Last month President Donald Trump said that Russia was hurting US efforts to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons [Stephanie Keith/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rejected the US call to cut ties with North Korea after Pyongyang launched ballistic missiles on Wednesday.

“We perceived this negatively,” Lavrov told journalists in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, commenting on Washington’s statement on the need to cut ties with North Korea.

US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, on Wednesday called on all countries to sever relations with Pyongyang, including cutting trade links and expelling North Korean workers.

The Trump administration vowed to slap additional sanctions on North Korea after the reclusive country test-launched its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) yet, with a range capable of striking Washington, DC.

North Korean state television, KCNA, said that missile is the “most powerful ICBM, which meets the goal of the completion of the rocket weaponry system development set by the DPRK”, according to South Korea’s news agency, Yonhap. DPRK refers to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Last month President Donald Trump said that Russia was hurting US efforts to disarm the North Korea of its nuclear weapons.

Trump has praised China – a close ally of Pyongyang – for its efforts to put pressure on North Korea.

In a tit-for-tat war of words with Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the US president called Kim a “madman” while the Korea leader dubbed him a “mentally deranged US dotard”.

The Russian foreign minister in September urged “hot heads” to calm down, calling the war of words “a kindergarten fight”.

by Al Jazeera

Former Bosnian Serbian commander Ratko Mladic has been sentenced to life in prison for genocide and war crimes during the Balkans conflicts more than two decades ago.

The presiding judge of the the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Wednesday found that the 74-year-old general “significantly contributed” to genocide committed at Srebrenica.

Previous judgments already ruled that the massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica was genocide.

Judge Alphons Orie ruled that the perpetrators of the crimes committed in Srebrenica intended to destroy the Muslims living there.

The judge also ruled that Mladic carried out and personally oversaw a deadly campaign of sniping and shelling in Sarajevo.

“The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to humankind,” he said.

The former general initially appeared relaxed as he listened intently to the verdict but was later removed from the courtroom after he shouted at the judges when he was refused an adjournment.

His lawyer said Mladic needed a break for treatment of high blood pressure but the continued reading the verdict after Mladic removal from court.

The former general, dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia”, was accused of 11 counts – including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his forces during the war in Bosnia from 1992 and 1995.

Many Bosnian Serbs, however, view Mladic as a national hero who helped Serbia through the war that broke up former Yugoslavia.

Serbian daily newspapers on Wednesday featured photos of Mladic on the front page with captions reading “I’m innocent; they can’t take my soul” and “I’m not guilty.”

Al Jazeera’s Marko Subotic, reporting from Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, said support for Mladic there is still widespread.

“The media in Serbia never reported on what the Serbian army, under the command of Mladic, committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because of this, researchers say residents are confused because they don’t know why Mladic is standing trial at the tribunal in the Netherlands,” Subotic said.

“A study in 2012 concluded that 42 percent of residents in Serbia don’t know why Mladic is being tried at all. They know more about what went on while he was in hiding; they know that he was looking for strawberries when he was arrested in Serbia in 2011.”

Wednesday’s verdict was long awaited by tens of thousands of victims across former Yugoslavia, and dozens gathered early outside the courtroom, many clutching photos of loved ones who died or are among the 7,000 still missing.

The court said, however, it was “not convinced” of genocidal intent in six other municipalities, in line with previous judgments.

“We’re sad and disappointed because Mladic wasn’t declared responsible for the genocide in Prijedor and in the other five municipalities that were listed,” Sejida Karabasic, from Prijedor, said.

“3,176 people [killed] in Prijedor isn’t enough in order to prove that there was a mass killing. So, more than 10,000 of us should have been killed in order to prove that genocide happened there,” Karabasic said.

“There were mass rapes, killings, concentration camps. They found the largest mass graves in the Prijedor region, none of that was enough for the verdict to include genocide,” she added.

Mladic’s trial was the last before the tribunal and came as the court in The Hague prepared to close its doors next month.

by Al Jazeera

A blast at a mosque in Mubi, northeastern Nigeria, has killed at least 50 people, according to local media reports.

Police said a teenage bomber targeted the mosque as people arrived for morning prayers.

No group has yet claimed responsibility, but Boko Haram carries out regular attacks in the region.

