In the U.S. more than 3 million shelter animals are adopted every year. But if you can’t find the animal you’ve been waiting for at your local shelter locally, or even nationally, you can look even farther afield. Svetlana Prudovskaya met with the people who make these little miracles happen. Anna Rice narrates her story.

Albania said Wednesday it has ordered the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats and declared them “persona non grata.”

Acting Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj announced the decision in a Facebook post, writing that diplomats Mohammad Ali Arz Peimanemati and Seyed Ahmad Hosseini Alast have conducted “activities in breach of their [diplomatic] status and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”

“The two representatives of the Islamic Republic have been asked to leave the territory of the Republic of Albania immediately,” Cakaj wrote, without offering further details.  

Confidential sources within the Albanian government told VOA the two diplomats are being expelled for activity endangering Albania’s national security. 

They said that cultural attache Seyed Ahmed Hosseini Alast had previously held high positions with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and that Mohamed Peimanemati had been a member of the operational unit of Iran’s Intelligence Agency, MOIS. The source charged that he was responsible for terrorist acts in European Union countries.

The same sources told VOA that the two had been associates of Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike early this month.

Rising tensions

Adrian Shtuni, a foreign policy and security expert in Washington, told VOA the expulsion marks a new low in the already strained diplomatic relationship between Albania and Iran.

“While the specific nature of the actions undertaken by the expelled Iranian diplomats are yet unclear, the justification used by the Albanian authorities, namely ‘activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,’ is a standard euphemism for espionage,” he said.

It is the second time in 13 months that Albania has declared Iranian diplomats “persona non grata.”

In December 2018, Tirana expelled Iran’s ambassador and another diplomat whom the country accused of “damaging its national security.” Following talks with other countries, including Israel, AIbania declared the two diplomats were expelled for “violating their diplomatic status.”

U.S. President Donald Trump subsequently thanked Albania, saying in a letter to Prime Minister Edi Rama that the action “exemplifies our joint efforts to show the Iranian government that its terrorist activities in Europe and around the world will have severe consequences.”

Reaction from Iran

Iran blamed the United States and Israel for the expulsions. Its foreign ministry said Albania “has become an unintentional victim of the United States, Israel and some terrorist groups.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seemed to target Albania in a televised address last week decrying the killing of Soleimani. He spoke of a “small and sinister” country that he claimed “was instrumental in a Western plot to effect violent unrest” in Iran in November. Mass protests swept Iran at that time following an abrupt increase in gasoline prices.

Albanian President Ilir Meta responded with a statement saying Albania “is not an evil country, but a democratic country that has suffered from an evil dictatorship unparalleled in its kind. [It] therefore considers human rights sacred.” Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha ruled for 40 years years before his death in 1985.

Iranian hostility toward Albania stems in part from the Balkan country’s decision to provide a refuge for 2,500 members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK), a militant Iranian opposition group regarded as terrorists by Tehran. The group was expelled from Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. has assisted Albania in its efforts to resettle the MEK, which has supported the U.S. in military operations in the Middle East.

Albanian police disclosed for the first time late last year that they had thwarted a 2018 plot involving a “terrorist cell” of Iran’s elite Quds Force. They said the group was targeting a gathering in Albania that included MEK members.

Three Iranian men and one Turkish man were suspected of involvement in the cell.
 

A federal judge agreed Wednesday to block the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order allowing state and local government officials to reject refugees from resettling in their jurisdictions.
    
U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction requested by three national refugee resettlement agencies that sued to challenge the executive order.
    
In his 31-page ruling, Messitte said the agencies are likely to succeed in showing that the executive order is unlawful because it gives state and local governments veto power over the resettlement of refugees.
    
President Donald Trump’s administration announced in November that resettlement agencies must get written consent from state and local officials in any jurisdiction where they want to help resettle refugees beyond June 2020.
    
Agency leaders say the order effectively gives governors and county leaders a veto in the resettlement process. The agencies also argue the order illegally conflicts with the 1980 Refugee Act.
    
Messitte concluded Trump’s order doesn’t appear to serve the “overall public interest.”
    
“Refugee resettlement activity should go forward as it developed for the almost 40 years before the (executive order) was announced,’”he wrote.
   
 Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit, filed the lawsuit in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Nov. 21. They are three of the nine national organizations agencies that have agreements with the federal government to provide housing and other services for refugees.
    
Texas, which took in more refugees than any other state during the 2018 fiscal year, became the first state known to reject the resettlement of new refugees. Gov. Greg Abbott said in a letter released Jan. 10 that Texas “has been left by Congress to deal with disproportionate migration issues resulting from a broken federal immigration system.”
    
The head of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, said the ruling for now puts on hold a policy that was causing “irreparable harm to refugee families and resettlement agency’s already. “ She added that it essentially re-opens the door for now to refugees being resettled in Texas.
    
“It’s a significant day in which the rule of law won,” O’Mara Vignarajah said.
    
At least 41 states have publicly agreed to accept refugees, but a governor’s decision doesn’t preclude local officials from refusing to give their consent. For instance, the Democratic mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts, has refused to give written consent for refugees to be resettled in the city.
    
Trump’s order says the agencies were not working closely enough with local officials on resettling refugees and his administration acted to respect communities that believe they do not have the jobs or other resources to be able to take in refugees. Refugees have the right to move anywhere in the U.S. after their initial resettlement, but at their own expense.
    
