Amnesty Intl Risks Criminal Probe after Taking Soros' Funds for Pro-Abortion Campaign in Ireland

Soros and left-wing organizations don't seem to have any respect whatsoever for a country's laws. It is one thing to oppose a law, and something else altogether to break another law in order to oppose the first. Yet they claim the high moral ground.

© Amnesty International Ireland / Facebook

Amnesty International Ireland could face criminal charges after an Irish regulatory body found that it broke the law by accepting a donation from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation for an abortion rights campaign.

Ireland’s Standards in Public Office Commission informed the human rights organisation that it had breached Irish law by accepting funds from a foreign donor and may face criminal investigation, Amnesty International Ireland said in a statement.

The organisation says the €137,000 grant received from the Open Society Foundation (OSF) last year was used to support a campaign to ensure abortion laws in Ireland comply with human rights.

Abortion is a 'human right'???? "Life' is a human right; the most basic and fundamental of all human rights! Abortion is the death of a human - the opposite of a human right! What lunacy!

Amnesty has blasted the law as draconian and defiantly stated it would not comply with the order to return the funds.

“Amnesty International will not be complying with the instruction from the SIPOC and will deploy every means at its disposal to challenge this unfair law,” Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland, Colm O’Gorman said.

O’Gorman claimed on Twitter that Irish law was “being weaponized by those opposed to our work.”

The Electoral Act 1997, as amended in 2001, forbids overseas donations of more than €100 to “third party” organisations for “political purposes”. Violation of this law can carry a penalty of up to three years imprisonment.

Earlier this year, it emerged that three organisations including the Abortion Rights Campaign and Amnesty International had received funds from the Open Society Foundation.

The Abortion Rights Campaign were ordered by SIPO to return the funds or face criminal investigation – an order they duly complied with, however, no such order was made against Amnesty International.

The organization said it was using the grant to carry out opinion polling and “research into models of abortion law reform that might bring Ireland into compliance with its international human rights obligations” – an explanation apparently accepted at the time, reported The Irish Times.

O’Gorman says it is unclear why the body reversed its decision, but noted that some groups and media have been framing their campaign to reform Ireland’s abortion law as ‘controversial’ or ‘too political.’ “They have also portrayed foreign funding as somehow sinister,” he said.

If it comes from Soros, it probably is sinister!

Amnesty International is now calling on the Irish government to urgently amend the Electoral Act so that civil society groups are not so “punitively” restricted in their access to funding.

'Punitively'??? Aren't both sides restricted by the same law? How then can it be punitive to one side?

Soros’ Open Society Foundation is the second largest charity in the US and said to be the most influential around the globe. It has been accused of undermining democracy in several countries – a charge denied by the NGO.

And if it is true, it's justified. Many a liberal believes that the end justifies the means, regardless of how illegal or onerous those means.

Iran Sentences ‘Mossad Spy’ to Death Over Assassinations of Nuclear Scientists

When it comes to Israel, little in Iran is as it seems

FILE PHOTO: A photo taken on February 13, 2017 shows a flyer during a protest outside the Iranian embassy in Brussels for Ahmadreza Djalali © Dirk Waem / Belga / AFP

An alleged spy for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service has been sentenced to death in Iran after he was found guilty of being involved in a string of assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists, according to prosecutors in Tehran.

“One of the crimes of the convict has been disclosing the address and some details of 30 important figures involved in (the country's) research, military and nuclear projects, including (Iranian nuclear scientists) martyrs, Shahriari and Ali- Mohammadi, to Mossad intelligence officers which led to their assassination and martyrdom,” Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said, as cited by a judiciary news website Tuesday under the caption “An execution of Mossad agent.”

Over the last decade, at least four senior nuclear researchers had been killed in Iran, including Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Dariush Rezaei Nejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan.

According to the prosecution, the suspect confessed that he had “several meetings” with a number of Mossad officers and passed on “sensitive information” about dozens of Iranian military and nuclear scientists and sites in return for money and help in securing a residency permit in Sweden, Reuters reports.

Although the name of the accused was not disclosed Monday, Amnesty International (AI) called on the Iranian authorities to release and abrogate the penalty for an Iranian-born Stockholm resident, Ahmadreza Djalali. 

The specialist in emergency medicine was sentenced after “a grossly unfair trial that once again exposes not only the Iranian authorities’ steadfast commitment to use of the death penalty but their utter contempt for the rule of law,” said Philip Luther, AI’s Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The rights group insists “no evidence has ever been presented to show that he is anything other than an academic peacefully pursuing his profession.”

Iran, academic, Ahmadreza djalali, doctor, Sweden, wife, children, death, execution, death penalty

amnesty.org

The Iranian-born man was captured in the spring of 2016 during an academic visit to the Iranian capital. He was arrested on suspicion of collaborating with a “hostile” government.

