‘Our bodies know the pain’: Why Norway’s reindeer herders want Gaza peace
Fosen Peninsula, Norway – A herd of reindeer running through thick, white snow sounds a bit like thunder. It is a spectacle that has been replayed for at least the past 10,000 years on eastern Norway’s Fosen Peninsula and one that Maja Kristine Jama, who comes from a family of reindeer herders, is deeply familiar with. Like most Sami reindeer herders, Jama knows every inch of this terrain without any need for a map. Instead of going to kindergarten like most other children in Norway, she was raised living outdoors alongside the migrating reindeer. Reindeer husbandry in Norway is a sustainable activity that is carried out in accordance with the traditional practices of Sami culture. Reindeer also play an important role in the Arctic’s ecosystem and have long been a symbol of the region “Reindeer herding defines me,” Jama says. “We are so connected to nature, we have respect for it. We say that you don’t live off the land, you live within it. But we see our lands being destroyed.” Europe’s oldest and last remaining Indigenous people are under grave threat as a result of borders, land seizures, construction projects dedicated to the extraction of natural resources and systematic discrimination. Yet, that creeping sense of suffocation has made the Sami reach out to another set of Indigenous people nearly 4,000km (2,500 miles) away, whose fight for survival they identify with: the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. Their own struggle for Indigenous rights and self-determination has turned the Sami into vocal advocates for the Palestinian cause. “There is an instant urge to stand up for people who are being displaced from their homes,” Ella Marie Haetta Isaksen, a Sami activist and artist widely known for her singing, tells Al Jazeera. ‘We say you don’t live off the land, you live within it,’ reindeer herder Maja Kristine Jama says [Courtesy of Norske Samers Riksforbund/Anne Henriette Nilut] Isaksen had just finished taking part in several months of demonstrations in Oslo for the rights of her own people when Israel launched its war on Gaza in October. As the death toll mounted, anger about Gaza quickly spread through Norway generally and the Sami community in particular. Scores of Norwegians posted images of themselves holding “Stop bombing Palestine” placards on social media while mass demonstrations called for an immediate ceasefire after Nordic countries, with the exception of Norway, abstained from a United Nations General Assembly ceasefire vote on October 27. For the Sami, it was a pivotal moment of two causes tangling into one. The community launched a series of regular protests in Oslo against the war in Gaza, and those rallies continue to take place. In front of the Norwegian Parliament on a cold October day, surrounded by hundreds of Palestinian and Sami flags, Isaksen held a mic and performed the “joik”, a traditional Sami song performed without instruments. Her lilting sounds brought the noisy demonstrators to a standstill, carrying a prayer that she hoped would somehow reach the besieged children of Gaza. “I’m physically so far away from them, but I just want to grab them, hold them and take them out of this nightmare,” Isaksen says. “Without trying to compare situations, Indigenous peoples all over the world have stood up for the Palestinian people because our bodies know the pain of being displaced from our homes and forced out of our own lands,” Isaksen says. Ella Marie Isaksen at Sami demonstrations in Oslo in October 2023 [Courtesy of Rasmus Berg] A long struggle For more than 9,000 years, the Sami lived a free, nomadic existence spanning modern-day Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. That began to change in the ninth century when outsiders from Southern Scandinavia encroached into Sapmi, the name given to the broad, untamed lands of the Sami. Christian invaders established a church in the 13th century in Finnmark in northern Sapmi territory in what is now northern Norway. Sweden’s break from Denmark, which had also ruled Norway, in 1542 launched an era of land disputes, conflict and coercion of the Sami that lingers today. A Swedish census that has been preserved from 1591 notes how one Sami community, moving across borders that hadn’t existed for their ancestors, simultaneously paid taxes to Sweden, Denmark and Russia. The creation of Europe’s longest unbroken border in 1751 – between Norway and Sweden – was particularly disastrous for the Sami, restricting them permanently within one country, splitting families apart and forcing their reindeer away from migratory routes. As has been the case for the Palestinians, the imposition of such borders has had a direct impact on the Sami’s fragile existence, says Aslat Holmberg, president of the Sami Council, a nongovernmental organisation promoting the rights of the Sami people across the Nordics and western Russia. He comes from an area on the border between Finland and Norway. “I