Dutch court convicts anti-Islam PVV party leader Geert Wilders of hate speech for leading a chant against Moroccans.

Wilders has maintained that he was merely repeating his party’s political programme [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

A court in the Netherlands has found Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam politician, guilty of hate speech for leading a chant against Moroccans at a 2014 campaign rally.

Wilders was convicted of discrimination and hate speech, but sentenced to no punishment on Friday for comments he made at a March 2014 local government election rally in The Hague.

When he asked supporters whether they wanted “fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands”, the crowd shouted back “Fewer! Fewer!” and a smiling Wilders answered: “We’re going to organise that.”

Wilders boycotted most of the trial, but in closing remarks on November 23 told judges his comments were obviously not intended as a call to genocide – but rather a reference to his official party platform.

Prosecutors, who rejected Wilders’ assertions that the trial was politically motivated and an unfair attempt to limit his right to free speech, had asked that a fine of 5,000 euros, but no prison sentence, be imposed.

Dutch TV channel RTL news reported that Wilders would appeal against the conviction.

Wilders, who is leading in several polls for the March elections, said he was not guilty of any wrongdoing.

“Every verdict, acquittal, or conviction will de facto change nothing,” he said in an interview with De Telegraaf published on Friday.

“I will continue to speak the truth regardless, including about the Moroccan problem, and no judge, politician or terrorist will stop me.”

A previous attempt to prosecute Wilders for anti-Islam remarks, such as likening the religion to Nazism and calling for a ban on the Quran, ended in acquittal in 2011.

That process was widely seen as strengthening his reputation as a defender of freedom of speech and increased his popularity.

Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from Schipol, said a conviction like this could work in Wilders’ favour.

“This could drum up support for some of the issues he is keen to champion: euro-scepticism, clamping down on migrants,” Barker said. “But what he is convinced he will continue to do is beat the nationalist drum, so how he plays this conviction is really yet to be seen.”

Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party (PVV) is leading in the polls ahead of a crunch vote on March 15 with the latest numbers putting the PVV at 34 seats in the 150-seat lower house of Dutch parliament, some 10 seats ahead of his nearest rival, Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Liberals.

After army advance against Boko Haram in the north, many people found on brink of starvation amid humanitarian crises.

A girl displaced by Boko Haram rests at a camp for internally displaced people in Yola [Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Fati Adamu has not seen three of her six children nor her husband since Boko Haram fighters attacked her hometown in northeast Nigeria in a hail of gunfire.

Two years on, she is among thousands of refugees at the Bakassi camp in Maiduguri, the city worst hit by a seven-year-old conflict that has forced more than two million people to flee their homes.

The United Nations says 400,000 children are now at risk from a famine in the northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe – 75,000 of whom could die from hunger within the next few months.

A push against the fighters by the Nigerian army and soldiers from neighbouring countries has enabled troops to enter remote parts of the northeast in the last few months, revealing tens of thousands on the brink of starvation – and countless families torn apart.

“I don’t know if they are dead or alive,” Adamu, 35, said of her missing relatives.

There is a renewed threat of Boko Haram attacks. The start of the dry season has seen a surge in suicide bombings, some of which have targeted refugee camps, including one at Bakassi in October that killed five people.

The World Food Programme said it provides food aid to 450,000 people in Borno and Yobe. About 200,000 of them receive $54 each month to buy food, soon to rise to $73.

At least 15 camps, mostly on the outskirts of Maiduguru, the Borno state capital, are home to thousands of people unable to return home and surviving on food rations.

At one known as New Prison, women and children visibly outnumber men, many of whom were killed by Boko Haram or are missing.

One man – Bukaralhaji Bukar, 45, who has eight children from his two wives – said the food he buys with the monthly stipend finishes within two weeks.

“We are suffering. It is not enough,” said Bukar, who begs on the street to make money.

In the centre of Maiduguri, life seems to be returning to normal. Food markets are bustling but soldiers in pick-up trucks clutching rifles are reminders of the need for vigilance.

Malnourished children

In a ward in Molai district near the Bakassi camp, the air is filled with the sound of crying babies and the gurgle of those who lack the energy to cry. Some, whose skin clings tightly to their bones, are silent – too weary to even raise their heads.

