extended the deportation drive to Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders as well,” said James Jennion

On the other hand, the Islamic Emirate's consulate in Pakistan has also reported the release of over 50 Afghan migrants and their return to the country.

Sayed Abdul Jabbar Takhari, the acting consul of the Islamic Emirate in Pakistan’s Karachi said: "Currently, we have around fifty detainees in the prisons of Sindh state. Efforts are ongoing to get them released and returned to country as soon as possible."

As the expulsion of the second round of Afghan migrants from Pakistan is about to begin, some Afghan migrants in that country are worried about their uncertain future.

They criticize the arrest and beating of Afghan migrants by the Pakistani police.

Stanikzai, an Afghan migrant in Pakistan, said: "This is an injustice to us. Whatever agency does this, whether the Pakistani government or the Afghan government, it's an injustice. Our request from everyone is to show mercy on us, we want to return to our homeland at the right time."

Shinwari, another Afghan migrant in Pakistan, says: "This is bad news for Afghan migrants because our businesses are here, and we cannot wrap everything up in a short time."

The first phase of expelling undocumented Afghan migrants from Pakistan began in November 2023, and the second phase, under the name of the repatriation plan which also includes those holding citizenship cards, is set to start on April 10th of the current year.

Source: tolonews.com

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https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-188162

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Rights violations: Home ministry snubs two-thirds of NHRC enquiry requests

Apr 5, 2024

Zyma Islam

Nearly two-thirds of the enquiry requests made by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to the home ministry regarding cases of human rights violations by law enforcement agencies have gone unheeded.

The commission now seeks the power to investigate the disciplined forces itself and has proposed that the law be amended to that end.

The founding law of the organisation, National Human Rights Commission Act-2009, restricts the commission from investigating any disciplined forces, including police and Rab.

The law only allows the NHRC to request reports and information from the home ministry, or recommend that the ministry conduct investigations.

Since 2012, the NHRC had made 122 such requests to the home ministry for reports, of which only 44 were adequately responded to, shows the commission's annual report.

In 24 cases, the NHRC had did not find the responses to be acceptable and returned the reports asking for reassessment.

"The commission is waiting for reports in 71 cases. Out of them, the commission has urged multiple times in the case of 27 complaints, but has not received any form of response," said the report. 

"We want section 18 of the NHRC act, which restricts the commission, to be done away with. We have proposed an amendment to the law. The commission should be able to investigate any and all for human rights violations," NHRC Chairman Kamal Uddin Ahmed told The Daily Star.

"The state does not shelter anyone who does wrong."

He went on to say that while the disciplined forces have their own investigation mechanisms, the NHRC can focus particularly on whether human rights violations have taken place.

"This will not harm anyone in the forces, but rather help identify wrongdoers."

The annual report shows that over the past year, the NHRC questioned the home ministry about 53 cases of human rights violations, in which accusations arose against the law enforcement agencies, and 33 of those are yet to be responded to. In about half of these incidents, the rights body had conducted suomotu (voluntary) interventions.

They noted that in six cases of custodial deaths and five cases of extrajudicial killings picked up from the media, there were no records of legal cases being filed.

This legal shortcoming has been one of the reasons why Bangladesh's NHRC is considered a "Category B" organisation by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI).

All the national human rights institutions of the world are assessed by GANHRI on how compliant they are with the Paris Principles, which are the international benchmark for national human rights institutions.

Category A is given to fully compliant institutions.

In addition to section 18, the NHRC also seeks to institute regulations concerning enquiry, investigation and settlements. It also regularises the posts at the commission and allows its staffers government pensions.

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/serve-people-secure-their-votes-future-3582351

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Arms supply to Israel must stop: foreign minister

Apr 4, 2024

Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud today hoped that those who supply weapons to Israel, used for killing innocent people, will realise their wrongdoing and stop the arms supply.

"We expect the Western world will realise and take steps against Israel. We, the government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, were beside Palestinians, we are with them, and we will continue to stand beside them," he told reporters, reacting to the Israeli air strike on aid workers in Gaza that also killed three British citizens.

The foreign minister said that people, including innocent children and women, are being killed in Gaza with the arms supplied by the Western countries.

"Even, aid workers are being killed. This is something beyond imagination. We expect arms supply to Israel will be stopped," Hasan said.

