Month: September 2019

A regional Chinese diplomat has rebuked the United States for being “ignorant” about his country’s ongoing key economic contributions and cooperation with Afghanistan.

Arrangements are being worked out to enhance the cooperation with Kabul even under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Yao Jing, the Chinese ambassador to neighboring Pakistan told VOA.

He hailed Saturday’s successful Afghan presidential election, saying China hopes they will boost peace-building efforts in a country wrecked by years of conflicts.

“We hope that with the election in Afghanistan, with the peace development moving forward in Afghanistan, Afghans will finally achieve a peaceful period, achieve the stability,” said the Chinese diplomat, who served in Kabul prior to his posting in Islamabad.

China and US Clash Over ‘Belt and Road’ in Afghan Resolution

China insisting on including a reference to Beijing’s $1 trillion global building program in resolution on the UN political mission in Afghanistan

Earlier this month, U.S. officials and lawmakers during a congressional hearing in Washington sharply criticized China for its lack of economic assistance to Afghan rebuilding efforts.

“I think it’s fair to say that China has not contributed to the economic development of Afghanistan. We have not seen any substantial assistance from China,” Alice Wells, U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, told lawmakers.

Wells, however, acknowledged that Beijing has worked with Washington on a way forward on peace as have other countries, including Russia and immediate neighbors of Afghanistan.

“She is a little ignorant about what China’s cooperation with Afghanistan is,” ambassador Yao said when asked to comment on the remarks made by Wells.

He recounted that Beijing late last year established a trade corridor with Kabul, which Afghan officials say have enabled local traders to directly export thousands of tons of pine nuts to the Chinese market annually, bringing much-needed dollars. Yao said a cargo train was also started in 2016 from eastern China to Afghanistan’s landlocked northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

China is also working on infrastructure projects, including the road linking Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad and the road between the central Afghan city of Bamiyan and Mazar-e-Sharif. Chinese companies, Yao, said are also helping in establishing transmission lines and other infrastructure being developed under the CASA-1000 electricity transmission project linking Central Asia to energy-starved South Asia nations through Afghanistan.

Ambassador Yao noted that China and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding on BRI cooperation, identifying several major projects of connectivity.

“But the only problem is that the security situation pose a little challenge. So, that is why China and Pakistan and all the regional countries, we are working so hard trying to support or facilitate peace in Afghanistan,” he said.  

For her part, Ambassador Wells told U.S. lawmakers that China’s BRI is a “slogan” and “not any reality” in Afghanistan. “They have just tried to lockdown lucrative mining contracts but not following through with investment or real resources,” she noted.

Wells said that Washington continues to warn its partners, including the Afghan government about “falling prey to predatory loans or loans that are designed to benefit only the Chinese State.”

U.S. officials are generally critical of BRI for “known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and a lack of transparency.” The projects aims to link China by sea and land through an infrastructure network with southeast and central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

But Yao rejected those concerns and cited the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a pilot project of BRI, which has brought around $20 billion in Chinese investment to Pakistan within the past six years. It has helped Islamabad build roads and power plants, helping the country overcome its crippling electricity shortages, improve its transportation network and operationalize the strategic deep-sea Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.

…

Clashes between two Turkish-backed rebel groups in the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin have left at least two fighters dead and about a dozen wounded, according to reports Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor group that has researchers across Syria, reported that fierce fighting between the al-Majd Legion and al-Sham Legion in Afrin erupted Saturday night following a disagreement over property.

“Our sources have confirmed that the infighting erupted after a dispute over the ownership of a house just outside of Afrin,” Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told VOA.

Local news said the disputed house belonged to a Kurdish civilian that armed groups reportedly had seized months ago.

Frequent clashes

Armed confrontations among Syrian rebel factions have reportedly increased since Turkish military and allied Syrian rebels took control of Afrin after a two-month-long military campaign that ousted the Kurdish People Protection Units (YPG) from the region in March 2018, rights groups said.

“This is not the first time that such clashes take place over property and revenue-sharing among rebel groups,” the Syrian Observatory added.

Infighting among rebel groups has become a common issue in the region.

 “There is almost one occurrence like this one on a daily basis,” said Mohammed Billo, a journalist from Afrin.

“Usually when fighting gets out of control, Turkish military interferes to stop it,” he told VOA.

Some rights groups have also voiced concerns about growing violations against civilians in recent months in Afrin.

“Local sources in Afrin reported at least 110 abuses that appear to amount to instances of arbitrary detention, torture and abductions of civilians by pro-Turkey armed groups,” Amnesty International said in a report released in May.

YPG attacks

Since their ouster from Afrin in March 2018, Kurdish fighters affiliated with the YPG have occasionally carried out attacks against Turkish military and Syrian rebel forces in the Kurdish-majority region.

Last week, YPG fighters claimed responsibility for an attack on a Turkish military outpost in Afrin that killed two Turkish soldiers and wounded another.  

Ankara views the YPG as part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in a three-decade war with Turkish armed forces for greater Kurdish rights in Turkey. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.  

Turkey has repeatedly threatened to invade other YPG-held areas in northern Syria, despite a recent agreement with the United States to establish a safe zone along Syria’s border with Turkey.

The two countries have begun joint patrols along parts of the border, but Turkish officials continue their objection over Washington’s support for the YPG, which has been a key U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Syria.

…

About 350,000 treasure hunters from all over the world, have been scouting out a large area in the Rocky Mountains stretching from Northern New Mexico to Montana, looking for a hidden treasure. As the story goes, all one needs to do to find the loot, is to decipher the nine clues in a poem written by wealthy art collector and entrepreneur Forrest Fenn, who says he collected and hid the treasure years ago. Its lore became wildly popular after he had written a book called “The Thrill of the Chase,” talking about his life and the treasure.  While many believe the treasure is real, others think it’s a hoax. VOA’s Penelope Poulou visited the area and spoke with Fenn about the meaning of it all

…

The United States does not currently plan to stop Chinese companies from listing on U.S. exchanges, Bloomberg reported Saturday, citing a U.S. Treasury official.

“The administration is not contemplating blocking Chinese companies from listing shares on U.S. stock exchanges at this time,” Bloomberg quoted Treasury spokeswoman Monica Crowley as saying.

Reuters reported Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration is considering delisting Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges in a move that would be part of a broader effort to limit U.S. investment in Chinese companies.

The Treasury did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

…

The Middle East. Trade tensions. Iran’s nuclear program. Venezuela’s power struggle. Civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Familiar flashpoints such as these got plenty of airtime at the U.N. General Assembly’s big annual gathering this week.

But some leaders used their time on the world stage to highlight international conflicts and disputes that don’t usually command the same global attention.

A look at some of the less-discussed controversies trying to be heard:

Nagorno-Karabakh

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan landed one of the coveted first few speaking slots, and he devoted a bit of his wide-ranging speech to a clash in the Caucasus: a standoff between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The mountainous, ethnic Armenian area of about 150,000 people is recognized as part of Azerbaijan in U.N. Security Council resolutions dating to the 1990s. But Nagorno-Karabakh and some neighboring districts have been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia, since a six-year separatist war ended in 1994.

Both Azerbaijan and Turkey have closed their borders with Armenia because of the conflict, cutting trade and leaving Armenia with direct land access only to Georgia and Iran.

Russia, the U.S. and France have co-chaired the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, attempting to broker an end to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In speeches and rebuttals at the General Assembly, Armenia and Azerbaijan accused one another of misstating history, disrespecting human rights and standing in the way of a settlement.

North Macedonia

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ “state of the world” address was largely a grim one, but he pointed to a few matters moving “in promising directions” — among them relations between Greece and the new Republic of North Macedonia.

Greece and what the U.N. cumbersomely used to call the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” sparred for nearly three decades over the latter’s name. It was adopted when the nation, which has a current population of about 2.1 million, declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

Greece said the use of “Macedonia” implied territorial claims on its own northern province of the same name and its ancient Greek heritage, not least as the birthplace of ancient warrior king Alexander the Great. Athens blocked its Balkan neighbor’s path to NATO and EU membership over the nomenclature clash.

It became “infamous as a difficult and irresolvable problem,” in the words of now-North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.

Repeated rounds of U.N.-mediated negotiations proved fruitless until June 2018, when the Skopje government agreed to change the country’s name to North Macedonia. The switch took effect this February.

European Council President Donald Tusk said this month that North Macedonia is now ready to start EU membership talks. It expects to become the 30th NATO member soon.