Would a man of his brilliance have been stupid enough to return to Tehran if he had indeed really been a spy for Mossad?

The judicial process, led by a judge Abolqasem Salavati in a revolutionary court, delivered the sentence on October 21 and gave the alleged Mossad agent 20 days to appeal, The Nature journal reports citing Djalali’s wife Vida Mehrannia.

Djalali worked on improving hospital’s emergency responses to armed terrorism and radiological, chemical and biological threats in the world’s largest medical universities, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, as well as in the University of Eastern Piedmont in Italy, according to the publication.

Djalali has denied guilt, claiming he was forced to read out pre-written confessions in front of a camera following psychological pressure and threats, as well as physical torture. He added that the intelligence ministry fabricated the accusations against him, AI reports citing a voice recording of Djalali published on YouTube.

According to another statement, said to be a literal transcription of the academic’s handwritten text shared by a close contact in 2014, Djalali was allegedly courted to spy on European countries for Iran, but refused.

“I have never acted against my country, I have never spied for Israel or any other country. My only fault is that I did not accept to use the trust of my colleagues and universities in EU to spy for Iran's intelligence services,” the researcher allegedly wrote.

This will certainly make other potential Iranian spies think twice before refusing to cooperate with Iranian intelligence.

Yemenis ‘Pay the Price’ for UK and America’s ‘Brazenly Hypocritical’ Arms Deals – Amnesty

I've been saying this for awhile. It is just disgraceful! Arms sales are easy and cheap but the USA and the UK need to find a way to keep their economies moving other than selling death and destruction. 

© Naif Rahma / Reuters

Amnesty International has condemned the US and Britain for supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, arms which have then been used to kill hundreds of civilians in Yemen.

Figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute show that the two countries have sent weaponry worth more than $5 billion to Saudi Arabia since Riyadh’s intervention began in March 2015. This is over 10 times the approximately $450 million that the US State Department and the UK’s Department for International Development have sent (or planned to send) in humanitarian aid to Yemen over the same period, which Amnesty has described as a “shameful contradiction.”

“Two years of conflict have forced 3 million people to flee their homes, shattered the lives of thousands of civilians and left Yemen facing a humanitarian disaster with more than 18 million in desperate need of assistance. Yet despite the millions of dollars’ worth of international assistance allocated to the country, many states have contributed to the suffering of the Yemeni people by continuing to supply billions of dollars’ worth of arms,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty's deputy director of research for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Weapons supplied in the past by states such as the UK and US have been used to commit gross violations and helped to precipitate a humanitarian catastrophe. These governments have continued to authorize such arms transfers at the same time as providing aid to alleviate the very crisis they have helped to create. Yemeni civilians continue to pay the price of these brazenly hypocritical arms supplies.”

Amnesty accuses the UK and US, both of whom are party to the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty, of “undermining the spirit” of the treaty, and has called on the international community to “immediately to impose an arms embargo” on all parties involved in the Yemeni conflict.

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf State allies, including Qatar and Bahrain, launched an aerial campaign to help prop up the ousted government of Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi against Shiite Houthi rebels. According to UN estimates, up to 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting so far, including 4,000 civilians. The majority of civilian deaths, according to the UN, have come from Saudi-led airstrikes.

In its investigation of the Yemeni conflict, Amnesty International has documented at least 34 coalition airstrikes that may have violated international law resulting in at least 494 civilian deaths, 148 of which were children. Amnesty also accused Saudi Arabia of using cluster bombs, which are banned under international law.

In November, the British government refused to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, rejecting calls from two parliamentary committees and human rights groups. According to Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), Britain licensed £3.3 billion (US$4.1 billion) of arms sales to Riyadh during the first 12 months of the Yemen war.

During Barack Obama’s two terms as president, the US offered Saudi Arabia $115 billion worth of arms in 42 separate deals, the Center for International Policy, a US-based anti-war think tank, reported in September. It estimated that US arms offers to Saudi Arabia were more than any US administration in the history of the US-Saudi relationship. But in December, the White House blocked the transfer of some weaponry to Saudi Arabia over concerns about the civilian death toll from the bombing campaign in Yemen. Arms exports to Saudi Arabia have resumed under Donald Trump’s administration.

‘Concerns of Major Cover-up’: Turkey Bans Probes into Kurdish Op Killings, HRW Says

© Sertac Kayar / Reuters

Turkey is blocking all access for independent investigations into the abuses against civilians in southeastern Turkey, where security forces are battling Kurdish fighters, Human Rights Watch said, calling for the UN to be allowed in to investigate.

Some of the alleged abuses against civilians include unlawful killings, mass scale displacement, and unlawful destruction of private property, according to HRW’s report.

“The government should promptly grant the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights permission to enter the area and investigate according to its standards,” HRW said in a statement.