Before Trump signed the executive order, state and local officials were given a voice but not a veto in deciding where refugees would be resettled, resettlement agency lawyers said.
    
During a Jan. 8 hearing, the judge said the president’s order essentially changed a federal law governing the resettlement of refugees.
    
Justice Department attorney Bradley Humphreys said the Refugee Act gives the president “ample authority” to make such a change.
    
“Why change it now?” Messitte asked. “Is it purely a political thing?”
    
Humphreys said the executive order is designed to enhance the involvement of state and local officials in the process of resettling refugees. But he insisted it doesn’t give them a veto over resettlement decisions.
    
The Trump administration has capped the number of refugee admissions at 18,000 for the current fiscal year. About 30,000 refugees were resettled in the U.S. during the past fiscal year; between 150,000 and 200,000 remain in the pipeline for possible U.S. resettlement while they live abroad, according to Linda Evarts, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Stanislav Aseyev and Oleh Halazyuk, two contributors to RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, were among the civilians released by Russia-backed separatists in a prisoner swap on December 29, 2019. Both had been held for more than two years. Shortly after their release, the two journalists told RFE/RL about the conditions of their imprisonment and the charges leveled against them.

Qatar is seeking to play a mediating role amid escalating tensions following a U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Iraq and brought the region to the brink of an all-out war involving Washington and Tehran, the Qatari foreign minister said Wednesday.

Speaking on an official visit to Baghdad, Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said Qatar was making contacts with regional and international countries in order to de-escalate tensions. His visit to Iraq comes days after Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani visited Tehran.

“Qatar, together with some friendly countries, is trying to decrease tensions. We have made international contacts for more consultations with our brotherly and sisterly countries,” al-Thani said in a joint press conference with Iraq’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed al-Hakim. “Today we see signs of decreased tensions and we hope this will continue.”

Al-Thani was scheduled to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and President Barham Saleh later Wednesday.

 “We discussed ways of decreasing tensions in our region and we have our common efforts and joint efforts together with our friends in Iran and America and our talks,” said al-Hakim. “Our talks concentrated on Iraq not being a scene for fighting.”

Tension soared following a U.S. drone strike early this month that killed a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, and senior Iraq milita commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Iran retaliated by firing a barrage of missiles that hit two bases in Iraq where American troops are based, but caused no casualties. Tensions soared further after Iran, just hours following the missile attacks, mistakenly shot down an Ukrainian passenger plane that had taken off from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.

 

 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday named two House chairmen who led President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry as prosecutors for Trump’s Senate trial.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who led the probe, and Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose committee approved the impeachment articles, as among the managers of the prosecution.

“Today is an important day,” said Pelosi, flanked by the team. “This is about the Constitution of the United States.”

Schiff and Nadler will lead the seven member team that includes a diverse selection of lawmakers, particularly those with courtroom experience. They include Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Sylvia Garcia of Texas, Val Demings of Florida and Jason Crow of Colorado.

During Pelosi’s press conference, Trump tweeted that impeachment is “another Con Job by the Do Nothing Democrats. All of this work was supposed to be done by the House, not the Senate!”

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House last month on charges of abuse of power over his pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden as Trump withheld aid from the country. He was also charged with obstructing Congress’ ensuing probe.

The House is set to vote later in the day to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial on whether the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are grounds for his removal. The managers will then walk the articles across the Capitol to the Senate.

Trump’s trial will be only the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, and it comes against the backdrop of a politically divided nation and an election year.

New details of Trump’s efforts on Ukraine emerged late Tuesday, increasing pressure on senators to call witnesses in the trial, a step that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been reluctant to take.

House investigators announced they were turning over a “trove” of new records of phone calls, text messages and other information from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said the information shows Trump’s effort  “to coerce Ukraine into helping the President’s reelection campaign.” He said this and other new testimony must be included in the Senate trial.

The Senate is expected to transform into an impeachment court as early as Thursday, although significant proceedings wouldn’t begin until next Tuesday after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The Constitution calls for the chief justice to preside over senators, who serve as jurors, to swear an oath to deliver “impartial justice.”

McConnell, who is negotiating rules for the trial proceedings, said all 53 GOP senators are on board with his plan to start the session and consider the issue of witnesses later.

Senate Republicans also signaled they would reject the idea of simply voting to dismiss the articles of impeachment against Trump, as Trump himself has suggested. McConnell agreed he does not have the votes to do that.

“There is little or no sentiment in the Republican conference for a motion to dismiss,” McConnell said Tuesday. “Our members feel we have an obligation to listen to the arguments.”

A mounting number of senators say they want to ensure the ground rules include the possibility of calling new witnesses.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is leading an effort among some Republicans, including Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska for witness votes.

Romney said he wants to hear from John Bolton, the former national security adviser at the White House, who others have said raised alarms about the alternative foreign policy toward Ukraine being run by Giuliani.

Democrats have been pushing Republicans, who have a slim Senate majority, to consider new testimony, arguing that fresh information has emerged during Pelosi’s monthlong delay in transmitting the charges.

Republicans control the chamber, 53-47, and are all but certain to acquit Trump. It takes just 51 votes during the impeachment trial to approve rules or call witnesses. Just four GOP senators could form a majority with Democrats to insist on new testimony. It also would take only 51 senators to vote to dismiss the charges against Trump.

