A leading human rights group has accused Israel of committing war crimes during this summer’s war in Gaza. Amnesty International says Israel displayed “callous indifference” in attacks on family homes in the densely populated coastal strip that in some cases amounted to war crimes. The criticism came in a report released on 5 November. The 50-day war killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 72 people on the Israeli side, all but six soldiers. Israel also arrested scores of Hamas activists in the West Bank.
FRANCE MULLS RECOGNISING A PALESTINIAN STATE
France’s ruling Socialist Party is preparing to submit a motion calling for recognising a Palestinian state to push forward efforts to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a report said on 5 November citing parliamentary sources. The vote is expected to take place within two weeks. “The (lower house National) Assembly asks the French government to use recognition of the state of Palestine as an instrument to obtain a final settlement of the conflict,” reads the provisional motion.
France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius said earlier last month that Paris should recognise a Palestinian state only if doing so would help achieve peace, not as a symbolic gesture. However, if negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel fail, Paris “would not shirk its responsibilities” but would recognise the Palestinian state, Fabius said in answer to a question in parliament.
LIBYA’S TOP COURT DISSOLVES ELECTED PARLIAMENT
Libya’s Supreme Court declared the country’s parliament as unconstitutional on 6 November, state news agency LANA said, deepening a rift between rival power centres in the country. Libya’s elected parliament, the House of Representatives, has been operating from the eastern city of Tobruk since an armed group linked to the western city of Misrata seized the capital Tripoli, dividing the North African country. The court is based in Tripoli where the Misrata-led group has set up an alternative parliament and taken control of state bodies, calling into question the court’s ability to rule independently. A number of lawmakers had asked the court in June to rule on the constitutionality of the assembly, which was elected in June.
AT LEAST 5.8 MILLION SYRIANS DISPLACED: RIGHTS GROUP
Around 5.8 million Syrian refugees have taken shelter in neighbouring countries since the beginning of the conflict in March 2011, according to a London-based human rights group. The number of displaced Syrian refugees has increased to 5.8 million, the opposition activist group Syrian Network for Human Rights said in its latest report. Around 50 per cent of recorded refugees are children, 35 per cent are women and 15 per cent are men, the report added.
Nearly 5.8 million refugees have fled to neighbouring countries, such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Turkey came first for sheltering 1.9 million refugees, including 450,000 children and 270,000 women, according to the report. The report also said around 190,000 people from Syria’s border town of Kobani have sought shelter in camps across Turkey after fleeing from attacks by militants of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group.
MB CALLS ON UN FOR ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CRIMES COMMITTED IN EGYPT
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) of Egypt have sent a 53-page submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council Periodic Review, which is deliberating on the condition of Human Rights in Egypt. In Egypt’s first review for four years, this session is seen as a major test for the United Nations Human Rights Council. Submissions have been made by a number of Human Rights organisations such as Amnesty, who are concerned over the regimes crackdown on civil society since the fall of President Morsi.
The Report provides detailed account of the role of the FJP during the revolution, its subsequent overthrow by the military coup and the repression that followed. In the report, the FJP and the Muslim Brotherhood emphasises the importance of full accountability for the crimes and violations committed since July 2013.
WE WILL NOT RECOGNISE THE COUP: MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said that all its members are part of the Anti-Coup National Alliance; they are sticking to their principles and will never recognise the coup government. In a statement issued on 3 November, the group said that this is their message “for the sake of the country”. It said that its members would never withdraw or bargain on their principles. “We stress that we will never recognise the military coup, and all its results are illegitimate,” the statement said. “Our hands will never be extended for reconciliation with anyone who took part in this bloody coup, which is a coup on legitimacy and the interests of the country, revolution and democracy.”
The statement added: “We will not concede and it is not our right to acknowledge the right of retribution from the killers whose hands were stained by the blood of thousands of the best sons and daughters of Egypt.
KENYA MUSLIM IMAMS DEMAND GOVT PROTECTION
Muslim leaders on 5 November called on the Kenyan government to provide protection for Muslim Imams following the killing of a prominent imam in the coastal city of Mombasa. “The Imam Council has officially communicated to us proposing that each imam be given a bodyguard by the government,” Abdulghaffur Al Busaidy, chairman of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, was reported as saying.
“This is the message I am sending to the inspector General of Police that our imams need protection,” he said. Imam Salim Mwarangi was shot dead in Likoni, a suburb outside off the Mombasa Island, late Tuesday, in the latest attacks targeting Muslim clerics in the coastal city. “It is shocking that in the last three years we have lost so many Muslim preachers to these killings,” Al Busaidy said. “What is even more worrying is that no single suspect has been arrested,” he added.
MYANMAR COMPLICIT IN TRAFFICKING ROHINGYA: RIGHTS GROUP
Myanmar security forces are benefiting financially through complicity with criminal gangs from the trafficking of the persecuted Rohingya ethnic minority, according to a human rights organisation. “Not only are the authorities making life so intolerable for Rohingya that they are forced to flee, but they are also profiting from the exodus,” Matthew Smith, executive director of Bangkok-based Fortify Rights, said in a report released on 7 November. “This is a regional crisis that is worsening while Myanmar authorities are treating it like a perverse payday,” he added.
Fortify Rights prepared the report after interviewing more than 90 Rohingya men and women between September 2013 and October 2014 in Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia. The research showed Myanmar police, navy and army officers were all making money on the backs of Rohingya boarding boats through local brokers to flee to Malaysia – with the charged sum typically ranging from $500 to $600 per shipload of asylum seekers in exchange for passage out to sea. Police officers were also allegedly forcing Rohingya to individually pay $15 dollars in order to leave the shore.
GEORGIA IS RETURNING 21 MOSQUES BACK TO MUSLIMS
The Georgian Governments Financial Affairs Commission held a meeting where the representatives of the three major religions were in attendance. In the meeting, the issue of sacred relics that were previously taken to be returned to the rightful religious organisations was discussed. During the meeting, their financial value was weighed. According to news reports in the Georgian media, this meeting was seen as the first that assessed the possessions and the financial situation of religious organisations. Close to 58 buildings and their position was assessed in the meeting and it was decided that 21 of them would be handed over to Georgian Muslim control. The remaining Muslim places of worship that weren’t returned will be decided at a later date.