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Ed Webb

OHCHR | UN Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen releases their ... - 0 views

www.ohchr.org/...NewsDetail.aspx

Yemen war crimes UN rights KSA Saudi UAE military

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 20 - Cached
  • After six unremitting years of armed conflict, all parties continue to show no regard for international law or the lives, dignity, and rights of people in Yemen, according to the third report of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen
  • “the international community has a responsibility to put an end to this pandemic of impunity, and should not turn a blind eye to the gross violations that have been committed in Yemen. After years of documenting the terrible toll of this war, no one can say ‘we did not know what was happening in Yemen’. Accountability is key to ensure that justice is served to the people of Yemen and to humanity.”
  • concern about the continued transfer of arms by third States to the parties of the conflict
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  • violations have been committed by the Government of Yemen, the Houthis, the Southern Transitional Council, as well as members of the Coalition, which is led by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
  • indiscriminate attacks have been carried out by both the Coalition and the Houthis, inflicting harm on civilians and civilian objects
  • violations include arbitrary deprivation of life, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, gender-based violence, including sexual violence, torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the recruitment and use in hostilities of children, the denial of fair trial rights, violations of fundamental freedoms, and economic, social and cultural rights
  • a consistent pattern of harm to civilians that not only occurs in the context of hostilities, but also away from the front lines
  • constitute war crimes under customary international law
Ed Webb

After 'Missteps' And Controversies, Museum Of The Bible Works To Clean Up Its Act : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ible-works-to-clean-up-its-act

US USA Iraq Egypt Afghanistan heritage history museum museums crime UNESCO religion

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Jun 20 - Cached
  • When the Museum of the Bible opened three years ago, its founders aimed to engage a wider audience with the Bible and its thousands of years of history. But the museum's ambitious goals have been overshadowed by a series of scandals, still unfolding, over antiquities — acquired in a five-year international shopping spree — that have turned out to be looted or fake.
  • Steve Green, the evangelical president of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain and the museum board's chairman, started acquiring artifacts in 2009 for what would become a $500 million museum on prime Washington, D.C., real estate. (Museum officials have long said the institution has no sectarian or evangelical agenda.)
  • Hobby Lobby paid a $3 million fine in a Justice Department settlement for not exercising due diligence in acquisitions. The judgment directed the forfeiture of 5,500 clay tablets and other illegally imported items to the Iraqi government.
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  • fresh controversies — over previously acquired objects, including Dead Sea Scroll fragments found to be fake and items from Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt — have continued to dog the museum
  • the museum is discussing the return to Iraq of another 8,106 pieces. Hobby Lobby acquired them so haphazardly for the museum, he says, that it may never be known how they came onto the market
  • ome of these items may have even come from Iraq's national museum, which was looted after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and troops failed to protect cultural sites
  • Hobby Lobby acquired the items, most of them clay tablets, between 2009 and 2014 from sources in the U.S., the U.K. and Israel. Another 5,000 items, Egyptian papyri and textiles, acquired during the same period, also lack proper documentation
  • between 5% and 10% of the roughly 8,000 objects now being returned to Iraq are fake
  • The Museum of the Bible's latest issue is over an ancient Jewish prayer book from Afghanistan. The museum says it was "legally exported" from the U.K. and "acquired in good faith" with provenance information dating from the 1950s. Now, Kloha says, museum staff believe the book was taken out of Afghanistan after 1998 — decades after a UNESCO convention made it illegal to export antiquities without government approval. The Taliban, which controls many parts of the country today, is accused of widespread trafficking in antiquities.
  • The U.S. government's 2017 complaint against Hobby Lobby notes that Green was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2010 while carrying a $1 million Bible without a customs declaration. The following year, U.S. Customs agents seized misidentified cuneiform tablets being shipped to Hobby Lobby from the United Arab Emirates.
  • the museum's reputation among scholars has made it difficult to arrange loans of works from other institutions
  • Iraqi's ambassador to the U.S., Fareed Yasseen, tells NPR that he would personally like to see Iraqi artifacts exposed to as wide an audience as possible. "To me, the Elgin Marbles should be in Greece, not in the British Museum, because a lot of people will see them in Greece," he says. "But if you look at the massive winged bulls [from ancient Iraq] you have in the British Museum ... or the Louvre, I mean honestly, if they were in Iraq, so few people would go there to see them. To be fair, looking at the issue as a world citizen, if you will, these are part of all our heritage. Anybody who has read the Bible can relate, right?"
Ed Webb

Libya talks pause without naming transitional government | Middle East | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...naming-transitional-government

