Saturday, November 24, 2018

Massacre in Malaysia

Why the quest for an investigation into alleged UK colonial crimes faltered

by James Sweeney-Nov 24, 2018

( November 24, 2018, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) Let bygones be bygones. Let sleeping dogs lie. But not everyone would agree: for decades the families of 24 people allegedly massacred by UK soldiers in 1948 at Batang Kali, Malaysia, have been trying to get the UK to investigate – without success. Their efforts recently came to the end of the line when an application to the European Court of Human Rights was rejected.

The families, led by Nyok Keyu Chong, thought the UK should investigate because in 1948 Batang Kali was within the British Empire. There had been investigations in the past, but Chong thought they were not good enough, and that new information from the Royal Malaysia Police and a 2009 book would make a difference. However, the UK government refused a new inquiry, and an appeal to the UK Supreme Court was unsuccessful. In desperation the families turned to the European Court of Human Rights, which has now ruled that the European Convention on Human Rights cannot help them.

The backdrop to this case is a 21st-century revision of how we view events of the past. Wrongdoing that was once swept under the carpet is now being reexamined, with people asking important questions about the UK’s reliance on slavery and colonialism.

The official line just after the Batang Kali massacre was that a number of “bandits” had been shot while making an attempt to escape custody. In 1969 The People newspaper reported that the victims were killed in cold blood, and several of the alleged perpetrators appeared on TV to confirm this new version of the events. The Labour government at the time said it was taking the matter very seriously, but after the Conservatives won the 1970 general election the investigation was cancelled.

The right to truth

In the wake of awful events, finding out exactly what happened, and why, takes on a special significance. After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the country embarked upon a process of “truth and reconciliation”. A commission was established, with the power to grant amnesties in return for information. Getting to the truth was so important that South Africa was willing to sacrifice the ability to prosecute people who had done terrible things.

The UN General Assembly has gone so far as to promote the idea of a “right” to the truth in respect of the most serious human rights violations. It also proclaimed March 24 as an annual “day for the right to the truth”. These efforts are designed to encourage states, but that is as much as the UN can do here – encourage. Since the General Assembly is not a parliament and does not make international law, there is a problem when states refuse to be “encouraged”.

This is what faced the families of the victims of the Batang Kali massacre. Spurred on by changing attitudes to colonialism, families’ leader Chong thought the time was right to request a new public enquiry. The UK government refused, so Chong tried, in effect, to use UK and European human rights law to enforce a right to the truth.

A disappointing outcome

International human rights law has long recognised that some past violations have effects that continue into the present day: these are called “continuing violations”. The clearest example is enforced disappearance, where it is accepted that the uncertainty and anguish felt by relatives continues until the fate of the missing person is known. The events at Batang Kali cannot be characterised as enforced disappearances so the law as it stands, disappointingly, does not recognise that they give rise to a “continuing violation”.

Sometimes when new information about events even in the distant past (including cover ups) comes to light, it can trigger a present-day obligation to investigate. This is because the right to life contains not only a duty not to deprive people of their life arbitrarily, but also a duty to investigate suspicious deaths. The European Court found that there were not enough new developments in relation to Batang Kali.

The European Court has said that it might look into the failure to investigate historical events that go against the very foundations of the European Convention, such as war crimes or crimes against humanity. This would be to protect the underlying values of the convention. However in the Batang Kali case, the European Court said that such “convention values” cannot help where the events took place before the European Convention on Human Rights even existed.

The European Court of Human Rights is a great institution that has real power to promote justice. And it has in the past recognised that proper investigations promote the right to truth. In the Batang Kali case it could have found that refusing to investigate the alleged events and cover up gave rise to a “continuing violation”. It could have found that new materials supplied by Chong were a significant new development. Finally it could have found that a present-day “convention value” is to investigate credible allegations about the worst excesses of colonialism. The European Court invented the “convention values” test only recently, and it is in its power to put events to that test. Given this historic opportunity, it is profoundly disappointing that the court declined to put itself on the frontline in the quest for a right to the truth.

