https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/un-committee-expresses-concern-over-uae-torture-of-yemenis
UN committee expresses concern over UAE torture of Yemenis
The United Nations Committee against Torture has expressed concern about the torture and ill-treatment by UAE armed forces, state security agencies, and non-state armed groups against Yemenis.
The Committee highlighted the UAE's involvement in the war on Yemen and assigned special responsibility to investigators and prosecutors that work with crimes of torture and abuse, calling for a "viable path through which victims seek justice."
The Committee also spoke about the ongoing practice of female genital mutilation in the UAE and the fact that there is no legislation criminalizing it.
They called on the UAE to “strengthen its efforts to eradicate gender-based violence and harmful practices through the enactment of new legislation and awareness-raising campaigns.”
The French newspaper Le Monde revealed, in a 2019 report, that the UAE ran a secret prison in a military base that it set up in mid-2017 on a part of a gas field in southern Yemen.
Expo 2020; a facade to UAE human rights abuses
Last October, Human Rights Watch said the UAE is using Dubai Expo 2020 to promote a "public image of openness that is at odds with the government’s efforts to prevent scrutiny of its rampant systemic human rights violations."
HRW's Deputy Middle East Director, Michael Page, criticized the UAE's double standards, saying that dozens of the Emirate's "peaceful domestic critics have been arrested, railroaded in blatantly unfair trials, and condemned to many years in prison simply for trying to express their ideas on governance and human rights." He added that the Expo gives the UAE another chance to present itself to the world as a country of tolerance and respect for human rights while preventing political expression, public discourse, and activism.
Page also said countries showcasing their pavilions at the Dubai Expo should help prevent the UAE's attempts to whitewash itself "by either advocating for the UAE to unconditionally release all those unjustly detained for exercising their right to free expression and to regularly open up the country, including its jails and its courts, to scrutiny by independent researchers and monitors, or not participate [sic] in the Expo," adding that governments and businesses have a human rights responsibility to avoid helping the UAE "whitewash its abuses."
On September 17, the EU Parliament voted for a resolution condemning the UAE's human rights abuses, focusing on the issue of human rights advocate Ahmad Mansour and the continued use of torture and persecution of detainees.
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/israeli-media:-iof-conducts-drills-in-cyprus-simulating-hezb
Israeli media: IOF conducts drills in Cyprus simulating Hezbollah war
Israeli media reported that the Paratroopers Brigade conducted training exercises in Cyprus to fight against Hezbollah.
The Israeli Walla! website said that the Paratroopers Brigade conducted exercises in a village in Cyprus, in an attempt to learn how to confront Hezbollah fighters in the Lebanese villages. The goal, as mentioned on the website, is to "get Hezbollah fighters out of their hideouts and force them to fight head-on."
This is not the first time that the IOF has trained in Cyprus. In May, as part of the "Chariots of Fire" drills, the IOF commando brigade went to Cyprus to train on possible Lebanese invasion tactics in light of future confrontation with Hezbollah. The IOF chose Cyprus given the similarity of the two countries’ terrain, according to the website.
Walla! also noted that "the mission requires physical effort, but it is also a battle of minds," adding that "in the background, the threats from Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah aimed at preventing Israel from pumping gas into the Karish platform resonate."
Furthermore, Israeli media reported, a few days ago, that the Israeli occupation had strengthened its forces protecting the Karish field platform, against the backdrop of threats.
Israeli occupation Reserve Major General Amos Gilad called on "Tel Aviv" to take Sayyed Nasrallah's threats made against the Israeli occupation on Monday seriously.
"Nasrallah's threats must be taken seriously, and [the Israeli occupation forces] must prepare," Gilad told Israeli public broadcaster KAN. "If they attack the Karish rig or any other rig, that will definitely lead to a confrontation that can have many dimensions," He added.
Moreover, Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out, in the "Arbaeen Dialogue", the issue is not about Karish and Qana, Sayyed Nasrallah said. "It is about all of the oil and gas fields looted by 'Israel' in Palestine's waters in exchange for Lebanon's rights."
Sayyed Nasrallah said that "The point of launching the drones was to send a message that we are serious and will escalate our actions gradually, and this message was understood by the Americans and the Israelis," adding that "When things reach a dead-end, we will not only stand in the face of Karish… Mark these words: we will reach Karish, beyond Karish, and beyond, beyond Karish."
Nasrallah also clarified that "The Lebanese state made a major concession through what it asked for from the US mediator when it mentioned line 23+," he highlighted. "Right now, the ball is not in Lebanon's court, as it is prohibited from extracting oil and gas in the non-disputed area."
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/pope-francis:-catholic-church-run-schools-committed-genocide
Pope Francis: Catholic-church run schools committed genocide
After a six-day 'penitential pilgrimage' trip to Canada, Pope Francis on Saturday told a reporter on his plane heading back to Rome that the treatment of First Nations in Canada amounted to genocide.
During the trip, the Pope apologized to survivors of residential schools and all those who suffered the abuse of the Catholic Church. The pontiff said that he "didn't say the word (in Canada) because it didn't come to my mind, but I did describe the genocide. And I asked for forgiveness for this process which was genocide. I condemned it too."
"Taking away children, changing the culture, changing the mentality, changing the traditions, changing a race, let's put it that way, a whole culture. Yes, genocide is (a) technical word… But I have described what is, indeed, a genocide," the pontiff added.
From the late 1800s to the 1990s, approximately 150,000 First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children were enrolled in 139 residential schools across Canada as part of a government policy of forced assimilation. The last residential school was closed in 1996, which is merely 25 years ago.
Individuals forced into residential schools were snatched away from their families, language, and culture for months or years, and many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers.
They were not allowed to speak their native tongue or dress the native way. Their hair, an important element for Canadian Indigenous peoples, was cut because the clergy was aware of that significance. Residential schools were a space for forced assimilation and a tool of ethnic cleansing, all of which the Pope summarized by admitting that the treatment of indigenous people in residential schools was, in fact, an act of genocide.
Earlier on his trip and during a papal Mass in Quebec, a large banner protesting the so-called "doctrine of discovery" was unfurled near the front row facing the congregation. The majority of those in the church were indigenous.
It is worth noting that the Doctrine of Discovery is a colonial-era doctrine that claims white European nations "discovered" North America during the age of exploration.
In Alberta, the Pope failed to call what happened a genocide or ethnic cleansing, rather apologizing in front of a crowd of indigenous peoples for the "evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples" of Canada, and regretted the Church's involvement in "cultural destruction," as he put it.
On July 26, President Fawn Sharp of the National Congress of American Indians wrote to Pope Francis, requesting the Catholic Church to work with Native American tribes to get all archives about federal Indian boarding schools in the United States.
"I invite His Holiness and the Catholic Church to work with the National Congress of American Indians to open all records related to Federal Indian boarding schools so that someday soon American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples may host an apostolic - and maybe even apologetic - journey to our tribal lands here in the United States," Sharp said in the letter on Monday.
Sharp stated that the Pope's visit to Canada has motivated him to deliver an apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for its role in the cultural genocide perpetrated by Canada's residential school system.