He said brutality and killings continue in Gaza by the Israeli forces who are not even taking the UN resolution into consideration.

Israeli airstrikes that killed seven aid workers in Gaza reverberated around the world, as friends and relatives mourned the losses of those who were delivering food to besieged Palestinians with the charity, World Central Kitchen.

Among those killed were three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish citizen, an American-Canadian, and a Palestinian. Some had traveled the world, participating in aid efforts in the aftermath of wars, earthquakes, and wildfires.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has recently written to president of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, and reiterated her pledge to support his endeavors in obtaining full membership of Palestine in the United Nations through advocacy in all international forums and beyond.

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/diplomacy/news/arms-supply-israel-must-stop-foreign-minister-3582186

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BNP can't come to right track under Tarique's leadership: Quader

Apr 4, 2024

Awami League General Secretary and Road Transport and Bridges Minister ObaidulQuader today said as long as BNP will remain under the leadership of its acting chairman Tarique Rahman, it cannot come to right track.

"Fugitive convict Tarique Rahman is the curse of BNP. As long as he will lead the BNP, the party cannot come to right path. It will remain stuck in the quicksand of errors," he told a view-exchange meeting at AL's Bangabandhu Avenue central office here.

The meeting was held as part of taking preparation for observing Mujibnagar Day on April 17. Khulna divisional leaders of the party also joined the meeting.

Quader said it has become painful for BNP leaders to accept the "free style" leadership of Tarique Rahman who is giving order from London.

The BNP leaders are now realising that as long as Tarique leads the party, it will stay stuck in the quicksand of mistakes.

The AL general secretary asked Tarique Rahman to come home if he has courage to do politics. "If you have courage, come home and do politics. Have the courage to go to jail. The people will not respond to your call from London," he said.

Even some BNP leaders also dub the party's call for movement as fake, he said.

The minister said BNP has failed in movement and elections while their call for boycotting Indian products has also failed.

"Indian products are in bedrooms and kitchens of BNP leaders. That is why BNP's so-called call for boycotting Indian products is hypocrisy," he said.

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/politics/news/bnp-cant-come-right-track-under-tariques-leadership-quader-3582171

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Work for people, don’t lose their trust, PM tells public representatives

Apr 4, 2024

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today asked public representatives of local government bodies to work with utmost sincerity for the welfare of the people.

"Don't lose public trust and confidence in any way. So, work for the people accordingly, standing by them," she said.

The premier was addressing the oath-taking ceremony of newly elected mayors of Cumilla and Mymensingh city corporations and chairmen of five zillaparishads, and councillors of Mymensingh City Corporation at Shapla Hall of her office in the morning.

She said her government made development in every area of the country and the grassroots people are in the focus of the development works.

"Every village would be transformed into a township. A radical change has already been there, which you can see," she said.

The prime minister asked the public representatives to work for the continuation of the current development trend by keeping the promises they made to the people.

She cited that Bangladesh would finally be graduated as a developing country in 2026.

"In this context, I'm urging you to stand beside the people with sincerity, serve them and work for them in a bid to continue the current trend of socio-economic development," she said.

Earlier, she administered oaths to the first female mayor-elect of Cumilla City Corporation Tahsin Bahar Suchona and elected mayor of Mymensingh City Corporation Ekramul Haque Titu.

The PM also administered oaths to the newly elected chairmen of five ZilaParishads -- Kurigram, Thakurgaon, Sirajganj, Brahmanbaria and Habiganj – in the same function. The five chairman of ZilaParishads are ANM Obaidur Rahman of Kurigram, Abdul Majid of Thakurgaon, Shamim Talukder of Sirajganj, Billal Miah of Brahmanbaria and Aleya Akhter of Habigan

Source: thedailystar.net

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https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/work-people-dont-lose-their-trust-pm-tells-public-representatives-3581891

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Southeast Asia

 

Myanmar’s worst violence since the military takeover is intensifying the crisis, the UN says

April 05, 2024

UNITED NATIONS: Myanmar’s escalating conflict and worst violence since the military takeover in 2021 are having a devastating impact on human rights, fundamental freedoms and basic needs of millions of people — as well as “alarming spillover effects” in the region, UN officials said Thursday.

