Habib Siddiqui

A UK-based Rohingya rights defender, the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK), in a new report claimed “the genocide against Rohingya shows no sign of abating in Myanmar” despite the order of the UN's highest court to the Myanmar authorities for protecting the minority community. “Since the start of 2021, at least 15 Rohingya -- including nine infants and young children -- have died as a direct result of onerous and illegal travel restrictions preventing access to medical care,” the report released on Monday said. The release has also coincided with Myanmar’s duty to report to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on how it is preventing genocidal acts against the minority Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. Myanmar is supposed to submit its periodical report to the ICJ by May 23 as the court in January 2020 imposed a legal injunction ordering the authorities of the Buddhist-majority Southeast Asian country to “prevent and halt genocidal acts against the Rohingya” as part o...

Maung Zarni The author is coordinator of the UK-based Free Rohingya Coalition, general secretary of Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, and a fellow of the Genocide Documentation Center in Cambodia LONDON This past Monday, the State Administration Council of Myanmar, the military regime, aired on state TV the still images of the detained National League for Democracy (NLD) leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, as she appeared in a closed-door courtroom, sitting alongside her two NLD deputies, in the dock. There is absolutely no question about the farcical nature of this trial of the deposed Myanmar state counselor by the regime that has committed -- and continues to commit -- all the gravest crimes in international law, as the UN International Independent Fact-Finding Mission (2016-18) had emphatically noted. Among the charges against her are the illegal import and possession of walkie-talkies for her security details, breaking the COVID-19 regulations, corruption and most ominously, breaking...

Seventy-fifth session Agenda item 34 Prevention of armed conflict Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and United States of America: draft resolution The situation in Myanmar The General Assembly, Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaratio...

UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir has expressed their determination to ensure a better future for the Rohingyas, a persecuted minority of Myanmar. "I assure you, the United Nations General Assembly is determined to ensure a better future for the Rohinga people," he said after his visit to the camps in Cox's Bazar where nearly a million Myanmar nationals took shelter after fleeing persecution in Rakhine State. Rohingyas have been taking refuge in Bangladesh since 1980s. Most of the refugees in Bangladesh fled military crackdown in Rakhine in 2017, which was dubbed as genocide. Repeated attempts of repatriation failed as the conditions of Rakhine state have not been conducive for return – a situation that puts huge burden on Bangladesh. Volkan arrived in Bangladesh on May 25. He has called on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, and delivered a speech on Bangladesh and UN's relationship. He also met with UN country team, led by UN Res...

GENEVA (AP) — The top U.N. human rights body on Thursday passed a resolution aimed to intensify scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, after the U.N. rights chief said Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and faulted the militant group Hamas for violations of international law in their 11-day war this month. The 24-9 vote, with 14 abstentions, capped a special Human Rights Council session on the rights situation faced by Palestinians. The session and the resolution were arranged by Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries, which have strongly supported Palestinians in their struggles with Israel. The resolution, which was denounced by Israel, calls for the creation of a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” — the most potent tool at the council’s disposal — to monitor and report on rights violations in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It would be the first such COI with an “ongoing” mandate. The commission is also to investigate “all underlying root causes of recurr...

Israeli police have arrested at least 250 Palestinian citizens of Israel within the last two days, while activists say attacks by Jewish Israelis against the community go unpunished. According to the Palestinian Authority's news agency Wafa, Israeli forces arrested 250 Palestinian citizens of Israel on Monday and Tuesday, in a campaign of detentions that is still ongoing. Hassan Jabreen, the head of Adalah, a legal centre for the protection of Palestinian citizens of Israel, told local news outlet Arab 48 that the Israeli police have been "terrorising" citizens via the campaign that comes from "purely political" motivations with no legal basis. In Wadi Ara and Kafr Manda, Israeli police arrested dozens of youths and raided homes. Arrests also took place in Negev and Umm Al-Fahm. Israeli intelligence forces also arrested Moein Al-Asam, a Negev based artist, after he sang an ode to Jerusalem and Gaza and praised "Palestinian resistance." He was inter...

The New York Times is worried that Israel’s feelings will get hurt if President Joe Biden re-enters the Iran nuclear deal. That was the theme of a reported article that ran in Wednesday’s edition of the paper of record, pivoting off Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to Jerusalem to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the Times, “the prospect of a U.S. return to the nuclear deal threatens to generate new strains between Washington and Jerusalem on a subject that poisoned relations between President Barack Obama and Mr. Netanyahu.” And? So what? What will the United States gain by re-entering the Iran deal? Will these supposed “new strains” with Israel have any impact on the JCPOA’s efficacy? Why is Joe Biden the guilty party here? Are the Israelis being unreasonable? The Times did not explore any of these questions, and instead gave Bibi and his allies prime real estate to support Israel’s gripe and relay baseless criticisms of the nuc...

The UN’s World Health Organization held a session Tuesday singling out Israel as a violator of Palestinians’ health rights and passed a resolution on the matter, in the only country-specific discussion during its annual assembly, which was largely devoted to the coronavirus pandemic. The delegations of some 25 countries held speeches accusing Israel of violating the health rights of Palestinians and the Druze population in the Golan Heights. The agenda item was slammed by UN Watch, a nonprofit that tracks alleged incidents of anti-Israel bias in the United Nations and its bodies, where pro-Israel critics say there is an automatic majority against the Jewish state. Similar resolutions have been passed in previous years. The resolution required the WHO to hold the same debate at next year’s assembly, and to prepare another report on the “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.” The motion passed with 82 coun...