“It was a devastating attack on the mosque as people gathered for prayer,” said Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

“The number of wounded was so high that we will probably see more and more people succumbing to wounds.”

He added: “Mubi is not far away from … the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency.”

Mugabe said he plans to preside over the coming party congress [AFP]

by Al Jazeera

Harare, Zimbabwe – President Robert Mugabe ignored a noon deadline to offer his resignation, imposed by Zimbabwe’s ruling party, and now faces the threat of impeachment as people remain in a state of shock after the 93-year-old leader’s anticlimactic address to the nation.

Public expectation was high that Mugabe would tender his resignation in a speech on Sunday evening. But after 37 years in power, Mugabe held to his throne longer.

In a scenario that last week would have been unthinkable, tens of thousands of citizens and the ruling ZANU-PF party have turned against Mugabe after a military takeover on November 15 – which put the president under house arrest.

The ZANU-PF party’s Central Committee, after expelling Mugabe as its leader on Sunday, had given him a Monday noon ultimatum to step down as president, or face impeachment.

Instead of celebration, the streets of Harare, the capital, were quiet after Mugabe’s address, in which he only acknowledged the party’s problems. He took note of the military’s action, but said it did not challenge his authority as head of state.

“The operation I alluded to did not amount to a threat to our well-cherished constitutional order,” Mugabe said. “Nor was it a challenge to my authority as head of state and government. Not even as commander-in-chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.”

Mugabe vowed to preside over the extraordinary congress scheduled for next month.

He ended his address with a wartime mantra: iwe neni tine basa- “you and I have a job to do”.

On Monday morning, Chris Mutsvangwa, the head of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, renewed a plea for Mugabe to resign and warned of further protests.

Speaking in Harare, he said: “Mugabe, go now, go now … your time is up!”

He added: “Please leave State House and let the country start on a new page.”

War veterans, who fought alongside Mugabe during the 1970s struggle for liberation from Britain and spearheaded the repossession of white-owned commercial farms in the 2000s, claim their president has betrayed the revolution.

Doug Coltart, a human rights lawyer, told Al Jazeera it was important for citizens to be involved in the movement to remove Mugabe.

“ZANU-PF seems to be seeking to be sidelining the citizens in these protests,” he said. “We feel that if citizens remain on the sidelines then we will be sidelined.

“We need to insert ourselves at the centre of the conversation.”

Activist pastor Evan Mawarire, who has been holding mass prayer sessions, said: “Today, there is a little bit of disappointment because of the president’s speech yesterday, that didn’t say anything about the situation.

“But for us, the resolution is we know what we want … we have been able to deliver a message that Mugabe must go.”

‘We are now in danger of things escalating’
Zimbabweans watching Mugabe’s speech at a cafe on Sunday evening in the capital gasped in disappointment and disbelief. Those who had gathered in bars and restaurants expressed disappointment and anxiety.

Tears welled up in Augustine Moyo’s eyes.

“I’m disappointed and heartbroken. I came all the way to see him resign, but now he’s buying time. He bought time for another day, but he can’t buy time for another election,” the 35-year-old public relations officer told Al Jazeera.

“We’ve managed to survive to a non-coup for the past few days, but we are now in danger of things escalating. The military can’t afford to back down now and he’s not resigning so we now have a stalemate, but something will have to give and it won’t be the army.”

Gabriel Muchenagumbo, 30, told Al Jazeera he was unsurprised and feared the further measures that could be taken to remove him.

“To me, he’s already gone, these are the last kicks of a dying horse and if he doesn’t submit that letter then measures will be taken against him by the parliament and the army,” the barber said. “He will have to be pushed out, but we cannot be sacrificed for one man, we can’t.”

According to constitution rules on stepping down, the president is required to submit a written letter of resignation to the Speaker of Parliament who must then issue a public notice within 24 hours of receipt.

In the event Mugabe does not file his notice, Mutsvangwa, the war veterans leader, has also warned of impeachment proceedings.

A motion could be put forward when parliament sits on Tuesday.

However, analyst McDonald Lewanika told Al Jazeera the process may take a few days as the house has to investigate the grounds for impeachment before pronouncing a decision on the motion.

‘It’s time to let go’
In an unprecedented mass protest, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans took to the streets on Saturday to demand an end to Mugabe’s rule.

Valerie Mjanji, 37, a manager who participated in the march, said Mugabe needed to see an even stronger message from the people.

