Headline

Taliban Ban Women From Working In National, International NGOs

Published

1 year ago

December 24, 2022

Editor

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers ordered all national and international NGOs to stop their women employees from working after “serious complaints” about their dress code, the Ministry of Economy told AFP on Saturday.

The order threatened to suspend the operating licences of NGOs that failed to implement the directive.

The latest restriction comes less than a week after the Taliban authorities banned women from attending universities, prompting global outrage and protests in some Afghan cities.

While the Taliban had promised a softer form of rule when they returned to power in August last year, they have instead imposed harsh restrictions on women — effectively squeezing them out of public life.

“There have been serious complaints regarding the non-observance of the Islamic hijab and other rules and regulations pertaining to the work of females in national and international organisations,” said a notification sent to all NGOs, a copy of which was obtained by AFP and confirmed by a spokesman for the economy ministry.

“The ministry of economy… instructs all organisations to stop females working until further notice,” the notification said.

“In case of negligence of the above directive, the license of the organisation which has been issued by this ministry will be cancelled,” it added.

Two international NGOs confirmed that they had received the notification.

“We are suspending all our activities from Sunday,” a top official at an international NGO involved in humanitarian work told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“We will soon have a meeting of top officials of all NGOs to decide how to handle this issue.”

Dozens of national and international NGOs continue to work in several sectors across remote areas of Afghanistan, and many of their employees are women.

‘Deplorable’ Order

Another official working at an international NGO involved in food distribution said the ban was a “big blow to women staff”.

“We have women staff largely to address humanitarian aid concerns of Afghan women,” the official said.

“How do we address their concerns now?”

Rights group Amnesty International tweeted that the ban was a “deplorable attempt to erase women from the political, social and economic spaces” in Afghanistan.

The order is the latest assault on women’s rights in the country.

On Tuesday, the authorities banned all women from attending universities, triggering condemnation from the United States, the United Nations and several Muslim nations.

The Group of Seven industrialised democracies said the prohibition may amount to “a crime against humanity”.

That ban was announced less than three months after thousands of women were allowed to sit university entrance exams.

In response to the order, around 400 male students on Saturday boycotted an exam in the southern city of Kandahar — the de facto power centre of the Taliban — a rare protest staged by men.

The students’ walkout was dispersed by Taliban forces who fired into the air, a lecturer at Mirwais Neeka University where the protest happened told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The Taliban had already barred teenage girls from secondary school, and women have been pushed out of many government jobs, prevented from travelling without a male relative and ordered to cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa.

They are also not allowed to enter parks or gardens.

The Taliban have also resumed public floggings of men and women in recent weeks, widening their implementation of an extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

Headline

US Missionary Couple In Their 20’s Killed In Haiti Gang Violence

Published

8 hours ago

May 25, 2024

Editor

A United States missionary couple were among three people killed in Haiti as widespread gang violence continues to plague the country.

Natalie Lloyd, 21, her 23-year-old husband David, and Jude Montis, a 20-year-old Haitian, were ambushed by gunmen as they left a church.

The couple’s deaths were confirmed on Facebook by Natalie’s father, Missouri State Senator Ben Baker.

“They were attacked by gangs this evening and were both killed,” he wrote. “They went to heaven together.”

According to BBC, the couple were married in 2022.

Their organisation, Missions in Haiti, confirmed to US media that Mr Montis was the third victim.

In an earlier Facebook post, the organisation said that the three were attacked by two separate armed groups, beginning with an attack by gunmen in three vehicles.

After another group arrived and a gang member was shot dead, the three missionaries were trapped in a house while the gang went “into full attack mode”, the post added.

“They are holed up in there, the gangs have shot all the windows out of the house and continued to shoot,” the post said.

Missions in Haiti confirmed that all three were dead three hours later, BBC reports.

The state department is aware of the deaths, a spokesperson told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

“We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss,” the spokesperson said. “We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance.”

On X social media platform, Missouri Governor Mike Parson called the deaths “absolutely heart-breaking news”.

The White House on Friday called for the swift deployment of a Kenyan-led multinational force to stabilise the nation.