At Tuesday’s private GOP lunch, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky warned that if witnesses are allowed, defense witnesses could also be called. He and other Republicans want to subpoena Biden and his son, Hunter, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, Burisma, while his father was vice president.

McConnell is drafting an organizing resolution that will outline the steps ahead. Approving it will be among their first votes of the trial, likely next Tuesday.

He prefers to model Trump’s trial partly on the process used for then-President Bill Clinton’s trial in 1999. It, too, contained motions for dismissal or calling new witnesses.

McConnell is hesitant to call new witnesses who would prolong the trial and put vulnerable senators who are up for reelection in 2020 in a bind with tough choices. At the same time, he wants to give those same senators ample room to show voters they are listening to demands for a fair trial.

Most Republicans now appear willing to go along with McConnell’s plan to start the trial first then consider witnesses later, rather than upfront, as Democrats want.

Even if senators are able to vote to call new witnesses, it is not at all clear there would be majorities to subpoena Bolton or the others.

 

Democratic presidential contenders clashed over a number of issues in their latest debate Tuesday, held less than three weeks before voters in Iowa head to the polls to kick off the 2020 primary season. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on the debate held in Des Moines, Iowa, and sponsored by CNN and The Des Moines Register newspaper.

Iranian students have staged noisy rallies at four Tehran universities in a fourth day of protests against Iran’s Islamist rulers after they admitted to mistakenly shooting down a passenger jet full of Iranians.

Video clips obtained by VOA appeared to show dozens of students chanting anti-government slogans in Tuesday protests at Tehran University, Amirkabir University of Technology, Shahid Beheshti University and Tehran University of Art. VOA could not independently verify the authenticity of the clips.

There were no immediate reports of Iranian police action against any of the student demonstrations, which appeared to be peaceful.

Iranians in Tehran and other cities have been holding daily anti-government protests since officials admitted on Saturday that their forces shot down a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 shortly after it took off from Tehran on a flight to Kyiv on January 8. For three days, Iranian leaders insisted that mechanical problems likely caused the crash that killed all 176 people on board, until acknowledging that Iranian military personnel downed the plane after misidentifying it as an enemy threat.

The dead included 82 Iranians and 57 Canadians, many of them Iranian students with dual citizenship who were flying to Kyiv en route to Canada to resume university studies after the winter break.

The pre-dawn crash happened hours after Iran fired missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq and was bracing for a U.S. counterstrike that never came. Iran’s missile attacks, which caused no casualties, were in retaliation for what the U.S. called a self-defensive strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3.

Western news agencies with journalists in Tehran said more than 200 anti-government protesters took part in Tuesday’s rally at Tehran University.

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In one clip, students gathered in a large circle near the campus’ science faculty, chanting: “Resign, resign, incompetent officials,” and, “We cry out against so much injustice.”

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In another clip, students assembled near the university’s medical school chanted, “Our state television is our disgrace.”

Iranian state TV network IRIB had broadcasted the government’s initial denials that Iran was responsible for the plane crash. Several presenters for the network have since resigned, in a reflection of public anger toward the erroneous denials.

Student supporters of the government also made their presence felt at Tehran University, holding a joint memorial for the victims of the plane crash and for Soleimani at the campus mosque. Images provided by Western news agencies showed some of the pro-government activists also burning American and British flags outside the mosque and chanting slogans vowing never to give in to Iran’s “enemies.”

A video that appeared to be from Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University showed students denouncing government officials who said they were mourning the plane crash while insisting it was not their fault. “If you are grieving, why have you waited for three days?” the students asked.

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At Tehran University of Art, students appeared to be chanting, “Death to the liar”, and, “Our hands are bare, so put away your truncheons.”

Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholhossein Esmaili said authorities had detained 30 protesters since the anti-government demonstrations began late Saturday. Widely-circulated online video of Sunday’s protests in Tehran appeared to show people suffering the effects of tear gas fired by police.

Esmaili said authorities were treating the protesters with leniency.

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Other video apparently filmed after nightfall Tuesday showed students at Amirkabir University denouncing Iranian security forces as “shameless”.

Earlier Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to punish those responsible for the “unforgivable” downing of the Ukrainian plane. In a televised speech, he also called for a special court to be set up to handle prosecutions.

Esmaili, the judiciary spokesman, said some of those suspected of having a role in the plane shoot-down had been arrested, but did not say how many or identify them.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. VOA’s Extremism Watch Desk contributed. 

Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden says he would not meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without preconditions. It is the latest evidence Biden would overturn parts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s outreach to Pyongyang.

“Not now, I wouldn’t meet without any preconditions,” Biden said Tuesday during a Democratic debate in the midwestern state of Iowa. “Look, we gave him everything he’s looking for. The president showed up, met with him, gave him legitimacy, weakened the sanctions we have against him.”

Biden has repeatedly criticized Trump’s willingness to meet with Kim, saying the strategy is ineffective and aimed more at creating headlines than addressing the North Korean nuclear issue.

At his campaign rallies, Biden has called Kim a “thug,”  “tyrant,” and “dictator.” In response, North Korean state media last year slammed Biden as an “imbecile,” a “fool of low IQ,” and a “rabid dog.”

“I would not meet with, absent preconditions…a, quote, supreme leader who said Joe Biden is a rabid dog, (that) should be beaten to death with a stick,” Biden said. “And he got a love letter from Trump right after that.”