It was, and indeed still is, possible for the UK government to instigate a public inquiry into the events of 1948. With concerted political pressure it might still happen – and while at least some of the people who were there as children are still alive and able to find out why their parents were killed.

James Sweeney, Professor, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Clashes follow detention of ultra-right Pakistani cleric

Police officers stand guard during a protest, after dispersing the supporters of the Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan Islamist political party, in Karachi, Pakistan November 24, 2018. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

Mubasher Bukhari-NOVEMBER 24, 2018

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan on Saturday detained scores of protesters in a continuing crackdown against followers of a hardline Islamic cleric who led three days of protests over blasphemy laws and whose arrest overnight triggered violent clashes with police.

Members of cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) party had shut down major cities in protest earlier this month at the acquittal of a Christian woman who had spent eight years on death row on blasphemy charges.

At least five people were wounded in last night’s clashes between Rizvi’s supporters and police in the eastern city of Lahore after police arrested the cleric on Friday night.

A spokesman for the Punjab chief minister’s office said Rizvi’s second-in-command, Afzal Qadri, had also been detained.

“Afzal Qadri and Khadim Rizvi have been sent to jail. Qadri has been admitted to the jail’s hospital.

A crackdown is underway across Punjab against TLP activists,” Shahbaz Gill told Reuters.

Information Minister Fawwad Chaudhry said on Twitter that Rizvi had been placed in protective custody after he refused to withdraw a call for further protests on Sunday.

“It’s to safeguard public life, property and order,” he said.

Rizvi had urged his supporters to take to the streets if he was arrested. Late on Friday his son said he had been taken away in a raid on his religious school, or madrassa, in Lahore.

A police document seen by Reuters listed 10 other leaders of Rizvi’s group who had also been detained.

TLP leaders had threatened the Supreme Court judges who acquitted Asia Bibi - urging their cooks and servants to kill them.

But the group called off protests following negotiations with the government and an agreement to open a review of the court’s decision on Bibi.

It is unclear whether Rizvi will appear before a court to face charges. Pakistan has detained Islamist leaders in the past but failed to keep them in custody.

Bibi and her family are in hiding after her release. She was convicted in 2010 for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbours objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim. She has always denied committing blasphemy.

In 2011, a bodyguard assassinated Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer after he began pushing for Bibi’s acquittal. The TLP was founded out of a movement that supported the assassin, Mumtaz Qadri.

Writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by Stephen Coates

'This is no eulogy': Jamal Khashoggi's daughters write for Washington Post

Children of Saudi journalist recall a loving father and patriot, but say they still have no closure about his death

‘His light will never fade,’ write Jamal Khashoggi’s daughters. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA

Martin Pengelly @MartinPengelly-Sat 24 Nov 2018 16.18 GMT

Writing for the Washington Post, the daughters of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi declared: “This is no eulogy, for that would confer a state of closure.”

Khashoggi, 59, a Saudi national and US resident who wrote for the Post, was last seen entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on 2 October. After a number of contradictory explanations, Riyadh said Khashoggi was killed and dismembered when “negotiations” to persuade him to return to the country failed.

The CIA has reportedly assessed that the murder was ordered by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader. He has denied any involvement. Amidst international outcry, Donald Trump has disputed reports on the CIA’s work, stressed the importance of US-Saudi ties and repeated the prince’s denials. House Democrats have promised to investigate the president’s response.

In their column for the Post, which was published on Friday, Noha Khashoggi and Razan Jamal Khashoggi did not directly address the political fallout from the death of their father. Instead, under an illustration of his empty chair by Razan, they wrote of their lives with “‘Baba’ – a loving man with a big heart”.

“We loved it when he took us every weekend to the bookstore,” they wrote. “We loved looking through his passport, deciphering new locations from pages covered with exit and entry stamps …

“As children, we also knew our father as a traveler. His work took him everywhere, but he always returned to us with gifts and fascinating stories. We would stay up nights wondering where he was and what he was doing, trusting that no matter how long he was gone, we would see him again, wide-armed, waiting for a hug.