The Turkish blockade fosters “concerns of a major cover-up,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at HRW.

“Credible accounts of Turkish security forces deliberately killing civilians, including children, when they were carrying white flags or trapped in basements should be ringing loud alarm bells,” said Sinclair-Webb. “The prosecutor in Cizre should conduct a full, effective, independent investigation capable of delivering justice for the victims.”

According to HRW, at least 338 civilians have died in the clashes following the breakdown of a ceasefire in July 2015. Other estimates range between 500 and 1,000 civilians killed.

Thousands of other innocent people are said to be affected by the fighting between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces. And over 355,000 people are said to have been temporarily displaced because of the conflict.

Kurdish militants are fighting for the right to self-determination and greater autonomy for Kurds – demands which Ankara rejects.

Majority of the destruction is said to have targeted nine towns in southeast Turkey, including Cizre.

Turkish security operations have introduced “round-the-clock curfews on 22 towns and city neighborhoods,” HRW said. The curfews prohibit all movement without permission and prevent access to non-governmental organizations, journalists, and lawyers.

“Authorities have blocked rights groups – including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights – from trying to document abuses even after curfews and operations ended,” according to HRW.

“Amid a mounting death toll and a spiralling conflict, real accountability in Turkey’s southeast is crucial” added Sinclair-Webb. “Prosecutors should thoroughly and effectively investigate all allegations of abuse by state forces and armed groups, and no legal or extra-legal measures should be taken to try to ensure impunity for personnel responsible for these crimes.”

Meanwhile, the Turkish government had denied allegations that is has targeted civilians in its military operations.

Despite mounting evidence of abuses, little is being done to lift the Turkish blockade. In March, RT launched a petition calling for a UNHRC-led investigation into claims that mass killings of Kurdish civilians had taken place in Cizre.

The petition was based on reports from an RT crew that visited the area and found shocking scenes of destruction. RT journalists also collected horrifying accounts of atrocities committed against Kurdish civilians there.

HRW, Amnesty Call on UN to Suspend Saudi Arabia from Human Rights Council

People inspect damage at a house after it was destroyed by a Saudi-led air strike in Yemen's capital Sanaa. © Mohamed al-Sayaghi / Reuters

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on the United Nations General Assembly to “immediately suspend” Saudi Arabia from the UN Human Rights Council because of numerous serious human rights violations.

“Saudi Arabia has committed gross and systematic violations of human rights during its time as a Council member, and it has used its position on the Council to shield itself from accountability for its violations in Yemen,” the two human rights watchdogs wrote in a joint letter to the UN on Wednesday.

They were referring to the actions of the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemeni conflict that resulted in numerous casualties among civilians.

The two organizations said they documented “69 unlawful airstrikes by the coalition, some of which may amount to war crimes,” that took lives of at least 913 civilians and hit homes, markets, hospitals, schools, civilian businesses, and mosques.

The human rights NGOs also stressed that the Saudi-led coalition used internationally banned cluster munitions in 19 strikes, some of which also targeted civilian areas.

The organizations urged the UN General Assembly to suspend Saudi Arabia from the Human Rights Council until it ends its “unlawful attacks” and conducts credible investigation into all cases of alleged human rights violations or agrees to cooperate with an independent and impartial international inquiry.

“Saudi Arabia has amassed an appalling record of violations in Yemen while a Human Rights Council member, and has damaged the body’s credibility by its bullying tactics to avoid accountability,” Philippe Bolopion, deputy director for global advocacy at Human Rights Watch, said.

His words were echoed by Richard Bennett, Head of Amnesty International’s UN Office, who said that “the credibility of the UN Human Rights Council is at stake, as “to allow [Saudi Arabia] to remain an active member of the Council, where it has used this position to shield itself from accountability for possible war crimes, smacks of deep hypocrisy.”

“It would bring the world’s top human rights body into disrepute,” he added.

Bennett also accused Saudis of using their membership of the Council “to derail a resolution to establish an international investigation, by garnering support for their rival, toothless resolution backing a national Yemeni inquiry,” which failed to investigate allegations of the coalition’s alleged war crimes.

The organizations also blasted other countries that continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia despite its poor human rights record.

“What’s particularly shocking is the deafening silence of the international community which has time and again ceded to pressure from Saudi Arabia and put business, arms and trade deals before human rights despite the Kingdom’s record of committing gross and systematic violations with complete impunity,” said Richard Bennett.

Earlier in 2016, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International already called on the United States, United Kingdom, and France to suspend all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia until it stops its unlawful airstrikes in Yemen.

The two NGOs also harshly criticized the Saudi Arabia’s internal policy, involving “crackdown on all forms of dissent” as well as “use of grossly unfair trials at a special counter-terror court and long prison terms for peaceful dissidents and human rights defenders.”