Assistant Secretary-General for political affairs Khaled Khiari told the UN Security Council that “the civilian toll keeps rising” amid reports of indiscriminate bombing by Myanmar’s armed forces and artillery shelling by various parties.

The nationwide armed conflict in Myanmar began after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule.

Thousands of young people fled to jungles and mountains in remote border areas as a result of the military’s suppression and made common cause with ethnic guerrilla forces battle-hardened by decades of combat with the army in pursuit of autonomy.

Despite its great advantage in armaments and manpower, the military has been unable to quell the resistance movement. Over the past five months, the army has been routed in northern Shan state, is conceding swaths of territory in Rakhine state in the west, and is under growing attack elsewhere.

Myanmar’s main pro-democracy resistance group said Thursday its armed wing launched drone attacks on the airport and a military headquarters in the capital, Naypyitaw, but the ruling military said it destroyed the drones as they attacked. It wasn’t possible to independently verify most details of the incident, but the military’s acknowledgement that it had taken place

in one of the country’s most heavily guarded locations will be seen by many as the latest indication that it is losing the initiative.

Khiari did not mention the attack but said the National Unity Consultative Council — formed after the 2021 military takeover to promote a return to democracy and comprising ethnic, political, civil society and resistance groups — convened its Second People’s Assembly on Thursday “to further define their common vision for the future of Myanmar.”

He singled out the fighting between the Arakan Army and the military in Rakhine State, Myanmar’s poorest, which he said “has reached an unprecedented level of violence.”

“The Arakan Army has reportedly gained territorial control over most of central Rakhine and seeks to expand to northern Rakhine” where many minority Rohingya Muslims still live, he said.

The Buddhist Rakhine are the majority ethnic group in Rakhine, which is also known by its older name of Arakan, and have long sought autonomy. They have set up their own well-trained and well-armed force called the Arakan Army.

Members of the Rohingya minority have long been persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. About 740,000 fled from Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh when the military in August 2017 launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in response to attacks in Rakhine by a guerrilla group claiming to represent the Rohingya.

Khiari urged all parties in Rakhine to support the Rohingya, who are caught in the middle of the conflict and continue to experience “significant restrictions” on their freedom of movement as well as denial of citizenship and disproportionate vulnerability to abduction or forced recruitment.

The crisis continues to spill over the borders and added that conflicts in key border areas have weakened security, Khiari said. The breakdown in the rule of law has enabled illicit economies to thrive, with criminal networks preying on vulnerable people with no livelihoods.

“Myanmar has become a global epicenter of methamphetamine and opium production, along with a rapid expansion of global cyber-scam operations, particularly in border areas,” he said. “What began as a regional crime threat in Southeast Asia is now a rampant human trafficking and illicit trade crisis with global implications.”

Senior UN humanitarian official Lisa Doughten said the ongoing escalation has left 12.9 million people — nearly 25 percent of Myanmar’s population — without enough food, stressing that children and pregnant women face malnutrition.

“Across Myanmar, the humanitarian community estimates that some 18.6 million people will need humanitarian assistance in 2024 — a nineteen-fold increase since February 2021,” she said.

Doughten said the health system is also in turmoil, with medicines running out. She appealed for urgent funding to assist millions in need, saying the 2023 appeal for $887 million was only 44 percent funded, causing 1.1 million people to be cut off from aid.

Both Khiari and Doughten echoed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a unified international response to the escalating conflict, and for neighboring countries especially to use their influence to open humanitarian channels, end the violence, and seek a political solution.

Khiari said Guterres intends to appoint a new UN special envoy for Myanmar soon to engage with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and other key parties toward those goals.

Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the council, however, that “the Myanmar military refuses to engage meaningfully with international efforts to reach a peaceful solution to the crisis.”

But she stressed, “We will not allow Myanmar to become a forgotten crisis.”

Calling Myanmar “our longstanding friend and close partner,” Russia’s UN Ambassador VassilyNebenzia objected to the meeting, saying the country doesn’t threaten international peace and security.

He accused Western nations of supporting armed opposition groups and destabilizing Rakhine and camps for the displaced “for the advancement of their own geopolitical concerns in the region.”