“The security situation in Haiti cannot wait,” said a National Security Council spokesperson, adding that President Joe Biden had pledged to support the “expedited deployment” of the force in talks with Kenya’s president on Thursday.

“Our hearts go out to the families of those killed as they experience unimaginable grief,” the spokesperson added.

In an interview with the BBC on Friday, Kenyan President William Ruto said this type of incident was part of the reason his country will deploy forces in the country.

“We shouldn’t be losing people. We shouldn’t be losing missionaries. It is the reason why we made this decision – knowing very well that the responsibility for security in Haiti is a shared responsibility,” he said.

“We are doing this to forestall and to stop more people losing their lives to gangs,” he added.

In a similar incident in 2021, 17 North American missionaries were kidnapped and held east of Port-au-Prince.

Kenya police to arrive in Haiti in ‘three weeks’

Five were released and 12 ultimately escaped by using stars for navigation to trek through dense bush.

Missions in Haiti has been operating in the country since 2000, and is largely focused on helping Haitian children.

For weeks, gangs had been carrying out deadly co-ordinated attacks, demanding the resignation of the then Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

He agreed to step down in March. Nine members of the transitional council have now been sworn in to lead the country.

But the gangs have capitalised on the power vacuum left by Mr Henry’s exit and expanded their control over large swathes of the country.

Kenya is due to deploy police forces to Haiti at the head of an international force aimed at helping the country’s transitional authorities restore order.

Earlier this week, the UN children’s agency, Unicef, warned that the violence and widespread malnutrition have brought Haiti’s health system to “the verge of collapse”.

Headline

Israel Disregards ICJ Orders, Bombs Gaza, Rafah

Published

8 hours ago

May 25, 2024

Editor

Israel bombed the Gaza Strip, including Rafah, on Saturday, despite an order from the UN’s top court for it to “immediately halt” its military offensive in the southern city.

At the same time, renewed efforts are getting underway in Paris aimed at securing a ceasefire in the war sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.

In a case brought by South Africa alleging the Israeli military operation amounts to “genocide”, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive and demanded the immediate release of hostages still held by Palestinian militants.

The Hague-based ICJ, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, also instructed Israel to keep open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which Israel closed before sending troops and tanks into the besieged city and crossing earlier this month.

Israel gave no indication it was preparing to change course in Rafah, insisting the court had got it wrong.

“Israel has not and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area that create living conditions that could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,” National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a joint statement with Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman.

Hamas, the Iran-backed Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, welcomed the ICJ ruling on Rafah but criticised its decision to exclude the rest of the Palestinian territory from the order.

‘Nothing left here’

In spite of the ICJ ruling, Israel carried out strikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning as fighting raged between the army and Hamas’s armed wing.

Palestinian witnesses and AFP teams reported Israeli strikes in Rafah and the central city of Deir al-Balah.

“We hope that the court’s decision will put pressure on Israel to end this war of extermination because there is nothing left here,” said Oum Mohammad Al-Ashqa, a Palestinian woman from Gaza City displaced to Deir al-Balah by the war.

Mohammed Saleh, also interviewed by AFP in the central Gazan city, said, “Israel is a state that considers itself above the law. Therefore, I do not believe that the shooting or the war will stop other than by force.”

In its ruling, the ICJ said Israel must “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

It ordered Israel to allow UN-mandated investigators “unimpeded access” to Gaza to look into the genocide allegations.

It instructed Israel to open the Rafah crossing for the “unhindered provision at scale” of humanitarian aid and also called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,857 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to data from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The Israeli military said on Friday the bodies of three hostages — the Israeli Chanan Yablonka, Brazilian-Israeli Michel Nisenbaum and French-Mexican Orion Hernandez Radoux — were recovered in Gaza’s north.

Paris meetings

Israel has come under mounting international pressure over its Gaza offensive.

The ICJ ruling came days after Ireland, Spain and Norway said they would formally recognise a Palestinian state next week and the International Criminal Court prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Hamas leaders on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On the diplomatic front, efforts have resumed to seek the first ceasefire in Gaza since a week-long truce in November that saw more than 100 hostages released in exchange for 240 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails.

CIA chief Bill Burns was expected to meet Israeli representatives in Paris in a bid to relaunch negotiations, a Western source close to the issue said.

Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron received the prime minister of Qatar and the Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers on Friday “to press for a ceasefire”, according to Cairo.

The French presidency said they held talks on the Gaza war and ways to set up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Top US diplomat Antony Blinken also spoke with Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz about new efforts to achieve a ceasefire and reopen the Rafah border crossing, Washington said.

Ceasefire talks involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators ended shortly after Israel launched the Rafah operation, though Netanyahu’s office this week said the war cabinet had asked the Israeli delegation “to continue negotiations for the return of the hostages”.

‘End this nightmare’

Israeli ground troops started moving into Rafah in early May, defying global opposition. It has since ordered mass evacuations from Rafah, with the UN saying more than 800,000 people have fled.

Troops took over the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, further slowing sporadic deliveries of aid for Gaza’s 2.4 million people.

The US military has also installed a temporary jetty on the Gaza coast to receive aid by sea that a UN spokesman said had delivered 97 trucks of aid after “a rocky start” a week ago.

The security and humanitarian situation in the territory remains alarming, with a risk of famine and most hospitals no longer functioning.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on social media site X on Friday that the situation had reached “a moment of clarity”.

“At a time when the people of Gaza are staring down famine… it is more critical than ever to heed the calls made over the last seven months: Release the hostages. Agree a ceasefire. End this nightmare.”

AFP

Headline

Catholic Priest Bites Woman While Giving Holy Communion During Mass[PHOTOS]

Published

19 hours ago

May 25, 2024

Editor

A priest in Florida bit a woman’s hand during a physical altercation while he was administering Holy Communion to the congregants of his church, officials said.

The incident between the priest and a female parishioner began at approximately 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 19, during Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in St. Cloud, Florida.

The woman “came through Father Fidel Rodriguez’s Holy Communion line and appeared unaware of the proper procedure,” according to a statement released by the Diocese of Orlando.

The woman makes a statement at the police station

“After a brief exchange with the woman, it was determined that she was neither prepared nor disposed to participate in Communion,” the statement said.

“Father Rodriguez gave the woman a blessing and advised her to receive the Sacrament of Penance (Confession) before coming back to receive Holy Communion (Eucharist).”

The same woman is said to have arrived at 12 p.m. for another Mass on Sunday and stood in Father Rodriguez’s Communion line when he asked her if she had been to the Sacrament of the Penance (Confession) to which she replied that “it was not his business,” according to the Diocese of Orlando.

“Father Rodriguez offered the woman Holy Communion on the tongue,” church officials said.

“At that point, the woman forcefully placed her hand in the vessel and grabbed some sacred Communion hosts, crushing them.

Having only one hand free, Father Rodriguez struggled to restrain the woman as she refused to let go of the hosts.

Then the woman pushed him and, reacting to a perceived act of aggression, Father Rodriguez bit her hand so she would let go of the hosts she grabbed.

The woman was immediately asked to leave, according to the Diocese of Orlando’s statement.

“It should be noted Father Rodriguez had no prior knowledge of the woman’s background,” officials said.

“Further, while the Diocese of Orlando does not condone physical altercations such as this, in good faith, Father Rodriguez was simply attempting to prevent an act of desecration of the Holy Communion, which, as a priest, Father Rodriguez is bound by duty to protect.”

The Priest being questioned by police

Authorities have not yet charged the priest with any crimes though it is possible he could be charged pending the investigation.

Officials have not given any details on injuries the woman may have suffered during the altercation.

In the Catholic tradition, the Eucharist is considered “the source and summit” of worship and faith, said the Diocese of Orlando.

“The act of participation in Holy Communion therefore calls for a proper understanding, reverence, and devotion.”

“The Diocese of Orlando believes all people of all faiths should be respected and that their religious ceremonies or services should never be disrupted,” officials said.

The Diocese of Orlando has said they will not comment any further on the incident and the investigation is currently ongoing.