Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

You are here: Home / Archives for Ban Ki-moon

UN approves resolution to fly Palestinian flag at headquarters

by

The US dismissed the move by the UN, calling it "counterproductive". (AFP/File)

The US dismissed the move by the UN, calling it “counterproductive”. (AFP/File)

by Press TV

The United Nations has approved a resolution calling for the hoisting of the Palestinian flag at the world body’s headquarters in New York.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly decided that the flags of the non-member observer states of Palestine and the Holy See “shall be raised at (UN) Headquarters and United Nations Offices following the flags of the member states.”

As many as 119 countries voted in favor of the resolution, eight voted against, and 45 abstained.

The draft resolution of the Palestinian proposal was submitted to the General Assembly on August 27.

The resolution requested UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take “the measures necessary” for the implementation of the decision. The UN has 20 days to carry out the decision.

Based on the Thursday decision, delegations of the two nations can participate in the UN sessions.

Before the voting session, Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour touched upon the significance of the resolution, saying although symbolic, the measure gives “our people some hope that the international community is still supporting the independence of the state of Palestine.”

The United States and Israel had expressed their opposition to the measure, with US State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner describing it as “counterproductive” and Israel’s envoy to the UN, Ron Prosor, dismissing it as “a blatant attempt to hijack the UN.”

Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the besieged Gaza Strip, and are demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.

On November 29, 2012, the General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine’s status at the UN from “non-member observer entity” to “non-member observer state” despite strong opposition from Israel and the US.

UN calls on Israel to halt demolition of 13,000 Palestinian homes

by

Some 13,000 Palestinian homes are scheduled for demolition in the occupied West Bank. (AFP/File)

Some 13,000 Palestinian homes are scheduled for demolition in the occupied West Bank. (AFP/File)

by Press TV

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on Israel to halt a plan to demolish some 13,000 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank.

“As we have said repeatedly, the secretary general calls on the Israeli authorities to halt demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon, told reporters in New York on Tuesday.

The UN chief also called on Israeli authorities “to revoke plans that would result in the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities, and to implement an inclusive planning and zoning regime that will enable Palestinians’ residential and community development needs to be met,” Dujarric added.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a Monday report that the Palestinian structures are currently under Israeli demolition orders, adding that the orders “leave affected households in a state of chronic uncertainty and threat.”

It also warned that the destruction of Palestinian homes leads to “displacement and disruption of livelihoods” among other things.

Tel Aviv claims the Palestinian structures are demolished because they were built without construction permits, but Palestinians argue such authorizations are routinely denied.

On September 3, Israel destroyed seven Palestinian structures in the East Tayba Bedouin community of the central West Bank, displacing nine Palestinians, including five children.

The Tel Aviv regime intensified the destruction of Palestinian homes last month, razing to the ground as many as 143 Palestinian structures, which is the highest such number in five years.

In August, 31 international organizations, including Oxfam and Amnesty International, criticized a “surge” in West Bank demolitions, saying Tel Aviv is using them to seize property for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.

More than half a million Israelis live in more than 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank in 1967.

The settlements are considered illegal by the UN and many countries because the territories were occupied by Israel and are thus subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

UN condemns arson attack by Israeli settlers

by

Security forces inspect the West Bank house destroyed in an arson attack on July 31, 2015. (AFP/Jaafar Ashtiyeh)

Security forces inspect the West Bank house destroyed in an arson attack on July 31, 2015. (AFP/Jaafar Ashtiyeh)

by Andolu Ajansi

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday sharply condemned an arson attack by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank that killed an 18-month-old Palestinian boy.

Ban “calls for the perpetrators of this terrorist act to be promptly brought to justice”, read a statement issued from his office.

Ali Saeed Dawabsheh was burned to death early Friday when Jewish settlers attacked a house in Duma village in the West Bank’s southern city of Nablus. His parents and brother also suffered serious injuries.

Palestinian officials said the attack was carried out by Jewish settlers affiliated with the Price Tag militant group.

“Continued failures to effectively address impunity for repeated acts of settler violence have led to another horrific incident involving the death of an innocent life. This must end,” the UN statement said.