“He’s danced his dance but now it’s time to let it go, he’s had his time as president, but now he needs to let the nation go and let us be free,” she told Al Jazeera. “If we have to come out in our numbers then we should do that because he needs to get it, it’s time to let go.”

A woman holds a placard with a portrait of Sergei Magnitsky during a 2012 rally [Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Canada’s move to impose sanctions on 30 Russian officials was “senseless and reprehensible” and has led to retaliatory measures, Russian officials said.

Canada announced the sanctions on Friday against Russian officials it accused of complicity in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009 while he was in prison after alleging state tax fraud.

Kirill Kalinin, a spokesman for the Russian diplomatic mission in Ottawa, told the official TASS news agency late on Friday retaliatory actions against Canadians had already been set in motion.

“Canada’s decision on extending anti-Russian sanctions under a false pretext of a hypocritical protection of human rights is absolutely senseless and reprehensible,” said Kalinin.

Ottawa’s move “is isolating itself from one of the key global powers” and “pushes Canada’s foreign policy back to the narrow black-and-white worldview, incompatible with modern geopolitics”, he added.

“Dozens of Canadians” have now been barred from entering Russia in response, Kalinin said, without specifying who would be affected.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed “the list is long, with dozens of names on it”.

The foreign ministry said in a statement those targeted are “Russophobic Canadian citizens who have consistently worked to destroy bilateral relations.”

In 2008, the whistleblower Magnitsky accused Russian interior ministry officials of organising a $235m tax scam, but he was then charged with the crimes he claimed to have uncovered. Human rights groups allege he was beaten in prison before he died under unclear circumstances.

His detention and death ignited serious diplomatic tensions between Russia and some western countries, including the United States.

Canada last month passed a Sergei Magnitsky Law, which targets Russian officials for human rights violations. Ottawa followed the Magnitsky Act passed by the US that led to sanctions on more than 40 Russian officials.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled the country since late August [Anadolu]

by Al Jazeera

The United States is considering sanctions against Myanmar authorities for its “violent, traumatic abuses” of the majority Muslim Rohingya in restive Rakhine state.

Washington may use a human rights law to target leaders or groups involved in the violence in the western state, the US Department of State said in a statement on Monday.

“We express our gravest concern with recent events in Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured,” the statement said.

“It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable.”

Since August 25, the Myanmar army has waged a brutal military campaign in Rakhine against the Rohingya.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled the country, most arriving in Bangladesh by foot or by boat, with aid agencies struggling to cope with the influx.

“We are exploring accountability mechanisms available under US law, including Global Magnitsky targeted sanctions,” Heather Nauert, State Department spokesperson, said.

Under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, the president can block or revoke the visas of certain foreign individuals and entities or impose property sanctions on them.

The US government last imposed sanctions on Myanmar in 1997 when it was under a military dictatorship. Following a transition towards democracy, the measures were lifted in October 2016 by then President Barack Obama.

Benjamin Zawacki, an independent Southeast Asia analyst, said while the proposed sanctions are far more appropriate, if imposed, they come a month late.

“Any preventative element of these sanctions has long passed its sell-by date,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking from Thailand’s capital, Bangkok.

“The only thing left now is the punitive element, and it remains to be seen whether they will be felt as such by these generals that have been targeted.”

The US also announced that it is withdrawing military assistance to Myanmar officers and units operating in northern Rakhine.

Zawacki suggested that an arms embargo would be effective against the military.

“If there is, in fact, no punitive effect on these generals, they [sanctions] need to be strengthened and widened by way of military force projection,” he said.

Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the US holds Myanmar’s military leadership responsible for its harsh crackdown of the Rohingya.

The UN describes the Rohingya as the world’s most persecuted people.

The minority group has suffered years of discrimination and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982.

In Monday’s statement, the US urged the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine, as well as a “credible path to citizenship”.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been victims of systematic and widespread attacks, says Amnesty [File:Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

Amnesty International has said it has strong evidence that the Myanmar army committed crimes against humanity in northern Rakhine State.

A new report published by the global rights group on Wednesday detailed mass killings, rape, torture and forcible transfers of Rohingya Muslims in the army’s ongoing campaign against fighters from the persecuted minority.

Amnesty has called for the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar and set targeted sanctions against senior officials.