The deal has been contentious within both countries, though, with critics accusing their governments of giving up too much. Regardless, North Macedonia’s prime minister highlighted it with pride from the world’s premier diplomatic podium.

“We can see nothing but benefits from settling the difference,” Zaev said, calling it “an example for overcoming difficult deadlocks worldwide.”

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis didn’t expand on the deal, saying only that his country supports EU bids by all the western Balkan countries if they respect their obligations to the EU and their neighbors.

Western Sahara

A mostly desert expanse along the northwest coast of Africa, Western Sahara has been a center of friction between Morocco and Algeria for almost half a century.

Morocco annexed the phosphate- and fishing-rich former Spanish colony in 1975, then fought the Algerian-backed Polisario Front independence movement until 1991, when the U.N. brokered a cease-fire and established a peacekeeping mission to monitor the truce and facilitate a referendum on the territory’s future.

The vote has never happened. Morocco has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for Western Sahara, while the Polisario Front insists that Western Sahara’s Sahrawi people — a population the independence movement estimates at 350,000 to 500,000 — have the right to a referendum.

Last year, the U.N. Security Council called for stepping up efforts to reach a solution to the dispute.

A U.N. envoy brought representatives of Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and neighboring Mauritania together last December for the first time in six years, followed by a second meeting in March. But the issue of how to provide for self-determination remains a key sticking point.

The envoy, former German President Horst Kohler, resigned in May for health reasons.

At the General Assembly, Moroccan Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani said his country’s autonomy proposal “is the solution,” while Algerian Foreign Minister Sabri Boukadoum reiterated hopes for Western Sahara residents “to be able to exercise their legitimate right to self-determination.”

Cyprus

A U.N.-controlled buffer zone that cuts across the city of Nicosia evinces a fraught distinction: Cyprus is the last European country to have a divided capital.

After 45 years, could that finally change? There’s “a glimmer of hope,” Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades told to the assembly.

The eastern Mediterranean island has been split into an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of uniting the island with Greece. Turkey continues to maintain more than 35,000 troops in the northern third of the island, which only Turkey recognizes as an independent state. The U.N. also has a peacekeeping force in Cyprus.

Tensions have ticked up lately, particularly over natural gas exploration in waters in the internationally recognized state’s exclusive economic zone. Turkey is also drilling there, saying it’s defending Turkish Cypriots’ rights to energy reserves.

On-and-off talks about reunification have spanned decades.

Greek Cypriots have rejected Turkish Cypriots’ demands for a permanent Turkish troop presence and veto power in government decisions in a future federated Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots, meanwhile, want parity in federal decision-making, believing they would otherwise be relegated to junior partners to the majority Greek Cypriots.

A U.N. envoy made a shuttle-diplomacy effort in recent weeks in hopes of paving the way for formal talks, and Anastasiades suggested in his General Assembly speech there was some agreement on starting points for potential discussion. But he also complained that Turkey’s drilling and other activities “severely undermine” the prospect of negotiations.

Turkey’s Erdogan, meanwhile, complained about “the uncompromising position” of the Greek Cypriots.

Belize-Guatemala

It’s been a big year in a centuries-old argument between Belize and Guatemala.

Guatemala claims more than 4,000 square miles (10,350 square kilometers) of terrain administered by Belize — essentially the southern half of Belize. It’s an area of nature reserves, scattered farming villages and fishing towns, and some Caribbean beach tourism destinations.

The dispute’s roots stretch to the 19th century, when Britain controlled Belize and Spain ruled Guatemala.

Guatemala, which became independent in 1821, argues that it inherited a Spanish claim on the territory. Belize considers Guatemala’s claim unfounded and says the borders were defined by an 1859 agreement between Guatemala and Britain (Belize remained a British colony until 1981).

The land spat has strained diplomatic relations and at times even affected air travel between the two Central American countries.

Belize and Guatemala agreed in 2008 to ask the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, for a binding ruling.

Guatemalans voters gave their assent to the plan in a referendum last year, and Belizeans gave their approval this May.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales celebrated the developments in his General Assembly speech.

“This is a milestone for Guatemala, for Central America and for the world,” he said, emphasizing the peaceful process toward resolving the disagreement. “Currently, bilateral relations between Guatemala and Belize are the best they’ve ever been.”

Belizean Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington told the assembly Saturday that his country also looked forward to resolving “an age-old, atavistic claim that has hindered Belize’s development” and undercut friendship between the countries.

While Belize remains concerned about various activities by Guatemalan troops and citizens, he said, Belizeans “certainly have the most fervent wish to live side by side with the government and people of Guatemala in peace, harmony and close cooperation.”

…

A boat carrying at least 50 Europe-bound migrants capsized Saturday in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya, the U.N. refugee agency and the country’s coast guard said, while an independent support group said another 56 migrants on another boat were at risk in the sea.

Coast guard spokesman Ayoub Gassim told The Associated Press that a shipwreck took place off the western city of Misrata, 187 kilometers (116 miles) east of the capital, Tripoli.

UNHCR said rescue efforts were ongoing Saturday afternoon and released no details on casualties.

Alarm Phone, an independent support group for people crossing the Mediterranean, said a second boat for migrants was in distress, with “about 56 lives at risk.”

The group said it received a call from migrants on the boat, who left Libya’s shores days ago, saying that “they are desperately calling for help and are afraid to die.”

“They are still in distress at sea with no rescue in sight. They have now been at sea for over 60 hours,” Alarm Phone said.

Mediterranean crossing point

Libya became a major crossing point for migrants to Europe after the overthrow and death of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, when the North African nation was thrown into chaos, armed militias proliferated and central authority collapsed.

In recent years, the European Union has partnered with the coast guard and other Libyan forces to try to stop the dangerous sea crossings.

Rights groups say those efforts have left migrants at the mercy of brutal armed groups or confined in squalid detention centers that lack adequate food and water.

At least 6,000 migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and other nations are locked in dozens of detention facilities in Libya run by militias accused of torture and other abuses.

There are limited supplies for the migrants, who often end up there after arduous journeys at the mercy of abusive traffickers who hold them for ransom from their families.

…

The United States rejected a request by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to visit Iran’s United Nations ambassador in a New York hospital where he is being treated for cancer, the U.S. State Department and Iranian U.N. mission said on Friday.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Zarif’s request would be granted if Iran released one of several American citizens it had detained.

In July the United States imposed tight travel restrictions on Zarif before a visit that month to the United Nations, as well as on Iranian diplomats and their families living in New York, which Zarif described as “basically inhuman.”

Unless they receive prior approval from Washington, they are only allowed to travel within a small area of Manhattan, Queens and to and from John F. Kennedy airport.

Iran’s U.N. mission spokesman Alireza Miryousefi said Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi was being treated for cancer in a hospital not far away in Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhood. Zarif is in New York for the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

“Iran has wrongfully detained several U.S. citizens for years, to the pain of their families and friends they cannot freely visit,” the State Department spokesperson said. “We have relayed to the Iranian mission that the travel request will be granted if Iran releases a U.S. citizen.”

The United States and Iran are at odds over a host of issues, including the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, U.S. accusations — denied by Tehran — that Iran attacked two Saudi oil facilities on Sept. 14 and Iran’s detention of U.S. citizens on what the United States regards as spurious grounds.

Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, on Monday said that if Iran wanted to show good faith, it should release the U.S. citizens it has detained, including Xiyue Wang, a U.S. citizen and Princeton University graduate student who was detained in Iran in 2016.

At a news conference in New York on Thursday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran was open to talking about prisoner swaps but that the ball was in Washington’s court after Iran’s release of a Lebanese man with U.S. permanent residency in June.

The United States deported an Iranian woman who pleaded guilty to exporting restricted U.S. technology to Iran on Tuesday. During a visit to New York in April, Zarif specifically mentioned the woman’s case when talking about possible prisoner swaps.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday declined to discuss the possibility of a U.S.-Iranian prisoner swap after the woman’s deportation.   

…

Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who set off a political firestorm by disputing U.S. intelligence used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion, died Friday, according to his ex-wife. He was 69. 
 
Wilson’s died of organ failure in Santa Fe, said his former wife, Valerie Plame, whose identity as a CIA operative was exposed days after Wilson’s criticism of U.S. intelligence that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium. 
 
The leak of Plame’s covert identity was a scandal for the administration of President George W. Bush that led to the conviction of vice presidential aide Scooter B. Libby for lying to investigators and justice obstruction. 
 
President Donald Trump pardoned Libby in 2018. 
 