“Many of them are malnourished, which is already bad enough, but they also develop things like malaria which further worsens their illnesses because they cannot eat and start vomiting,” said Dr Iasac Bot, who works at the unit overseen by the charity Save the Children.

Children have conditions ranging from diarrhoea and pneumonia to bacterial infections and skin infections.

Hauwa Malu, 20, fled with her husband and their two-week-old daughter, Miriam, from her village in Jere after Boko Haram fighters burned the farming community to the ground and took their cattle.

Miriam, now aged 10 months, has suffered from fevers, a persistent cough, and is malnourished. Her mother said they have been left without a home or livelihood.

Tim Vaessen of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said a failure to restore their ability to farm would in the long term mean displaced people would depend on expensive food aid.

“They would remain in these camps, they would become easy targets for other armed groups and they might have to migrate again – even up to Europe,” he said.

The FBI is not investigating letters sent to mosques in six more states promising to “cleanse” America of Muslims.

Photocopies of the original letter’ sent to three California mosques has been sent to mosques in other states [Credit: CAIR/Facebook]

by Al Jazeera

Several more mosques in the United States have reported receiving hate-filled letters from California that warned Muslims to leave the country or face genocide.

The identical letters postmarked from the Los Angeles area have now shown up at mosques throughout California and in Ohio, Michigan, Rhode Island, Indiana, Colorado and Georgia.

Los Angeles police have been investigating the lettersaddressed to “the children of Satan” as a hate incident, but not a crime because it does not contain a specific threat.

The letters appeared to be photocopies of a handwritten note referring to Muslims as “vile and filthy people” and saying that President-elect Donald Trump would do to Muslims what Hitler did to Jews.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has asked the FBI to investigate.

The FBI said the threats, while inflammatory and awful, did not constitute a hate crime, nor did they pose a threat specific enough to investigate at this point. They added they were monitoring the situation and urged anyone to report such incidents.

Police in Providence, Rhode Island, said they would increase patrols after one of the letters was received at Masjid Al-Kareem.

Faissal Elansari of the Islamic Center of Rhode Island said he felt a wave of hate at his doorstep, WPRI-TV reported.

Envelopes have had a return address in the city the letter was sent – often 331 Oak St. – but are postmarked in Los Angeles or Santa Clarita, a suburb about 30 miles north.

The name above the return address is Reza Khan, said Shehadeh Abdelkarim, president of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, which received one of the letters. He noted that is a Muslim name.

“The person obviously knows a little about Muslim culture,” Abdelkarim said.

The name is bogus, said Sgt Mike Abdeen of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which is helping Los Angeles police.

Letters have been received at six mosques in California, including Los Angeles, Fresno and San Jose, according to police and Islamic groups. Elsewhere, they have also turned up at mosques in Denver, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Savannah, Georgia, and a school affiliated with an Indianapolis mosque.

Trump’s spokespeople have not responded to a request for comment.

Players from Brazil’s Chapecoense and journalists among the dead as five people survive air disaster.

Only five people survived when a charter plane en route to Colombia went down in the mountains [Luis Noriega/EPA]

A plane carrying players from a Brazilian football team headed to Colombia for a regional tournament final, has crashed on its way to Medellin’s airport, killing at least 76 people.

Police officials said that five passengers had survived, one died in hospital and that the rest of the passengers were killed in the crash.

Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from Bogota, said the flight crashed in a mountainous region.

“There have been heavy rains day in and day out in the last week or so,” he said. “That could have played a big role in the crash, but that is still unconfirmed.”

Medillin’s Mayor Federico Gutierrez said he was on his way to the region where the chartered aircraft was believed to have crashed shortly before midnight local time.

“It’s a tragedy of huge proportions,” he told Blu Radio.

It was not clear what caused the British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane to crash, but, as reported by Rampietti, Colombia had been hit by heavy rains and thunderstorms in recent hours.

Data from the FlightRadar24.com website showed the plane circling before eventually disappearing south of Rio Negro. Medellin’s airport confirmed that the aircraft, which made a stop in Bolivia, was transporting the first division Chapecoense team from southern Brazil.

The team was scheduled to play on Wednesday in the first of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin.

‘Completely devastated’

Al Jazeera’s Monica Villamizar, reporting from Brazil’s Sau Paolo, said the country was “completely devastated”.

