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Southeast Asian politicians call for rescue of boat carrying 200 Rohingya refugees

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(Last Updated On: December 20, 2022)

Southeast Asian politicians called Tuesday for the rescue of a boat carrying as many as 200 Rohingya refugees including women and children stranded at sea for several weeks.

Thousands of the mostly Muslim Rohingya, heavily persecuted in Myanmar, risk their lives each year in long, expensive sea journeys — often in vessels in poor condition — trying to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.

The boat carrying the refugees has been reported in waters close to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and India in the Andaman Sea and the Malacca Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, AFP reported.

“We urgently call on ASEAN member states and other countries in the region to… launch search and rescue operations,” said ex-Indonesian MP Eva Sundari, who is a member of advocacy group ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), in a statement.

“It is disgraceful that a boat filled with men, women, and children in grave danger has been allowed to remain adrift.”

Charles Santiago, a former Malaysian MP and chairman of APHR, said in the same statement that the delay in rescuing the stranded refugees likely “has already caused untold suffering and loss of life.”

The vessel’s current location is unknown and it is unclear when or exactly from where it departed.

But at least one relative of a passenger hoping to reach Malaysia told AFP he was taken to the boat in deep waters by a small fishing trawler from Bangladesh.

Sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh are home to some one million Rohingya, many of whom fled neighboring Myanmar after a 2017 military crackdown bringing accounts of rape, arson and killings.

But the dire conditions of Bangladesh’s overcrowded camps have forced many to flee again.

Rohingya activists and relatives of some of those aboard the vessel told AFP it had been adrift at sea for at least two weeks.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said last week that the boat has been in waters since late November, and it had received reports of at least a dozen people dying on board.

Those remaining had no access to food or water, it said.

Noor Habi, a resident of a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, said her 23-year-old daughter Munuwara Begum was on the stranded boat and had spoken to her sister by walkie talkie.

“We are in danger. Please save us,” her daughter Begum said, according to an audio clip of the call.

“There is no food and water with us and there is no one to save us from this drowning boat.”

The Indonesian navy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Russia says evidence links attackers to ‘Ukrainian nationalists’

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Russian investigators said on Thursday they had uncovered evidence that the gunmen who killed more than 140 people in an attack on a concert hall near Moscow last week were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”.

Russia has said from the outset that it is pursuing a Ukrainian link to the attack, even though Kyiv has denied it and the militant group Islamic State (Daesh) has claimed responsibility.

In a statement, the state Investigative Committee said for the first time that it had uncovered evidence of a Ukrainian link, Reuters reported.

“As a result of working with detained terrorists, studying the technical devices seized from them, and analyzing information about financial transactions, evidence was obtained of their connection with Ukrainian nationalists,” the statement said.

However, the White House has described Russia’s allegation that Ukraine was involved in the attack as “nonsense”.

National security spokesman John Kirby said it was clear that ISIS was “solely responsible.”

He added the US passed a written warning of an extremist attack to Russian security services, one of many provided in advance to Moscow.

Russia says however it is suspicious that Washington was able to name the alleged perpetrator of the attack so soon after it took place.

The head of Russia’s FSB security service said earlier this week, again without providing evidence, that he believed Ukraine, along with the U.S. and Britain, were involved.

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Spain air drops 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Spanish military planes air dropped 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Madrid called on Israel to open land border crossings to prevent a famine, the Foreign Ministry said.

The operation, carried out in coordination with Jordan and co-financed by the European Union, dropped more than 11,000 food rations to alleviate the “catastrophic levels of food insecurity” faced by up to 1.1 million people in Gaza, the ministry said in a statement.

“Spain insists on the opening of the land crossings as an indispensable measure to avoid a famine situation,” it added.

Other Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, have also resorted to air drops to deliver aid to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza after nearly six months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, Reuters reported.

Aid agencies say deliveries into Gaza, much of which has been laid to waste by Israeli bombardments, have been held up by bureaucratic obstacles and insecurity since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last week, a U.N.-backed report said a famine was imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July.

The Spanish foreign ministry also reaffirmed its commitment to supporting UNRWA, the United Nations humanitarian agency for Palestinians, and to its continued existence.

In January, major donors to UNRWA, including the U.S. and Germany, suspended funding following allegations that around 12 of its tens of thousands of Palestinian employees were suspected of involvement in the attacks on Israel by Hamas which triggered the war.

Israel says it puts no limit on the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza and blames problems in it reaching civilians there on U.N. agencies, which it says are inefficient, read the report.

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UN expert says Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, calls for arms embargo

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(Last Updated On: March 27, 2024)

A United Nations expert told the global body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo, Reuters reported.

Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.

“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the U.N. rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called “The Anatomy of a Genocide”.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.

“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said, prompting a burst of applause.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. It was triggered when Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies, read the report.

“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” it said.

Gulf nations such as Qatar, as well as African countries including Algeria and Mauritania, voiced support for Albanese’s findings and alarm at the humanitarian situation, Reuters reported.

The seats for Israel’s ally the United States were left empty. Washington has previously accused the council of a chronic anti-Israel bias.

Albanese, an Italian lawyer, is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific themes and crises. Her views do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.

In the past, her comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict have drawn scrutiny, including from a U.S. ambassador in Geneva who said she has a history of using “antisemitic tropes”.

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