It said the absence of a political process and Israel’s illegal settlement expanding activities, as well as its demolition of Palestinian homes, had “given rise to violent extremism on both sides.

“This presents a further threat to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for statehood as well as to the security of the people of Israel,” read the statement.

International law views East Jerusalem and the West Bank as occupied territories and deems any construction of Israeli settlements on the land to be illegal.

Earlier Friday, UN’s top Mideast envoy Nickolay Mladenov also condemned the “heinous” attack, calling it an act carried out for a political objective.

“We must not permit such acts to allow hate and violence to bring more personal tragedies and to bury any prospect of peace,” said Mladenov, who is the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

“This reinforces the need for an immediate resolution of the conflict and an end to the occupation,” he added.

Direct peace talks between Israel and Palestinians remain deadlocked amid Israel’s unilateral settlement-building policies in occupied lands and Palestinians’ efforts on international recognition of their statehood.

The Rohingya – Adrift on a Sea of Sorrows

by

Rohingya

by Eric Margolis

When is genocide not really genocide? When the victims are small, impoverished brown people no wants or cares about – Burma’s Rohingya.

Their plight has finally commanded some media attention because of the suffering of Rohingya boat people, 7,000 of whom continue to drift in the waters of the Andaman Sea without food, water or shelter from the intense sun. At least 2,500 lucky refugees are in camps in Indonesia.

Mass graves of Rohingya are being discovered in Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). Large numbers of Rohingya are fleeing for their lives from their homeland, Burma, while the world does nothing. Burma is believed to have some 800,000 Rohingya citizens.

This week, the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Peace Prize winners call on Burma and its much ballyhooed ‘democratic leader,’ Aung San Suu Kyi, to halt persecution of the Rohingya. They did nothing.

The Rohyinga’s persecution has been going on for over half a century, totally unobserved by the rest of the world. Burma’s government claims they are descendants of economic immigrants from neighboring Bengal who came as indentured laborers to the British colony of Burma in early the 19th century.

Interestingly, the British Empire created a similar ethnic problem by bringing large numbers of Tamils from southern India to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to work the British tea plantations.

But Bengalis have been on Burma’s Arakan Coast for centuries. What sets Rohyingas apart is their dark skin and Islamic faith. Burma seems determined to expel its Muslims for good, treating them like human garbage. It’s the kind of brutal ethnic cleansing, racism and genocide that we recently saw unleashed against Albanian and Bosnian Muslims and Catholics in Bosnia and Kosovo.

I’ve been watched the steady rise of a weird form of Asian racism among some militant Buddhists in Burma and Sri Lanka. The first sign was anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka a decade ago led by fiery Buddhist monks.

But wait a minute. I have always been very attracted to Buddhism as a gentle, sensible, human faith. My first book, “War at the Top of the World,” was inspired by my conversations with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. I like to meditate in Buddhist temples whenever I’m in Asia.

So from where did all those screaming, hate-promoting Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka and Burma come from? Clearly, from deep smoldering fires that we knew nothing about. The bloody Sri Lankan civil war between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils was largely initiated by militant monks. One also remembers Vietnam’s self-immolating monks.

The same phenomena erupted in Burma, a nation rent by violent regional and ethnic tensions that have raged since 1945. But who initiated a campaign of hate and pogroms against the Arakan Muslims who were quietly, minding their own business and eking out a living? As soon as Burma’s military stepped back from total rule, the anti-Muslim violence went critical.

The triple-sainted (at least in the Western media) Aung San Suu Kyi refuses to hear foreign pleas that she do something. Burma will hold elections in November and she wants to avoid antagonizing Buddhist voters – even when her nation in practicing genocide.

I stood in front of her in Rangoon years ago when she was still a prisoner of the military junta, listening to her platitudes about human rights and democracy. I thought then and now that like all politicians, her words were not to be given too much credit. Maybe those fools on the Nobel Peace Prize committee could revoke her Peace Prize and, while they’re at it, Obama’s.

Thailand wants no Rohyingas; Indonesia says only a few thousand on a temporary basis. Australia, which is not overly fond of non-whites, say no. Bangladesh can’t even feed its own wretched people. So the poor Rohyingas are a persecuted people without a country, adrift on a sea of sorrows.