“As bittersweet as it was, we knew from a young age that Dad’s work meant that his reach extended far beyond our family, that he was an important man whose words had an effect on people over a great distance.”

Khashoggi left his home in Jeddah and moved to the US last year, establishing at the Post an outlet for stringent criticism of Prince Mohammed’s rule. He also wrote for the Guardian. His daughters echoed his belief that he was a Saudi patriot, writing: “In truth, Dad was no dissident. If being a writer was ingrained in his identity, being a Saudi was part of that same grain.”

They added: “It was vitally important to him to speak up, to share his opinions, to have candid discussions. And writing was not just a job; it was a compulsion. It was ingrained into the core of his identity, and it truly kept him alive.”

Noha and Razan Jamal Khashoggi and two brothers were born to Jamal Khashoggi’s first wife, Rawia al-Tunisi. He had two other marriages. He went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to collect documents relating to a planned marriage to his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

“When we were in Virginia during Ramadan,” his daughters wrote, “Dad … told us about the day he left Saudi Arabia, standing outside his doorstep, wondering if he would ever return. For while Dad had created a new life for himself in the United States, he grieved for the home he had left. Throughout all his trials and travels, he never abandoned hope for his country.

“After the events of 2 October, our family visited Dad’s home in Virginia. The hardest part was seeing his empty chair. His absence was deafening. We could see him sitting there, glasses on his forehead, reading or typing away. As we looked at his belongings, we knew he had chosen to write so tirelessly in the hopes that when he did return to the kingdom, it might be a better place for him and all Saudis.

“This is no eulogy, for that would confer a state of closure. Rather, this is a promise that his light will never fade.”

Beijing’s population fell for the first time in 2 decades

000_15L58J-940x580 — The Forbidden City is seen in Beijing on June 4, 2018. Source: AFP

23rd November 2018

FOR the first time in 20 years, the Chinese capital of Beijing’s population has dropped, according to official data.

The Standing Committee of Beijing Municipal People’s Congress said the number of Beijing’s permanent residents stood at 21.707 million in 2017, which was 22,000 fewer than the number in 2016, Xinhua reported.

The committee had reviewed another report which found the number of permanent residents in the city’s six urban districts continue to decrease.

In the past three years, Beijing’s permanent residents declined by 740,000 permanent residents in the six districts, down three percent in 2016 and 2017, the report said.

The falling number of residents falls in line with Beijing’s plan to tackle “big city diseases” such as congested roads and pollution, among others.

SEE ALSO: Will Vietnam follow China down the pollution path?

What this means

The government’s move to address overpopulation of the megacity is also done with resource shortages and house price inflation in mind.

According to Reuters, the bustling city’s population rose by two thirds since 1998 and with it the energy consumption. The number of vehicles also tripled, leading the government to cap its population at 23 million by the end of the decade.

This photo taken on Feb 10, 2018 shows a Chinese soldier standing in the main hall while travellers rush before boarding trains at the West Railway Station in Beijing, as people depart the capital ahead of the Lunar New Year. Source: AFP

Part of the government’s solution to overpopulation involved integrating its economy with the neighbouring province of Hebei and the city of Tianjin which involved proposals to relocate universities, government departments and industrial firms.

The mass relocation also involved the building of some infrastructure, including a development zone at Xiongan in Hebei which would take up some of Beijing’s “non-capital” functions.

SEE ALSO: Order and chaos in China’s cities of multi-million migrants

The government has also invested heavily in transportation networks to allow easier long-distance commutes.

Amid its drive to control the number of inhabitants in cities, China is also facing an ageing population problem.

The government has been trying to boost the birth rate, which fell last year and is expected to decline further this year.

By the end of 2035, China’s elderly population is expected to reach 400 million by the end of 2035. Currently, the figure stood at 240 million this year, which is already straining health services and pension funds, according to the China Association of Social Security.

Home-Based Sales Solutions: A Growing Trend

2019 will witness more home-based ventures within the retail marketplace

Nov-22-2018

(SALEM, Ore.) - According to data released from the Small Business Administration, there were more than 27.9 million home-based businesses throughout the United States in 2010.

