World

Activists have called on football fans attending Iran’s matches at the World Cup starting later this month to chant the name of Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody sparked nationwide protests.

Iran has been rocked by eight weeks of protests since Amini’s death, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress rules for women based on Islamic sharia law.

In spite of a bloody crackdown, the protests that initially saw women burn their hijab headscarves and cut their hair have evolved into a broader movement calling for the end of the Islamic republic.

Women’s rights campaigner Negin Shiraghaei called on spectators to sing out the 22-year-old Amini’s name in the 22nd minute of each game that Iran plays at the World Cup in Qatar.

“Join us to remind the world about what’s happening in Iran by shouting Mahsa’s name at minute 22 of football matches this World Cup,” said a post on her Twitter account.

Masih Alinejad, a New York-based activist originally from Iran who campaigns against the mandatory hijab, also appealed to World Cup fans to chant Amini’s name.

“Help us immortalise #MahsaAmini and our fight against this brutal regime. At the 22nd minute of each World Cup game, say #MahsaAmini,” she tweeted.

Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights says at least 304 people have been killed across Iran since protests broke out over Amini’s death on September 16.

The protests were fanned by fury over the restrictive dress rules for women, but have grown into a broad movement against the theocracy that has ruled Iran since the 1979 fall of the shah.

Iranian sports stars are among celebrities who have shown public support for the Amini protests, landing some of them in trouble with the authorities.

In late September, former Iranian international football player Hossein Maanahi was arrested for what state media said was his support for “riots” on his social media pages.

All but two players in Iran’s national football team refused to sing the country’s anthem before they played a friendly against Nicaragua in Tehran on Thursday evening, according to footage shared online.

At the end of September, the whole team remained dressed in black during the anthems rather than exposing Iran’s national uniform, in what was seen as a tribute to those killed in the protests.

The Islamic republic has sought to portray the protest movement as a plot hatched by the United States and its allies.

At the World Cup, which kicks off in Qatar November 20, Iran is scheduled to face England on November 21, Wales on November 25 and the United States on November 29.

US President Joe Biden headed to UN climate talks in Egypt on Friday armed with major domestic achievements against global warming but under pressure to do more for countries reeling from natural disasters.

Biden will spend only a few hours at COP27 in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, three days after US midterm elections that have raised questions about what the result could mean for US climate policy.

Climate action in the United States — the world’s second biggest emitter — was given a major boost this year when Congress passed a landmark spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $369 billion for clean energy and climate initiatives.

“We’re living in a decisive decade –- one in which we have an opportunity to prove ourselves and advance the global climate fight,” Biden said on Twitter.

“Let this be a moment where we answer history’s call. Together,” said the US leader, who skipped a two-day summit of some 100 world leaders at COP27 earlier this week that coincided with the US election.

New research shows just how dauntingly hard it will be to meet the goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — requiring emissions to be slashed nearly in half by 2030.

The new study — published on Friday in the journal Earth System Science Data — found that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are on track to rise one percent in 2022 to reach an all-time high.

COP27 talks have been dominated by the need for wealthy polluters to stop stalling on helping developing countries green their economies and prepare for future impacts — alongside calls to provide financial help for the catastrophic damage already apparent.

– Climate-sceptic Republicans –

“The world needs the United States to be a climate leader in our fight for climate justice,” prominent Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, a 25-year-old Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, told AFP.

Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, told reporters that Biden’s attendance at COP27 was a “very good sign” that reassures other countries that “the United States at the highest level takes this issue incredibly seriously”.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Biden will “underscore the need to go further, faster, to help the most vulnerable communities build their resilience” and push major economies to “dramatically” cut emissions.

US climate envoy John Kerry presented this week a public-private partnership aimed at supporting the transition to renewable energy in developing nations and based on a carbon credit system.

But the plan has been panned by activists wary of firms using these to “offset” their carbon emissions.

The White House announced Friday plans to require federal contractors to set targets to reduce their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

It also aims to step up efforts to cut methane emissions — a major contributor to global warming — with a “Super-Emitter Response Program” that would require companies to act on leaks reported by “credible” third parties.

Biden has also pledged to contribute $11.4 billion to a $100 billion per-year-scheme through which rich countries will help developing nations transition to renewable energies and build climate resilience.

But Democrats may be running out of time to honour that as control of the House of Representatives appears poised to shift to the Republicans from January in the wake of this week’s mid-term elections.

“We’re going to be pressing for passage of the appropriations bills,” US lawmaker Kathy Castor, who chairs the climate crisis committee in the House, told AFP.

– ‘Loss and damage’ –

Developing countries will look to the United States for support on establishing a “loss and damage” fund through which rich polluters would compensate them for destruction from climate-induced disasters.

Washington has previously resisted that idea, but agreed to discuss it at COP27.