The report said hundreds of thousands of Rohingya men, women and children have been “the victims of a widespread and systematic attack”, and that “Myanmar’s security forces unleashed an attack against the Rohingya population in its entirety.”

The army’s Western Command was responsible for some of the worst violations, it said.

The Amnesty report, based on about 150 witness accounts, satellite data, and photo and video evidence, is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis to date since Rohingya refugees began pouring into Bangladesh in late August.

Efforts to reach the Myanmar government were unsuccessful.

Officials have previously denied any systematic violence against the Rohingya, who they consider as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Laura Haigh, Amnesty’s Myanmar researcher, said the crimes they documented were similar to the army’s abuses against other ethnic minorities in Myanmar, including the Kachin, Shan and the Palaung.

“There are common threads here: A military that is completely unaccountable, often out of control, and impunity that breeds further impunity,” she said.

“And it’s time for that to stop.”

The violence in Buddhist-majority Rakhine erupted after an armed group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked at least 30 security posts on August 25.

An estimated 582,000 refugees have now fled Myanmar and thousands more are continuing to make the perilous journey on foot to the country’s border with Bangladesh, the UN said on Tuesday.

Page after page in the Amnesty report, entitled “My World Is Finished”, provide detailed testimonies of widespread killings, rapes, and burning of entire villages.

‘Burned all over’
In one account, a 30-year-old woman from the village of Min Gyi, also known as Tula Toli, said soldiers killed scores of men and older boys, raped the women, torched Rohingya homes, and burned people, including children, to death.

“They [the soldiers] first hit us in the head, to make us weak … Then, they raped us,” she said.

Soldiers then set fire to the house she was assaulted in, but she said she managed to escape after her seven-year-old daughter found a weak point in the hut’s bamboo siding.

“I was burned all over,” she told Amnesty. “The flame was so hot. When I ran, the fire was still on me. The clothes we wore, they were all burned.”

The pattern was similar in dozens of villages across Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathetaung townships, the report said.

The Myanmar army killed at least hundreds of Rohingya women, men, and children in the hours and days since the ARSA attacks in August, it says. Many people were shot as they ran away.

The elderly and disabled were often unable to flee and were killed or burned in their homes.

Mohamed Zubair, 26, told Amnesty he left his 90-year-old grandmother in their home when the military opened fire on his village, Chut Pyin, in Rathetaung.

“I asked her to follow us to the hill. She said, ‘I’m old, they won’t do anything to me. Go,'” Zubair said.

In hiding, he watched as soldiers torched his village, including the house where he had left his grandmother.

When the military left, he found his grandmother dead, her body “burnt very seriously”.

More than a dozen other witnesses from Chut Pyin also described seeing soldiers, border guards and local vigilantes deliberately burn down Rohingya parts of the village, and leave the non-Rohingya areas intact, the report said.

The accounts of targeted burning were backed by satellite imagery.

“I was burned all over … The flame was so hot. When I ran, the fire was still on me.”
ROHINGYA RAPE SURVIVOR
Amnesty said the killing of the elderly, disabled and children demonstrated the military’s campaign “has been far from a ‘clearance operation’ in the sense of being designed to root out ARSA members.

“Instead, it has been an attack on the Rohingya population as a whole, with the seeming objective to ‘cleanse’ Rakhine state of that entire population”.

Amnesty said its investigations into the responsibility of specific units and individuals were ongoing, but testimony indicates that a unit led by Major-General Maung Maung Soe was disproportionately involved in some of the worst crimes.

Witnesses consistently described a patch on soldiers’ uniforms that match the one worn by Western Command, the report said.

Amnesty said it is also investigating claims that ARSA fighters killed Hindu men and women, and burned ethnic Rakhine villages.

Haigh, the researcher, said Amnesty wants to see the UN General Assembly adopt “a strong resolution on Myanmar” as a first step to end the violence.

“We’d like to see a strengthened call for a global arms embargo, in addition to targeted sanctions on specific senior military officials who are responsible for crimes,” she said.

Myanmar must also allow unfettered access to UN investigators, she said.

Myanmar has strongly denied allegations of human rights abuses.

On Monday, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s army told UN officials that soldiers acted lawfully in their response to attacks by ARSA.