Libya diplomacy talks Tunisia Tunis UN peace elections transition

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Nov 20 - Cached
  • Talks on Libya’s future have adjourned without naming a new government to oversee a transition to possible elections next year.
  • “This is not an acceptable alternative. It is not sustainable; everybody recognises that. The hard summer that many Libyans passed through – with no electricity, and very little water and all the other hardships and the [coronavirus] pandemic – was really a wake-up call.” The UN envoy said there was still a lot of work to do and that delegates will resume talks online next week to discuss a reformed structure and role for the executive authority. They will also discuss the question of a constitutional basis for the election. “We have agreed to reconvene in about a week in a virtual meeting [to] agree on the selection mechanism for the coming authority,”
  • The talks come as part of a wider peacemaking process along with a military ceasefire agreed between the two main sides in the war: the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) and Khalifa Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA).
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  • Observers have criticised the way the delegates were chosen for the Tunis talks and cast doubts over their clout in a country where two administrations, as well as an array of armed groups and foreign powers, are already vying for power.
  • The GNA emerged from a UN-backed political agreement in 2015, but was spurned by eastern factions. Last year, Haftar launched an LNA offensive on Tripoli that the GNA turned back in June with support from Turkey. The LNA is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Egypt.
  • “The UN’s biggest difficulty is that there are permanent Turkish and Russian military bases and Emirati officers on the ground,”
Ed Webb

Cameroonian migrants deported from UAE face conflict or exile - 0 views

news.trust.org/...20210917000028-v6ugx

Cameroon Nigeria UAE Dubai migrants rights HRW

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Sep 21 - No Cached
  • Just months ago, Cameroonian migrant Wilfred Christopher had a home and stable job as a pastry chef in Abu Dhabi. Now, the 26-year-old fears for his life after authorities in the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) deported him to Cameroon – where his home region is mired in conflict. "Sometimes there's fighting, there are stray bullets. Now they said if you go out (after curfew), they might shoot you," Christopher said by phone from the town of Tiko in Cameroon's South West region, referring to fighting between Anglophone separatists and government forces.
  • one of hundreds of African migrant workers - from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Uganda - who were arrested in late June in the UAE, and deported en masse in recent weeks
  • charges which human rights groups have decried as bogus
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  • forced returns of Cameroonians this summer to a country beset by violence could amount to a violation of international law, according to Human Rights Watch
  • six deported Cameroonians said they were repeatedly denied access to lawyers or information about the charges against them following their arrest, and that their concerns about the ongoing violence back home were dismissed
  • "I told them: 'you want me to die?' and they said: 'just go back to your country'," added Rene, who worked as a car polisher in Abu Dhabi since 2019. Rene said he had not been allowed to retrieve his savings or any documents, including his birth certificate, before being deported.
  • African and Asian workers have highlighted stigma and racism in the past, and the UAE regularly faces criticism from human rights groups for abuses including forced deportations. Yet the scale of the mass arrests in June and recent deportations were unprecedented, the non-profit Euro-Med Monitor - which co-authored a report on the issue - said this month.
  • all countries are obliged to abide by a human rights principle known as "non-refoulement," which prohibits nations from forcibly returning anyone to a country where they risk threats to their life or liberty
  • Cameroon's consul-general in Dubai, Donancier Mebouogue, said he had received "no official information" from the UAE's foreign ministry on the arrests and deportations, despite three written requests. In early August, Mebouogue tried to visit al-Wathba prison, where guards confirmed that Cameroonians were being detained but prevented him from seeing them, he said.
  • While Nigeria has proved a sanctuary for some of the Cameroonians, not all are so fortunate. "I traveled (to Abu Dhabi) because the war was getting too tough," former pastry chef Christopher said. "Now I'm back (in Cameroon), with nowhere to turn to – nowhere to run."
Ed Webb

Fourth Turkish drilling ship begins energy exploration in Mediterranean - Al-Monitor: I... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ergy-exploration-mediterranean

Turkey mediterranean energy territory Cyprus Greece Israel Egypt UAE

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Aug 22 - No Cached
  • Turkey’s fourth drilling ship set sail today as the country continues to pursue its offshore energy exploration.  The Abdulhamid Han will conduct a two-month mission in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The ship is considered the strongest of the country’s fleet, the official Anadolu Agency reported. 
  • Turkey sent a drilling ship to parts of the Mediterranean Sea claimed by Greece in 2018 and began conducting exploration in maritime territory claimed by Cyprus in 2019. Turkey halted the activities ahead of dialogue with Greece that began in early 2021.  Turkey's dialogue with Greece ended in May of this year, and now tensions are on the rise again. Leaders of both states exchanged subtle threats in June. 
  • In June, Egyptian military leaders met with their Greek and Cypriot counterparts to discuss military cooperation. In May, the United Arab Emirates and Greece signed a $4.2 billion investment agreement. Last December, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett hosted Greek and Cypriot leaders for a meeting on their security alliance. 
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