don’t like to divide the Sami with borders, but we are people now living in four countries,” Holmberg says. Although Sami groups maintain a bond, they believe the borders imposed on them were one of many colonial acts that tore them apart. A ban on speaking their own language under forced assimilation policies, which officially ended in the 1960s in Norway, almost erased their cultural ties. Holmberg warns that Sami languages are now “endangered”. A Sami woman on a Sami farm in Solheim, Troms og Finnmark in Norway [File: Jorge Castellanos/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images] He isn’t exaggerating. There are no historical records showing population figures for the Sami through history. Today, however, they are estimated at 80,000. About half that number live in Norway, where just three Sami languages remain in use. There are only 20 remaining speakers of one of them – the Ume language used in Sweden and Norway. In all, there are nine surviving Sami languages, which are related to languages such as Estonian and Finnish. Preservation of these languages is fraught with difficulties. In Finland, 80 percent of Sami youth live outside traditional Sami territory, where
US warns of ‘disaster’ amid oil slick in Red Sea from ship hit by Houthis
US military says Iran-aligned group is being reckless with attacks on shipping in the Red Sea off Yemen’s shores. The United States military has warned of an “environmental disaster” after an attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on a cargo ship caused an oil slick in the Red Sea. The Iran-aligned group hit the United Kingdom-owned, Belize-flagged bulk carrier Rubymar on February 18 with multiple missiles. It was sailing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, on its way to Bulgaria after leaving Khor Fakkan in the United Arab Emirates. Extensive damage prompted the crew, all of whom are safe, to abandon the ship. US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed on Saturday that the ship was now “anchored but slowly taking on water”, which it said has caused a 29-kilometre (18-mile) oil slick. The vessel was transporting more than 41,000 tonnes of fertiliser when attacked, the military said, “which could spill into the Red Sea and worsen this environmental disaster”. “The Houthis continue to demonstrate disregard for the regional impact of their indiscriminate attacks, threatening the fishing industry, coastal communities, and imports of food supplies,” it added. On Feb. 18 between 9:30 p.m. and 10:40 p.m., Iran-backed Houthi terrorists attacked the M/V Rubymar, a Belize-flagged, UK-owned bulk carrier. The ship is anchored but slowly taking on water. The unprovoked and reckless attack by Iran-backed Houthi terrorists caused significant… pic.twitter.com/bU6j850wwG — U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) February 24, 2024 US broadcaster CNN cited an unnamed US official as saying the threat of more Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, combined with the condition of the water, makes it very difficult to safely get to the ship and attempt to tow it to a port. US officials are not sure what kind of substance is causing the slick, the report said. The group has been disrupting trade through the Red Sea, promising that its attacks will continue until Israel ends its war on Gaza, which has killed more than 29,600 Palestinians, mostly children and women. Backed by several other allied Western governments, the US and the United Kingdom have been bombing governorates across Yemen in response to the Houthi strikes. The military confrontation has now turned into a daily occurrence. The US military also confirmed multiple new “self-defence strikes” on Houthi-controlled positions in Yemen. It said it destroyed seven mobile antiship cruise missiles that were prepared for launch towards the Red Sea. “These actions will protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US Navy and merchant vessels,” CENTCOM said. The Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous regions, earlier this week struck what they said was an Israeli cargo ship, the MSC Silver, in the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea. Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group had also used drones to target a number of US warships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea as well as sites in the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat. US media cited US officials as confirming earlier this week that the Houthis had hit an MQ-9 attack drone near Yemen, the second time they have shot down a US military drone since the start of the Gaza war. Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi on Thursday said they have introduced “submarine weapons” in their attacks. This confirms a previous US military report that the group is deploying underwater drones. A Houthi spokesperson has said the group has recruited and trained more than 200,000 new fighters since the start of the Gaza war. Adblock test (Why?)
Navalny widow says Russia’s Putin torturing him even in death, demands body
Yulia Navalnaya accuses Russian president of mocking Christianity as officials refuse to hand over remains to family. Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, has demanded that Russian authorities hand over his body for burial as she accused President Vladimir Putin of mocking Orthodox Christian values and “torturing” his corpse. “Give us the body of my husband,” Navalnaya said in a video released on Saturday, adding that she wanted to give him a traditional Orthodox funeral. “You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead,” she said in a message to Putin. Navalny, a prominent opponent of Putin, died last week in a remote maximum-security Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges. The authorities claim that he died of natural causes. They have refused to hand over his remains to the family even nine days later. Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, has said investigators were pressuring her to bury her son in “secret” at a private ceremony without mourners. An official told her that she should agree to their demands because Navalny’s body was already decomposing, she said. Navalny’s aides said the authorities had threatened to bury him in the prison colony where he died unless his family agreed to their conditions. “They want to take me to the far end of the cemetery to a fresh grave and say: ‘Here lies your son’,” his mother said in a video posted on YouTube on Thursday. “I’m not agreeing to that.” ‘How low will you sink?’ “No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the body of Alexey,” his widow said in the video, as she questioned Putin’s often-professed Christian faith. “What will you do with his corpse? How low will you sink to mock the man you murdered?”, she asked and said, “We already knew that Putin’s faith was fake. But now we see it more clearly than ever before.” The Russian leader is frequently pictured in church, dunking himself in ice water to celebrate the Epiphany and visiting holy sites in Russia. He has promoted what he has called “traditional values” without which, he once said, “society degrades”, and has touted his closeness to Russia’s Orthodox Church. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has denounced allegations – even from world leaders – that Putin was involved in Navalny’s death, calling them “absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state”. Musician Nadya Tolokonnikova, who became widely known after spending nearly two years in prison for taking part in a 2012 protest with her band Pussy Riot inside Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, released a video in which she accused Putin of hypocrisy. “We were imprisoned for allegedly trampling on traditional values. But no one tramples on traditional Russian values more than you, Putin, your officials and your priests who pray for all the murder that you do, year after year, day after day,” said Tolokonnikova, who lives abroad. “Putin, have a conscience, give his mother the body of her son.” Tolokonnikova was one of several cultural icons who have released videos calling on Russian authorities to return Navalny’s body to his family. Critics say that the authorities fear a funeral could turn into a large-scale public show of support for the opposition leader. The funeral arrangements for Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin ally-turned-rival and founder of the Wagner mercenary group who died last August, were surrounded in secrecy and his body was buried on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg away from the glare of the media. While Russian media have given little space to the news of Navalny’s death, people flocked to the streets of cities across the country to pay tribute to the opposition leader. Police arrested at least 400 people in the first 24 hours since the news of his death, according to protest monitoring group OVD-Info. Adblock test (Why?)
US says new Israeli settlements ‘inconsistent’ with international law
The US and its allies have historically done little to pressure Israel to halt or roll back settlement expansion. The United States has said that new Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal, effectively reversing a policy by the administration of former President Donald Trump. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an announcement by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that more than 3,300 new Israeli settlements are to be built in the occupied West Bank was “disappointing”. “It has been a longstanding policy of both Democratic and Republican administrations that new settlements are counterproductive to achieving enduring peace. They are also inconsistent with international law,” Blinken said at a news conference late on Friday in Buenos Aires. “Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion. In our judgement it only weakens, not strengthens Israel’s security,” he added, without making any mention of tangible consequences Israel could face for settlement expansion. This negates the so-called Pompeo Doctrine, which referred to an announcement in November 2019 by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Washington supports Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem as legal. The majority of the global community views these settlements as illegal and an extension of Israeli occupation. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Blinken’s position “has been consistent over a range of Republican and Democratic administrations”. “If there’s an administration that is being inconsistent, it was the previous one,” Kirby said. The Pompeo Doctrine itself had overturned a legal position held by the US Department of State since 1978 when the administration of former President Jimmy Carter had evaluated Israeli settlements to be in violation of international law. Germany has also condemned the latest Israeli plans to construct thousands of new settler homes in the occupied West Bank. “You know our position on settlement construction. It is contrary to international law and this also applies when new construction projects are carried out,” deputy foreign ministry spokeswoman Kathrin Deschauer told a news conference in Berlin. New settlements Israel’s Smotrich had announced the new settlement plans were a supposed response to what he called a “terrorist” attack on Thursday, when three Palestinians opened fire near a checkpoint between Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank city of Ma’ale Adumim, killing one Israeli and wounding several others. Smotrich now plans to build 2,350 new housing units on Palestinian land in Ma’ale Adumim, 300 in Kedar and 694 in Efrat, with backing from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Saturday called the announcement a “blatant challenge to the international community” and an obstacle to establishing an independent Palestinian state. Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said that “Israel’s 2024 budget shows an addition of over $100m to settlements”. “In 2024, coalition funds for settlements will amount to over $203m [instead of the originally allocated $76m in the government decision from May 2023],” it added. Ministers in the most far-right administration in the history of Israel have also called for increased curbs on Palestinians, including heavy restrictions on movement, after the attack. Over decades, Israel has advanced plans to build new illegal settlements regardless of any attacks. The US and its allies have historically done little to pressure Israel to halt or roll back settlement expansion. Raids across Palestinian territories occupied by Israel had become an almost daily occurrence even before the war on Gaza started on October 7, and they have only significantly intensified since, growing deadlier as well. In the Gaza Strip, more than 29,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since the start of the war, most of them children and women. Adblock test (Why?)
Western leaders visit Ukraine to show solidarity as war enters third year
Visit comes as Kyiv is on the defensive amid flagging Western aid and Russian territorial gains. Western leaders including the European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen and Canada’s Justin Trudeau have arrived in Ukraine to show solidarity with Kyiv as it enters the third year of its war with Russia. Von der Leyen, Trudeau, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Belgium Prime Minister Alexander De Croo arrived in the country on Saturday on an overnight train from neighbouring Poland. Meloni, whose country is chairing the G7 this year, is scheduled to host a video conference on Saturday between leaders from the group of major economies and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with new sanctions against Russia and joint arms purchases for Ukraine among the likely topics of discussion. “More than ever, we stand firmly by Ukraine. Financially, economically, militarily, morally. Until the country is finally free,” von der Leyen said in a post on X. Trudeau said that Ukrainians were fighting for “our collective future”. “They are fighting to remind the world that democracy is both important enough to die for and strong enough to win,” he said in a statement before arriving in Kyiv. “As the war continues, that is what is at stake. And that is why Canada has stood with Ukraine since day one.” The Western leaders’ visit comes as Ukraine marks the second anniversary of Moscow’s invasion on the defensive amid flagging Western aid and Russian territorial gains. Kyiv’s fortunes have suffered in recent weeks amid shortages of military supplies, with Russia this month capturing the eastern town of Avdiivka in its biggest victory on the battlefield in months. United States President Joe Biden has blamed Republicans in Congress for holding up a $61bn package of military funding, casting the support as crucial to Kyiv’s efforts to repel Moscow. Biden on Friday announced further sanctions against Russia, pledging to keep up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war machine”. On Friday, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba delivered a rebuke to sceptics who doubt Kyiv’s ability to defeat Moscow, insisting that “Ukraine will win the war” and victory would come “sooner rather than later” with international support. Zelenskyy earlier this week told diplomats in an emotional address that he remained “convinced that victory awaits us”. While neither Ukraine nor Russia has provided official estimates of the number of people killed and injured in the war, both sides claim to have inflicted heavy losses. The New York Times in August cited US officials who estimated that about 70,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and a further 100,000-120,000 wounded. In December, leaked US intelligence suggested that about 315,000 Russian troops had been killed or injured. Adblock test (Why?)