“Saudi Arabia must release all prisoners of conscience immediately and unconditionally, and end its shameful reliance on the death penalty,” Bennett said.

The Saudi-led coalition launched its aerial campaign in Yemen in March, 2015, after the “Ansar Allah” Houthi movement captured huge territories in Yemen including the capital of Sana’a and the country’s second largest city, Aden.

The conflict has left nearly 4,300 dead since March, half of them civilians, according to UN figures. Since that time, the coalition has been repeatedly accused of numerous and grave human rights violations. The most high profile incidents involving Saudi coalition airstrikes include bombing a wedding party in September 2015 that claimed lives of 135 civilians; hitting a Yemeni hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) a month later and bombing a market in north-western Yemen in March 2016, where more than a hundred people died.

At the press briefing on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner tried to deflect the questions about Saudi Arabia.

“Because we only have observer status on the Human Rights Council, and we don’t have a vote, I’ll refer you to the UN for more details,” Toner told reporters. His comments were met by protests that the US was a major financial backer of the HRC, that Washington supervised the election of the members, and that Saudi Arabia was a major US ally and partner.

“We’ve been very clear about our involvement in Yemen – our support for the GCC, led by the Saudis, in combating the threat that it faced on its borders from the Houthis,” Toner said. “With respect to this movement with regard to their position on the Human Rights Council, we’re not going to comment on it. Just not.”

On June 3, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed the Saudi-led coalition for “killing and maiming” children in Yemen, and added it to an annual blacklist of countries and armed groups that have violated children's rights in conflict.

According to the report presented by Ban Ki-moon, the coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year, killing 510 people and wounding 667 others. The coalition was also behind half of the attacks carried out on schools and hospitals in Yemen.

In March, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said that the coalition was responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together.

Saudi Arabia repeatedly dismissed all accusations and even forced the UN to remove it from the blacklist of child-killers in Yemen just days after it was added to this list. Later, Ban Ki-moon admitted that his decision to remove the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen from the UN blacklist came after threats from a number of countries.

It came after a diplomatic source told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the UN was faced with “bullying, threats [and] pressure” from Riyadh, adding that it was “real blackmail.”

This incident also caused the outrage of the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. “Allowing Saudi Arabia to obstruct independent scrutiny and avoid accountability threatens the credibility of both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly,” the two organizations wrote in the joint letter to the UN.

Saudi Arabia joined the Human Rights Council in January 2014 and is now in its final year of a three-year term on the 47-member Human Rights Council.

A two-third majority vote by the UN General Assembly can suspend a country from the Human Rights Council for continuously committing grave and systematic violations of human rights during its membership, according to the General Assembly Resolution 60/251, which created the Human Rights Council.

Denmark Approves Confiscation of Refugees’ Valuables, Delay of Family Reunifications

Migrants, mainly from Syria, prepare to board a train headed for Sweden, at Padborg station in southern Denmark
© Claus Fisker / Reuters

The Danish parliament has passed measures aimed at deterring refugees from seeking asylum, including the confiscation of their valuables and a delay in family reunifications. The move has received widespread condemnation from human rights organizations.

Asylum seekers arriving in Denmark will now have to hand over cash exceeding 10,000 kroner (US$1,450) and any personal items valued at more than that amount. This is more than three times the 3,000 kroner ($435) that was originally proposed.

However, wedding rings and other sentimental items will be exempt from confiscation.

Integration Minister Inger Stojberg said the goal of the new legislation is for Denmark to become “significantly less attractive for asylum-seekers,” AFP reported.

The center-right Danish government says the measures are aimed at covering the cost of each asylum seeker’s support from the state, and is similar to requirements for Danish citizens receiving welfare benefits. However, Danes are not subject to the kinds of searches proposed in the new refugee law.

Some have compared the new measures to the confiscation of gold and other valuables from Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

But Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of the right-wing Venstre party has shrugged off the criticism, calling it the “most misunderstood bill in Denmark’s history.”

The new legislation will also prevent refugees from applying to be reunited with their family for three years, and will only give Syrian war refugees one year’s protection.

“I’m afraid that it will lead to an incentive structure where refugees bring their children with them,” parliament member Mette Gjerskov told Berlingske newspaper. Berlingske said ahead of the vote that she was one of three Social Democrats planning to vote against their own party.

I doubt it! It will more than likely cause migrants to head to another country, which is the whole idea.

“We have seen plenty of children in rubber boats on the Mediterranean,” the lawmaker added.

International human rights organizations have also condemned the three-year delay for reunification applications.

Amnesty International called the move “cruel,” stating that it could have a “devastating impact on families.” Meanwhile, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said the law violates several conventions on rights and refugees.

