Headline

Strike: UK Records Largest Walkout In 12 Years

Published

1 year ago

February 1, 2023

Editor

Half a million workers went on strike in Britain on Wednesday, calling for higher wages in the largest such walkout in over a decade, closing schools and severely disrupting transport.

As Europe battles a cost-of-living crisis, Britain’s umbrella labour organisation the Trades Union Congress called it the “biggest day of strike action since 2011”.

The latest strikes come a day after more than 1.27 million took to the streets in France, increasing pressure on the French government over pension reform plans.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called for pay rises to be “reasonable” and affordable” warning that big pay rises would jeopardise attempts to tame inflation.

But unions have accused millionaire Sunak of being out of touch with the challenges faced by ordinary working people struggling to make ends meet in the face of low paid, insecure work and spiralling costs.

Teachers and train drivers were among the latest groups to act, as well as border force workers at UK air and seaports.

“The workload is always bigger and bigger and with the inflation, our salary is lower and lower,” London teacher Nigel Adams, 57, told AFP as he joined thousands of teachers marching through central London.

“We’re exhausted. We’re paying the price and so are the children,” he added as protesters held up placards reading “Pay Up” and “We can’t put your kids first if you put their teachers last”.

Britain has witnessed months of strikes by tens of thousands of workers – including postal staff, lawyers, nurses and employees in the retail sector — as UK inflation raced above 11 percent, the highest level in more than 40 years.

Job centre worker and union representative, Graham, who preferred not to give his last name said workers had no choice but to strike faced with soaring costs.

“Some of our members, even though they are working, still have to make visits to food banks,” he said.

“Not only are wages not keeping up, but things like fares, council tax and rents are going up. Anything we get is eaten away,” he added.

– ‘Slap in face’ –

At London’s King’s Cross rail station, Kate Lewis, a 50-year-old charity worker, said she sympathised with the strikers despite her train being delayed.

“I understand. We are all in the same boat. All impacted by inflation,” she said.

Another major commuter hub in the capital, London Bridge station, was completely closed.

One train driver who gave his name as Tony, 61, said the sort of pay rises on offer were insulting, especially in the wake of the pandemic.

“We worked all through Covid. We were being praised as key workers and then there is this slap in the face,” he said.

“I was leaving (home) at 3 am to go to work. People were having barbecues, you could hear the bottles. I think we deserve a pay increase that keeps up with inflation.”

Government and company bosses are standing firm over wage demands.

With thousands of schools closed for the day, Education Minister Gillian Keegan told Times Radio she was “disappointed” teachers had walked out.

But union boss Mark Serwotka said the government’s position was “unsustainable”.

“It’s not feasible that they can sit back with this unprecedented amount of industrial action growing, because it’s half a million today,” he told Sky News.

“Next week, we have paramedics, and we have nurses, then will then be the firefighters,” he added, warning that unions were prepared to strike throughout the summer.

Prime Minister Sunak on Wednesday told parliament the government had given teachers the “highest pay rise in 30 years” including nine percent for newly qualified teachers.

He urged opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer to say “that the strikes are wrong and we should be backing our school children”

– Nationwide rallies –

The latest official data shows 1.6 million working days were lost from June-November last year because of strikes – the highest six-month total in more than three decades – according to the Office for National Statistics.

A total of 467,000 working days were lost to walkouts in November alone, the highest level since 2011, the ONS added.

Alongside the strikes, unions are also staging rallies across the country against the Conservative government’s plans to legislate against public sector strike action.

Sunak has introduced a draft law requiring some frontline workers to maintain a minimum level of service during walkouts.
AFP

Headline

Iran Hangs 53-year-old Woman, Six Others

Published

5 hours ago

May 18, 2024

Editor

Iran on Saturday hanged at least seven people, including two women, while a member of its Jewish minority is at imminent risk of execution as the Islamic Republic further intensified its use of capital punishment, an NGO said.

Parvin Mousavi, 53, a mother of two grown-up children, was hanged in Urmia prison in northwestern Iran along with five men convicted in various drug-related cases, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) said in a statement.

In Nishapur in eastern Iran, a 27-year-old woman named Fatemeh Abdullahi was hanged on charges of murdering her husband, who was also her cousin, it said.

IHR says it has tallied at least 223 executions this year, with at least 50 so far in May alone. A new surge began following the end of Persian New Year and Ramadan holidays in April, with 115 people including six women hanged since then, it said.

Iran carries out more recorded executions of women than any other country. Activists say many such convicts are victims of forced or abusive marriages.

Iran last year carried out more hangings than in any year since 2015, according to NGOs, which accuse the Islamic republic of using capital punishment as a means to instill fear in the wake of protests that erupted in autumn 2022.

“The silence of the international community is unacceptable,” IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told AFP.

“Those executed belong to the poor and marginalised groups of Iranian society and didn’t have fair trials with due process.”

‘Killing machine’

IHR said Mousavi had been in prison for four years. It cited a source as saying she had been paid the equivalent of 15 euros to carry a package she had been told contained medicine but was in fact five kilos of morphine.

“They are the low-cost victims of the Islamic Republic’s killing machine, which aims at instilling fear among people to prevent new protests,” added Amiry-Moghaddam.