It is entirely plausible to observe that this number of grown tremendously over the past eight years. High-speed Internet access, broadband connectivity and more online retail sales options are some of the main reasons behind such a meteoric rise.

Are you interested in becoming involved with such a lucrative opportunity? If so, there are a few suggestions to keep in mind before you begin and there are a handful of blunders that should also be recognized. Let us examine how to sell products from home so that the possibilities are fully understood.

Home-Based Online Sales: A Brief Introduction

The notion of selling goods or services to the online community has existed since the middle portion of the 1990s. This was the time when major third-party platforms such as Amazon and eBay first attracted the public. Times have certainly changed over the past 23 years.

Home-based businesses now employ features such as standalone websites, social media pages, high-definition images, and cutting-edge sales platforms. It should therefore be clear that technology is your friend as opposed to your rival.

Become familiar with common web hosting services such as WordPress. It is also wise to look into e-commerce solutions including those offered by major providers such as Shopify. However, another excellent choice is to appreciate a concept known as drop shipping.

Many home-based businesses rely upon drop shipping, and for good reason. It can be difficult (if not impossible) to stock physical inventory without possessing a warehouse. Assuming that your enterprise enjoys even a moderate amount of success, keeping track of shipping and similar logistics could represent another stumbling block. Drop shipping simplifies these and other concerns.

This process involves the use of a separate supplier. You will choose from a variety of products and market these to the general public. Assuming that an order is placed, the supplier will ship the item directly to the customer.

This frees up a great deal of time that would have otherwise been devoted to such issues. You can therefore direct your efforts towards where they matter the most: marketing, product promotions and customer relations.

Another interesting advantage associated with drop shipping is that there are literally thousands of products to choose from. Many of these will be offered at or below currently online retail prices, so your customers will also be able to take advantage of significant discounts. In an era partially defined by the value of the almighty dollar, these savings will allow your business to rise above and beyond the competition.

Common and Costly Oversights

Now that we have taken a look at some of the essential tools and methods associated with a home-based online business venture, it is just as prudent to list a few mistakes which should be avoided.

The most common is a lack of patience combined with financial desperation. It is always best to start an online venture due to your own ambitions as opposed to fiscal necessity alone. Why is this the case? Those who are desperate to turn a profit will often rush the sales and marketing processes; resulting in substandard performance.

Furthermore, such stress will undoubtedly cause you to expect unrealistic results within relatively short periods of time. There is no doubt that home-based businesses can provide you with a substantial source of income and yet, they will take time before progress is witnessed.

The second error involves spreading your marketing efforts too thin. Many would-be entrepreneurs allow greed to overtake common sense. Promoting your products to an extremely large audience will often water down the end results.

Not only can it be difficult to determine if your efforts are producing success, but you are failing to target a nice market. Narrow down your attempts so that you can more easily gauge how they are performing from both short- and long-term points of view. You could otherwise be throwing money out of the digital window.

A final pitfall is not fully understanding the requirements of your customers. While you might believe that a product will sell like hotcakes, this may not necessarily be the case. What feedback are you receiving and what are others saying about your firm?

Even negative opinions can help to guide you in the right direction. If an item is consistently failing to produce results, it could be time to rethink your strategy or abandon it altogether in favor of a different approach.

It is likely that 2019 will witness even more home-based ventures within the retail marketplace throughout the United States. If you hope to remain on the cusp of innovation, the suggestions mentioned above will prove to be invaluable in the near future.

Source: Salem-News.com Special Features Dept.

In the wake of Raed Fares' murder, Syrian town mourns a visionary leader

The activist and his longtime associate Hamoud Jneed were gunned down on Friday, leaving a hole in the fabric of Kafranbel's civil society

Activists mourn the loss of Fares and Jneed in Kafranbel, in Syria's Idlib province (Harun al-Aswad/MEE)

Harun al-Aswad

Saturday 24 November 2018

KAFRANBEL, Syria - As a bleak mist hung low above Kafranbel on Saturday, the weather seemed to match the mood in the small Syrian town.