That sentiment echoed a January 15 letter to Stojberg from the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Nils Muiznieks, who said the reunification waiting period raises “issues of compatibility” with the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen defended the law to the UN Human Rights Council last week, saying “the Danish welfare state is based upon the very simple principle that the state will provide and pay for those unable to take care of themselves, not for those who are able.”

Jensen and Stojberg responded with similar answers when questioned by European MPs during a meeting of the civil liberties committee on Monday.

The bill will be signed into law by Denmark’s Queen Margrethe within a few days.

Passage of the new legislation comes less than one week after Danish lawmakers passed a resolution urging the government to look into the consequences of building temporary housing complexes for refugees outside of Danish cities. The move is backed by the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which wants to prevent refugees from integrating into Danish society.

Yikes! While this looks good at first glance in terms of safety for Danish girls, I can see some pretty awful possibilities as a consequence of such a move. Such camps would quickly become breeding grounds for discontent and recruiting grounds for ISIS. 

But the first question to be answered is whether or not real integration of such large numbers is even possible.

The influx of asylum seekers has led to tension with locals in some areas, with Danish women reporting sexual harassment at the hands of refugees in at least three towns. Several nightclubs have imposed strict admission rules, requiring patrons to prove their ability to speak Danish, German, or English. 

Denmark registered 21,000 asylum applications in 2015, making it one of the top EU destinations for refugees per capita, after Finland, Austria, Germany, and Sweden.

Europe continues to face its biggest migrant crisis since 1945, with the number of asylum seekers expected to increase this year. More than one million refugees entered Europe in 2015, most of them from Syria, where a civil war has taken the lives of 250,000 people and displaced 12 million since 2011, according to UN figures.

Anti-Israel Ads OK’d to Run in Boston Subways

Boston Strong is not supposed to refer to smell

Boston's north subway station

BOSTON (JTA) – The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority approved the display of an anti-Israel ad it had previously rejected.

The poster, which features a large photograph of a child and the word “violence” in large, bold letters, accuses Israel’s military of using US tax dollars to kill 2,000 Palestinian children since September 2000, and calls for the end of US military aid to Israel.

I have no idea how accurate these numbers are, but I do know the inferences here are dishonest, deceitful propaganda. Most of the Palestinian children who died in the summer of 2014, did so because Hamas deliberately fired rockets from school grounds, hospitals, and housing complexes. They did this knowing that the IDF would return fire to those locations. 

Their purpose was to create as many civilian casualties as possible, because that would cause gullible, undiscerning people to condemn Israel as deliberately targeting women and children. Hamas has to win the propaganda war because it cannot win the military war, and MBTA is helping them. Hamas is responsible for the deaths of most of those children.
These accusations were documented by Amnesty International.

From a previous blog post: Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas’s military wing, fired thousands of rockets and mortars indiscriminately toward civilian areas in Israel, according to Amnesty International, and also endangered Palestinian civilians by reportedly launching rockets from within civilian facilities, including schools and a hospital in Gaza.

It is one of three ads that was initially approved by the MBTA in June 2014, but later removed. At the time, the governing body of the state’s public transportation system said the ads violated its policy against language that demeans or disparages individuals or groups.

The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the rejection on behalf of the Palestinian rights organization, Palestine Advocacy Project. The group, formerly called Ads Against Apartheid, asserts that the poster is a form of protected First Amendment speech and should be allowed in a public space. The agency’s decision to approve came after the ACLU persuaded it that the ad does not violate the MBTA’s policy against demeaning ads, according to Sarah Wunsch, deputy legal director of the ACLU’s Massachusetts branch.

In a statement to JTA, a spokesman for the MBTA said these advertisements comply with its guidelines, that it described as “viewpoint neutral standards for all advertising displayed on MBTA property.”
Astonishing!

“To reduce unnecessary litigation which can arise from issue-based ads of this nature, the MBTA is currently considering whether to amend its advertising guidelines and in the future will not accept ads concerning political issues or matters of public debate,” the statement continued.

Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston said in a statement provided to JTA: “We do not believe that the MBTA nor any other government authority should regularly be in the business of banning speech. However, spreading distortions and inaccuracies about a complex political situation will achieve no positive benefit in the search for a lasting end to the conflict in the region, a cause to which we and all reasonable people are committed.”

Astonishing - Saudi Arabia Won't Let Syrian Migrants in Because They Might Change Society

Gulf states under fire for not accepting Syrian refugees

A man carries children through a bombed-out city in Syria.

© AFP | 
Text by Khatya CHHOR

Gulf states are under fire from human rights groups for not doing more for Syrian refugees as Syria’s neighbours struggle to house those fleeing across their borders and the EU grapples with its worst refugee crisis since World War II.

The UN estimates that more than 4 million Syrians have fled the country’s civil conflict so far, with 3.8 million of these having temporarily sought refuge in just five countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq (mainly Kurdistan) and Egypt.