On his official Facebook page, Min Aung Hlaing said UN comments on Rakhine, which include allegations of ethnic cleansing, were “totally contrary to the situation on the ground”.

London: The “unique” and “extraordinary” novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” by noted American short story writer George Saunders that tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s grief after the death of his young son has been declared as the winner of 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Saunders’ win was announced by Lola Baroness Young, the chair of the judging committee, at a dinner at London’s Guildhall late on Tuesday night. He was presented with a trophy by the Duchess of Cornwall and a 50,000 pounds cheque by Luke Ellis, Chief Executive of the Man Group. Saunders also received a designer-bound edition of his book and a further 2,500 pounds for being shortlisted.

“The form and style of this utterly original novel reveals a witty, intelligent and deeply moving narrative. This tale of the haunting and haunted souls in the afterlife of Abraham Lincoln’s young son paradoxically creates a vivid and lively evocation of the characters that populate this other world. Lincoln in the Bardo is both rooted in, and plays with history, and explores the meaning and experience of empathy,” commented Young.

Her fellow judges this year were writer and critic Lila Azam Zanganeh, novelist and poet Sarah Hall, artist and author Tom Phillips and travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron.

Saunders thanked his wife, Paula, referring to her as his “precious friend and artistic hero” for supporting him to achieve the “wonderful honour”.

“If you haven’t noticed, we live in a strange time. So the question at the heart of the matter is pretty simple: Do we respond to fear with exclusion and negative projection and violence? Or do we take that ancient great leap of faith and do our best to respond with love? And with faith in the idea that what seems other is actually not other at all, but just us on a different day.

“In the US we’re hearing a lot about the need to protect culture. Well this tonight is culture, it is international culture, it is compassionate culture, it is activist culture. It is a room full of believers in the word, in beauty and ambiguity and in trying to see the other person’s point of view, even when that is hard,” Saunders said on receiving the prize.

The 58-year-old New York resident, born in Texas, is only the second American author to win the prize in its 49-year history. He was in contention for the prize with two British, one British-Pakistani and two American writers.

The novel is published by Bloomsbury, making it the third consecutive year the prize has been won by an independent publisher, following Oneworld Publications’ success in 2015 with Marlon James and 2016 with Paul Beatty. Bloomsbury has won the prize thrice before, with Howard Jacobson (2010), Margaret Atwood (2000) and Michael Ondaatje (1992).

The widely-read novel, which has now thrust Saunders into the limelight, focuses on a single night in the life of Abraham Lincoln: an actual moment in 1862 when the body of his 11-year-old son was laid to rest in a Washington cemetery. Strangely and brilliantly, Saunders activates this graveyard with the spirits of its dead.

The judges considered 144 submissions for this year’s prize. The books losing out on the prize were “4321” by Paul Auster (US), “Elmet” by Fiona Mozley (UK), “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid (UK-Pakistan), “History of Wolves” by Emily Fridlund (US) and “Autumn” by Ali Smith (UK).

(IANS)

Valletta: A journalist who led the Panama Papers probe into corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her residence, the media reported.

Daphne Caruana Galizia died on Monday when her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device, reports the Guardian.

A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers, Caruana Galizia was recently described by the American news outlet Politico as a “one-woman WikiLeaks”.

Her latest revelations accused Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and two of his closest aides, connecting offshore companies linked to the three men with the sale of Maltese passports and payments from the government of Azerbaijan.

No group or individual claimed responsibility for the attack, the Guardian reported.

Malta’s President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, called for calm. “In these moments, when the country is shocked by such a vicious attack, I call on everyone to measure their words, to not pass judgement and to show solidarity.”

In a statement, Muscat condemned the “barbaric attack”.

“Everyone knows Caruana Galizia was a harsh critic of mine,” said Muscat, adding “Both politically and personally, but nobody can justify this barbaric act in any way.”

He announced in parliament later on Monday that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers were on their way to Malta to assist with the investigation, following his request for help from the US government.

According to local media reports, Caruana Galizia filed a police report 15 days ago to say that she had been receiving death threats.

The journalist posted her final blog on her Running Commentary website at 2.35 p.m. on Monday, and the explosion, which occurred near her home, was reported to police just after 3 p.m.

Over the last two years, her reporting had largely focused on revelations from the Panama Papers, a cache of 11.5 million documents leaked from the internal database of the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

(IANS)