The group meanwhile said a member of Iran’s Jewish community, which has drastically reduced in numbers in recent years but is still the largest in the Middle East outside Israel, was at imminent risk of execution over a murder charge.

Arvin Ghahremani, 20, was convicted of murder during a street fight when he was 18 and is scheduled to be executed in the western city of Kermanshah on Monday, it said, adding it had received an audio message from his mother Sonia Saadati asking for his life to be spared.

His family is seeking to ask the family of the victim to forgo the execution in line with Iran’s Islamic law of retribution, or qesas.

Also at risk of execution is Kamran Sheikheh, the last surviving member of a group of seven Iranian Kurdish men who were first arrested between early December 2009 and late January 2010 and later sentenced to death for “corruption on earth” over alleged membership of extremist groups, it said.

Six men convicted in the same case have been executed in the last months almost one-and-a-half decades after their initial arrest, the last being Khosro Besharat who was hanged in Ghezel Hesar prison outside Tehran this week.

There has been an international outcry meanwhile over the death sentence handed out last month to Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, seen by activists as retaliation for his music backing the 2022 protests. His lawyers are appealing the verdict.

AFP

Headline

Israeli Leaders Disagree Over Post-war Gaza Governance Amid US Pressure

Published

5 hours ago

May 18, 2024

Editor

New divisions have emerged among Israel’s leaders over post-war Gaza’s governance, with an unexpected Hamas fightback in parts of the Palestinian territory piling pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across Gaza for more than seven months while also exchanging near-daily fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah forces along the northern border with Lebanon.

But after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, where Israel previously said the group had been neutralised, broad splits emerged in the Israeli war cabinet in recent days.

Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.

The Israeli premier’s outright rejection of post-war Palestinian leadership in Gaza has broken a rift among top politicians wide open and frustrated relations with top ally the United States.

Experts say the lack of clarity only serves to benefit Hamas, whose leader has insisted no new authority can be established in the territory without its involvement.

“Without an alternative to fill the vacuum, Hamas will continue to grow,” International Crisis Group analyst Mairav Zonszein told AFP.

Emmanuel Navon, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, echoed this sentiment.

“If only Hamas is left in Gaza, of course they are going to appear here and there and the Israeli army will be forced to chase them around,” said Navon.

“Either you establish an Israeli military government or an Arab-led government.”

US pressure

Gallant said in a televised address on Wednesday: “I call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza strip.”

The premier’s war planning also came under recent attack by army chief Herzi Halevi as well as top Shin Bet security agency officials, according to Israeli media reports.

Netanyahu is also under pressure from Washington to swiftly bring an end to the conflict and avoid being mired in a long counterinsurgency campaign.

Washington has previously called for a “revitalised” form of the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the war.

But Netanyahu has rejected any role for the PA in post-war Gaza, saying Thursday that it “supports terror, educates terror, finances terror”.

Instead, Netanyahu has clung to his steadfast aim of “eliminating” Hamas, asserting that “there’s no alternative to military victory”.

Experts say confidence in Netanyahu is running thin.

“With Gallant’s criticism of Netanyahu’s failure to plan for the day after in terms of governing Gaza, some real fissures are beginning to emerge in the Israeli war cabinet,” Colin P. Clarke, director of policy and research at the Soufan Group think tank, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“I’m not sure I know of many people, including the most ardent Israel supporters, who have confidence in Bibi,” he said, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

Hostage ‘impasse’

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 125 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead.

Israel’s military retaliation has killed at least 35,386 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.

Many Israelis supported Netanyahu’s blunt goals to seek revenge on Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 attack.

But now, hopes have faded for the return of the hostages and patience in Netanyahu may be running out, experts said.

On Friday, the army announced it had recovered bodies of three hostages who were killed during the October 7 attack.

After Israeli forces entered the far southern city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Gazans were sheltering, talks mediated by Egypt, the United States and Qatar to release the hostages have ground to a standstill.

“The hostage deal is at a total impasse — you can no longer provide the appearance of progress,” said Zonszein of the International Crisis Group.

“Plus the breakdown with the US and the fact that Egypt has refused to pass aid through Rafah — all those things are coming to a head.”

Headline

Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger Finalise Regional Alliance Project

Published

9 hours ago

May 18, 2024

Editor

Junta-run Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have finalised plans to form a confederation after turning their backs on former colonial ruler France to seek closer ties with Russia.

Their foreign ministers met Friday in Niger’s capital Niamey to agree on a text establishing the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

“The objective was to finalise the draft text relating to the institutionalisation and operationalisation of the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)”, said Niger Foreign Minister Bakary Yaou Sangare as he read the final statement late Friday.

He said the text would be adopted by the heads of state of the three countries at a summit, without specifying the date.

“We can consider very clearly, today, that the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has been born,” Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said after meeting General Abdourahamane Tiani, the head of Nigerien military regime.

The third foreign minister at the meeting was Burkina Faso’s Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore.

The Sahel region has been subject to deadly jihadist violence for years, which they accused France of not being able to curb.

The three countries said late January they were quitting The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which they said was under French influence, to create their own regional grouping.

AFP