According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Turkey has taken in almost 2 million Syrian refugees while Lebanon has registered 1.1 million refugees within its borders – an influx that now accounts for 20 percent of the Lebanese population. Jordan, likewise, has received almost 630,000 asylum-seekers, Iraq close to 250,000 and Egypt another 132,000. Many other Syrians have crossed into these countries but have not been officially counted.

But while Syria’s neighbours struggle to accommodate the influx, an Amnesty International report from December noted that the six Gulf states — Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar — “have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees”.

The executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, underscored this point in a blunt tweet last week: “They're wealthy, Muslim and not taking ANY Syrian refugees: Saudi Arabia & other Gulf states,” he wrote on Twitter.

The Gulf states do provide significant financial help to those affected by the conflict. The United Arab Emirates has donated more than $540 million in humanitarian assistance and funded a refugee camp in Jordan as well as another in northern Iraq, a UAE government official told Bloomberg.

Saudi Arabia has donated $18.4 million to the Syria fund of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs so far this year while Kuwait has given almost $305 million, making it the third-largest international donor behind the United States (at $1 billion) and the United Kingdom ($475 million).

“If it wasn’t for the Gulf states, you would expect these millions to be in a much more tragic state than they are,” Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor in the United Arab Emirates, told The New York Times. “This finger-pointing at the Gulf that they are not doing anything, it is just not true.”

But critics note that the Gulf states' aid does not involve opening up their borders to help deal with the crisis.

“Burden sharing has no meaning in the Gulf, and the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari approach has been to sign a check and let everyone else deal with it,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch for its Middle East and North Africa division, told the Times. “Now everyone else is saying, ‘That’s not fair.’ ”

'Shameful'

Nabil Othman, acting regional representative to the Gulf region at the UNHCR, told Bloomberg last week that there are currently 500,000 Syrians in Saudi Arabia. But many of these may have entered the country before or in the early days of the Syrian conflict as migrant workers.

The UN refugee agency’s own figures as of December 2014 put the number of international refugees welcomed by the kingdom at 561 along with another 100 asylum-seekers; it did not specify how many of these were Syrians.

"The bottom line is that in terms of resettlement, the Gulf states have not stepped up in accepting refugees," said Geoffrey Mock, chairman of Middle East specialists at Amnesty International USA. "They have offered zero resettlement places ... and this is shameful," he told USA Today.

A CARTOON BY SAUDI ARTIST ABDULLAH JABER FOR MAKKAH NEWSPAPER SATIRIZES THE GULF STATES' RESPONSE

"Shame on you EU, open your doors"

Some analysts point out that not only is Saudi Arabia wealthy enough to accommodate a significant number of refugees, but it also has the logistical capability to do so: Each year the kingdom receives an influx of millions for the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. And the construction companies that have built the mega malls and opulent skyscrapers of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh could be contracted to create temporary shelters, said one Quartz commentator, adding: “There’s no reason all this know-how can’t be put to humanitarian use.”

More welcome in Europe?

Syrians are required to obtain visas to enter all Arab countries except for Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen. The process for requesting a tourist or work visa is expensive, and Gulf states have cracked down on the number of foreign work permits they grant in recent years.

Many have taken to social media to urge the Gulf states to do more for those who need asylum. The Arabic hashtag #Welcoming_Syria's_refugees_is_a_Gulf_duty has been tweeted more than 33,000 times in the past week, the BBC reports.

Two other hashtags in Arabic – “Open your doors” and “Welcoming Syrian refugees is the people’s demand” – are also making the rounds on Twitter. These were created the same day that the image of a Syrian toddler who washed up on a beach in Turkey made headlines across Europe, bringing home to many the human tragedy of a conflict that once seemed far away.

Domestic social and security considerations have underpinned some of the Gulf states' hesitation to allow large numbers of refugees to cross their borders. Concerns have been raised about newcomers taking jobs from locals or that jihadists might enter the country posing as asylum-seekers.

Astonishing!

"Saudi Arabia stopped issuing work permits to Syrian nationals at the beginning of the war in 2011," said Stéphane Lacroix, a researcher specialising in the Arab world at the Centre for International Research at SciencesPo university, in comments to FRANCE 24.

Lacroix said the response – or lack thereof – by authorities in Riyadh has been largely motivated by concerns over its own political stability.

As a Sunni monarchy, it cannot help but support the Sunni Syrian rebellion, he said. But Saudi Arabia also fears that "by welcoming outsiders it will, at the same time, import new ideas and new rhetoric that will contaminate Saudi society”.

Even more astonishing! Germany and Sweden have not asked themselves any of those questions, or addressed any of those concerns. Arabs use them as excuses to keep out other Arabs, almost all of whom are Muslim, while Germany and Sweden whose societies are already beginning to collapse under the weight of Islamic immigrants, don't seem to care about the consequences.