Plame, who is running as a Democrat for Congress — in part as a Trump adversary — called Wilson “a true American hero, a patriot, and had the heart of a lion.” Plame and Wilson moved to Santa Fe in 2007 to raise twin children and divorced in 2017. 
 
In 2002, Wilson traveled as a diplomat to the African country of Niger to investigate allegations that Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium, which could have been used to make nuclear weapons. 

Wife’s identity revealed

Plame’s identity with the CIA was revealed in a newspaper column days after Wilson alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the Bush administration twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. Wilson later accused administration officials and political operatives of putting his family at risk. 
 
A Connecticut native and graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Wilson’s career with the Foreign Service included posts in a handful of African nations. 
 
He was the senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad during the first Gulf War and was the last American official to meet with Saddam before Desert Storm. 
 
Wilson drew intense criticism from Republican lawmakers over his statements regarding Iraq in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion. A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 pointed to inconsistences. 
 
Wilson dismissed those claims, later authoring the book “The Politics of Truth.” 
 
In a 2003 interview with PBS, he said that the post-9/11 security mission went astray with the full invasion of Iraq. 
 
“The national security objective for the United States was clear: It was disarmament of Saddam Hussein,” he said. “We should have pursued that objective. We did not need to engage in an invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq in order to achieve that objective.” 

…

Mourners gathered at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Friday to pay their respects to former President Jacques Chirac, whose death unleashed a flood of tributes to a charismatic but complex giant of French politics. 
 
Chirac, president from 1995 to 2007, died Thursday at age 86 after years of deteriorating health since suffering a stroke in 2005. 
 
Ahead of a national day of mourning announced for Monday, the French presidency threw open the doors of the Elysee Palace for people wanting to sign a book of condolences. 
 
“I express my admiration and tenderness for the last of the great presidents,” read one tribute. “Thank you for fighting, thank you for this freedom and good spirits.” 
 
In a televised address Thursday night, President Emmanuel Macron praised “a man whom we loved as much as he loved us.” 
 
Chirac is also to be given the honor of a public memorial ceremony on Sunday as well as a mass on Monday, which will be attended by Macron and foreign dignitaries including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. 
 
A minute of silence will also be observed Monday at public institutions, schools and football matches. 
 
Schools have also been urged to dedicate class time on Monday “to evoke the former head of state’s memory,” with the education ministry saying it will propose potential discussion themes for teachers. 
 
And the Quai Branly museum of indigenous art founded by Chirac, who had a deep appreciation of Asian cultures, said it would offer free admission until Oct. 11. 
 
French newspapers splashed his portrait across their front pages and dedicated most of their editions to the former president’s life — Le Parisien had an exhaustive 35 pages plus a 12-page special insert. 

Everyman charm 

Even Chirac’s opponents hailed his charm and qualities as a political fighter, as well as how he stood up to Washington in 2003 by opposing the Iraq War. 
 
He was also lauded for acknowledging France’s responsibility for the wartime deportation of Jews, slashing road deaths with the introduction of speed cameras, and standing up to the increasingly popular far right under Jean-Marie Le Pen. 
 
But some questioned how much he had actually achieved during a long period in office — his career shadowed by a graft conviction while mayor of Paris, from 1977 to 1995. 
 
He contested the ruling but did not appeal it, saying the French people “know who I am: an honest man” who worked only for “the grandeur of France and for peace.” 
 
And it hardly dented the popularity of the beer- and saucisse-loving charmer, whose extramarital affairs were an open secret. 
 
He had barely been seen in public in recent years, after suffering a stroke in 2005 and undergoing kidney surgery in December 2013. 
 
He will be buried at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris next to his daughter Laurence, who died in 2016 after a lifelong battle with anorexia. 
 
He is survived by Bernadette, his wife of more than six decades; his daughter Claude, who served as his confidante and adviser; and a grandson, Martin. 

‘Embodied’ France 
 
The centre-right Chirac succeeded his longtime political rival,  Socialist Francois Mitterrand, in 1995 after two previously unsuccessful bids to secure the Elysee. 
 
“As a leader who was able to represent the nation in its diversity and complexity … President Chirac embodied a certain idea of France,” Macron said Thursday. 
 
His death garnered an outpouring of tributes from world leaders, the latest from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who lauded “an old friend of the Chinese people.” 
 
Lebanon has also declared a day of mourning Monday, noting the close ties between Chirac and the family of former Premier Rafiq Hariri — whose family provided Chirac and his wife with a sumptuous Paris apartment for several years after he left office. 

…

Heightened tensions in Jammu and Kashmir will likely be in the spotlight Friday at the United Nations, when the leaders of India and Pakistan address the General Assembly.

“He expects the international community to respond in time before there is a catastrophe,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told VOA of his prime minister, Imran Khan, who will be making his U.N. debut.

Kashmir has been a regional flashpoint for decades. India and Pakistan have fought several wars over the majority-Muslim territory since they both gained independence from Britain in 1947.

India’s Aug. 5 decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir has led to a security crackdown and communications blackout in the territory and a dangerous escalation between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be making his first visit to the U.N. since his re-election in May, and it will be his first appearance at the annual debate in five years.

Leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, have urged the two nations to open a dialogue to resolve the situation.

The foreign ministers of China and Russia are also scheduled to deliver their statements Friday, as is the prime minister of the Bahamas. His island nation was ravaged last month by Hurricane Dorian, and he is likely to talk about the effects of climate change as his nation struggles to clean up and rebuild.

On Thursday, the assembly heard from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who said he remained committed to a two-state solution with Israel despite recent setbacks.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, delivered his country’s statement, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suffered an election setback and remained at home. Katz called on the Palestinians to return to negotiations without any preconditions.

He spoke of the Sept. 14 attack on two major Saudi oil facilities and said it was carried out on the direct orders of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei in order to destabilize world oil supplies.

“I call on international community to unite in order to stop Iran,” Katz said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf said the attacks on his country, carried out by 25 cruise missiles and drones, cut Saudi oil production by almost half and are a test for the international community’s will.

“The latest attacks and aggression have exposed the Iranian regime to the entire world,” he said. “It is necessary for the international community today to realize that cutting off sources of finance is the best way to compel the regime to renounce its militias, to prevent it from developing ballistic missiles, and to put an end to its destabilizing activities in the region and in the world.”

Washington and Riyadh have accused Iran of being responsible for the attack on Saudi oil facilities. Tehran has denied any involvement.

U.N. and international experts have gone to Saudi Arabia to support the investigation into the attack. A Saudi official said this week that once all work is done, Riyadh will decide its next steps in consultations with its allies.

…

This article originated in VOA’s Persian service. VOA Persian’s Katherine Ahn contributed. 
  
The Trump administration has provided few additional details of a newly announced entry ban on Iran’s senior officials and their family members, leaving unanswered questions about whom it will affect. 
  
President Donald Trump declared the entry ban on Wednesday via a proclamation ordering U.S. authorities to “restrict and suspend” the ability of “senior government officials of Iran and their immediate family members” to enter the U.S. as immigrants or nonimmigrants. It was his latest move in what he has called a “maximum pressure” campaign to pressure Iran to end perceived malign behaviors. 
  
In a Thursday statement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered one new detail about the proclamation, saying it was targeted at “designated” senior Iranian officials. That refers to officials who have been placed by the U.S. government on its list of Specially Designated Nationals, whose assets under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked and whom Americans are generally prohibited from dealing with.   

‘No more’
  
“For years, Iranian regime elites have shouted, ‘Death to America.’ Meanwhile, their relatives have come here to live and to work. No more,” Pompeo said in remarks to reporters in New York. 
  
In a separate media appearance in New York, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook responded to a question about who is on the list of banned Iranian officials by noting that Tehran makes regular personnel changes among its government ministers and military leaders, including those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April.     

“We will always be updating and renewing this list to ensure that the senior regime officials and their family members are not able to travel to the United States,” Hook said. 
 
But neither Hook nor Pompeo elaborated on which Iranian officials and their family members would be denied entry and who would be granted exemptions allowed by Trump’s proclamation. 
  
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) research director David Adesnik told VOA Persian there were several unanswered questions about the entry ban, including “who exactly is considered a ‘senior’ official, and does ‘immediate family’ only mean siblings, parents and children.” 
 
In a Thursday news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani criticized the U.S. entry ban but also appeared to dismiss it as irrelevant. 
  
“Iranian officials have no desire to travel to America. We only come here for U.N. events and should not be banned by America [for doing so],” Rouhani said. The Trump administration granted Rouhani and his delegation visas to attend the U.N. event, under its obligations as host of the world body, while also tightly restricting their movements within New York. 
  