Source: arabnews.com

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https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488361/world

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PAS sec-gen tells interfaith council to stop being a ‘busybody’ over proposed amendments to Act 355

05 Apr 2024

KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 — PAS secretary-general Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan today slammed an interfaith council for saying the proposed amendments to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (Act 355), which includes the proposal to increase penalties for Shariah criminal offences, would be unconstitutional.

Takiyuddin said the statement by the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) was misguided and problematic.

He said that the proposed amendments to Act 355 do not contradict any provision or basic premise of the Federal Constitution (FC), and therefore, are valid and constitutional.

“The council views the proposed amendments as unconstitutional and against the basic principles of the Federal Constitution on the grounds that the related criminal offences are already part of existing criminal laws under the Federal Constitution.

“First of all, as an organisation that aims to create understanding, mutual respect and cooperation between followers of various religions, MCCBCHST should not interfere in Islamic affairs and their administration, which has a special position as the Federal Religion.

“The religious rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution for religions in Malaysia also cover the Islamic religion and must be obeyed and respected by all parties and groups,” he said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Malay Mail reported MCCBCHST as saying that the amendments to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (Act 355) will be unconstitutional as such offences are already part of existing criminal laws enumerated under the Federal Constitution.

MCCBCHST said that the enhanced sentencing powers granted to Shariah Courts would allow for hudud-related offences — like theft, robbery, adultery, sodomy and intoxication — to be tried under Islamic criminal law.

Takiyuddin said that the “contradiction or legal polemic” raised by MCCBCHST is completely unrelated to its legal position and role as a religious consultation council.

He also pointed out that the council did not provide any evidence or examples of how the amendments to the Islamic law would have an impact on the practice of non-Islamic religions in the country.

“Does MCCBCHST playing the role of busybodies or ghost intermeddlers (orang hantutengah) now?” he asked.

Takiyuddin also said that MCCBCHST’s statement could be interpreted as the council standing in the way of Muslims strengthening their religious bonds with irrelevant objections and misguided narratives.

“Once again, the actual motive and agenda of the council is called into question; thus, potentially creating an atmosphere of disharmony between races and religions,” he said.

He also said the council failed to understand the current climate of sensitivity and had raised the issue at an inappropriate time as Muslims regard the last 10 days of Ramadan as the holiest and most meaningful throughout the fasting month.

“During this period, Muslims focus on increasing their acts of worship, be it by reading the Quran, meditating in the mosque, doing charity or performing all kinds of good deeds in pursuit of the rewards promised by God.

“But unfortunately, this period was deliberately singled out as a time to lobby objections and polemics at the Muslim community without considering the effect it will have on their peace and well-being when performing acts of worship,” he said.

Takiyuddin then urged Putrajaya to take appropriate action and immediately respond to MCCBCHST’s statement, which he said was outrageous and provocative.

Source: malaymail.com

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https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2024/04/05/pas-sec-gen-tells-interfaith-council-to-stop-being-a-busybody-over-proposed-amendments-to-act-355/127414

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8 mosques to offer 3 sessions for Hari Raya prayers

 APR 05, 2024

SINGAPORE – Over two-thirds of the 68 mosques that will accommodate prayers on the morning of Hari Raya Aidilfitri will offer more than one session, said the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis) on April 4.

Out of these mosques, 19 will conduct one session, 41 will offer two sessions, and eight will have three sessions.

The session timings are 7.20am, 8.45am and 9.45am.

Hari Raya Aidilfitri falls on April 10.

Additionally, 34 mosque-affiliated qaryahs, or community groups, will offer supplementary spaces to Muslims seeking prayer sessions closer to their homes.

The two qaryah sessions will be at 8.15am and 9.30am. The second session will take place only at QaryahPandan Gardens. The list of venues for the supplementary spaces can be found on Muis’ website here.

The 68 mosques are expected to accommodate up to 228,760 people, the council added.

The only session where booking is required is for the first session at Darul Ghufran mosque in Tampines. The booking can be done at https://book.masjids.sg/ from 10am on April 5, according to the booking website and Muis’ website.

Sultan Mosque in Kampong Glam will also be the only mosque to conduct prayers at 8.45am for the first session, with the second session there beginning at 9.45am.

Mosques with prayer sessions at 9.45am may require a 15-minute grace period, and start at 10am instead, Muis said.

A full list of the mosques and details on the sessions they are holding can be found on Muis’ website here.

Source: straitstimes.com

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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/8-mosques-to-offer-3-sessions-for-hari-raya-prayers

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Unsold, leftover food at Ramadan bazaars in Malaysia raises concerns over wastage

05 Apr 2024

AfifahAriffin

KUALA LUMPUR: Tonnes of excess food left unsold at Ramadan bazaars in Malaysia have raised concerns over food wastage in the country.

These bazaars, popular among locals and tourists, bustle with life during the holy month of Ramadan. Vendors prepare and sell a vibrant array of delicacies and traditional dishes daily.

But amidst the festive atmosphere lies the hidden challenge of food waste.

INCREASE IN WASTE DURING FASTING MONTH

If nothing is done to reduce wastage, Malaysia would waste around 75,000 tonnes of food during Ramadan, or about 15 to 20 per cent more compared to other months, according to the Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation last year.

The wastage pollutes the environment, and also raises concerns about food security and ethical consumption, said observers.

Various organisations have since stepped up to address the problem of Ramadan food waste.

Volunteers from the MySaveFood programme, for instance, collect surplus food from more than 130 bazaars across the country, organise it and then distribute it to the underprivileged.

“If we don't save the excess food, it will be wasted and end up in landfills,” said MySaveFood deputy director AniadilaKamaruddin.

“The programme has had a significant impact on the lower-income recipients, who are touched by the donations as many struggle to afford the food due to high prices.”

Since MySaveFood was launched in 2016, it has made great strides. Last year, it saved 20 tonnes of food from these bazaars.

In the first three weeks of this year’s Ramadan, MySaveFood has already saved more than 54 tonnes of food, worth around US$126,000.

The programme, which now has more than 2,000 volunteers, urged bazaar-goers to plan ahead and buy only what they need.

Vendors can also reduce waste by adjusting the quantities they sell and preserving the food sustainably, it added.

Volunteer Adamsyam Daniel said he wanted to give back to the community by helping to salvage bazaar food for charity purposes.

“Right now, I feel we have two main problems in our daily lives, which are excess food and many who are in hunger,” he added.

“We want to raise awareness among all communities about these food issues.”

Some organisations are also mobilising their staff and volunteers to visit Ramadan bazaars to hand out flyers on overbuying and wasting food.

Despite the challenges, the collective efforts of various stakeholders are making a difference in tackling the food waste issue in the country, said observers.

They noted that by promoting a culture of responsible consumption and sustainable practices, Malaysia’s Ramadan bazaars can continue to be a symbol of community spirit while reducing their environmental footprint.

Source: channelnewsasia.com

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/unsold-leftover-excess-food-malaysia-ramadan-bazaars-wastage-impact-environment-volunteer-needy-4244751

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Jailed former Malaysia premier Najib Razak seeks to serve remaining sentence under house arrest

April 05, 2024

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Najib Razak is seeking to serve the rest of his prison term under house arrest, two months after his sentence in a corruption case was reduced by half.

His surprise application filed Wednesday said he had “clear information” that then-king Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah issued an order during the Jan. 29 pardon’s board meeting, which cut his 12-year jail sentence by half and sharply reduced a fine, allowing him to finish his sentence under house arrest.

Najib asked the court to have the government verify and carry out the order. His application was due to be heard Thursday but was postponed to April 17.

Sultan Abdullah hails from Najib’s hometown of Pahang. He ended his five-year reign on Jan. 30 under Malaysia’s unique rotating monarchy system. A new king took office on Jan. 31.

Najib, 70, has served less than two years of his sentence, supposed to end on Aug. 23, 2028, after his sentence was commuted. He was charged and found guilty in a corruption case linked to the multibillion-dollar looting of state fund 1MDB.

In his application, he accused the pardons board, home minister and the attorney-general among seven entities of concealing the sultan’s order “in bad faith.”

Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told reporters later Thursday that he has “no knowledge” of such an order, adding that he wasn’t a member of the pardons board.

The others named in the application couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

Najib set up the 1MDB development fund shortly after he took office in 2009. Investigators allege at least $4.5 billion was stolen from the fund and laundered by Najib’s associates through layers of bank accounts in the US and other countries and financed Hollywood films and extravagant purchases that included hotels, a luxury yacht, art and jewelry. More than $700 million landed in Najib’s bank accounts.