“This team in particular had been a miracle team,” she said. “The mood has changed from total celebration – to the fact that the team was in the finals – to total sadness here hearing the news of the crash.”

A video published on the team’s Facebook page showed players, filled with enthusiasm, preparing for the flight earlier on Monday in Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport.

The sister of defender Alan Ruschel, who local media reported was the first survivor taken to hospital, tweeted her relief.

“I love you BRO. You’re a warrior!” she said.

Ruschel had earlier posted images of his journey to Colombia on his Instagram account , including a photograph of he and his teammates onboard the plane.

Local reports said that goalkeeper  Marcos Danilo Padilha was another of the survivors, along with an unnamed air stewardess and a journalist.

After the incident, the team published an update on Facebook in which it said players, staff, journalists and guests were among those travelling with the club on the plane.

The team, from the small city of Chapeco, joined Brazil’s first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and made it to the Copa Sudamericana finals last week by defeating Argentina’s legendary San Lorenzo squad.

Al Jazeera senior sports presenter Andy Richardson described the team as “a rare model of organisational success” that was “lauded as an example of how to run a club”.

He added: “They were seen as a real success story of the last three or four years in Brazilian football.”

In a statement released on Tuesday, CONMEBOL, the South American Football Federation, announced it had suspended all activities until further notice.

After news of the disaster broke, tributes poured in from the football community with teams and players from across the world offering condolences and tributes.

“Sad news to wake up to today,” Manchester United and England captain Wayne Rooney tweeted.

Leader of Cuban revolution embraced communism, defied US for decades and lived in relative seclusion in his final years.

by Al Jazeera

Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the US, has died aged 90.

Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and current president of Cuba, announced his death on state television in Havana early on Saturday.

In his final years, Fidel lived in relative seclusion, but occasionally wrote opinion pieces or appeared to meet visiting dignitaries.

Al Jazeera’s Latin America Editor Lucia Newman, reporting from Santiago in Chile, said Castro’s death hardly came as a surprise.

“He has been a larger-than-life figure who inspired a revolutionary movement all over the world, especially in Latin America,” she said.

“As time went by, we heard less and less from Fidel Castro. We all knew he had been ill for a decade and not been seen since August after his birthday, which was celebrated across the country.

“His death is going to have an enormous emotional impact on Cubans. It does really feel like the beginning of the end of the Castro era.”

Mixed reactions

Many Havana residents reacted with sadness to the news.

“I am very upset. Whatever you want to say, he is a public figure who was respected and loved,” Sariel Valdespino, a student, said.

In contrast, exiled Cubans in Florida celebrated his death in the streets of Miami’s Little Havana.

Videos posted on social media showed people opening bottles of champagne, honking their car horns and banging on pots and pans.

The US government spent more than $1bn trying to kill, undermine or otherwise force Castro from power, but he endured unscathed before old age and disease finally took him.

His supporters in Havana described him as a tireless defender of the poor.

Castro was “a giant of the Third World”, said Agustin Diaz Cartaya, 85, who joined Castro in the 1953 attack in eastern Cuba that launched the revolution.

“No one has done more for the Third World than Fidel Castro.”

What critics said

Critics say Castro drove the country into economic ruin, denied basic freedoms to 11 million Cubans at home and forced more than a million others into exile.

“In 55 years, the Cuban government has not done anything to help the Cuban people in terms of human rights,” said Hector Maseda, 72, a former political prisoner who lives in Havana. “I don’t believe in this regime. I don’t trust it.”

Doubtless, Castro leaves a legacy that will be hotly debated for years to come.

For five decades, he worked to turn the island nation into a place of equality and social justice.

His government produced tens of thousands of doctors and teachers and achieved some of the lowest infant mortality and illiteracy rates in the Western hemisphere.

But Cuba never shook off its dependence on foreign dollars and the state-run economy failed to bring prosperity to most Cubans.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us any more,” Castro admitted in 2010, startling a visiting US journalist.

The US had tried for years to topple the Cuban government. Cuba stumbled along, even after the collapse of its chief sponsor, the former Soviet Union.

The CIA plotted to assassinate Castro – using everything from exploding seashells to lethal fungus, American officials cut off almost all trade to Cuba, and they financed dissidents and pro-democracy activists.

But nothing worked during 11 successive administrations, from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama.