Located in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last remaining region of Syria not in government hands, Kafranbel is in mourning for two of its most outspoken and active residents: civil society activist and broadcaster Raed Fares, 46, and fellow activist Hamoud Jneed, 38.

Residents have borne seemingly endless waves of violence from forces both supporting and opposing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since the war began almost eight years ago.

But the assassinations of Fares, a giant of Kafranbel’s civil society, and Jneed, one of his close associates, on Friday have hit the town hard.

Their deaths have left many wondering about the future of Kafranbel and its legacy of activism, as the dreams of the early days of protest now seem like a distant memory.

A revolutionary spirit

Fares was studying medicine when anti-Assad protests first broke out in Syria in March 2011.

Very early on, Kafranbel emerged as one of the first places to revolt against Assad, with Fares acting as one of the leaders of the protest movement, organising peaceful demonstrations and helping create the Union of Revolutionary Bureaus (URB) in Kafranbel.

Fares established a small office to monitor deaths due to the conflict and provide relief to survivors. He then set up another project to help provide water to residents of Kafranbel and its surrounding areas.

In 2012, he established the first radio station in Syria to broadcast from opposition-held areas, Radio Fresh.

READ MORE ►

Prominent Syrian activist Raed Fares shot dead in Idlib

In addition to Radio Fresh, he went on to form many organisations as part of the URB.

They included the website Fresh Online, a roving medical clinic office serving residents in and around Kafranbel, an office assisting with the educations of children aged 5 to 15, an office for women's professional empowerment, and another organisation documenting the cases of Syrians detained by both pro- and anti-government forces.

One of URB’s most notable achievements was helping broker a prisoner exchange deal between Assad's forces and opposition factions in the Hama area in 2017, which secured the release of 55 women prisoners who had been held by Damascus security forces in 2017.

Right before his death, Fares was in the process of opening a new television channel, Fresh TV, with the goal of filming a comedy series satirising the grim reality for Syrians living under war.

Jneed, meanwhile, had stood by Fares’s side since the beginning of the protests in 2011, assisting him in all his work. A peaceful activist, Jneed had been writing anti-government slogans on the walls on Kafranbel since the protests first began, in spite of the many risks.

Fares helped create the Union of Revolutionary Bureaus in Kafranbel (Harun al-Aswad/MEE)

The legacy in Kafranbel

For all the work Fares, Jneed and their colleagues did in Kafranbel, the activists also succeeded in providing a face for Syrian citizens and their demands for peace and justice - even as the international discourse around the war shifted to focus more on the fight between Islamist movements and government forces.

In 2013, Fares and other Kafranbel residents published a photograph of themselves holding a banner in English expressing their solidarity with the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. Residents of the US city responded with their own banner in support of the Syrian people.

Whether it was responding to the Black Lives Matter movement or the death of US actor Robin Williams, Kafranbel's residents often used news events abroad to draw attention to their plight, with the town’s banners becoming an unfiltered medium through which they could communicate their own frustrations and demands.

Translation: Down with the regime and the opposition… Down with the Arab and Muslim world… Down with the UN Security Council… Down with the world… Down with everything.

As a result, Fares’s relationships with people abroad grew, as he visited the United States in 2014, meeting with US officials and obtaining US State Department funding for his many projects in the Idlib region.

Fares embraced many revolutionary Syrian activists, such as Hadi al-Abdallah, a journalist who received the Reporters Without Borders award in 2016. Abdallah helped teach many media professionals in the URB training centre for journalists.

“I do not know how to describe Raed,” Abdallah told MEE. “He was more than a friend or a brother to me, I looked up to him as an example to follow.”

Abdallah reminisced about the years he spent with Fares, Jneed and fellow journalist Khaled al-Issa — working, eating, traveling and living together.

Today, Abdallah is the only survivor of that group of friends.

‘We have lost them’

Despite an official lull in fighting between pro-Assad forces and militias in Idlib province since September, when a shaky deal to delay an anticipated wide-scale offensive by the government to reconquer the region was reached, Idlib's residents are still suffering, picked off one by one by ongoing deadly attacks.

“I do not know why all this happens! When will the of blood and loss of loved ones stop?” asked resident Ali Dandoush, his voice filled with sadness.

Shortly after 11am local time on Friday, as most of the residents of Kafranbel attended Friday prayers in the town's mosques, a series of gunshots rang out.

It was only after the sermons were over that the people of Kafranbel, stunned, found out that Fares and Jneed had been assassinated.

'He was more than a friend or a brother to me, I looked up to him as an example to follow'

- Hadi al-Abdallah, journalist and friend of Raed Fares and Hamoud Jneed

Dandoush was with them during their final moments.

The three men were leaving the offices of Radio Fresh, where Fares served as director and Dandoush was a photographer, and heading by car to the home of one of Fares’s relatives.

"When we left the radio building, we saw a van approaching us, but we did not pay it any attention,” Dandoush told Middle East Eye. “When we arrived to Raed’s cousin’s house, we saw that same van stopped only two metres to our left.

“They shot us directly... The three killers got out of their car and they shot at us again,” he said. “Raed and Hamoud were wounded. I survived by a miracle. I think the killers thought I was dead, so this is why I am alive now.”

Jneed died on the spot, while Fares succumbed to his wounds in the hospital.

While Dandoush said the gunmen did not have their faces covered, he did not recognise them.

Mohammed al-Fares, one of Fares’s sons, only found out about his father’s death on social media. He was out of town and immediately rushed back to Kafranbel.

“I could not believe it. I went to the city and my mom told me he was dead, that they had shot my father in the heart and that another bullet had hit him in his left thigh. Hamoud was hit by two shots, the first in his shoulder and the second in his side,” the 19-year-old told MEE.

“We have lost them.”

Jneed leaves behind five children, while Fares was a father of three.

Ever-present risk of death

Fares, Jneed and the activists of Kafranbel knew the risks were high to carry out their work, as they garnered opponents both among government supporters and the opposition.

In the Idlib governorate, indiscriminate killings by anonymous gunmen are an almost daily occurrence.

Turki al-Sweid, an administrator at Radio Fresh, told MEE that staff did not think twice when they first heard the shots that killed Fares and Jneed, only 500 metres from the office.

“We thought it was a routine shooting, which happens almost daily in the city,” Sweid told MEE.

With their regular documentation of shellings, raids and arrests carried out by the Syrian government, as well as the actions of anti-Assad armed groups after they took control of Kafranbel, Fares and his colleagues had repeatedly found themselves in dire straits.

Both Fares and Jneed had been detained by an opposition faction in northern Syria for five days in 2014 for their work.

Fares was arrested at least one other time, and survived an assassination attempt in 2014.

'I do not know why all this happens! When will the of blood and loss of loved ones stop?'

- Ali Dandoush, Idlib resident

In late 2016, Abdallah himself and fellow journalist Khaled al-Issa - another close associate of Fares and Jneed - were also the victims of an assassination attempt in eastern Aleppo. Abdallah was seriously wounded, while Issa died in the hospital.

In its few years of operations, Radio Fresh saw its production stopped several times - its office was closed, staff members were detained, and equipment was confiscated by anti-government militias.

Fares was only able to reopen the radio station after reaching an agreement with Islamist factions in Idlib promising not to broadcast songs and to segregate its employees by gender.

The high number of groups and individuals opposed to Fares and the URB’s work has left residents of Kafranbel guessing as to who might have ordered the murders.

While Fares and Jneed’s legacy will endure after their deaths, their absence is already being felt among their colleagues, friends and supporters — and for some, they now represent the slow annihilation of the dreams of the Arab Spring.

“They are all gone today,” said Abdallah, the journalist. “I used to try to cultivate hope in the hearts of the people around me, but that hope has died.

“There is no meaning to life, and if there is anything good to do, it is to search for and identify the killers and hold them accountable."