Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, feted in the West as a heroine of democracy, has defended her country’s atrocities against Rohingya Muslims at the UN’s top court in the Hague. 

The Nobel Peace laureate on Wednesday spoke for about 30 minutes at the courtroom in defense of the actions of the Myanmar military that for years had kept her under house arrest.

She claimed that the military’s actions, which have brought genocide allegations in a lawsuit filed by Gambia, were in fact a “clearance operation” in response to militant attacks against police stations in Rakhine State.

Suu Kyi then accused Gambia, acting on behalf of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, of making “incomplete and misleading” accusations and said the case should not be heard by the Hague. 

Around 740,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh after a bloody crackdown by the Myanmar military in 2017 that UN investigators have already described as genocide.

On Tuesday, Suu Kyi listened with a stony face to accounts by lawyers of Rohingya victims, including a mother whose one-year-old son was beaten to death and an eight-month-pregnant woman who was stamped on and then repeatedly raped.

Dildar Begum, a Rohingya widow from Tula Toli village in Myanmar, broke down in tears while describing the killings in her village she says were carried out by the Myanmar army and militias.

Suu Kyi said while disproportionate military force may have been used and civilians killed, the acts did not constitute genocide.

“Can there be genocidal intent on the part of a state that actively investigates, prosecutes and punishes soldiers and officers that are accused of wrong doing?” she claimed. 

Last year, Myanmar’s military announced that seven soldiers involved in a massacre of 10 Rohingya men and boys in the village of Inn Din in September 2017 had been sentenced to “10 years in prison with hard labor in a remote area”.

They were the only security personnel the military has said it has punished over the 2017 operation. They were granted early release after less than a year in the prison.

One of the soldiers confirmed to Reuters that he had been released but declined to comment further, saying: “We were told to shut up.”

Two fellow inmates told the news agency that the release came in November – less than a year into the 10-year prison term.

Opening Myanmar’s defense, Suu Kyi said, “Gambia has placed an incomplete and misleading picture of the factual situation in Rakhine state in Myanmar.”

“Surely, under the circumstances, genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis,” she told the panel of 17 judges. 

Gambia’s legal team provided a photograph of Suu Kyi with three smiling generals who are also Myanmar government ministers. The lawyers argued that the picture is an evidence of her close ties to the military.

“All that The Gambia asks is that you tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people,” Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told the judges.

The final ruling on genocide may be years away, though.

A United Nations fact-finding mission has previously found that “the gravest crimes under international law” have been committed in Myanmar and called for genocide trials.  

The International Criminal Court (ICC) recently approved a long-awaited full investigation into the crimes against the Rohingya minority.

Soldiers and Buddhist mobs razed hundreds of villages in the remote western Rakhine State, torturing, killing, and raping the Rohingya people.

The Rohingya have inhabited Rakhine State for centuries, but the state denies them citizenship.

Source: Presstv

A bomb explosion near the largest US military base in Afghanistan has left at least five injured, officials say.

The attack which took place on Wednesday near the entrance to Bagram Airfield has also damaged a hospital that was under construction.  

“The explosion happened in front of the gate of the Korean hospital which is almost adjacent to Bagram airfield,” said Wahida Shahkar, spokeswoman for the governor of Parwan province.

“So far five injured civilians have been transferred to the hospital,” Shahkar said, adding that all five wounded in the attack were Afghans.

“A 30-minute clash also happened between the attackers, who obviously wanted to enter the base, and foreign forces,” she said.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast so far.

NATO’s mission said in a statement that there were no US or coalition casualties and “the attack was quickly contained and repelled.”

However, a future medical facility being built for locals was badly damaged, the statement added.

Wednesday’s attack comes as the United States has resumed talks with the Talibanmilitant group, three months after President Donald Trump abruptly halted negotiations aimed at ending America’s longest war.

Washington resumed talks with the Taliban in Qatar’s capital Doha on Saturday.

Trump ended yearlong talks with the Taliban in September, when an agreement appeared imminent that could end America’s longest war. 

The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and overthrew a Taliban regime in power at the time, vowing to bring stability to the war-ravaged nation.