What of the Muslim world? What of that self-proclaimed “Defender of the Faith. Saudi Arabia?” The Saudis are just buying $109 billion worth of US arms which they can’t use, but they don’t have even a few pennies for their desperate co-religionists in the Andaman Sea. The Holy Koran enjoins Muslims to aid their brethren wherever they are persecuted – this is the true essence of jihadism.

But the Saudis are too busy plotting against Iran, bombing Yemen, and supporting rebels in Iraq and Syria, or getting ready for their summer vacations in Spain and France, to think about fellow Muslims dying of thirst. Pakistan, which could help, has not, other than offering moral support. Neither has India, one of the world’s leading Muslim nations.

In the end, it may be up to the United States to rescue the Rohyinga, just as it rescued Bosnia and Kosovo. That’s fine with me. I don’t want the US to be the world’s policeman; I want it to be the world’s rescuer, its SOS force, its liberator.

We should tell Burma to halt its genocide today, or face isolation and sanctions from the outside world.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation – Pakistan, Hurriyet, – Turkey, Sun Times Malaysia and other news sites in Asia.

Myanmar denies Rohingya Muslims citizenship under UN pressure

by

Seventeen countries Asian countries met in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday to discuss the migrant crisis that has seen thousands lost at sea.

Rohingya migrants who arrived in Indonesia by boat are seen at a temporary shelter. Photo: Reuters

Rohingya migrants who arrived in Indonesia by boat are seen at a temporary shelter. Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Myanmar to address the status of Rohingya Muslims in the country.

“The communal situation in Rakhine and elsewhere remains fragile,” Ban said. “There are already troubling signs of ethnic and religious differences being exploited in the run-up to the elections. The reform process could be jeopardized if the underlying causes of these tensions are left unaddressed.”

Myanmar was criticized for failing to include in its census – the first in three decades – Rohingya Muslims in the list of the country’s 135 official ethnic groups, which was taken as a sign that the country still has no intention of recognizing its 1.3 million Rohingya as citizens.

Myanmar President Thein Sein launched the census and said it had been done in line with international standards.

“From the political dialogues that we will be conducting in the very near future to establish a union based on federal principles, we will certainly encounter issues of categorizing and recognizing the ethnic national races based on political agreements reached,” he said.

The Dalai Lama joined in the debate and asked Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do more to help the persecuted minority in her country. It is not the first time the Tibetan spiritual leader has pleaded to Suu Kyi, who has always refused to publicly speak out for the Rohingya.

Myanmar refuses to recognize the term Rohingya and calls the people Bengali, suggesting they come from neighboring Bangladesh. Officials in Myanmar said they would not attend the Bangkok meeting if the term Rohingya was used on the statement; which Thailand accepted by titling the conference “Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean.”

Many nongovernmental organizations have been trying to help the Rohingyas, which the U.N. describes as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. On Thursday, the Rakhine state legislature voted to shut down unregistered NGOs, arguing they had been “causing bigger problems” between Muslims and Buddhists. Doctors Without Borders was one of the nongovernmental organizations asked to stop working in the Rakhine state, where it was providing health care to displaced people in camps.

UN chief: Syrians feel 'increasingly abandoned'

by

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says world “divided and incapable of taking collective action” to resolve crisis.

More than 4 million people have fled the country millions more have been internally displaced [AFP/Getty Images]

More than 4 million people have fled the country millions more have been internally displaced [AFP/Getty Images]

by Al Jazeera

The UN secretary-general has warned that Syria’s people feel increasingly abandoned by the world as their country’s crisis enters its fifth year.

Ban Ki-moon called on President Bashar al-Assad by name to take decisive steps to end the conflict.

“Governments or movements that aspire to legitimacy do not massacre their own people,” Ban declared on Thursday.

In a statement, Ban described the international community as “divided and incapable of taking collective action” in the civil war.

That division is seen in the UN Security Council, which has been largely powerless to take strong action because of the threat of a veto from permanent member Russia, Syria’s ally.

Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters that the UN chief was not so much assigning blame but underscoring “our collective responsibility”.