‘This is my land’: Ukrainians are bitter but resilient, two years into war
Kharkiv, Ukraine – Andriy’s undermanned squad can only shoot 10 shells a day at encroaching Russian troops because of a dire shortage of ammunition. The 45-year-old suffers from stomach pains, deteriorating eyesight and other consequences of multiple contusions that landed him in hospital several times. Two years ago, Andriy defended Kyiv in the full-scale war’s first weeks until Russian troops withdrew after heavy losses, and fought in the eastern town of Bakhmut that fell to the Wagner private army last May. The timing and duration of tours to “zero” positions, or the front lines of the eastern Donbas region, are unpredictable, and his commanding officers deliberately report less “zero” time for him to decrease his pay, he said. But when it comes to Andriy’s determination to stand his ground, he has no doubts or qualms. “This is my land, understand? I grew up here. I eat bread grown on this land. That’s what keeps me going,” he told Al Jazeera while on a break in the eastern city of Kharkiv. He withheld his last name and his unit’s location in accordance with wartime regulations. The absolute majority of Ukrainians – 85 percent – are confident of victory in the war that began two years ago today, according to a survey by the Rating Group, a Kyiv-based pollster, released on Monday. Most of the remaining 15 percent hail from eastern or southern regions next to the front lines and occupied areas that witness the worst consequences of the war firsthand, it said. “I’d agree for peace if they want to keep the occupied lands,” Konstantin, a resident of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that sits near the Russian border, told Al Jazeera. Last spring, the shockwave from an explosion right next to his apartment building shattered his windows and blew open his solid metal front door. He stayed on, but almost daily bombardments and the failure of last year’s counteroffensive have worn him out. “I don’t want to grow old hearing the incoming [shelling] every day and night, because one day it’ll hit my home,” he said. Western aid is crucial to Ukraine’s victory, say 79 percent of Ukrainians, according to the Rating Group’s poll. But the aid is dwindling, while Western governments tacitly urge Kyiv to sign a truce with Moscow by recognising the loss of occupied areas that amount to one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory. Peace talks – but on whose terms? Yet, the public mantra of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and every Ukrainian politician is: Moscow has to withdraw from all occupied areas before peace talks can begin. “The political acknowledgment of the occupation is impossible, no politician will go for it, and the public won’t accept it, ” Kyiv-based analyst Alexey Kushch told Al Jazeera. “There are unofficial talks about freezing the conflict according to the Korean scenario,” he said, referring to the Korean Armistice of 1953, under which North and South Korea agreed to an end to fighting without formally ending the war. But until the war is over, Ukraine will “officially announce maximal goals” to mobilise the public and Western allies, Kushch said. The war has cost Ukraine 30 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and 3.5 million jobs, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Wednesday. But the biggest loss is to its people. At least 6.5 million people have fled abroad, and the population in Kyiv-controlled areas is below 30 million, analysts say – a far cry from the 52 million at the dawn of Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Many refugees have nothing to go back to. Last June, Halyna, a 28-year-old woman from the southern city of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of civilians died during a months-long siege, told Al Jazeera about the horrors her two young children went through during Russian air raids and shelling. “When things got real tense, they just convulsed with hysteria in those basements. And they asked questions: ‘Does it hurt to die?’ she said. After moving to the Czech Republic, her children are safe – but still scarred. “Only recently, my son stopped being frightened by the sound of planes. The daughter sometimes weeps at night, wants to go back to her past life, to her pillow with [the images of] cats,” she said. “There’s a new life looming for us, but it’s not in Ukraine, unfortunately,” she said. Last week, Russia scored a rare victory after Ukrainian forces pulled out of the town of Avdiivka in the Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. But the Kremlin-funded propaganda blew it out of proportion. “The Kyiv regime and its protectors have missed a blow they will possibly not recover from,” publicist Kirill Strelnikov wrote on Tuesday. The news coincided with the death of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny, and Russian President Vladimir Putin gloated. “The objectives our ill-wishers had in terms of limiting, isolating Russia, obviously fell apart,” he said on Wednesday. ‘Russia’s isolation not total’ While independent observers reject Putin’s assessment, they admit that Russia’s economy has shown unexpected resilience to Western sanctions designed to crush it. On Friday, the US imposed its latest round of sanctions against Russia, in response to Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison. “The sanctions didn’t affect Russia’s economy the way they had been expected to, Russia’s isolation didn’t become total,” Temur Umarov of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a think tank in Berlin, told Al Jazeera. With all walks of life around them militarised, many Ukrainians tilted to the political right largely accepting fiercely anti-Russian slogans spawned by fringe nationalist groups, said Kyiv-based human rights advocate Vyacheslav Likhachev. These groups stood for banning all things Russian, including the language, the literature and the Orthodox Church that reported to Moscow Patriarch Kirill. These days, millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians voluntarily switch to Ukrainian in daily life, while Zelenskyy’s government is pondering a ban on the Russia-affiliated church. “Radical ideas that used to be marginal are now shared by a sizable part of the public and are to some extent implemented by the government,” Likhachev told Al Jazeera. What