However, US forces have remained bogged down there through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump.

More than 14,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan and Trump has repeatedly expressed his frustration with their continued deployment.

On Monday, a confidential trove of US government documents made public by The Washington Post revealed that American officials have “constantly lied to” the US public about what has been going on in the now 18-year war on Afghanistan.

Source: Presstv

Donald Trump on Tuesday paid $2 million in damages as part of a settlement over use of his former charity to further his political and business interests — the latest item on the US president’s list of legal woes.

Trump had been accused of using foundation funds to settle lawsuits, promote his Trump-branded hotels, and for personal spending, including the purchase of a portrait of himself to display at one of his golf clubs.

The $2 million was paid equally to eight different charities, including the Children’s Aid Society, the United Negro College Fund and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to a statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat.

“Charities are not a means to an end, which is why these damages speak to the president’s abuse of power and represent a victory for not-for-profits that follow the law,” she said in the statement.

The payments were made the same day that Democrats in Congress unveiled two articles of impeachment against Trump, a momentous step asserting that he abused his office and deserved to be removed.

James filed the lawsuit against the Trump Foundation in June last year, accusing it of “persistently illegal conduct” that included improper coordination between the charity and his campaign team during his 2016 White House bid.

Trump agreed to shut down his personal charity in 2018, but the suit moved ahead regardless, as prosecutors sought millions of dollars in restitution and penalties.

The suit also said that in early 2016 while Trump was running for president, he organized what was billed as a Trump Foundation fundraiser but was actually a campaign event.

Trump had pushed back against the lawsuit, defending his organization’s work and lauding its financial responsibility.

“It has been 4 years of politically motivated harassment,” he said in a statement after the court ruling. “All they found was incredibly effective philanthropy and some small technical violations, such as not keeping board minutes.”

Trump faces ongoing legal troubles on multiple fronts. Courts have ordered that two banks must hand over to Congress documents related to the president’s finances, and he is fighting an attempt by a New York prosecutor to compel the release of eight years’ worth of tax returns, among other battles.

Source: AFP

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has launched genocide hearings against Myanmar, as the first major legal attempt to bring the country to justice over horrific atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims.

The three-day hearings in the United Nations’ top court kicked off at The Hague on Tuesday following a November lawsuit filed by the West African country of Gambia.

Acting on behalf of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Gambia called on the ICJ to take emergency measures to halt Myanmar’s “ongoing genocidal actions” against the Rohingya.

“All that The Gambia asks is that you tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people,” Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told judges on Tuesday.

Demonstrations have been planned outside the court and across the Dutch city against and in support of Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who attended the tribunal.

Rohingya Muslims, recognized by the UN as the world’s most persecuted minority group, are denied Myanmarese citizenship as the country’s leadership brands them as “illegal” immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, which, for its part, says they are from Myanmar.

A military crackdown that began in 2016 saw thousands of the Muslims being killed, injured, arbitrarily arrested, or raped by Myanmarese soldiers and Buddhist mobs.

After the initiation of the military campaign that the UN itself has already said was perpetrated with “genocidal intent,” more than 730,000 members of the minority fled Myanmar’s northwestern state of Rakhine to Bangladesh. They have largely been camped in the country’s southern district of Cox’s Bazar in squalid conditions.

Myanmar has repeatedly justified the crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine and insists its own committees are adequate to investigate allegations of abuse.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel “Peace” Prize winner now in the dock at the World Court, refused to stop or take any action against the military and the Buddhist mobs.

Source: Presstv

Key lawmakers called Sunday for a halt to a Saudi military training program after a shooting rampage at a US naval base in which a Saudi officer killed three American sailors.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he has ordered a review of vetting procedures while defending the training program that brought Mohammed Alshamrani to Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida.

Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Saudi Royal Air Force, opened fire in a classroom at the base on Friday, killing the three sailors and wounding eight other people before being shot dead by police.

The FBI said Sunday the shooting was being investigated with the “presumption” it was an act of terrorism, but that authorities had yet to make a final determination.