The Syrian conflict began months after popular protests erupted in March 2011.

More than 220,000 people have been killed so far in the war, and more than 4 million have fled the country.

The UN says it needs another $2.9bn to help Syrians caught up in the conflict.

Government forces and rebels are battling each other on many fronts, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has seized large swathes of territory.

‘Total collapse’

Ban warned of the “fearsome prospect of the total collapse of this country” and its effects throughout the region.

He said the lack of accountability in the conflict has led to an exponential increase in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“Each day brings reports of fresh horrors,” he said, including executions, systemic torture, the use of indiscriminate weapons like barrel bombs on civilians, siege and starvation and the use of chemical weapons.

The UN chief’s statement came as more than 20 international aid groups issued a joint condemnation of the Security Council for its failure to back up the resolutions it passed last year to help get aid to millions of Syrians and protect civilians from the fighting.

The aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Handicap International, called on UN members to ensure the resolutions are fully implemented.

Israel's plan to build 600 new homes in E. Jerusalem earns UN’s anger

by

United Nations

– by RT

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his frustration at Israel’s settlement program, which plans 600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The new units are set to expand four existing settlements in the Palestinian city.

“I once again strongly condemn the continued settlement activity by Israel,” the UN chief told journalists after a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah.

The Israeli government also plans to seize one square kilometer of farmland near Bethlehem, “intended for the construction of settlement units, parks, a synagogue and agricultural roads,” according to a report by the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

It is possible to appeal the seizure within a period of two months, in line with Israel’s tax law. The new construction plans come shortly after last month’s announcement of the most significant construction plan in the past several decades – the idea of building more than 2,500 homes in the area with a majority Arab population.

Like Ban, the EU has joined the international chorus of condemnation, strongly suggesting that such plans threaten to upset a very fragile peace with the Palestinians.

The UN chief also urged the two sides to return to the negotiating table.

“I urge Palestinians to show courage and continue engaging in the… peace process… [and] Israelis to do the same,” Ban warned, adding, “Time is not on the side of peace. We need to act immediately to prevent a deepening of an already unsustainable status quo.”

President Mahmoud Abbas has also recently warned the UN General Assembly that continuing the occupation would ensure that the Palestinian population would eventually turn into fragmented ghettos. He will be seeking a UN resolution and a “firm timetable” to stop the Israeli occupation.

But the move also comes as the government admitted to a covert building freeze in the disputed area. Israeli media is alleging that Ban got the entire matter wrong and sees his comments as misdirected. They believe the UN head might have been referring to building tenders in a wholly Jewish neighborhood in the capital, leaving intact the building freeze.

According to Arutz Sheva daily, the decision was in fact the approval of building tenders at some future date in the Jewish neighborhood of Israel’s capital, and leaves intact the building freeze gripping the area.

This summer’s 50-day military conflict between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Administration has caused immense damage and loss of life. Dubbed operation Protective Edge, it killed more than 2,200 people – the vast majority of them Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children.

Ban’s visit to Ramallah comes on the heels of combined efforts by the US, EU, Turkey, Qatar, Germany and Kuwait to rebuild the Gaza Strip. So far they’ve raised $5.4 billion, smashing through the $4 billion target set by the Palestinian Authority.

How UN’s Ban Ki-moon and Oxfam undermine Palestinian right to resist

by

palestine-resist

– by Ali Abunimah

Earlier this month, as Israeli massacres claimed dozens of lives every day and night in Gaza, 129 Palestinian and international organizations sent an open letter condemning UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s role as a partner in Israel’s crimes.

They criticized his “biased statements,” his “failure to act, and the inappropriate justification of Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law, which amount to war crimes.”

They called on him to “stand for law and justice or resign.”

Sadly, the message did not get through. Yesterday, following the ceasefire deal between the Palestinian resistance and Israel, Ban issued a new statement welcoming the ceasefire.

“After this latest round of killing and the further widespread destruction of Palestinian homes, civilians on both sides need a reprieve in order to resume their daily lives, and to allow for humanitarian and early recovery efforts to address the desperate needs of the people in Gaza,” Ban said.