The entry ban is likely to have a bigger impact on senior Iranian officials’ children who are among what the State Department has said are “thousands” of Iranian students studying in the U.S. each year. 

Three categories
  
Trump’s proclamation said the entry ban would not apply to Iranians in three categories: lawful U.S. permanent residents; people already granted asylum and refugee status by the U.S. or deemed to be at risk of torture if deported; and people whose entry could benefit U.S. interests and law enforcement objectives. The document did not say anything about Iranians on student visas in the U.S. 
  
A VOA Persian request for comment about how the entry ban would affect such students went unanswered by late Thursday. 
  
In an October 2018 op-ed published by The Washington Times, FDD senior Iran analyst Tzvi Kahn identified several children of senior Iranian officials as being enrolled in U.S. universities. He said they included Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani; Eissa Hashemi, the son of Iranian Vice President for Women’s and Family Affairs Massumeh Ebteka; siblings Ehsan Nobakht and Niloofar Nobakht, whose uncle Mohammad Bagher is also an Iranian vice president; and Ali Fereydoun, whose father Hossein is President Rouhani’s brother and aide. 
  
Adesnik said children of senior Iranian officials were unlikely to be U.S. permanent residents if they have been in the U.S. only on short-term student visas. 
  
“They certainly could be facing a challenge now,” Adesnik said. “It’s possible that the U.S. would renew their visas. But there is a constant stream of young Iranians who want to come to the U.S. to get the best education, and they definitely are going to be affected.” 

Iranian Americans’ reactions
 
The U.S. entry ban also drew mixed reactions from the Iranian American community. 
 
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a nonprofit group frequently critical of the Trump administration in its escalating tensions with Tehran, lamented the move in a statement to VOA Persian. 
  
“If this action were aimed at securing the release of Americans detained in Iran, facilitating negotiations to prevent a military standoff or another legitimate goal, then we would applaud it. Unfortunately … this seems to be a symbolic doubling down of the failed maximum pressure policy which has only interfered with efforts to free Americans, made war more likely and undermined human rights defenders in Iran,” said NIAC President Jamal Abdi. 
  
The Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), a nonprofit group that supports what it calls the Iranian people’s “struggle for democratic change” and a “non-nuclear government,” told VOA Persian that it welcomed the U.S. entry ban as “necessary but long overdue.” 
  
“This ban must not be limited only to the families of regime officials,” OIAC added. “All Tehran agents … operating under different disguises such as students, scholars and businesspeople must be exposed and expelled from the U.S.” 
  
U.S. network NBC News said some families of Americans detained in Iran had lobbied the Trump administration for years to deny visas to the children or relatives of senior Iranian officials as a way of pressuring those officials to release the detainees.   
  
In a message to VOA Persian, the family of Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran 12 years ago and whose relatives believe Iran detained him, said it was not directly involved in that lobbying campaign. 
  
“But we welcome any actions that continue to send a message to Iran that it must send our father and all Iran hostages home,” the Levinson family said. 

…

Seven Catalan separatists arrested on suspicion of planning violent attacks have been charged with belonging to a “terrorist organisation” and remanded in custody, Spanish judicial authorities said on Thursday.

The seven were among nine people detained on Monday on accusations they were planning attacks with possible explosives. The other two were released.

A judge in Madrid ruled that there was evidence suggesting the seven were members of an organization intending to achieve Catalan independence “by any means including violence,” a court statement said.

No details of the accused were given.

The seven suspects have also been charged with making and possessing explosives.

The arrests come just weeks before the second anniversary of the banned Catalan independence referendum which triggered one of Spain’s biggest political crises.

Several hundred people demonstrated outside the Catalan parliament in Barcelona and then the city’s police headquarters shouting “freedom for political prisoners.”

The parliament earlier Thursday approved a resolution calling for the “withdrawal from Catalan territory of the civil guard police,” described as a “type of political police.”

A verdict is due next month in the trial of 12 separatist leaders for their roles in the attempted secession in 2017.

Sentencing the separatist leaders could provoke strong protests in Spain’s northeastern region.

Alleged violence in 2017 was a key focus of the trial, in which the separatist leaders defended the peaceful nature of their movement.  

…

The woman who launched France’s #MeToo movement against sexual harassment has been ordered to pay damages to the man she accused of harassment.

A Paris court on Wednesday ruled that journalist Sandra Muller must pay TV executive Eric Brion $22,000 for defaming him.

In 2017, at the height of the global push against sexual harassment, Muller tweeted her accusation using the hashtag #balancetonporc, which roughly translates to “squeal on your pig.”

Brion’s lawyers had argued that his inappropriate comments to Muller were an attempt at flirting during a party, not harassment and that he had apologized for them.

The court on Wednesday also ordered Muller to delete her tweet and replace it with the statement of the court.

Muller said the court’s decision sends a message to victims: “Be quiet.”  She said she will appeal the ruling.

Muller’s lawyer said the decision also sends a message to men in France.  “If they only do it one time, it will be excused by the court,” Francis Szpiner said.

Brion hailed the ruling on Twitter as a “victory of true justice.’’

…

President Donald Trump Wednesday gave the State Department the authority to bar senior Iranian officials and their family members from entering the United States as immigrants or nonimmigrants, the White House said in a proclamation.

The proclamation, posted on the White House website and bearing Wednesday’s date, repeated U.S. accusations that Iran sponsors terrorism, arbitrarily detains American citizens, threatens its neighbors and carries out destructive cyber attacks.

“Given that this behavior threatens peace and stability in the Middle East and beyond, I have determined that it is in the interest of the United States to take action to restrict and suspend the entry into the United States, as immigrants or nonimmigrants, of senior government officials of Iran, and their immediate family members,” Trump said in the proclamation.

Iranian officials were not available to comment.

Iran nuclear deal

The U.S.-Iranian confrontation has ratcheted up since last year, when Trump withdrew from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. Trump wants to go beyond that deal to further curb Iran’s nuclear program, halt its ballistic missile work and end its support for proxy forces in the Middle East.

It was unclear why Trump chose to issue the proclamation Wednesday. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani earlier said the United States would have to “pay more” if it wanted a wider deal and rejected meeting with the U.S. president for now. Both men were in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering of world leaders.

A State Department spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “the government of Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The regime has destabilized the Persian Gulf region with attacks on oil and shipping infrastructure.

“Their support for the (rebel) Houthis in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria contribute to the regional instability and the humanitarian crises in those countries. The Iranian regime continues to suppress ethnic and religious minorities as well as unjustly detain foreign citizens to perpetuate their foreign policy aims,” the spokeswoman said.

“Allowing senior Iranian regime officials or their family members to continue to travel to the United States would be counter to our interests and be seen as turning a blind eye to these actions,” she said.

State Department

Trump gave the authority to decide who would be covered by the proclamation to the secretary of state, or whomever he or she designates.

Trump also provided exceptions, saying that among others the proclamation would not apply to lawful U.S. permanent residents, those granted asylum, or refugees already admitted to the United States. He also provided possible exceptions for people whose entry “would further important … law enforcement objectives.” 

…

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands urged financial regulators on Wednesday not to let fears over technology stall efforts to ensure everyone in the world has access to a bank account and credit to save money and build businesses.

Maxima said progress had been made since she was appointed the United Nations special advocate for financial inclusion 10 years ago, with about 70 percent of the world now having access to banking, insurance and credit compared with 51 percent in 2011.

But she said 1.7 billion adults globally still did not have an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money provider, with women in developing economies about 9 percentage points less likely than men to have a bank account.

“Financial inclusion is not the end but the means to increase family income, improve nutrition, increase access to health care … education, and empower — especially women,” Maxima told a side event at the United Nations General Assembly.

Ending poverty, inequality

The Dutch queen said it is critical if the world is to achieve the United Nations’ goals to end poverty and inequality by 2030 that people were included in financial systems.

She said mobile money and fintech had opened opportunities to connect people — particularly those sidelined like women in developing countries, farmers and the poor — and cautioned fears over cyberattacks and data privacy should not stop this.

“Technology today presents our best chance to reach these people,” Maxima told an event marking her 10 years as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA).

“The challenges are that this new technology brings risks … but get together the innovators with the regulators. If we are serious about this issue, we need to innovate and go beyond business as usual,” she said.

Argentine-born Maxima, 48, said she intended to continue in her role traveling around the world to encourage regulators and governments to treat financial inclusion as a priority.

Gates: Money is power

Melinda Gates, who co-founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with her husband Bill Gates, backed Maxima, saying digital financial services had to reach women, marginalized people and the poor to create an equitable world.