Instead, Biden said he would pressure China to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, and would attempt to reunify the relationship between South Korea and Japan, which has been strained over a trade dispute and historical tensions related to Japan’s use of wartime forced labor.

Unorthodox approach

Trump’s approach to North Korea during his first term as president has been a story of extremes. In 2017, Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” He also threatened to “totally destroy” the country.

In June 2018, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader. At their first summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim signed a vague agreement to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” but never agreed on what that meant.

The talks were stalled for most of 2019, after Trump and Kim failed to reach a deal at a second summit in Hanoi. Kim said earlier this month he is prepared for a “long-term” standoff with the U.S., saying his country should not expect sanctions relief.

North Korea has also threatened to end its self-imposed suspension of long-range missile or nuclear tests – a move that could totally upset the nuclear talks and would risk alienating Chinese and Russian support for the North.

North Korean officials have repeatedly stressed that while the Trump-Kim relationship remains positive, it does not mean the talks will succeed.

“Although Chairman Kim Jong Un has a good personal feelings about President Trump, they are, in the true sense of the word, ‘personal,’” senior North Korean diplomat Kim Kye Gwan said on Saturday.

Will Trump’s approach endure?

It isn’t clear how much of Trump’s approach will outlast his presidency.

Many Democratic presidential candidates have criticized certain aspects of Trump’s North Korea strategy, saying it has been erratic and ratings-driven. But many of those candidates support the general idea of diplomacy with Pyongyang.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizebeth Warren, and former Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg have expressed support for a step-by-step approach to North Korea’s denuclearization.

So far, that is further than Trump has been willing to go. Instead, Trump has insisted North Korea first agree to entirely abandon its nuclear weapons before the U.S. relaxes sanctions or gives other major concessions.

“If Trump’s approach is erraticism, or insults combined with threatening fire and fury, or meeting Kim Jong Un for photo ops, then none of it will survive,” says Van Jackson, a former Pentagon official who now lectures at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

Jackson says any current Democratic nominee will undertake a “serious run” at diplomatic engagement. “The thing that depends very much on the candidate (and their advisers) is how much we’ll entertain sanctions relief and in what sequencing,” he says.

Iraq’s influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr escalated his rhetoric Tuesday against the U.S. influence in Iraq, calling civilians to participate in a “million-person” march for the removal of American troops in the country.

“O Soldiers of God and the nation, rush to a united and peaceful demonstration of millions, denouncing the American presence and its violations,” al-Sadr said in a tweet to Iraqis.  

Al-Sadr, whose political list won the most seats in the Iraqi 2018 legislative elections, has used his popularity in the past to draw thousands of zealous supporters to the streets, including the October 2019 protests over government corruption. He has since 2003 ardently opposed the U.S. presence in Iraq and for years used the now disbanded Mahdy Army to target U.S. troops.

WATCH: Tens of Thousands of US Troops are Stationed Near Iran

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The cleric in his recent plea for rally expressed his frustration over the violation of Iraq’s sovereignty by “the occupying forces,” saying he was confident that Iraqi protesters “will not bow down to global arrogance.”

Global Arrogance  

The term “global arrogance” is often used by Iran’s officials to refer to the United States and its Western and Israeli allies.

Al-Sadr’s call for protests comes as Iran’s state-sponsored AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA) Tuesday reported an “important gathering” between him and “the commanders of Iraqi resistance” late Monday in Iran. 

The meeting, attended by leaders of Hezbollah Battalion, the Movement of the Noble Ones, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, was “in the virtue of more coordination of Islamic resistance forces” and “in order to put an end to the American invaders’ presence in Iraq,” ABNA reported, referring to three Shiite militant groups designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S.  

Another meeting between al-Sadr’s political wing Saairun and Fatih coalition in the Iranian city of Qom Saturday agreed to choose Hadi al-Aameri as the head of “the Islamic Resistance in Iraq” following the U.S. killing of Iraqi Shiite leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis along with IRGC’s Qassem Soleimani, ABNA reported.

Relations between the United States and Iran faced a series of escalations in recent weeks after the U.S. accused Iranian proxy militias of targeting U.S. facilities in Iraq, including a rocket attack in Kirkuk province that killed an American contractor in late December and prompted American strikes on Kataeb Hezbollah facilities in Iraq and Syria.

WATCH: A Look at Soleimani’s Axis of Resistance

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The tensions reached a new level high after the U.S. embassy was sieged by pro-Iran protesters on Dec. 31, followed by a U.S. airstrike on January 3 that killed Iran’s top commander Soleimani along with several others. Iran on Jan. 8 responded by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles on at least two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops. 

WATCH: Qassem Soleimani: From Construction Worker to Architect of Iran’s Middle East Expansion

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In Iraq, where the Shiite-dominated government has condemned the U.S. airstrike as a violation of its sovereignty, the parliament last week passed a resolution that asked for the removal of American troops and other foreign forces. U.S. president Donald Trump, in return, has threatened to hit Iraq with severe sanctions.

Sherko Mirways, a Kurdish lawmaker and head of Iraqi parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA that Iraq was entering “a dark tunnel,” warning that Iraq’s leadership needs to take Trump’s threats seriously. 

“We need to work together to deescalate the situation now and have a serious debate later about Iraq’s political direction and a balanced relation with the world,” Mirways said. 

The lawmaker said that Iraq was falling victim to the U.S.-Iran rivalry, adding that the country needed to work with both sides based on mutual interests.