The irony is astounding! The stupidity of some of those European countries will precipitate the complete collapse of European societies bringing Sharia law much closer to reality than it was just last week.

The unique demographics of some Gulf states also make the authorities hesitant to allow in vast new numbers of foreign nationals, wrote Michael Stephens, head of the Royal United Services Institute Qatar research centre, in a contribution to the BBC. UAE and Qatari citizens account for just over 10% of their respective populations; the vast majority of residents are temporary foreign workers.

And many refugees themselves express a desire to make the journey to Europe instead of opting for resettling in Arab states.

“In Europe, I can get treatment for my polio, educate my children, have shelter and live an honourable life,” said asylum-seeker Yassir Batal in comments to Bloomberg. “Gulf countries have closed their doors in the face of Syrians.”

The EU is now struggling with its own migrant crisis, with an estimated 330,000 asylum seekers entering Europe so far this year. But as Amnesty International points out, the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey alone is more than 10 times the number of asylum applications received from Syrians by all 28 EU countries in the past three years combined.

Over 100,000 air-conditioned tents empty
Meanwhile, there are reports that there are over 100,000 air-conditioned tents in Saudi Arabia sitting empty. These tents were erected for the Hajj which starts next week. The Hajj is that insane circling of hundreds of thousands of people in the mosque at Mecca. 

Saudi Press Agency also claims that the Kingdom has accepted 2.5 million Syrians since the conflict began, but because they don't label them as refugees, some reporters claim that they have not taken any. Also, Saudi Arabia, as well as other Gulf States have given many millions of dollars to other countries and agencies to assist with caring for the refugees.

Saudi Arabia – which has taken in precisely zero migrants – has 100,000
air conditioned tents that can house over 3 million people sitting empty.

So that's the story, whether you believe the Saudi Press or whether you believe Amnesty Int'l and Human Rights Watch, is up to you.

Iran Execution Rates Approaching ISIS Levels

The majority of those killed in 2015 were 

convicted of drug charges

BBC Middle East

There has been an "unprecedented spike" in the number of executions in Iran, Amnesty International has warned.

The rights group said it believed 694 people were killed between 1 January and 15 July, almost three times the figure acknowledged by the authorities.

It said credible reports suggested Iran executed at least 743 people in 2014.

Amnesty said the surge was disturbing as the death sentences were invariably imposed by courts "completely lacking in independence and impartiality".

"They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalised at all, let alone attract the death penalty," it added.

"Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation."

'Climate of fear'
As of 15 July 2015, the Iranian authorities had officially acknowledged 246 judicial executions this year but Amnesty International said it had received reports of a further 448 executions.
If confirmed, that would be the equivalent to more than three a day.

In 2014, 289 people were executed according to official sources but reports suggested that the real figure was at least 743, the group added.

"Iran's staggering execution toll for the first half of this year paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale," said Said Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa programme.

He added: "The use of the death penalty is always abhorrent, but it raises additional concerns in a country like Iran where trials are blatantly unfair."

Amnesty said the reasons behind the surge in executions were unclear, but that the majority of those killed in 2015 were convicted of drug charges.

"The [Iranian] authorities have confirmed that around 80% of executions are for these [drugs] offences," Amnesty researcher Raha Bahreini told the BBC.

Iran's anti-narcotics law provides mandatory death sentences for a range of drug-related offences, including trafficking more than 5kg (11lbs) of narcotics derived from opium or more than 30g (1oz) of heroin, morphine, cocaine or their chemical derivatives.

Iranian Kurds protest in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil against
the execution of Kurdish rebels in Iran (31 October 2013)

Among those executed are members of ethnic and religious minorities

Amnesty said this was in direct breach of international law, which restricts the use of the death penalty to only the "most serious crimes" - those involving intentional killing.

"For years, Iranian authorities have used the death penalty to spread a climate of fear in a misguided effort to combat drug trafficking, yet there is not a shred of evidence to show that this is an effective method of tackling crime," Mr Boumedouha said.

Among those executed are members of ethnic and religious minorities convicted of "enmity against God" and "corruption on earth", including Kurdish political prisoners and Sunni Muslims.

Amnesty said that several thousand people were believed to be on death row on Iran. In many cases, they are notified that they will be executed only a few hours beforehand. The families of those executed are sometimes informed days, if not weeks, later.

3 executions per day - that's got to be close to ISIS levels. If they will do that to their own people, how bad will they be if they get control of Syria, or Lebanon, or Yemen? 

Hamas Committed Horrible War Crimes - and It's All Israel's Fault

Hamas Is Accused of Using Gaza War as Cover to Torture and Kill Palestinians

Gaza - last summer

By ISABEL KERSHNER and JODI RUDOREN

JERUSALEM — The militant group Hamas used last summer’s war with Israel in the Gaza Strip to carry out extrajudicial killings of at least 23 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel and to torture dozens of others, including political rivals, Amnesty International charged in a report issued early Wednesday.