On December 17, 2014, Obama announced that the US planned to renew diplomatic ties with Cuba and loosen some trade and travel restrictions.

Obama’s critics were angered, saying he was throwing a lifeline to the socialist government, and undermining the work of democracy activists who are regularly arrested and beaten.

Obama pledged to continue supporting democracy activists in Cuba, but said the US embargo had not worked and legislators should lift it.

As part of the deal he struck with Cuba, the US agreed to send three Cuban spies back to the island in exchange for jailed American development worker Alan Gross and Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a Cuban agent who spied for the CIA.

Order targets region with 10 million-strong Muslim Uighur minority, who frequently complain of religious discrimination.

Many experts doubt the Uighur groups’ links to global terrorism [AFP]

All residents in China’s largely Muslim region of Xinjiang must hand in their passports to local police stations for “examination and management”, according to Global Times, a state-funded newspaper .

“Anyone who needs the passport must apply to the police station,” an anonymous police officer in Aksu prefecture told the paper on Thursday, adding that the policy had been implemented throughout Xinjiang.

The Global Times article followed numerous reports of tightened passport controls in cities across the region.

While the order covers everyone living in the area, many members ofXinjiang’s more than 10 million-strong Muslim Uighur minority complain of discrimination – including denials of passport applications – as well as controls on their culture and religion.

In mid-October, the public security bureau of Shihezi city posted a directive on a verified social media account asking residents to hand in their passports to police.

The order stated: “Those who refuse to hand them in will bear the responsibility themselves should there be consequences such as being forbidden to go abroad.”

The post was later deleted.

Photos of other notices posted on social media showed police stations in various counties and in the regional capital Urumqi requesting citizens hand in passports or stating that new documents would no longer be issued.

‘Xinjiang regressing’

Angry questions about the new restrictions abounded on Chinese social media.

“I didn’t spend time and money getting a passport to become the focus of the government’s safeguarding or to ask for their instructions every time I go out on holiday,” said one incensed user from the border district of Tacheng, on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo platform.

“If citizens cannot enjoy even basic rights, how can we live? Would the government please give me a sensible reason for this?”

A second said: “Xinjiang is becoming stranger and stranger, regressing as time goes on.”

In June, local state-run media reported that the mostly Kazakh residents of a Xinjiang border district had to give police DNA samples, fingerprints, voiceprints and a “three-dimensional image” in order to apply for certain travel documents, including passports.

A Xinjiang official told the Global Times that the new tightening of policy was intended to maintain social order in the region.

Beijing regularly accuses what it says are exiled separatist groups, such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, of being behind attacks in Xinjiang, which has seen a wave of violent unrest.

But many independent experts doubt the strength of overseas Uighur groups and their links to violent attacks, with some saying China exaggerates the threat to justify tough security measures in the resource-rich region.

UNHCR chief accuses country’s troops of killing men and raping women, forcing stateless minority to flee to Bangladesh.

Hundreds of thousands live in camps in Bangladesh [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Myanmar is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims, a United Nations official has said, as stories of gang rape, torture and murder emerge from among the thousands who have fled to Bangladesh.

Up to 30,000 members of the ethnic community have abandoned their homes in Myanmar to escape the unfolding violence, the UN said, after troops poured into the narrow strip where they live earlier this month.

Bangladesh has resisted urgent international appeals to open its border to avert a humanitarian crisis, instead telling Myanmar it must do more to prevent the stateless Rohingya minority from entering.

“It’s very difficult for the Bangladeshi government to say the border is open because this would further encourage the government of Myanmar to continue the atrocities and push them out until they have achieved their ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority in Myanmar,” McKissick said.

A spokesman for Myanmar President Htin Kyaw criticised the comments.

“I would like to question the professionalism and ethics which should be followed and respected by UN staff. He should speak based on concrete and true facts, he shouldn’t make accusations,” Zaw Htay told AFP news agency.

Ethnic cleansing

It is not the first time ethnic-cleansing claims have been made against Myanmar.

In April 2013 Human Rights Watch said it was conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya – an accusation rejected by Thein Sein, the  then president,  as a “smear campaign”.

The scale of human suffering was becoming clear on Thursday, as desperate people such as Mohammad Ayaz told how troops attacked his village and killed his pregnant wife.