“Money is power. If we want to empower people you have to make sure that they have the means for saving … and bring them into the digital financial services,” Gates said.

…

A threat by Donald Trump to pull the United States out of the global postal system could lead to a “nightmare scenario” of mail going undelivered, packages piling up and American stamps no longer being recognized abroad, the U.N. postal agency said.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has been holding an emergency meeting in Geneva to persuade Washington not to follow through on a threat to quit the agency, which sets rules to ensure mail gets delivered around the globe.

The Trump administration says it wants to charge other countries more than UPU rules now permit to have letters and packages delivered in the United States. It has set a deadline of next month for rates to be raised or it will quit.

“It is really a nightmare scenario,” the UPU’s secretary-general, Bishar Hussein, told a news conference, noting that no country had ever left since the agency was founded nearly 150 years ago. It now has 192 members.

“If the United States leaves, you’ll get those piles, because somehow every country has to figure out how to send mail to the United States. … A major disruption is on the way if we don’t solve the problem today.”

Were the United States to quit the UPU, U.S. stamps would no longer be valid abroad, he said. He said he was “very optimistic” that a compromise could be reached.

‘Broken’ system

The UPU is one of the oldest international organizations, set up in 1874 to ensure that mail could be delivered anywhere on Earth. It establishes a system for calculating the fees, known as “terminal dues,” that countries collect from each other to deliver mail that arrives from abroad.

Washington says the fees are too low, which unfairly benefits exporters from countries such as China, who can send goods ordered online to U.S. customers while the U.S. Postal Service bears part of the cost of delivering them.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who heads the U.S. delegation, called for fixing a system “that everyone in this room knows is broken.”

“The mission here today is to retool this system for the brave new world of e-commerce,” he told the three-day talks.

Navarro, speaking to journalists, said: “In an age of e-commerce, the United States is being forced to heavily subsidize small parcels coming into our country. Many are from China, but this is not strictly a China problem.”

He said the system meant the U.S. Postal Service was effectively spending $300 million to $500 million to subsidize the cost of delivering imports, including counterfeit goods and drugs mailed to the United States from China.

Other countries that receive more mail than they send, including Brazil, Canada, Norway and South Africa, were also being hit, he said. Countries should be allowed to set their own rates, which he said “might cause some very short-term disruptions” but was “the clearest, cleanest, fairest and quickest path to a reform that is long overdue.”

Massive disruptions?

Democrats Abroad, the arm of the Democratic Party for Americans overseas, has warned of chaos and urged members to lobby Congress against the proposal by the Republican administration to quit the body.

“If the withdrawal goes forward, postal mail service to the United States will be thrown into disarray and the USPS expects postal service to and from the States to be massively disrupted,” the group said in a statement.

Navarro said Washington could quit without problems.

“We have prepared for a seamless transition. There will be absolutely no disruption in military mail, election mail, or holiday mail,” he said.

…

Sweeping goals to end poverty, inequality and other global ills are being derailed by climate change, conflicts and violence, the head of the United Nations told world leaders in New York on Tuesday, calling for a “decade of action.”

Sustainable development needs more financing, investment in health and education, and broader access to technology to succeed, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the first high-level review of the global goals adopted in 2015.

Launched with great fanfare and optimism, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the 193 U.N. member states set out an ambitious “to-do” list tackling conflict, hunger, land degradation, gender inequality and climate change by 2030.

But assessments of their progress have been bleak.

“Let us be clear: we are far from where we need to be. We are off track,” Guterres said. “Deadly conflicts, the climate crisis, gender-based violence and persistent inequalities are undermining efforts to achieve the goals.

“Uneven growth, rising debt levels, heightened global trade tensions are creating new obstacles to implementation.

Another assessment came on Tuesday from global business leaders who complained of being hampered by political uncertainty and market constraints in their efforts to contribute to the goals’ progress.

Four in 10 chief executives said political uncertainty was slowing or stalling their efforts, and a third said closing global markets and limits on free trade were hindrances, according to a study by the U.N. Global Compact, a network of businesses, and consulting company Accenture Strategy.

“The way in which markets are working at the moment, political uncertainty is a real concern,” said Peter Lacy, an Accenture senior managing director. “Global trade looks ever more threatened. Populism is rearing its head again.

“Unequivocally we know that the global goals are not on course to deliver the ambitious targets set.”

Some progress is being made in areas such as access to energy, to decent work, and in fighting extreme poverty and child mortality, Guterres said in his remarks.

But he said youth unemployment has not improved and global hunger and gender inequality are on the rise.

“Indeed, half the wealth around the world is held by people who could fit around a conference table,” he said.

With just 10 years to go until the goals’ deadline, he made a call for a “decade of action”, with an annual meeting beginning on the goals beginning next September.

“We need to focus on solutions that will make greatest impact,” he said.

The cost of implementing the global goals has been estimated at $3 trillion a year.

…

House and Senate leaders are reacting along party lines to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of a Trump impeachment inquiry.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is accusing Democrats of having a “predetermined conclusion” about Trump’s guilt, calling Tuesday’s developments part of an “impeachment parade in search of a rationale.”

“It simply confirms that House Democrats’ priority is not making life better for the American people, but their nearly three-year-old fixation on impeachment.”

McConnell’s statement came just after he was part of the Senate’s unanimous consent agreement that the whistleblower’s complaint be immediately handed over to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

McConnell’s House counterpart, Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, says Democrats are still bitter about losing the 2016 presidential election and have wanted to impeach Trump from “day one.”

But the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings, reminded Republicans that history will show they ignored their duty to the Constitution if they “close their eyes and put party over country.”

He called Trump’s alleged appeal to another government to interfere in a U.S. election “an affront to the Constitution and a grave breach of his oath of office.”

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has been calling for Trump’s impeachment for months because of his alleged obstruction of justice in the Russian election probe.

She tweeted that the “impeachment inquiry must move forward with the efficiency and seriousness the crisis demands.”

U.S. markets closed down Tuesday over the impeachment uncertainty before Pelosi spoke.

But experts say many investors do not expect the Republican-led Senate to ultimately convict Trump in any impeachment trial. The experts also do not think the House inquiry will have a big impact on stocks.

…

Two dozen mainly European countries voiced concern Monday at alleged torture, unlawful detentions and unfair trials of critics, including women activists and journalists, in Saudi Arabia.

It was the second joint statement criticizing the kingdom read out at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva in six months, following the first censure of Saudi Arabia at the forum in March.

The new statement urged Saudi authorities to establish the truth about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October and ensure the perpetrators were held to account.

Fifteen European Union members, including Britain and Germany, were among the signatories, as well as Canada, New Zealand, and Peru, diplomats said. France, Italy and Spain did not sign.

There was no immediate response from the Saudi delegation, which is among the U.N. rights council’s 47 member states but was absent when the statement was read out.

The kingdom has regularly denied allegations of torture and unfair detention.

The joint statement acknowledged Saudi reforms, including the announcement last month that restrictions on the rights of women to travel will be lifted.

“However, we remain deeply concerned at the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. Civil society actors in Saudi Arabia still face persecution and intimidation,” Australia’s ambassador Sally Mansfield said, reading out the statement.

“We are concerned at reports of torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, unfair trials and harassment of individuals engaged in promoting and defending human rights, their families and colleagues,” she said.

Jailed activist

Lina al-Hathloul later appealed for the release of her sister Loujain, a prominent women’s rights activist who had campaigned for an end to a ban on women driving. Loujain was jailed in May 2018, weeks before the kingdom lifted the ban.

“She was eager to engage with the government to improve the rights of fellow women citizens. Yet instead of considering her as a partner they labeled her a traitor, tortured her,” Lina told the Geneva forum.

“I am here today despite the high risk of reprisals to Loujain, our family and myself to call on all states and this Council to demand the Saudi government immediately and unconditionally release my sister,” she said.

Jamal Khashoggi 

Agnes Callamard, the U.N. expert on extrajudicial executions worldwide, said in a report last June that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other senior officials should be investigated over Khashoggi’s murder given what she called credible evidence against them.

In Riyadh, a minister rejected the report at the time as having nothing new and containing “baseless allegations.”

The Saudi public prosecutor has indicted 11 suspects for the crime, including five who could face the death penalty.

…

The Trump administration is doing away with so-called “catch and release” for Central American immigrants who illegally cross into the United States.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced the move Monday. He says it is part of the administration’s plans to ease what he calls the “pull factor” that attracts migrants to try to cross the border.