From Scroll.in: The suit prompted more than 300 prominent writers, academics, and scholars last week to stand in solidarity with Hindus for Human Rights. Anisha Sircar --- The Hindu American Foundation advocacy group said, earlier this month, that it was suing four activists, academic Audrey Truschke, and a journalist for two articles published in Al Jazeera that it claims are defamatory. The lawsuit has sparked a debate over free speech in the US, with hundreds of activists and scholars criticising the defamation case and standing in solidarity with those named in it. The Al Jazeera articles, published in April, said that federal Covid-19 relief funding amounting to $833,000 had been given to the Hindu American Foundation and four other US foundations which, the reports alleged, had “ ties to Hindu supremacist and religious groups”. The articles said that the HAF, Vishwa Hindu Parishad America, Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of USA, Infinity Foundation, and Sewa International had re...

Israel’s missile attack on media offices in Gaza City last weekend was successful. A gratifying response came quickly from the head of The Associated Press, which had a bureau in the building for 15 years: “The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.” For people who care about truth, that’s outrageous. For the Israeli government, that’s terrific. The AP president, Gary Pruitt, said “we are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.” There’s ample reason to be horrified. But not shocked. Israel’s military began threatening and targeting journalists several decades ago, in tandem with its longstanding cruel treatment of Palestinians. Rather than reduce the cruelty, the Israeli government keeps trying to reduce accurate news coverage. The approach is a mix of deception and brutality. Blow up the cameras so the world won’t see as many pictur...

Usually I talk about sex, but Israel’s most recent, gut-wrenching horrors wreaked upon Palestinian people have propelled me, like a virtual kick from behind, to step out of my *comfort zone* and say that I am deeply embarrassed as a Jew. Yes, as a Jew. No, I’m not an Israeli, certainly not a Zionist, and not a religious or even a practicing Jew. Actually, I’m a pretty blasphemous Jew (especially on my show), as well as a Wandering Jew, an agnostic ethical hedonist bonoboësque Jew; but a Jew nonetheless, certainly by Hitler’s standards. So, for me, as a Jew, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is, in addition to being an atrocity, a tragedy and a war crime, an embarrassment. In Yiddish, they call it a shanda, a terrible shame, and that’s what I feel: Ashamed. I often say we should not feel ashamed of our sexuality, that various religions, governments, parents and schools throughout human history have made us feel ashamed in ways we really shouldn’t. But we should feel shame if we...

BY JIM KAVANAGH With its latest attack on Gaza—on the families it drove from their homes in what is now Israeli territory—Israel is surpassing itself in viciousness. As of today, Israel has killed 212 Gazans, including at least 61 children and 36 women. It is “obliterate[ing] multiple generations of families” in the middle of the night—at least 21 members of the al-Qawlaq family, from 6 months to 90 years old. It is pulverizing residential towers and media offices and bombing “civic infrastructure, businesses and the main roads leading to the city’s al-Shifa hospital.” Destroying the roads is an instructive example of Israel’s gratuitous, and clever, cruelty: It of course prevents ambulances and medics from moving where they’re needed; it also blocks the families who are fleeing to the hospitals for safety from the sudden explosion of their homes. But, We didn’t bomb the hospital! Given all of Israel’s precision weapons and careful advance planning, this is not an accident, nor was th...

The video of 10-year-old Palestinian Nadine Abdullatif, tearful and devastated as she stands in front of the newly obliterated remains of her neighbour's home, has now been viewed more than 13 million times. Israel-Palestine: The names of Palestinians and Israelis killed during the violence Read More » "You see all of this?" she asks, eyes red, gesturing at the rubble behind her. "What do you expect me to do? Fix it? I'm only 10." Her voice breaks with emotion. "I just want to be a doctor or anything to help my people, but I can't. I'm just a kid." The internet carried images of the recent spate of violence around the world over the past two weeks, as Israel once again dropped bombs on Gaza, a small stretch of land that is home to more than two million people - 40 percent of whom are under 14. Yet despite Israel's best efforts and heavy-handed moderation - if not outright censorship - of pro-Palestinian posts by several social medi...

United Nations says 800,000 people don’t have regular access to clean water, as nearly 50% of network was damaged in fighting. GAZA CITY — A Palestinian official says an initial assessment shows at least 2,000 housing units were destroyed in the fighting between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in Gaza. Naji Sarhan, deputy of Gaza’s Hamas-run works and housing ministry, said more than 15,000 other units were partly destroyed in the 11-day war. The fighting in Gaza began after Hamas launched rockets toward Jerusalem following days of clashes and unrest in East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque, including over the planned eviction of several Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. As the conflict unfolded, Hamas fired thousands of missiles at Israeli communities, and Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on what it said were terror targets in the enclave. The Israeli Air Force targeted residential, commercial and government buildings, saying...

The British government says it has robust checks on arms sales but campaigners have raised concerns that several UK-made parts are found in weapons used by Israel. The United Kingdom is being urged to make good on promises of robust checks on arms sales after new research revealed numerous British-made components are found in weapons used by Israel in its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The research by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) shows UK-produced parts are used in the F-35 and F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters used by the Israeli military, according to The Independent. Lockheed Martin, the American aerospace manufacturer that produces the F-35, says on its website that "the fingerprints of British ingenuity can be found on dozens of the aircraft's key components". "More than 100 UK-based suppliers" including BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce are involved in the production of the fighter jet, according to Lockheed Martin. The UK Defence Journal estimat...