VOA Kurdish Service’s Dlshad Anwar contributed to this report from Kirkuk, Iraq.

The head of Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that China has launched an assault on the international human rights system, and governments need to resist Beijing’s actions.

“This is the most severe period of repression that we have seen in decades in China,” said Kenneth Roth, HRW executive director.  

In its World Report 2020, launched Tuesday at the United Nations, the rights group chronicles abuses in 95 countries. It expresses its deepest concern, though, about an emboldened China, which it warns is using its growing global economic influence to silence domestic critics and deter condemnation abroad.  

At home, HRW says President Xi Jinping’s government uses a combination of technology and intimidation to keep its people in line. Most concerning is the government’s treatment of millions of ethnic Uigher Muslims.

“For the Uighers and other Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang, Beijing has built the most intrusive system of surveillance we have ever seen and coupled it with the largest case of mass arbitrary detention in decades,” Roth told reporters.

In the northwest territory of Xinjiang, where most Uigher’s live, Communist party officials and loyalists “visit” and live in homes of some Uighers to monitor them. The government also has harnessed technology to deploy facial-recognition systems and use the forced collection of DNA samples, as well as phone apps, to collect their data.

A million or more Uighers are incarcerated in “re-education” facilities, separated from their families, with many children being left without their parents.  

China has defended its treatment of the Uighers, saying they are in vocational training and that it is pursuing de-radicalization and counterterror efforts.  

Roth urged countries to deny Beijing the international respectability it desires, saying that can help force positive change.

“Governments should deliberately counter China’s divide-and-conquer strategy for securing silence about its repression,” Roth said. “When governments deal with China on their own, they often opt for silence, but if they band together, the power of balance shifts.”

Denied entry

HRW originally planned to launch its report from Hong Kong, but authorities there would not let Roth into the country, which is governed by China.  

A diplomat from China’s U.N. mission attended his press conference and told reporters that Beijing rejects HRW’s assessment of its human rights situation, saying his government has “made every effort to advance human rights in China.”

As to Roth’s denial of entry into Hong Kong, First Secretary Xing Jisheng said, “Given what you said here, I think it’s clear to all why you have been barred such entry.”
 

Six U.S. Democratic presidential candidates traded barbs with each other in a tense debate late Tuesday, attempting to make the case to voters in the farm state of Iowa that they alone have the political fortitude and skill to take on Republican President Donald Trump in the November national election.

With heightened world tensions between the U.S. and Iran, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, quickly attacked the foreign policy credentials of the party’s national front-runner for the presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Sanders derided Biden’s 2002 vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq on what proved to be erroneous American intelligence that deposed dictator Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, while Sanders opposed the the 2003 invasion.

He said Biden voted for the “worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.”

Biden, who for years has said his Iraq vote was a mistake, countered that while he had erred, as former U.S. President Barack Obama’s second in command, he worked to bring home more than 150,000 U.S. troops once stationed in Iraq and to end the conflict.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said that she, as a candidate early in her political career, also opposed the Iraq invasion, while accusing Trump of “taking us pell-mell toward another war,” in the current conflict over the U.S. leader’s changing rationale for ordering a drone strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.

A key challenger to both Biden and Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a one-time Harvard law professor, and others said they would move to bring thousands of U.S. troops home from the Middle East, at odds with Trump’s recent dispatch of more forces to the region. Warren said, “We have to stop this mindset that the answer” to world’s trouble spots is to send U.S. troops overseas. Asked whether she would leave some combat troops in the Middle East, she replied: “No, we have to get them out.”

Sanders said, “The American people are sick and tired of endless wars.”

Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the only war-time veteran on the debate stage, said he could best serve as the country’s commander in chief, because “the lessons of the past are personal to me.” Wealthy environmentalist Tom Steyer contended that Trump “obviously has no strategy” in dealing with Iran and agreed with Biden that it would take the efforts of an international coalition to rein in its nuclear ambitions.

Tuesday’s debate stage had the fewest number of candidates since the face-to-face encounters began last June. It was also the first with all white contenders, after black, Latino and Asian candidates have either dropped out of the race for lack of voter support and campaign money or failed to qualify for the debate stage.

It was the seventh debate, but the last before Democrats in rural Iowa in the U.S. heartland cast the first votes in the party’s months-long nomination process, at night-time caucuses less than three weeks from now, on Feb. 3.

Contests in other states are just ahead on the political calendar. But Iowa, even though its predominantly white 3 million population is at odds with the increasingly racially diverse U.S. demographics, draws out-sized national attention because it is first in the once-every-four-years presidential sweepstakes.

Warren and Sanders sparred sharply over a private conversation they had more than a year ago in which Warren claims that Sanders questioned whether a woman can defeat Trump to become the first female U.S. president.

Sanders denied making the remark and said no one believes a woman can’t win, noting that Democrat Hillary Clinton out-polled Trump by nearly 3 million votes in 2016, while losing the vote in the country’s state-by-state electoral college system of electing presidents.

When she was asked what she thought when Sanders told her a woman couldn’t defeat Trump in 2020, Warren responded: “I disagreed.”

Warren said that the male candidates on the debate stage had collectively lost 10 elections during their lifetimes, while the two women, herself and Klobuchar, are undefeated.

Trump’s incumbent status means Republicans are sure to nominate him to seek a second four-year term in the White House.  But the Democratic race is highly unsettled.