But Ban continued (emphasis added):

Any peace effort that does not tackle the root causes of the crisis will do little more than set the stage for the next cycle of violence. Gaza must be brought back under one legitimate Palestinian Government adhering to the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] commitments; the blockade of Gaza must end; Israel’slegitimate security concerns must be addressed. The United Nations stands ready to support efforts to address the structural factors of conflict between Israel and Gaza.

The Secretary-General remains hopeful that the extended ceasefire will act as a prelude to a political process as the only way of achieving durable peace. The two-state solution is the only viable option. The Secretary-General urgently calls on both parties to return to meaningful negotiations towards a final status agreement that addresses all core issues and ends the 47-year occupation.

It is not up to Ban to dictate internal political arrangements to Palestinians, but what concerns me is his insistence that any Palestinian “government” must adhere to “PLO commitments.”

What he means is that it must adhere to the so-called “Quartet principles” dictated by the United States in 2006 after Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections.

These require Palestinians to “be committed to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Road Map.”

What this meant at the time and means in the present context is that Palestinians must unilaterally accept Israel’s political demands and renounce resistance and self-defense.

It is simply obscene for Ban to demand this, especially after the latest Israeli war crimes and atrocities that some international experts say rise to the level of genocide.

It would be one thing if Ban were even-handed and demand that Israel also renounce violence, but he does not do so. Instead he makes a nod to Israel’s “legitimate security concerns” as if it were not the Palestinians who have actually faced apocalyptic destruction – the equivalent of an atomic bomb dropped on Gaza – at the hands of Israel.

It is also notable that Ban utters not a single word about Palestinian rights. Instead he uses the vague and deceptive formula of a “final status agreement that addresses all core issues and ends the 47-year occupation.”

This may be news to Ban, but eighty percent of Gaza’s residents are refugees. Yes, they are resisting to end Israel’s 47-year occupation. But they are also demanding an end to their 66-year exile from their homes in present-day Israel. Their right of return cannot be trumped by Israel’s racist demand to be recognized as a “Jewish state.”

Oxfam backs Israel’s right to kill Palestinians

Sadly, this unbalanced thinking, in which the aggressor and occupier’s right to use violence against its victims is sacred, and in which the victims must be disarmed, is not unique to the UN.

I was also disturbed to read a paper from the international development agency Oxfam which effectively endorses Israel’s right to kill Palestinians under certain circumstances, while denying Palestinians any right to resist (“Cease Failure: Rethinking seven years of failing policies in Gaza”).

The paper contains some useful suggestions to be sure, but apparently offers Israel advice on when it can kill its Palestinian victims in its self-declared buffer zones in the Gaza Strip and off Gaza’s coast (emphasis added):

Israeli activity is currently conducted under the laws of armed conflict, which allow for the legal use of deadly force under an extensive range of circumstances. A more appropriate approach is the law enforcement model, which would limit the legal use of deadly force to extreme circumstances, and only when all other non-lethal measures have proven insufficient.

While offering the Israeli occupation tips on when and how to kill Palestinians whose land it is occupying, Oxfam advises that Palestinians should be denied any means to self-defense and resistance.

It calls for “adequate inspection of the border between Egypt and Gaza to eliminate the smuggling of illegal weapons” but without describing any means by which Palestinians could legally obtain weapons to defend themselves.

Oxfam reaffirms its opposition to any Palestinian right to self-defense and resistance by demanding that a future “Palestinian government” be held “accountable to the current Quartet principles (renunciation of violence, acceptance of previous agreements signed by the PLO, and recognition of the State of Israel).”

This is simply astonishing. Oxfam should not give the occupier advice on how to occupy and how to refine its apparatus of siege, oppression and murder.

Instead, Oxfam should restrict itself to demanding that Palestinian rights, all Palestinian rights, be enforced and that Israeli individuals and the Israeli entity be held accountable for their atrocities in Gaza.

Let’s remember that Palestinian resistance would be unnecessary in the first place if the so-called “international community” – the US, EU and their client regimes – had not been arming, financing and supporting Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing and colonization for all these decades.

Palestinians should no longer accept such language or demands from those who purport to support their struggle.

Source

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives