Habib Siddiqui

YANGON —  The head of the U.N. children's fund urged Myanmar on Monday to implement the recommendations of a panel on the Rohingya crisis led by former U.N. head Kofi Annan, saying it had yet to create conditions right for the return of refugees from Bangladesh. Speaking at a forum in the capital, Naypyitaw, UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore said children from the Rohingya Muslim minority, a persecuted and mostly stateless community from Buddhist-majority Myanmar, were living "a precarious and an almost hopeless existence" in camps in neighboring Bangladesh. About 730,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine state, in western Myanmar, since a military crackdown in 2017 after Rohingya insurgents attacked security posts, U.N. agencies estimate. Tens of thousands remain behind in Rakhine, where they are subjected to restrictions on movement and have limited access to health care and education. Fore said Myanmar's "commitment" to enacting the recommendations o...

Slideshow Mohammed Ali ma7400124@gmail.com Hide To fareed fareed@cnn.com, Stratton Grace (Wyden) grace_stratton@wyden.senate.gov, matthew.smith matthew.smith@fortifyrights.org, Ms. Chris Lewa chris29asia@yahoo.com, Nurul Islam nuromor@yahoo.com, Dr. Wakar Uddin ucon54@hotmail.com, Tun Khin tunkhin80@gmail.com, senator_Merkley senator_Merkley@merkley.senate.gov, earl.blumenauer earl.blumenauer@capitolenews.com, AHRC HumanRights ahrc@ahrc.asia, timd timd@worldoregon.org, civilsociety civilsociety@ohchr.org, foreign-press foreign-press@europarl.europa.eu, hameedalbar hameedalbar@yahoo.com, Helen Jarvis helenjarvis@online.com.kh, M Zarni fanon2005@gmail.com, sct sct@amnesty.org.uk, uaigv uaigv@amnesty.org, Tariq A. Al-Maeena talmaeena@aol.com, Sufyan bin Uzayr sufyanism@gmail.com, Cair info@cair.com, Burma Task Force info@burmamuslims.org, Restless Beings info@restlessbeings.org, Anna Malin...

Analysis: The theme of this year’s forum was ‘Globalisation 4.0’, a reference to the social disruption of automation. But as Ben Chu explains, ordinary people around the world are still grappling with globalisation’s earlier versions. No Theresa May . No Donald Trump . No Emmanuel Macron. No Xi Jinping. No Narendra Modi. No Justin Trudeau. Davos 2019 was notably light on the political leader front. Together these no-show leaders represent countries that account for around half of the global economy and 40 per cent of the planet’s population. True, there were specific reasons for most of the major non-appearances at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps. Theresa May has the parliamentary Brexit stand-off to contend with. Donald Trump is mired in government shutdown politics. Macron has the Gilets Jaunes protests and terrible poll ratings to grapple with. Xi is dealing with a rather alarming growth slowdown in China. Yet there’s always a domestic crisis somewhere in the world,...

by Brian Cloughley   On January 2 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Brazil,  and his Department noted that in discussions with Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo they “highlighted the importance of working together to address regional and global challenges, including supporting the people of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua in restoring their democratic governance and their human rights.” Pompeo declared that the US and Brazil “have an opportunity to work alongside each other against authoritarian regimes.” From this we gather that Pompeo is a strong advocate of democratic governance and will always make it clear that the United States supports unfortunate people living in countries having “authoritarian regimes.”  It is apparent he must believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” Unfortunately it transpired that Pompeo is a selective supporter of democracy and ...

by Rannie Amiri In the wake of the outcry after the abduction and murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi—in a foreign country and under the directive of a rogue Crown Prince—one would think the threshold to condemn the detention of an American journalist in the United States without charge or trial would be quite low. Unfortunately, it has proven to be nearly insurmountable. Marzieh Hashemi, a US citizen and anchorwoman of Iran’s English-language news station, PressTV, had been held under these circumstances for 10 days beginning shortly after her arrival to St. Louis Lambert International AirportJan. 12 to work on a documentary on the Black Lives Matter movement. She was finally released, again without charge, on Wed Jan. 23. Hashemi was purportedly an alleged material witness in an as-yet unspecified investigation . She was forced to remove her headscarf and offered pork to eat, both against the tenets of her religion, before being transferred to Washington, D.C. to an unkn...

by Robert Fisk Most folk outside the United States – and until this month, most Americans – won’t have heard of Michelle Alexander. She’s a civil rights lawyer and academic and has written a book called  The New Jim Crow , and a few months ago  The   New York Times  took her on as a regular columnist. Like millions of black – and white – Americans, she’s a devotee of  Martin Luther King Jr . And last week,  she began her op-ed  in the Old Gray Lady of record and one-time conservatism with a long and admiring tribute to the black, Christian, nonviolent civil rights campaigner who, just a year before his 1968 assassination, decided he must speak out about the disaster of the Vietnam war. He had been told to soft-pedal the conflict which had by then cost the lives of 10,000 Americans, but which was still supported by the political establishment. So even though he would be falsely accused of being a communist, he chose to break his silence. So far, ...

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Tracing his fingers over the metal fencing at a United Nations protected site in South Sudan’s capital, Nhial Nyuot Nhial hung his head as he contemplated going home after years of civil war. “At the moment it’s impossible for someone to leave,” he said. The 33-year-old is among tens of thousands of people who are still sheltering in such camps across the country, the legacy of an unprecedented decision by a U.N. peacekeeping mission to throw open its doors to people fleeing war. Nhial has been in the Juba camp since 2014, shortly after the country erupted in fighting. A fragile peace deal signed between President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar in September has brought little comfort. Like many in the camps, Nhial still fears for his life and refuses to leave. What began as a temporary experiment is looking more like a permanent refuge for more than 190,000 people living in squalor in the six U.N. protected sites. Now the U.N. has pushed for ...

India successfully tests ship-borne air defense system created with Israel In latest trial of the jointly produced Barak 8 maritime interceptor, Indian Navy fires surface-to-air missile at low altitude target The Indian Navy conducted a successful trial of the maritime Barak-8 interceptor on Thursday, in the latest test of the joint Indian-Israeli missile defense system, the Indian Defense Ministry said. The Barak-8, also known as the Long Range Surface-to-Air Missile (LRSAM), was fired from the INS Chennai at an incoming target flying at a low altitude, India said. “The missile destroyed the target with a direct hit. All the mission objectives have been met,” the country’s defense ministry said in a statement.                   The Barak-8 was developed by IAI in collaboration with Israel’s Defense Ministry, India’s Defense Research and Development Organization, the navies of both coun...

Xi's China is proving to be a state where bigotry is becoming a signature policy. View the links below to see some examples of its bigotry against Islam: https://bitterwinter.org/tag/muslim-chinese/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA7briBRD7ARIsABhX8aB3v2tMtlmn9siMU01HP0zn54WpOnQCrk0Uo4gpx7vh1VST8hyZcOYaAqbAEALw_wcB https://bitterwinter.org/ccp-interfering-with-muslim-funerals/ https://bitterwinter.org/sinicization-of-religion-is-a-sign-of-weakness/ https://bitterwinter.org/anti-muslim-repression-expands-outside-xinjiang/ https://bitterwinter.org/re-education-for-work-or-travel-far-from-home/ https://bitterwinter.org/authorities-sinicize-wujiawan-grand-mosque/ https://bitterwinter.org/eradication-of-muslim-traditions-extends-beyond-xinjiang/ https://bitterwinter.org/how-ccp-is-destroying-businesses-in-xinjiang/ https://bitterwinter.org/a-u-s-bills-to-sanction-china-for-misdeeds-in-xinjiang/

Malaysia has cancelled a $20 billion rail project financed by China, a minister said Saturday, citing high interest costs for the government’s decision as he offered the clearest statement that one of Beijing’s largest One Belt, One Road infrastructure initiatives would be scrapped. Kuala Lumpur, China’s biggest trading partner in Southeast Asia after Vietnam, has pushed back against Chinese dominance in its economy since Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad returned to power after a stunning electoral triumph in May last year, stalling billions of dollars of contracts. To read the full article by By Ali Nufael  click here: http://www.eurasiareview.com/27012019-malaysia-scraps-20-billion-china-backed-train-project/

Suu Kyi was once a global icon who was admired by many, including me. We all hoped that once elected she would make a difference for good for all the people of Burma. Instead, she proved to be a sub-human, monster or a she-devil. She was a fake, a DOB. Here is the link to an article by Reuters reporters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-suukyi-history-special-report-idUSKBN1OI1ET

By Habib Siddiqui Imagine that you are living in a country where most of your family members are now detained in mass detention camps where they face inhuman torture including waterboarding! You ask – why? Well, according to the government, as an ethnic and religious minority your family members are perceived as potential threats to the law and order of the country. You ask – isn’t such a racist discriminatory practice against someone born into a family that is not part of the majority ethnic group? What happened to all those rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? What about the international laws prohibiting such crimes against a people? Isn’t our state a member of the United Nations? Did not our government ratify such laws and are expected to live by such binding articles? No, you won’t get any satisfactory answer from the Chinese (PRC or the People’s Republic of China) government on a plethora of such vital questions, if you are a Turkic-speaking U...

                      Author: Jean Perier          The cyclical nature of the world economy, when every single decade ends in a major meltdown of the world financial results in a number of experts predicting a global crisis to take place in 2019. Everyone remembers the crisis of 2008, from which the West hasn’t fully recovered as production levels across the Western states still remain below the level shown in 2007. For the point of view of an impartial bystander, it’s rather hard not to point out that most countries would be borrowing cheap money at breathtaking rates in a bid to stimulate consumer spending. The problem of a wealthy lifestyle some still enjoy these days on borrowed funds is that it doesn’t solve any issues, it just delays the inevitable. In the end, all the printed money will flow back down to the stock market and the bubb...