Biden, now in his third race for the party’s presidential nomination, leads national polls of Democratic voters, but possibly trails his Democratic opponents in Iowa and some other states. Should he falter early in the nominating process, that could dent his key campaign argument that according to national polls he stands the best chance of defeating Trump.

Last weekend’s Iowa Poll indicates Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, has surged to a narrow lead, with 20% support of those who say they will attend a caucus in three weeks. Warren, a progressive representing Massachusetts, is second at 17%, ahead of Buttigieg, who has fashioned himself as a political centrist, at 16%, and Biden, a left-of-center politician through nearly five decades in Washington, at 15%. But more than half of those polled said they could still decide to support a candidate other than the one they now prefer or have yet to make up their mind.

A separate Monmouth University poll showed a similar close contest among the four leaders, but with Biden ahead followed by Sanders, Buttigieg and Warren.

Klobuchar and Steyer both trail the four leaders in the pre-election Iowa polling, but qualified for the debate stage by meeting the polling and fundraising standards set by the national Democratic Party. Other Democratic candidates remain in a crowded field of presidential aspirants, but are not campaigning in Iowa, did not make the cut for the debate or have dropped out, including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey who left the race on Monday.

Trump has taken note of Sanders’s recent ascent in opinion polls, saying in a Twitter comment over the weekend, “Wow! Crazy Bernie Sanders is surging in the polls, looking very good against his opponents in the Do Nothing Party. So what does this all mean? Stay tuned!”

Wow! Crazy Bernie Sanders is surging in the polls, looking very good against his opponents in the Do Nothing Party. So what does this all mean? Stay tuned!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2020

For months Trump had focused singularly on Biden, with occasional barbs against Warren and Buttigieg, as his mostly likely 2020 opponent, to the extent that his concern about Biden is at the center of the impeachment case against Trump. The president’s impeachment trial in the Senate trial is likely to start next Tuesday, only the third such impeachment trial in two and a half centuries of American history.

Trump is accused of trying to benefit himself politically by pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a late July phone call to launch an investigation of Biden, his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to undermine Trump’s campaign. His requests came at the same time he was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Trump eventually released the money in September without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations. That is proof, Republicans say, that Trump had not engaged in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal, the military aid in exchange for the Biden investigations.

Three of the leading Democratic challengers — Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar — could be directly affected by Trump’s impeachment trial since they will be among the 100 members of the Senate, effectively sitting as jurors, deciding Trump’s fate. That will keep them in Washington six days a week while the trial is going on, and importantly for them, off the campaign trail in Iowa to meet voters.

With a Republican majority in the Senate, Trump is all but assured of being acquitted and allowed to remain in office to face voters in November. But a full-blown trial, if witnesses are called to testify as Democrats and some Republicans want, could infuse unexpected new information about Trump and perhaps Biden into the last weeks of the Iowa contest.

ABUJA — Nigerian authorities have been battling the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, for a decade in a conflict that has cost the lives of an estimated 35,000 people. In a ceremony over the weekend, Nigeria marked Armed Forces Day by remembering the soldiers killed in the battle against the insurgency. 

The special remembrance event for troops took place in the Nigerian capital, and with smaller ceremonies in states like Borno, Adamawa and Yola — the epicenters of Nigeria’s decade-long war against the Boko Haram insurgency.

During the event in Abuja, about 200 widows of fallen soldiers and their relatives received food and financial support.

Like many of the women, Olubunmi Adetunji’s husband, a soldier, was killed while fighting Boko Haram in Maiduguri in April 2016. Since then, the defense ministry has been helping her care for their four children.

“I thank the defense headquarters and the army headquarters for what they have been doing in my life because since 2016, I don’t know how much they sell rice in the market. They provide rice, provisions, even the children’s sponsorship, they call us every year to pay the sponsorship,” Adetunji said.

A concert to honor fallen soldiers, tagged  “Tribute To Our Heroes,” debuted with top Nigerian entertainers, musicians and comedians performing.

Lere Osanyintolu, a personnel official at the defense ministry, said the ministry plans to make it an annual event.

“The aim of this project is to let you know that the chief of defense staff, armed forces of Nigeria and, indeed, the nation at large has not forgotten you and that you’re never alone as you’re always in our prayers,” Osanyintolu said.

Security expert Kabiru Adamu, who heads an Abuja-based security consulting firm, said events like the concert help boost morale and inspire confidence.

“The insurgency has been going on for about 10 years now, so I think this is a very good development,” Adamu said. “There are issues regarding the relationship between the military and the public in the locations where they are fighting. So this type of morale-boosting activity like the concert, I think it’s a very good development.”

As the military continues to battle Boko Haram, millions affected by the fight who are living in camps are hoping to return home.
 

Amnesty International will ask an Israeli court on Thursday to order Israel to revoke the export license of NSO Group, whose software is alleged to have been used by governments to spy on journalists and dissident.

Amnesty said on Tuesday that Israel’s Defense Ministry last week petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court to dismiss the lawsuit, or if it proceeds to restrict reporting on national security grounds.

In a statement, the ministry did not comment directly on whether it had sought a dismissal or gag order but said its supervision of defense exports was “subject to constant scrutiny and periodic assessments”.

The ministry added that it does not comment on specific licenses.

The Israeli company’s cellphone hacking software, Pegasus, has been linked to political surveillance in Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, according to University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance, security, privacy and accountability.

In October, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, sued NSO in the U.S. federal court in San Francisco, accusing it of helping government spies break into the phones of about 1,400 users across four continents.

Targets of the alleged hacking spree included diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials.

NSO has denied the allegations, saying it solely “provides technology to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help them fight terrorism and serious crime”.

In Amnesty’s case, brought by members and supporters of its Israel office, the organization said NSO continues to profit from its spyware being used to commit abuses against activists across the world and the Israeli government has “stood by and watched it happen.”“

The best way to stop NSO’s powerful spyware products reaching repressive governments is to revoke the company’s export license, and that is exactly what this legal case seeks to do,” said Danna Ingleton, deputy director of Amnesty Tech.

Amnesty Tech is described on Amnesty International’s website as a global collective of advocates, hackers, researchers and technologies challenging “the systematic threat to our rights” by surveillance-based businesses.

Ingleton called for the hearings in Tel Aviv to be conducted in open court, saying the Defense Ministry “must not be allowed to hide behind a veil of secrecy when it comes to human rights abuses”.

The ministry in a statement said its licensing assessments took into account various considerations such as “the security clearance of the product and assessment of the country toward which the product will be marketed.”“

The issue of protecting human rights is a major factor in the process, as are policy and security considerations,” it added in the statement on Tuesday.

NSO’s phone hacking software has already been implicated in a series of human rights abuses across Latin America and the Middle East, including an espionage scandal in Panama and an attempt to spy on an employee of the London-based Amnesty group.

NSO came under particular scrutiny over the allegation that its spyware played a role in the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

NSO, which was purchased by London-based private equity firm Novalpina Capital last year, announced in September it would begin abiding by U.N. guidelines on human rights abuses.

 

Nigerian authorities have been battling the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, for a decade in a conflict that has cost the lives of an estimated 35,000 people. In a ceremony over the weekend, Nigeria marked Armed Forces Day by remembering the soldiers killed in the battle against the insurgency. From Abuja, Timothy Obiezu reports.
 

Iran’s foreign minister has cancelled an expected appearance at next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, organizers said Tuesday, citing the “backdrop of uncertainty” in the Middle East.

The move averts a possible crossing-of-paths with top U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump, in the Alpine town at a time when relations between Iran and the United States have hit a new low.

WEF President Borge Brende cited only the “cancellation” by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was notably blacklisted by the Trump administration even before the new tensions. Brende declined to elaborate on the reasons for it.

“We have to understand the cancellation against the backdrop of uncertainty in the region and what his happening in Iran,” he told reporters at WEF headquarters in Geneva at a look-ahead event to the 50th anniversary of the forum.

Word of Zarif’s absence came as WEF founder Klaus Schwab warned that the world faces a “state of emergency” and said the window for opportunity is closing fast – notably when it comes to acting to save the environment.

He insisted the annual meeting will be “a `do-shop,’ not a `talk-shop’.”

All told, nearly 3,000 leaders from 118 countries are expected for the Jan. 21-24 event. The president of Iraq, Barham Salih, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among the 53 heads of state and government set to attend, along with hundreds of business leaders and civil society activists, like environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg of Sweden.

Schwab emphasized the importance of sustainable economic growth, the need for decent jobs and salaries, and plans for skills training for a billion people worldwide over the next decade.

He expressed hopes that a “Green Revolution” will go mainstream and said the World Economic Forum would encourage partner businesses to become carbon neutral. He highlighted an environmental project to plant 1 trillion trees worldwide by 2030 to help gobble up excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Schwab revived his call for “stakeholder capitalism” to help take the lead in solving global problems.

“Environmental responsibility is very much a part of the stakeholder responsibility,” he said.

 

Abu Dhabi’s crown prince has agreed to lead a committee that will oversee the construction of a new capital city for Indonesia that is estimated to cost $34 billion, an Indonesian official said Tuesday.

Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said it would be “an honor to play a role in the development of the largest Muslim-majority country,” Indonesian Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said in a statement.

The committee will also include Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Japanese holding company SoftBank, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who currently runs the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, he said.

“We expected their presence would provide a confidence boost for prospective investors in the new capital,” Pandjaitan said.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo met Sheikh Mohammed during a two-day trip to Abu Dhabi that ended on Monday.

Widodo announced last August that Indonesia’s capital will move from overcrowded, sinking and polluted Jakarta to a site in sparsely populated East Kalimantan province on Borneo island, known for rainforests and orangutans.

The capital’s relocation to a 180,000-hectare (444,780-acre) site almost triple the size of Jakarta will cost an estimated $34 billion. Of that, 19% is to come from the state budget and the rest from cooperation between the government and business entities and from direct investment by state-run companies and the private sector.

Widodo welcomed talks between Indonesian officials and the United Arab Emirates, as well as SoftBank, on the setting up of an Indonesia Sovereign Wealth Fund which will be finalized at the end of this month in Tokyo, the maritime and investment ministry said.

It said the UAE, a federation of seven sheikdoms on the Arabian Peninsula; SoftBank; and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation will participate in the SWF’s funding of Indonesian development projects.

The idea to set up the fund came during a visit by Sheikh Mohammed to Indonesia last July, and the UAE has pledged to become the main investor in SWF projects, Pandjaitan said.