Cradling his two-year-old son, he said troops killed at least 300 men in the village market and gang-raped dozens of women before setting fire to around 300 homes, Muslim-owned shops and the mosque where he served as imam.

“They shot dead my wife, Jannatun Naim. She was 25 and seven months pregnant. I took refuge at a canal with my two-year-old son, who was hit by a rifle butt,” Ayaz said.

Ayaz sold his watch and shoes to pay for the journey and has taken shelter at a camp for unregistered Rohingya refugees.

Many of those seeking shelter say they walked for days and used rickety boats to cross into Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of registered Rohingya refugees have been living for decades.

The Rohingya are viewed as illegal immigrants  by many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar who call them “Bengali”, even though many have lived there for generations.

Most live in the impoverished western Rakhine state, but are denied citizenship and smothered by restrictions on movement and work.

Bangladesh said on Wednesday that it had summoned Myanmar’s ambassador to express “deep concern”.

Since the latest violence flared up, Bangladesh border guards have intensified patrols and the coastguard has deployed extra ships.

Officials say they have stopped around a thousand Rohingya Muslims at the border since Monday.

Satellite images

Human Rights Watch said this week it had identified, using satellite images, more than 1,000 homes in Rohingya villages that had been razed in northwestern Myanmar.

Myanmar’s military has denied burning villages and even blamed the Rohingya themselves.

Rohingya community leaders said hundreds of families had taken shelter in camps in the border towns of Teknaf and Ukhia, many hiding for fear they would be sent back to Myanmar.

Police on Wednesday detained 70 Rohingya, including women and children, who they say will be sent back across the border.

Number of anti-Muslim hate crimes rose in 2015 to the highest level since the aftermath of 9/11.

The FBI reported 257 incidents of anti-Muslim bias in 2015 in the US, compared with 154 incidents in 2014 [Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]

Hate crimes against Muslims in the United States shot up 67 percent in 2015 to their highest levels since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to new FBI statistics.

Overall, 57 percent of the 5,850 reported incidents were motivated by race or ethnicity, while 20 percent of hate crimes were related to religious bias, the federal law enforcement agency reported on Monday.

There were 257 incidents of anti-Muslim bias in 2015, compared with 154 the previous year. The number is second only to the surge in hate crimes following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when 481 incidents against Muslims were reported.

While there was a huge increase in crimes against Muslims, Jews remained the most frequent target of religious-based hate crimes in the US, representing 53 percent of all those reported, the FBI said.

The bureau’s report also listed 1,053 hate crimes regarding sexual orientation, 19 percent of which were committed against gay males.

The report came at a time of heightened racial and religious tensions in the US following last week’s presidential election.

“I think these statistics are just a fraction of what we see on the ground right now,” Ibrahim Hooper, from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told Al Jazeera.

“We witnessed a spark in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in late 2015, and this number increased further during Donald Trump’s election campaign.

“We expect the situation to get worse in the future, based on the fact that Donald Trump had mainstreamed Islamophobia.”

President-elect Trump’s campaign had heavily focused on minorities, immigrants and Muslims, routinely painting these groups as threats to peace, the economy, and homeland security.

Famously while campaigning, Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the US. He also promised to build a wall to block Mexicans.

In the first television interview since his election, Trump said he is planning to immediately deport or jail as many as three million undocumented immigrants.

There have been several reports of racist, Islamophobic and anti-semitic incidents since last Tuesday’s election that have sparked outrage, including a mosque at New York University’s Brooklyn campus being vandalised, and several Muslim women reporting Trump supporters attempting to rip off their headscarves.

Black students at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) said they were afraid to attend classes after they were subjected to racial slurs and threats of lynching following the election.

A videotaped assault in Chicago showed black men beating a white man as onlookers screamed, “You voted Trump!”

Hundreds of Americans also detailed on social media racist attacks that have taken place since the election.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes across the United States, has counted more than 200 complaints since election day, according to USA Today.

On Sunday, Trump further ignited civil rights organisations’ concerns by naming right-wing Breitbart news executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counsellor.

Under Bannon’s tenure, Breitbart pushed a nationalist agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right – a movement often associated with white supremacist ideas that oppose multiculturalism and defend “Western values”.

“Donald Trump just named a white supremacist as chief strategist,” CAIR’s Hooper said. “We have no reason to believe things are going to get better for the American Muslim community or other minorities anytime soon.”