Except for some humanitarian and medical exceptions, McAleenan says immigrants who cannot successfully claim their lives would be in danger would be sent back to their home countries. Those who can prove a genuine fear would be returned to Mexico while their asylum requests are processed.

Under catch and release, border patrol agents who catch illegal migrants temporarily detain them until they are assigned a court date for an immigration hearing and then release them.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said only a small fraction of migrants show up for their hearings.

But the Justice Department says as many as 75% have kept their assigned court date.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump told Poland’s president he expected to announce Polish entry into the U.S. visa waiver program in coming weeks as the two held talks on defense, security, energy and other issues, the White House said on Monday.

Speaking as he began a meeting with Andrzej Duda, Trump also confirmed his plans to move an unspecified number of U.S. troops to Poland from elsewhere in Europe and said the Polish government had agreed to pay for building facilities for them.

In June, Trump pledged to Duda that he would deploy 1,000 U.S. troops to Poland, a step sought by Warsaw to deter potential aggression from Russia. Duda has previously said he is considering naming the planned U.S. installation “Fort Trump.”

Poland has long sought access to the State Department’s Visa Waiver Program under which most citizens of participating countries can travel to the United States for tourism or business for up to 90 days without obtaining a U.S. visa.

“President Trump informed President Duda that he expects to announce Poland’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program in the coming weeks,” the White House said in a brief statement about the talks on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly.

Trump, who canceled a trip to Poland for Labor Day weekend to deal with Hurricane Dorian, said he would reschedule it “fairly soon.”

…

The British oil tanker seized by Iran in July will soon be released, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Sunday.

The Stena Impero and its crew were seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in the Strait of Hormuz for alleged maritime violations just weeks after British forces seized an Iranian oil tanker off the coast of Gibraltar.

Britain accused Iran of trying to sell oil in violation of international sanctions against Tehran. Gibraltar released that tanker last month.

The head of the Swedish company that owns the Stena Impero told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that the tanker may be released within hours.

“We have received information now this morning that it seems like they will release the ship Stena Impero within a few hours. So we understand that the political decision to release the ship has been taken.” Erik Hanell said.

The head of the Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran in Hormozgan Province, Allahmorad Afifipour, told Fars that the the process of allowing the tanker to move into international waters has begun but that a legal case against the ship is still pending.

He did not release any other information about the tanker.

…

Umar Cheema experienced the latest brand of Pakistani media suppression firsthand.

Cheema, a prominent investigative reporter, works for national newspaper The News and has 1.1 million Twitter followers.

This year in July, after he posted some tweets critical of the Pakistan government and military, his managers received calls pressuring them to respond. In Pakistan, such calls typically originate with the military. Cheema was forced to take down his Twitter account for a week.

Journalists in Pakistan have long been at the mercy of the country’s powerful military and rulers. But Cheema and others say what’s happening under Prime Minister Imran Khan might not be as brutal as the suppression of previous governments, but it’s far more insidious and pervasive.

“In the past, the military had picked up journalists, beaten them up or would make threatening calls,” Cheema told VOA. “They have become more sophisticated.”

The censors are wielding a broad arsenal of punishing tools – from shutting down cable channels, cutting off government advertising, intimidating media owners and unleashing an army of social media attack trolls.

Moreover, critics say Khan’s government and the military are in lockstep, making matters worse than past periods of military martial law.

“At least then we were in a position to publicly say we are not allowed to publish the whole truth,” said Zaffar Abbas, editor of Dawn, a paper that has won acclaim for standing up to censors.

“Now, the bulk of the media is churning out lies and half-truths, and we can’t even complain as most of the owners have surrendered to these demands,” Abbas said.

Pakistan PM Heads to Washington Amid Media Crackdown at Home

Days before Imran Khan is due to meet with President Trump, his party has launched another attack on the press, linking critical coverage to potential ‘treason’

What Cheema experienced reflects the gradual unspooling of media freedom in Pakistan, a country of critical strategic importance to the U.S. by a leader who can be as dismissive of the media as President Donald Trump and his attacks on “fake news.”

At an appearance with Trump during his July visit to the White House, Khan scoffed at the notion of media censorship in Pakistan, calling it “a joke.” The two laughed about who got the least-favorable treatment. “It’s worse than you,” Khan told Trump.

Indeed, some Pakistani journalists who side with Khan’s nationalistic politics say concerns about media control are exaggerated. “I think we are Pakistani first and then journalists,” said Amir Zia, news director at Hum News, a TV station in Islamabad. “The press here is absolutely free, and with comparison to the past, we have moved very forward.”

In interviews with VOA this August, however, an overwhelming majority of Pakistani reporters, editors, media owners and analysts said censorship has worsened since Khan came to power in 2018 in what was a watershed victory over two legacy political parties.

Four times since Pakistan’s independence in 1947, the military has taken power, and U.S. congressional researchers said in June that most analysts see the military as maintaining a “dominant” influence under the Khan government.

Pakistan has fallen in global media and speech freedom indexes but is still considered partly free. The country has a robust media tradition that persists despite the suppression.

Recently, talk surfaced about creating special courts to hear complaints and disputes in the broadcast sector. But journalism groups fear such a move will burden media houses under tons of litigation and could be used as a tool to keep them in line.

Hamid Mir is a political talk show host at Pakistan’s leading television channel, Geo News, and an author and a rights activist. He called Khan’s assertion at the White House that Pakistan’s media is among the freest in the world “categorically false.”

“Imran Khan can make such sweeping claims about journalistic freedoms here only while being in the U.S.,” Mir said. “President Trump can criticize the news channels he dislikes, but in Pakistan, the prime minister can not only shut down such outlets but encumber them with false allegations absent the rule of law.”

“He wouldn’t even admit to pressuring the media – in this way, he’s even stronger than Trump when it comes to curbing a free press,” Mir said.

From more to less space

In its 72 years, Pakistanis have lived through more than three decades of military rule. Liberalization of news media had begun under the last military leader, General Pervez Musharaff. The launch of privately owned Geo TV in 2002 marked a turning point.

“After the martial law regime (Musharaff) was dismissed, there was a revolution in the media industry of Pakistan, and we were under the impression that it would create more space,” said Ahmed Waleed, Lahore bureau chief for Samaa TV, a privately owned channel.

“There have been restrictions on the media during dictatorships,” Waleed said, “but it was more difficult to control a live medium such as television. Many TV channels were able to raise their voice and discussed several political and security issues despite strict restrictions imposed by politicians and security agencies.”

But journalists say the tide has shifted markedly. The government and military now share the view that media should support the official narrative prescribed by the state – and not criticize it under the banner of national interest.

“There was pressure before, but is has multiplied several times now,” Waleed said. “The prime minister is being advised to control the media, and his ministers have issued similar statements. Then, they have a strong following on social media and their followers troll journalists who criticize them.”

The mentality is reflected in top-trending hashtags such as #ArrestAntiPakJournalist or #JournalismNotAgenda used by online nationalist vigilantes to attack critical journalists.

Pakistani Journalists Protest Censorship

The protests on July 16 are spearheaded by the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists to fight ‘unprecedented censorship’

Cheema received an International Press Freedom Award in 2011 from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the U.S. advocacy group. He had been abducted, tortured, stripped naked and his head and eyebrows shaved after stories reporting that the Pakistani military and the ISI operated outside the law.

Cheema maintains he was targeted by Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has long faced accusations of kidnapping and intimidating journalists and activists. The agency denies the allegations.

These days, Cheema said, the stakes are just as high, but the means of control are more varied.

“Initially, they would threaten cable operators to shut down the transmission of any TV channel, but now they are using a new weapon, which is to create a financial crisis by cutting down government ads to channels who are not toeing government’s line,” Cheema said.

“They come after us by intimidating media owners. They unleash a team of trolls on you on Twitter. They are converging our interest because if the news organization shuts down, how will I be able to do my journalism or run my house expenditures?”

Red-lining the news

Cheema said he knew of several news organizations where journalists haven’t been paid for months. The tremendous financial pressure forces self-censorship.

“In terms of what we can cover and what we can’t – red lines have increased every passing day in the past two years. Initially, we realized that red lines are redefined, but now the tickers on TV are being controlled not by the newsrooms but somewhere else.”

Common “red lines” involve reporting on missing persons, conflict in separatist-ridden Balochistan province and allegations of human rights abuses by the military.

Some contend that Pakistan is not alone in setting boundaries.