The national outrage over the scandal led to the shocking 2018 election defeat of the party that had governed Malaysia since independence. Najib was sentenced in 2020 and two years later, he lost his final appeal in court, becoming the country’s first former premier to be imprisoned.

Despite his conviction, Najib still holds clout in his party, the United Malays National Organization, which is part of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government that took power after the 2022 elections.

Najib has maintained his innocence, alleging that Malaysian financier Low TaekJho duped him. Low, thought to be the mastermind of the scandal, remains at large.

The former premier’s separate graft trial over the 1MDB scandal is ongoing.

Source: arabnews.com

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https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488416/world

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Africa

 

Mixed reactions in Uganda after constitutional court rejects bid to nullify anti-homosexuality laws

APRIL 04, 2024

People in Uganda reacted with mixed views after the country’s Constitutional Court upheld Wednesday an anti-gay law that allows the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality".

The law in question defines “aggravated homosexuality” as cases of homosexual relations involving a minor and other categories of vulnerable people, or when the perpetrator is infected with HIV.

The court in the Ugandan capital Kampala rejected the petitioners' request to quash the law despite widespread condemnation from rights groups and others abroad.

President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill into law in May last year.

The law is supported by many in the East African country, where some see it as behaviour imported from abroad and not a sexual orientation.

Constitutional Court judges said the law was legally passed by parliament and does not violate the constitution.

Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda under a colonial-era law criminalizing sexual activity “against the order of nature.”

The punishment for that offense is life imprisonment.

A suspect convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” can be imprisoned for up to 14 years, and the offense of “attempted homosexuality” is punishable by up to 10 years.

The court, however, ruled that members of the gay community should not be discriminated against when seeking medication.

Uganda was one of the earliest and hardest hit countries when AIDS emerged, and public health experts have long warned against letting stigma or fear of punishment impede access to care.

In Kampala, many Ugandans expressed mixed feelings over the ruling.

But members of the LGBTQI community were quick to cast a dark shadow on the court’s decision, saying it will worsen their already desperate situation.

Some lawyers for the petitioners said after the judgment that they will now turn to the Supreme Court, hoping it will overturn the law.

omosexuality is criminalized in more than 30 of Africa’s 54 countries.

Source: africanews.com

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https://www.africanews.com/2024/04/04/mixed-reactions-in-uganda-after-constitutional-court-rejects-bid-to-nullify-anti-homosexua/

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Military releases names of killed B’Haram commanders

5th April 2024

Solomon Odeniyi

The Defence Headquarters on Thursday released the names of terrorist kingpins killed during different operations in the northern part of the country.

The DHQ noted that the terrorist commanders were killed in operations between January and March 2024.

The names of the terror kingpins are Abu Bilal Minuki (aka AbubakarMainok) – Head of Is-Al Furqan Province (ISGS and ISWAP) and HarunaIsiyaBoderi. He was described as a notorious terrorist who operated along BirninGwari Forest in Kaduna State, as well as the Abuja-Kaduna highway.

The military said he was killed by troops on February 24.

SPORTS EXTRA: Arsenal, Man city, And Liverpool In Tough Title Race0:00 / 1:01

Others were KachallahDamina, neutralised on March 24 by troops, alongside over 50 combatants; KachallahAlhaji Dayi, Kachallah Idi (Namaidaro), KachallahKabiru (Doka), KachallahAzarailu (Farin-Ruwa), KachallahBalejo, Ubangida, AlhajiBaldu, among several others.

Director, Defence Media Operations, Maj. Gen. Edward Buba, revealed the names to journalists during a briefing in Abuja.

“The above was achieved through synchronised strikes between the ground and air forces on terrorist enclaves. For instance, immediately upon acquisition of vital targets, fighter jets are scrambled to carry out major bombarding raids on significant terrorist enclaves,” Buba added.

He said a total of 2,351 terrorists were killed, 2,308 arrested and 1,241 kidnap hostages rescued during the period under review.

Buba said, “Troops equally conducted ambushes, raids, fighting patrols and offensive against the terrorists. The attacks and offensive actions by troops during the period led to 2,351 terrorists neutralised, 2,308 terrorists arrested and 1,241 kidnap hostages rescued. Furthermore, troops recovered 2,847 weapons and 58,492 caches of ammunition.”