Air Strikes

In a reminder of the region’s churning tensions, the Israeli military launched predawn airstrikes on Gaza on Wednesday in response to a rocket fired from the coastal territory the night before.

The rocket landed near Gan Yavne, an Israeli town outside the port city of Ashdod, causing no injuries but puncturing the fragile calm that has mostly prevailed since the 50-day war ended last August.

Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said in a statement that the rocket had been fired by Islamic Jihad, not Hamas, the Islamic organization that controls the crowded coastal territory and has generally tried to enforce an informal cease-fire with Israel. But Mr. Yaalon said that Israel viewed Hamas as responsible. “It is in Hamas’s interest to act to rein in any attempt to fire at Israel,” he said. “Otherwise, we will be forced to act with greater force.”

Gaza residents awoke to the familiar sound of heavy bombardments for the first time in months. Palestinian news organizations reported that airstrikes hit mostly in the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Younis, and that training sites for the military wing of Hamas as well as Islamic Jihad were among the targets.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said in a statement, “The reality that Hamas’s territory is used as a staging ground to attack Israel is unacceptable and intolerable and will bear consequences.”

Executions

As the exchange threatened to reignite cross-border conflict, the Amnesty report focused on what happened within Gaza. It said that many of those executed in July and August were on trial at the time, having been charged with collaboration, or were awaiting the outcome of appeals against death sentences from a military court in Gaza on the same charges. Two had been convicted and were serving prison terms when they were killed.

“In the chaos of the conflict, the de facto Hamas administration granted its security forces free rein to carry out horrific abuses, including against people in its custody,” Philip Luther, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Program of Amnesty International, said in a statement. “These spine-chilling actions, some of which amount to war crimes, were designed to exact revenge and spread fear across the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas, which has not accepted responsibility for the killings, responded to the report by blaming Israel for creating a “situation of chaos” during the war. Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for Hamas, said that Israel had attacked the Gaza security services, preventing them from managing Palestinian internal affairs properly.

“The Amnesty report about Hamas needs to be more precise,” Mr. Masri said in a telephone interview. “Hamas did not claim responsibility for the killing of collaborators during the war,” he said. “There was a press release issued by a group of Palestinian resistance factions. Hamas was not part of them.”

In reports published in recent months, Amnesty International accused Israel and the armed wing of Hamas of carrying out war crimes last summer. The human rights organization said that Israel had shown “callous indifference” by carrying out airstrikes on homes that killed many civilians.

Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas’s military wing, fired thousands of rockets and mortars indiscriminately toward civilian areas in Israel, according to Amnesty International, and also endangered Palestinian civilians by reportedly launching rockets from within civilian facilities, including schools and a hospital in Gaza.

We've known this for a long time, but to have it documented by Amnesty and publicized by the news media, has been a long time coming and a genuine surprise.

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, were killed during the conflict, according to the United Nations, and more than 70 Israelis died, most of them soldiers.

On Aug. 22, one day after Israel displayed its intelligence capabilities by killing three top Hamas commanders in Gaza, up to 18 Palestinians were summarily executed in public in what was seen as a warning to the people of the Gaza Strip.

Masked Palestinian gunmen in black T-shirts and pants paraded seven of the suspected collaborators, handcuffed and hooded, to their deaths outside a downtown mosque as they knelt in hoods in front of a crowd of men, women, and children, the report says.

After weeks in which the militants had fought from the shadows, mostly keeping out of sight, the killings were meant to be photographed and publicized. Amnesty International said the killings were part of an operation in Gaza called Strangling Necks, aimed at instilling fear and settling scores.

One of those killed was Atta Najjar, a former police officer under the Palestinian Authority, which was overthrown by Hamas in Gaza in 2007. Amnesty said that Mr. Najjar, who had a mental disability, was arrested in 2009 and convicted of collaborating with Israel, and had been serving a 15-year prison term imposed by a military court when he was dragged out and killed.

In addition, "perceived political opponents" of Hamas were abducted, tortured or assaulted - "particularly members of the rival Fatah party and former members of the Palestinian Authority security forces in Gaza".

"These abuses too were committed with impunity," the report says. "Committed with 'impunity' or with 'approval'"?

BBC Middle East correspondent Kevin Connelly says Hamas exercises undisputed authority within Gaza, and Amnesty's powerful report depicts an organisation responding to the relentless pressure of Israeli military operations with a brutal campaign against its own enemies within.

Amnesty called on the Palestinian authorities to "impartially and independently" investigate the allegations, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Like that's going to happen!

Majd Al Waheidi contributed reporting from Gaza. - Majd - get out of Gaza now!