“If you go to the U.K. or the U.S.A., when they give a license of any TV channel or of any newspaper, they tell you about the laws and about some red lines which you cannot pass,” said Sabir Shakir, an anchor with ARY News in Islamabad.

Waleed said Khan, soon after taking power, began using financial pressure to enforce red lines. “Imran Khan’s ministers stated that the electronic and print media should change their business model,” Waleed said, “and then the government stopped all due payments of the state-run ads worth around Rs10 billion ($63.8 million).”

“As a result there was around 30 to 40 percent reduction in revenue leading to financial issues and the survival of the media,” Waleed said. That put “immense pressure” on private channels, he said.

Pakistan’s media regulatory authority, known as PEMRA, goes to court when it believes programming violates national security. “Then they issue notices to TV channels that they committed certain violations and impose heavy fines on them,” Waleed said.

Now, self-censorship is the new normal, multiple journalists said. Pakistan also has on several occasions temporarily banned broadcasts by international broadcasters like BBC and VOA Urdu news for crossing red lines.

Fade the opposition to black

Journalists cited several instances where the state simply switched off TV news reports or channels.

In early July, an interview by Hamid Mir at Geo News of former Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari was taken off air within minutes of broadcasting.

Zardari, who served as the president from 2008-2013, is battling fresh money-laundering charges.The government said Mir shouldn’t have had access to Zardari, who was interviewed at Parliament while on temporary release from prison. Mir maintains the blackout was a part of a government pattern of muzzling opponents.

A few days before that episode, an interview with Maryam Nawaz Sharif, political heiress and daughter to three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was also cut off.

Nawaz Sharif, who was Khan’s immediate predecessor, is currently imprisoned and facing numerous corruption charges that he and his family deny and say are politically motivated. The host of the show at Hum News, Nadeem Malik, said on Twitter that the live interview with Sharif’s daughter, who has taken up his cause as an opposition leader, was “forcefully” taken off-air minutes after it started.

Pakistan’s Most Popular TV Station Forced Off Air Amid Crackdown on Free Press

Pakistani Prime Minister Khan brushes aside concerns about a media crackdown

Also in July, three Pakistani news channels were taken off-air after they broadcast a news conference by Maryam Nawaz Sharif. Although authorities claimed the channels were down due to “technical reasons,” the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said they had been blocked by PEMRA without any notification.

Sharif was taken into custody in August after she held several large political rallies criticizing the government and military.  She remains in jail.

In July 2018, Sharif had been fined and sentenced to seven years in prison on corruption charges, but in September of that year the Islamabad High Court suspended her sentence.

“Maryam Nawaz was freed on order of the court, and the former president is an accused, not a convict,” Mir said. “There’s no law in Pakistan which deprives either of them the right to voice their views on TV. No government body wrote to us informing what laws the interview was skirting. We received nothing in writing.”

Mir knows something about government pressure.

In 2014, he barely escaped an assassination attempt following a series of programs in which he criticized the military for meddling in foreign policy and for their operations in Balochistan province – where dissenters have gone missing without a trace.

“When the former president’s interview was cut short, I did reach out to the owners of my TV channel,” Mir said. “They were succinct in their rejection, saying there was too much pressure and they had to yield, after which they hung up.”

Deep-state spin

The censorship has a cost.

“Things from the margins are not reported. Former tribal areas, political crises in Kyber Pakhtoonkhwa, unrest in Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, and even Pakistani-administered Kashmir are lost in some information black hole,” said Mohammad Hanif, a British-Pakistani journalist who writes for The New York Times. 

“Voices from these areas are not allowed to go on-air as even the mainstream opposition politicians are not allowed to have their say on media,” he said. “So increasingly, we are getting information that is being sanctioned by the deep state, or comes with a heavy-handed spin.”

Media officials told VOA that the military recently has moved to quash news about the Pashtun rights movement known as PTM. The movement sprung up in in the war-torn tribal areas along the Afghan border. Its leaders have criticized the military for allegedly harboring the Pakistani Taliban and mistreating locals.

Last December, VOA Urdu’s website was blocked in Pakistan after covering a news conference by PTM’s leader Mohsin Dawar.

In an interview with VOA, Pakistan military spokesperson Major Gen. Asif Ghafoor denied any military involvement in curbing press freedom in Pakistan.

“How can army control a media which is so powerful?” he asked. “There is so much happening in the country. We have been in a war-like situation, as the prime minister of Pakistan has said during his U.S. visit.”

Ghafoor also disputed allegations that the military uses social media trolls to go after journalists. “How can I have such a big team of people for social media use? These are Pakistanis who are in favor of Pakistan military, and it’s their right of speech,” he said.

Furor over an exposé

If the increasing pressure on news media can be traced to one story, it would have to be the one known as “Dawn Leaks,”
published before Khan became prime minister.

On October 6, 2016, Cyril Almeida, an editor and columnist at the newspaper Dawn, exposed confidential minutes of a meeting between the government and military officials about Pakistan’s failure to aggressively move against terrorists.

In one exchange, the leader of Pakistan’s largest province accused the military and intelligence service of freeing internationally designated terrorists after they’d been arrested by civilian security forces.

Almeida’s report sparked a firestorm. While denouncing the story as inaccurate, the government fired its information minister. The military demanded a leak investigation.

Dawn came under brutal attack.

“A vicious media campaign, even calls for prosecuting the reporter and editor for treason, with one news anchor constantly reminding that its punishment is death,” Dawn Editor Abbas said. “Social media was used in a big way in an attempt to brand us as anti-state.”

In another May 2018 report, Dawn published an interview with former Prime Minister Sharif in which he complained about the slow pace of trials for Pakistanis behind the terror attacks that killed some 160 people in Mumbai over four days in 2008. In comments seen as controversial, Sharif wondered why Pakistan could have allowed the militants to cross its border.

Authorities blocked Dawn from distributing the paper at military institutions and many towns and cities.

Dawn’s editor, Abbas, said some parts of the country are still out of bounds. It’s another way censorship is exerted, he said.

”Officially, there’s no censorship, but large section of the media, if not being totally controlled, is being greatly influenced to churn out just one narrative, i.e., a pro-Pakistan narrative — nothing else is kosher or acceptable,” he said.

Dawn’s situation hasn’t gone unnoticed outside Pakistan. Almeida was named 2019 World Press Hero by the International Press Institute. Abbas earned the 2019 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders also nominated Dawn for its 2019 Independence award. “The country’s oldest daily newspaper is the only one that continues to resist military rule,” RSF said.

But inside Pakistan, the atmosphere is stifling.

“As a journalist, if you do not toe the line you are out of job,” Mohammad Hanif said. “As a media owner if you defy the powers-that-be, then your channel is off-air, advertisers are pressured, your rivals are being used to portray you as anti-state.”

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Pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq known as Popular Mobilization Forces are becoming bolder, despite calls by Iraq’s Shiite spiritual leader and prime minister to put their weapons under government control.

The PMF is an umbrella organization of Iraqi Shiite militias formed in 2014 to fight the Sunni militant Islamic State (IS), whose capture of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul triggered a collapse of the nation’s military. PMF militias boast tens of thousands of fighters.

Earlier this month, Iraqi media circulated a letter purportedly from the PMF’s most dominant commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, ordering the creation of a PMF air force separate from the Iraqi military. His apparent order came after several aerial strikes on PMF bases in Iraq in recent months. The PMF blamed the strikes on Iran’s regional enemy Israel, which neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric in Shiite-majority Iraq, inspired the PMF’s creation through a June 2014 fatwa or religious decree encouraging Iraqis to “volunteer to join the security forces” to save the country from the IS threat. Iraqi Shiites responded by joining pre-existing and new Shiite militias with the approval of then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who granted them semi-official status under the PMF umbrella. The militias also received training and weapons from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force as they battled IS and helped Iraq’s revived military to defeat the Sunni militants in 2017.

Since then, the elderly Sistani has been urging Iraqis, through statements by his representatives, to join security forces specifically under the government’s authority. A week after the September 5 revelation of the PMF’s intention to create its own air force, Sistani’s office director in Lebanon, Hamed Alkhafaf, told Iranian Shiite news agency Shafaqna that the cleric believes weapons “should be, first and foremost, in the hands of the army and no party, group or clan other than government forces should hold arms.”

Iraq’s government also has been calling for PMF weapons to be brought under its control in recent years.

In late 2016, the Iraqi parliament enacted a law granting the PMF formal recognition as an autonomous branch of the Iraqi security forces and entitled it to government aid, with Iraq’s 2019 budget allocating $2.16 billion to the organization.