At least 15 killed in fire at apartment block in China’s Nanjing
Residential building fire is the latest in a series of blazes that have killed dozens across China. At least 15 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a fire at an apartment block in eastern China’s Nanjing, local authorities have said. The blaze in the Yuhuatai district of Nanjing appears to have started on Friday on the residential building’s first floor, where electric bikes were stored, officials said at a press conference, citing the results of a preliminary investigation. The fire was put out by about 6am and a search and rescue operation was wrapped up at about 2pm on Friday, authorities said. Forty-four people were sent to hospital for treatment, according to authorities, with one person in a “critical condition”. Twenty-five fire trucks were deployed to fight the blaze, emergency services said. Footage shared on Chinese social media sites showed a skyscraper on fire at night, with black smoke emitting from the structure. Fires and other disasters are a common occurrence in China, where safety standards have lagged behind the country’s break-neck development. After a fire in central China’s Xinyu that killed at least 39 people last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for “deep reflection” and greater efforts to “curb the frequent occurrence of safety accidents”. Xi’s call came just days after 13 children were killed in another inferno at a school dormitory in central China’s Henan province. The incident sparked outrage among social media users, who called for those responsible to be punished. In November, 26 people were killed and dozens of people were injured after a fire broke out at the office of a coal company in northern Shanxi province. In October, 31 people were killed in an explosion at a barbecue restaurant in the northwestern Ningxia region. Adblock test (Why?)
Israel’s war on Gaza: List of key events, day 141
EXPLAINER UN agency for Palestinian refugees say it can no longer provide services in northern Gaza, citing staff shortages and a ‘collapse of social order’. Here’s how things stand on Saturday, February 24, 2024: Humanitarian crisis, fighting on the ground: A UNRWA official says the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees can no longer provide services in north Gaza, citing staff shortages and a “collapse of social order” amid Israeli attacks on civilians and restrictions on food aid access that have left the population starving. An Israeli strike on a home housing displaced Palestinians killed at least 24 people in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah on Friday. Staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital say they are still receiving wounded people, and the death toll is expected to rise. Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that 104 people were killed and 160 injured in Israeli attacks between Thursday and Friday afternoon, according to the latest situation report from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Israeli forces have raided villages, towns and cities across the occupied West Bank, searching homes and clashing with locals resisting the incursions, Palestine’s state news agency, Wafa, reports. Diplomacy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has released his most detailed vision yet for a post-war Gaza. It includes maintaining indefinite military control over the Strip; ceding the enclave’s civilian administration to Palestinians with no link to Hamas – he didn’t cite the Palestinian Authority (PA) – and creating a buffer zone along Gaza’s border with Egypt that Israel will control. The PA has criticised the plan, saying security can only be obtained through the establishment of a Palestinian state. The UN’s top court has completed its fifth day of hearings following a request by the UN General Assembly to issue an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has repeated his criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza, saying it “is not war, it is genocide”. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, has warned that states that transfer weapons to Israel amid its war on Gaza could be complicit in “atrocity crimes”. Reuters news agency has reported that talks are under way in Paris in what appears to be the most serious push in weeks to halt the fighting in Gaza. Singapore has iterated its calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza at G20 meetings in Brazil, local media have reported. Regional tensions The United States military says it has destroyed seven antiship cruise missiles that Yemen’s Houthi rebel group planned to launch at targets in the Red Sea. US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the UK-owned bulk carrier MV Rubymar, which was attacked by Houthi forces last weekend in the Red Sea, is slowly taking on water, leaking oil and it poses an environmental hazard in the region. Adblock test (Why?)