Biden will also use the trip to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and discuss the human rights situation in the country, where the case of jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah was raised by other leaders earlier this week.

Ahead of his trip, the White House expressed “deep concern” for the hunger-striking British-Egyptian activist.

After COP27, Biden will head to an ASEAN regional summit in Cambodia at the weekend before travelling to Indonesia for G20 talks.

He may have a chance to revive cooperation with China when he meets President Xi Jinping at the G20, after Beijing cut off climate talks with Washington due to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August.

A Taiwanese truck driver was sentenced to nearly eight years in jail on Friday for causing the island’s worst rail disaster in decades, which left 49 dead and more than 200 injured.

The April 2021 crash was caused by a railway maintenance truck that slid down an embankment moments before a packed train hurdled through the eastern coastal city of Hualien.

The vehicle had been stuck in bushes on a nearby road. 

Prosecutors said truck driver Li Yi-hsiang, 50, and his assistant tried to free it with a cloth strap tied to an excavator but the attempt failed and instead the vehicle tumbled onto the railway track.  

Li’s actions “resulted in heavy casualties and seriously affected social order while causing physical and emotional trauma to many victims,” the Hualien district court said in a statement as he was jailed for negligent homicide.

His assistant, a Vietnamese national, was acquitted by the court which cited insufficient evidence for his participation in “the core act” of the accident, which was to tie the truck with the cloth strap that could not sustain the weight.

Li did not contact rail authorities or alert the train conductor after the truck slipped onto the track and then failed to call the police or the 911 emergency service after the crash, according to prosecutors.

A lawyer for the victims’ families vowed to appeal the ruling because they felt the sentence was too short, the Central News Agency reported.

Li was part of a contracted railway maintenance team that regularly inspects Taiwan’s mountainous eastern train line for landslides and other hazards.

He was working on shoring up a steep hillside at the accident scene.

The last major train derailment in Taiwan before this incident was in 2018 when 18 people died on the same line. 

The train driver in that case was sentenced last year to four and a half years in prison for negligent homicide for speeding and other faults.

Taiwan’s most deadly rail disaster on record was in 1948 when a train caught fire and 64 people perished.

The Ethiopian government said Friday its forces controlled 70 percent of the war-stricken northern region of Tigray and that aid was being sent in — claims swiftly denied by Tigrayan rebels.

The restoration of desperately needed humanitarian assistance to the region is one of the key planks of a peace deal between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to end two years of brutal war in northern Ethiopia.

The contradictory claims come as representatives of the warring sides have been meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to follow up on the breakthrough agreement signed in the South African capital Pretoria on November 2.

“70% of Tigray is under ENDF (Ethiopian National Defence Force),” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s national security adviser Redwan Hussein posted on Twitter.

“Aid is flowing like no other times,” he said, adding that trucks of food and medicine had been sent to the strategic city of Shire and that flights were being allowed.

“No hindrance whatsoever regarding aid.”

But the rebels denied Redwan’s assertions.

“He is plucking his facts out of thin air,” TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda told AFP in a message.

AFP was not able to independently verify the claims as Tigray — a region of about six million people — remains inaccessible to journalists.

Ethiopia’s northernmost region is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis due to lack of food and medicine, and there is limited access to basic services including electricity, banking and communications.

Redwan’s comments were also dismissed by a humanitarian worker based in Tigray.

“What Redwan tweeted is completely false,” the worker told AFP. “No aid is allowed to enter Shire city at all.

“No services have been reconnected and no flights are allowed.”

– ‘Many dying of starvation’ –

The peace deal was signed after little more than a week of African Union-brokered negotiations between federal government and TPLF delegations.

It notably calls for the cessation of hostilities, restoration of humanitarian aid, the re-establishment of federal authority over Tigray and the disarming of TPLF fighters.

Military chiefs from the warring sides have been holding talks in Nairobi this week to discuss disarmament and the restoration of aid among other issues. 

The US State Department’s African bureau noted that Redwan had said in Nairobi that by week’s end humanitarian aid would flow “unhindered”.

“Vulnerable Ethiopians in Tigray, Afar, and Amhara need aid now,” it said on Twitter early Friday.

“Also restoration of services, protection of civilians & human rights accountability. Waiting urgently for actions to respect and implement the agreement.”

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization called for a massive influx of food and medicines into Tigray following the ceasefire deal, saying aid had not yet been allowed in.

“Many people are dying from treatable diseases. Many people are dying from starvation,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who hails from Tigray, told a press conference.

“Even in the middle of fighting, civilians need food, need medicine. It cannot be a condition.”

The conflict between the TPLF and pro-Abiy forces, which include regional militias and the Eritrean army, has caused an untold number of deaths, forced more than two million from their homes and sparked reports of horrific abuses such as rape and massacres.