On the operations against crude oil theft, Buba said stolen products worth N20bn were recovered by troops between January and March.

He said, “Troops denied the oil theft of an estimated sum over N20,331,713,910. About 21,573,310 litres of stolen crude oil, 2,723,430 litres of illegally refined AGO, 53,300 litres of DPK and 52,730 litres of PMS, amongst other items, were recovered.”

Source: punchng.com

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Yusuf launches distribution of 4th Ramadan palliatives, warns against diversion

April 4, 2024

FavourLashem

Gov. Abba Yusuf of Kano State has inaugurated the fourth distribution of Ramadan palliatives in 44 local government areas of the state, warning against diversion of the foodstuff.

Yusuf launched the exercise for the needy and the vulnerable on Wednesday at the Tiamin Rice Mill in Dawakin Kudu Local Government Area of the state.

He warned that anyone of those in charge of distribution of the palliatives found diverting them, would be dealt with according to the law.

“I swear to God that anyone found diverting the palliatives will be dealt with decisively and according to the law. This government will not allow anyone to sabotage this exercise,” he said.

National growth LS

The governor said the palliatives were made of 25 kilogramme bags of rice meant to ease the hardships being faced by the intended beneficiaries, during the current Ramadan fasting.

He said 224,440 bags of the commodity would be distributed to the three senatorial districts in the state for onward sharing to the target beneficiaries.

He apologised to the people of the state for their patience as the rice was being processed and bagged for distribution.

Yusuf said that his administration would continue to intervene “until hunger is eradicated among our people”.

He thanked the Aliko Dangote Foundation, other groups and individuals for distributing their own palliatives to the needy during the holy month, and prayed Allah to reward them abundantly.

The governor also thanked the people for their support and prayers, especially during the 2023 governorship election and the ensuing legal battles “which to the glory of God, we won emphatically”.

Earlier, Chairman of the state Palliatives Distribution and Compliance Committee, Dr AbdullahiBichi, said the exercise was the fourth in the series of distribution of palliatives to the people.

Bichi, also the Secretary to the State Government, commended Yusuf for the gesture, which he said would immensely alleviate their hardships. (NAN)

Source: newsdiaryonline.com

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https://newsdiaryonline.com/yusuf-launches-distribution-of-4th-ramadan-palliatives-warns-against-diversion/

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Turkish Embassy distributes food aid among vulnerable Muslims in South Sudan

Benjamin Takpiny

04.04.2024

JUBA, South Sudan (AA) – The Turkish Embassy in South Sudan on Thursday distributed food aid among vulnerable Muslims in South Sudan as part of aid provided during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The food packages containing cooking oil, maize flour, tea, sugar, rice, soap, and lentils were handed over to about 400 Muslims in South Sudan by the Turkish Embassy in coordination with the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) and South Sudan Islamic Council.

Turkish ambassador to South Sudan, ErdemMutaf, said that since the start of Ramadan, Turkish aid agencies and charities are active in South Sudan, reaching out to those in need.

“Türkiye always stands with South Sudanese on every occasion,” he said, adding that assistance and humanitarian aid are not limited to Ramadan only.

He said that since he assumed his duty in South Sudan, they have very good cooperation with the South Sudan Islamic Council.

“We thank TIKA director Abdullah Sari, as with their efforts and contributions, we organized today’s event of food distribution.”

He said that for the last two weeks, the Turkish Diyanet Foundation distributed food packages to 10,000 families in five different areas in Juba.

The Turkish Embassy, in cooperation with South Sudan Refugee Council, will be reaching out to people in Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile in the future, he said.

Abdallah Baraj, the secretary-general of the South Sudan Islamic Council, thanked the Turkish government and its humanitarian and charity organizations for their support in South Sudan.

Khamis Jaden, one of the beneficiaries, thanked the Turkish government for giving them food during this difficult time when they don’t have anything to eat.

“I have now received food from Türkiye for the Ramadan. I thank the ambassador and the TIKA for reaching out to us.”

Fatma Ahmed Silliman, another aid recipient, said they are very happy about the support given to them by the Turkish Embassy.

Source: aa.com.tr

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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/turkish-embassy-distributes-food-aid-among-vulnerable-muslims-in-south-sudan/3183944

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