Iran unveils plan for tighter internet rules to promote local platforms
Tehran, Iran – A new regulatory directive from Iran’s top internet governing body shows how authorities hope to steer Iranians away from foreign platforms and turn them towards local ones. Iran’s top internet policymaking body released a directive earlier this week that stipulates new rules with potentially wide-ranging ramifications for the country’s already constrained internet landscape, which the agency says were approved by Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC) asserted that using “refinement-breaking tools” is now “forbidden” unless the user has obtained a legal permit. That is the new word Iranian authorities have come up with for virtual private networks (VPNs), online privacy tools that mask the user’s IP (internet protocol), which most Iranians use regularly to circumvent heavy internet restrictions. All major social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Telegram, are banned in Iran but along with thousands of websites, remain highly popular with tens of millions of users – for years prompting users to resort to circumvention tools. Iran had made the purchase and sale of VPNs illegal in 2022, but news that using them, even without any commercial transaction involved, would also be banned prompted a backlash online. Many pointed out that an overwhelming majority of Iranians have no choice but to use them if they wish to access the free internet, so making the use of VPNs illegal would effectively include most people in the country. SCC Secretary Mohammad Amin Aghamiri told state television a day after the uproar that the regulations do not include the general public, and are only directed at top state entities – the office of the supreme leader, the presidency, the judiciary and the parliament, among others. Pushing foreign platforms away But regardless of whom the VPN ban covers, the SCC directive contains other regulations that call for large-scale changes in Iran’s internet landscape. For one, it asks the culture ministry to collaborate with the economy and information and communications technology (ICT) ministries to come up with a plan in one month that would incentivise content creators and businesses active on foreign platforms to stay “strictly on local platforms”. The goal: to bring at least half of the target audience to local platforms within six months. This effectively means that the SCC wants much of the content created by people inside Iran on the likes of wildly popular Instagram and YouTube to move to local platforms. It is unclear how the government expects to make this happen within months. “Any advertisement by legal entities on foreign platforms is illegal,” asserts the directive, which tasks the culture ministry, state television, law enforcement, the economy ministry and the judiciary to monitor this and report back every quarter. Moreover, the ICT ministry has been tasked with offering “comprehensive and essential government services” on local platforms “exclusively”, with at least two services ready within six months. Some of this has been in the works for several years. The Iranian state has been working on a “National Information Network”, obligating websites and services to position their servers inside Iran, limiting some government services only to local platforms, and making global internet traffic cost twice as much as local traffic to incentivise using local services. Unblocked ‘shells’ of foreign platforms Another part of the SCC directive could also have a significant impact on how social media platforms are used in Iran. It stipulates that authorities must provide technical capabilities that would allow Iranians to access “useful foreign services” in the form of “governable formats”. This, it said, could include negotiations for foreign platforms to establish representative offices inside Iran, in addition to “windows of access” baked into local platforms, and “shells” of foreign platforms that would not be blocked like the main versions. No foreign companies running social media platforms have agreed to place representatives in Iran – that would need to be accountable to the Iranian state – and major brands like United States-based Meta have said they are not interested. As for the so-called shells, Iranians have experienced them before, and have been exposed to breaches of privacy as a result. In 2018, after Iran blocked the massively popular messaging app Telegram, citing its alleged use in inciting and enabling “riots” during a period of protests and unrest, unfiltered shells of the app started being used by Iranians. Iran also underwent an almost total internet blackout that lasted for nearly a week during the November 2019 protests that started after the government significantly increased petrol prices. These shells would allow unblocked access, but would have access to users’ data as it was passed through them before reaching the servers of the original app. This exposed millions of Iranians to data leaks and fraud before people became aware of the dangers. Now, the Iranian state wishes to officially endorse such shells, essentially inviting people to use them instead of the main apps which will remain blocked. Internet restrictions in Iran reached new levels after nationwide protests began in September 2022 following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. Adblock test (Why?)
Deadly blaze rips through apartment block in Spain
NewsFeed At least ten people were killed and others are missing after a fire ripped through an apartment block in Spain. Published On 23 Feb 202423 Feb 2024 Adblock test (Why?)