Estimates of casualties vary widely, with the United States saying that as many as half a million people have died, while the EU’s foreign envoy Josep Borrell said that more than 100,000 people may have been killed.

UN-backed investigators have accused all sides of committing abuses but also charged that Addis Ababa had been using starvation as a weapon of war — claims denied by the Ethiopian authorities.

Abiy — a Nobel Peace Prize laureate — sent troops into Tigray on November 4, 2020 to topple the TPLF, the region’s ruling party, in response to what he said were attacks by the group on federal army camps.

The conflict capped months of simmering tensions between Abiy and the TPLF which has dominated the national government for almost three decades until he took office in 2018.

Japan’s justice minister stepped down on Friday after facing criticism for reportedly saying his “low-profile” position only generates media coverage when he approves the death penalty.

Yasuhiro Hanashi’s resignation serves a further blow to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government, which is already facing plummeting approval ratings.

And it comes just weeks after the minister for economic revitalisation quit following scrutiny over his links to the Unification Church.

Hanashi reportedly said at a party with lawmakers this week that his job was “a low-profile position that only makes headlines on the midday news after giving the stamp of approval for the death penalty in the morning”.

Japan is one of the few developed countries to retain the death penalty, and public support for capital punishment remains high despite international criticism.

As he announced his resignation on Friday, Hanashi — who has been in the post since August, and has not overseen any executions — said he had spoken “carelessly”.

Kishida had been due to leave in the afternoon for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia, but he delayed his departure until 1 am to appoint a replacement for Hanashi.

“I take my own responsibility for appointing him in the first place seriously. By tackling challenges ahead, I would like to fulfil my duties,” Kishida said.

The government’s low approval ratings are partly due to controversy over politicians’ ties to the Unification Church.

The sect has been in the spotlight since reports emerged that the man accused of killing former prime minister Shinzo Abe resented the organisation over donations his mother made that bankrupted the family. 

The church, officially known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, has denied wrongdoing.

The wife of a jailed Saudi activist says she is desperate to know her husband’s fate after losing touch with him for the first time during his nearly decade-long imprisonment. 

Maha al-Qahtani, who is based in the United States, spoke to AFP this week in her first interview since her husband, Mohammad al-Qahtani, was taken into Saudi custody in 2013. 

“I kept silent for 10 years but now I have run out of patience,” she said. 

“Is he OK? Is he alive? That is the question.” 

Mohammad al-Qahtani was a founding member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, an NGO formed in 2009 that documented human rights abuses and pushed for elections in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy notorious for repression and human rights violations. 

In 2013, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for crimes including sedition, but he had been slated for release later this month. 

After years of speaking with Mohammad by phone every day, Maha and their five children have not heard from him since October 23. 

He “used to call us once or twice a day for 10 years”, Maha said.

“He was pushing us to move on and enjoy our time. He did not abandon his responsibilities as a father and husband, even in prison.” 

She added: “The fact that communication was completely cut off indicates that something is being hidden.” 

Mohammad, in his late fifties, has been held in Al-Ha’ir prison, a maximum-security facility outside Riyadh. 

On October 10, he complained about a fellow inmate who was monitoring him “everywhere and all the time” and “inciting mentally ill patients” against him, Maha said. 

“I complained to a responsible officer in the prison, but the issue is developing,” Maha recalled him saying. 

“Anything that happens to me, they are responsible because they have knowledge of the matter,” he said, before the connection was cut.

Maha said she had tried to get information about her husband from Saudi authorities in recent weeks to no avail. 

– Repressive record – 

Saudi Arabia is often criticised for not tolerating dissent and has recently been in the spotlight for decades-long prison sentences handed down to two women who tweeted and retweeted posts critical of the government. 

Maha said she was especially worried about her husband because another founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, Abdullah al-Hamid, died in custody in Al-Ha’ir prison in 2020. 

Hamid’s relatives have accused prison authorities of denying him necessary health care. 

On Wednesday, Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, said she was “increasingly concerned” for Mohammad al-Qahtani.

Lawlor said Mohammad had complained about attacks by other prisoners since May but his request to be transferred had been refused.

London-based rights group ALQST denounced what it described as an “enforced disappearance”. 

Mohammad “has already faced years of cruel punishment for his brave activism, including repeated harassment and ill-treatment. Yet it seems the authorities are determined to punish him still further,” said Lina al-Hathloul, ALQST’s head of monitoring and communications. 

Mohammad had been due for release on November 22, though he would still face a 10-year travel ban. 

Maha said their youngest daughter will celebrate her 10th birthday on Saturday, and she is anxious to know if she will hear from her husband by then. 

“If he does not call her as usual, I will be sure that something serious has happened to him,” she said. 

“I just want to hear his voice.”