But the law also required PMF to put its weapons under Iraqi state control and abandon politics. Since the law’s passage, Iraq’s previous Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and incumbent Adil Abdul Mahdi also have issued decrees calling for the PMF to respect it.

In response to a dozen attempted attacks by suspected PMF militiamen on U.S. military, diplomatic and commercial targets in Iraq in the first half of this year, Prime Minister Mahdi in early July called on the PMF to become an “indivisible part of the armed forces and be subject to the same regulations.” He warned that any group failing to comply by July 31 would be treated as an outlaw.

Almost two months after that decree, the PMF has continued to operate outside of Iraqi government control. Some experts say Sistani’s ignored appeals for the PMF to abide by government decisions show the cleric no longer is the main influencer of the organization.

The PMF’s most powerful militias were established before Sistani’s fatwa and owe allegiance only to Tehran, according to Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi politician and former parliament member. Consequently, “the strength and weakness of these militias depends on the strength and weakness of the IRGC and the Iranian regime,” Alusi told VOA Persian.

Alusi said the PMF also has benefitted from the political support of some Iraqi Shiite politicians, particularly those affiliated to Islamist parties, who see the organization as a guarantor of continued Shiite rule of the country.  

Ismael Alsodani, a retired Iraqi brigadier general who served as an Iraqi military attaché in Washington, said those Iraqi politicians have manipulated Sistani’s 2014 fatwa, using it to call for government benefits for PMF militias while encouraging those militias to ignore government orders.

Mustafa Habib, an Iraqi political analyst and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted that not all PMF militias have defied the Iraqi government. “There are those who respect the government and work under its leadership, and some who refuse to work with it and consider themselves part of an ‘axis of resistance’,” Habib said, referring to an alliance that includes Iran, Syria and non-state actors such as Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Iraq’s pro-Iranian militias, some of whom the U.S. has designated as terrorist organizations, have increased in size by twenty times since 2010, according to a study published last month by the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. From having as few as 4,000 operatives at the beginning of that period, the study said such militias now employ 81,000 to 84,000 personnel under the PMF umbrella.

Michael Knights, the author of the study and an Iraq military expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the significant growth of Iran-backed Iraqi militias, coupled with Iraq’s large population and weak government, make the country the fastest-growing arena for Iran’s expansion of perceived malign influence in the Middle East.

Knights told VOA that Iran’s major rivals in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, have been watching this trend closely and are likely to act against it when necessary.

“Israel will keep striking in Iraq until such time as the Iranians stop using the PMF to move and hide missiles. The Israelis now consider Iraq to be a part of an extended battleground— first it was Syria, and then Iraq was added to it,” Knights said, referring to a series of recent unclaimed attacks that targeted PMF groups across Iraq and Syria.
 
“If you look at the suspected Israeli strikes, they all hit Kataib Hezbollah, which is a primary Iranian proxy in Iraq, but also is the most important player within the PMF,” he added.

The attacks, which killed and wounded several PMF members according to Iraqi media, raised the prospect of a new proxy war in Iraq, with Kataib Hezbollah threatening to strike back at Israel and hit U.S. bases in Iraq with missiles.

Ihsan al-Shamari, the head of the Iraqi Political Thinking Center in Baghdad, told VOA that Iranian influence over the PMF presents a major challenge to Iraq’s democracy and sovereignty.

“Iraqis don’t have any issue with the PMF as an institution, but their concern lies in Tehran’s dominance over its decision-making. Iran will continue to support a number of armed factions in Iraq as part of its strategy to maintain proxies in the region,” Shamari said.

“Ultimately, it is up to Iraq’s government to decide whether it be for this Iranian vision of the PMF or against it.”

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With marching bands, drum lines, hundreds of yard signs and at least one fire truck, Democratic presidential candidates made a colorful and often loud pitch to Iowa Democrats at the Steak Fry fundraiser in Des Moines on Saturday.

The event, a fundraiser for the Polk County Democratic Party and one of the biggest remaining opportunities for candidates to flex their organizing muscles in Iowa before the caucuses, comes as a number of candidates are facing an uncertain future in the race and shaking up their campaign strategies in an effort to break out of the pack.

Warren gains in poll

A new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll Saturday shows Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren challenging Joe Biden’s dominance in the field. Warren stands at 22% to the former vice president’s 20% in a poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers.

On Saturday morning, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker warned he may need to end his campaign if he’s unable to raise $1.7 million by the end of the third fundraising quarter. His announcement came soon after California Sen. Kamala Harris announced she’d be going all-in on Iowa in hopes of finishing in the top three. Both have been stagnant in national and Iowa surveys, with Harris polling in the middle of the pack and Booker struggling to move beyond low single digits.

In the new poll, Harris sits at 6% and Booker, along with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, has 3%.

At the Steak Fry, however, Harris turned out her fans in force, marching into the event with hundreds of supporters and a drum line. Booker had a smaller crowd gathered to see him into the event, and the portrait the candidate painted to reporters after speaking to the Steak Fry crowd was dire.

“I don’t believe people should stay in this just to stay in it,” he said. “You either have a trajectory to win or not. And right now if we don’t raise $1.7 million we won’t be able to make the investments necessary. He added: “If we don’t have a pathway to win we should get out of this race.”

Part parade

The event Saturday is part parade, part organizing show of force — and quintessentially Iowa, home of the 2020 race’s leadoff caucuses in February.

It began as a fundraiser for Tom Harkin’s first congressional bid, where the 53 attendees could buy a steak and a foil-wrapped baked potato for $2.

Harkin has retired from the Senate and is out of politics, but the steak fry lives on, now more than four decades strong.

This year, more than 12,000 people were expected to join in addition to 19 presidential candidates. Attendees enjoyed the traditional steaks — 10,500 were grilled by volunteers — but they also had the option to order from a food truck or visit a craft beer tent.

There are even camping grounds, where supporters of former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke spent Friday night.

The county’s Democratic chairman, Sean Bagniewski, said the event has a “modern twist.”

“That’s the future of the party — it’s gonna be more women in positions of leadership, it’s gonna be more people of color, and it’s going to be more young people,” he said.

Part show of force

What hasn’t changed is the event’s significance for the candidates. When Barack Obama marched into the 2007 Iowa steak fry flanked by 1,000 supporters, skeptical Iowans were put on notice that he could win the state’s caucus. Bagniewski said that, like 2007, Democrats are looking for someone who can show they have the organizational strength to win.

“Everyone wants to beat Donald Trump,” he said. “Everyone has a top five, but when you actually see that your candidate of choice has 1,000 people supporting them at the steak fry, it gives you more liberty to make that decision.”

A few hours before the candidates began their speeches, gray clouds swirled overhead at the Des Moines Waterworks.

People wore campaign T-shirts and chanted the names of their preferred candidates as smoke hovered over the thousands of cooking steaks at the riverside park.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was hoping to make a big splash Saturday as he steps up his Iowa presence, addressed hundreds of supporters sporting his campaign’s signature gold and blue T-shirts. In the new CNN/Des Moines Register poll, Buttigieg has 9%. O’Rourke, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang all have 2%

Against this festive backdrop, former Vice President Joe Biden commented on the whistleblower’s complaint in Washington that involved Trump’s phone conversation with Ukraine’s leader. Although the complaint is under wraps, Trump is known to want Ukraine to investigate business dealings there by Biden’s son, Hunter, during his vice presidency.

“The fact of the matter is that that fellow in the White House knows that if we get the nomination we’re gonna beat him like a drum,” Biden said. “So be prepared for every lousy thing that’s coming from him.”

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The Islamic State group on Saturday claimed a bomb blast that killed 12 people near the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Karbala the previous day.

The blast aboard a bus at a checkpoint north of Karbala also wounded five people, according to the city’s health authorities.

Security forces said Saturday that they had arrested a man suspected of placing the explosives on the bus before it disembarked.

Iraq declared victory against IS in late 2017 after three years of a brutal fight against the extremist Sunni group, which had specifically targeted Shiite gatherings.

Jihadist sleeper cells have continued to carry out hit-and-run attacks against government positions across the country, particularly at checkpoints, but attacks targeting Shiite religious gatherings had been rare in recent years.

The deadliest incident this year was a stampede earlier this month in Karbala that left more than 30 pilgrims dead and dozens injured.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and as far away as India had been gathering in the southern city this month to mark the Shiite holy day of Ashura.

Iraq is expecting millions more Shiite pilgrims to arrive at the end of October for the annual Arbaeen commemoration, which marks the end of the 40-day mourning period for the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein by the forces of the Caliph Yazid.

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