During Widodo’s visit to Abu Dhabi, the two countries reached 16 business and government deals in which the UAE agreed to invest $6.8 billion through five government-to-government agreements and 11 business-to-business deals, the maritime and investment ministry said.

Jakarta is an Asian mega-city with 10 million people, or 30 million including those in its greater metropolitan area. It is prone to earthquakes and flooding and is rapidly sinking because of uncontrolled extraction of ground water. The water and rivers are highly contaminated. Congestion is estimated to cost the economy $6.5 billion a year.

Mineral-rich East Kalimantan was once almost completely covered by rainforests, but illegal logging has removed many of its original growth. It is home to only 3.5 million people and is surrounded by Kutai National Park, known for orangutans and other primates and mammals.

Indonesia is archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands, but currently 54% of the country’s nearly 270 million people live on Java, the country’s most densely populated area.

Egypt said Tuesday it would investigate the death in custody of a U.S. citizen who had gone on a hunger strike as part of a six-year battle against what he insisted was wrongful imprisonment.

Mustafa Kassem, 54, an Egyptian-born auto parts dealer from Long Island, New York, died late Monday of heart failure after a hunger strike he began last year, his lawyers said.

The case has trained a spotlight on the dangers of Egyptian prisons, where many inmates are serving time for crimes they insist they did not commit, or have not been charged at all, as President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi escalates a crackdown on dissent.

Egypt’s chief prosecutor ordered an autopsy and said officials are questioning all doctors who oversaw Kassem’s care in prison and at the Cairo University hospital where he died.

In Washington, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker told reporters that Kassem’s death was “needless, tragic and avoidable.”

“I will continue to raise our serious concerns about human rights and Americans detained in Egypt at every opportunity,” he said.

Kassem was in Cairo to visit family in August 2013 when his lawyers say he was mistakenly swept up in a vast dragnet during the violent dispersal of an Islamist sit-in that killed hundreds of people.

That summer, security forces descended on supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, who hailed from the Muslim Brotherhood, in what became known as the the “Rabaa Massacre.”

US Releases Aid to Egypt Amid Human Rights Concerns

The Trump administration is justifying the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in additional military aid to Egypt, citing the country’s progress over the last year in counterterrorism efforts and some improvements in its human rights record.A State Department official told VOA the United States has worked closely with the Egyptian government over the last year to further strengthen bilateral ties in support of common security and counterterrorism goals.”The secretary signed the national…

Kassem was exchanging money at a shopping mall near Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square when police stopped him and asked to see identification. When he handed over his U.S. passport, officers suddenly started beating him, and detained him. He was held for five years before he was charged.

Then in 2018, in a mass trial of over 700 defendants widely condemned by human rights organizations, Kassem was sentenced to 15 years under a contentious anti-protest law. After that, he refused to eat anything but vegetable juice, his lawyers said. Last week, he stopped even drinking.

When President Donald Trump secured the release of Egyptian-American rights advocate Aya Hijazi, who was imprisoned for three years in Egypt on false charges, Kassem appealed to the U.S. administration for help. Vice President Mike Pence raised the issue last year with el-Sissi.

El-Sissi came to power the same summer of 2013 and has overseen a sweeping crackdown on dissent, silencing critics and jailing thousands. Rights groups accuse Egyptian prosecutors of detaining people without evidence, denying them access to lawyers and a fair chance to appeal.

“It’s a scary precedent,” Hijazi, who pressed for Kassem’s release, told The Associated Press. “Both for what it means for the many political prisoners on hunger strike in Egypt right now … but also for imprisoned U.S. citizens that have called on American authorities to respond to no avail.”

Hijazi said Kassem was the fifth person to die in an Egyptian prison over the past month.

“He was targeted not because he was a criminal, but because he was American,” she added, speaking about his arrest and imprisonment.

U.N. experts recently said that “brutal” prison conditions, including deprivation of vital diabetes medicine, contributed to Morsi’s death.

The death of Kassem, who suffered from diabetes, prompted accusations of medical negligence by activists, who say authorities restricted his access to much-needed medication during years of detention.Kassem’s case evoked that of Morsi, who was held in the same notorious Tora prison. The divisive but democratically-elected former president died last year while on trial in a Cairo courtroom, six years after his overthrow amid mass protests against his rule.

More than 30,000 people near the Philippine capital, Manila, have been evacuated from the immediate vicinity of a volcano that has been belching lava, ash and steam since it erupted Sunday.

Scientists at the Philippines’s seismology agency issued a warning of a major and far more explosive eruption at the Taal volcano, located more than 60 kilometers north of Manila.  The large cloud of ash, which blasted several kilometers into the sky during Taal’s initial eruption, has also produced intermittent streaks of lightning.

The ash eventually fell over Manila, forcing authorities to shut down the city’s main airport until Monday.

Taal last erupted in 1977, 12 years after an eruption killed some 200 people.  

The Philippines archipelago lies along the Pacific Ocean’s so-called “Ring of Fire,” a long line of active faults and volcanoes where most of the world’s seismic activity occurs.  

The personal relationship between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump has no impact on Pyongyang’s denuclearization stance toward Washington, said experts.

“The recent North Korean statement responding to Trump’s birthday card was very clear,” said Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The personal feelings between Trump and Kim have no bearing on DPRK policy.”

The DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official English name for North Korea.

Over the past two years, Trump has attempted to parlay his personal relationship with Kim into a breakthrough on denuclearization talks.