Alshamrani was reported to have posted a manifesto on Twitter before the shooting denouncing America as “a nation of evil.”

“We need to suspend the program until we investigate,” Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican on national security issues, said on Fox News.

“I like allies. Saudi Arabia’s an ally, but there’s something really bad here fundamentally. We need to slow this program down and reevaluate,” he said.

US media reported that six Saudi nationals also assigned to the base have been questioned, and that Alshamrani had shown videos of mass shootings at a dinner party the night before the attack.

In a pre-taped interview that aired on Fox News Sunday, Esper confirmed that several Saudis have been detained, including “one or two” who filmed the shooting on their cellphones.

He said it was unclear if they began filming before the shooting began or after it started.

– Vetting –

The attack has struck a live nerve in the United States with its echoes of the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which Saudi citizens accounted for 15 of the 19 hijackers that flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Saudi Arabia remains one of the closest US allies in the Middle East, and US President Donald Trump has cultivated its controversial de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican whose Florida district includes the Pensacola base, warned the shooting “has to inform on our ongoing relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” he called for the military training program to be halted “until we are absolutely confident in our vetting program.”

He said he told the Saudi ambassador “as clearly as I possibly could that we want no interference from the kingdom as it relates to Saudis that we have.

“And if there are Saudis that we do not have that may have been involved in any way in the planning, inspiration, financing or execution of this, that we expect Saudi intelligence to work with our government to find the people accountable and hold them responsible.”

“And I was given every assurance from the ambassador that that would occur,” he said.

– Relationship questioned –

Democrats questioned the broader security relationship under the Saudi crown prince, citing Riyadh’s role in the brutal war in Yemen and the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post.

Saudi Arabia has yet to account for Khashoggi’s murder at its Istanbul embassy, said Representative Zoe Loghren. “So yes, there are a lot of questions about Saudi Arabia,” she said on ABC.

“This is a relationship that has serious problems,” said Cory Booker, a senator and presidential candidate.

“And the fact that this president seems, in a very transactional way, doubling down on the relationship, and telling us it’s because of just financial interests, is unacceptable.”

Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it was too early to say the shooting was an act of terrorism but that Congress would press for a full investigation by the Saudis.

“And I wish the president of the United States, rather than trying to speak for the Saudi government, were pressing the Saudi government for answers,” he added on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has denounced the shooting as a “heinous crime” and said the gunman “does not represent the Saudi people.”

Prince Khalid bin Salman, the king’s younger son and the deputy defense minister, offered his “sincerest condolences” to the victims’ families.

“I was trained in a US military base, and we used that valuable training to fight side by side with our American allies against terrorism and other threats,” Prince Khalid added on Twitter.

Trump said King Salman and the crown prince would “help out the families very greatly,” without specifying how.

Source: AFP

NATO leaders professed unity on Wednesday at a summit near London — but a spat over off-the-cuff chit chat at a royal reception rattled their show of solidarity. 

U.S. President Donald Trump branded the leader of America’s northern neighbor “two-faced” after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared to gossip about Trump in comments caught on camera and microphone.

Trudeau was seen standing in a huddle with French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Britain’s Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, at Tuesday evening’s Buckingham Palace reception for NATO leaders.

Trudeau could be heard saying incredulously, “he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top.” Trudeau confirmed that was a reference to Trump’s long and unscheduled question-and-answer session with journalists earlier Tuesday.

Trudeau also said: “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.” He explained Wednesday that was in reference to Trump’s decision to hold the next Group of Seven meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat.

Power & Politics✔@PnPCBC

.@JustinTrudeau, @EmmanuelMacron, @BorisJohnson and other VIPs shared a few words at a Buckingham Palace reception Tuesday. No one mentions @realDonaldTrump by name, but they seem to be discussing his lengthy impromptu press conferences from earlier in the day.

Footage of the palace reception was recorded by a pool camera. The clip was posted online by Canadian broadcaster CBC and has been viewed more than 5 million times.

Speaking Wednesday at the summit venue in Watford, outside London, Trump said Trudeau was likely upset that the U.S. president had broached the fact that Canada falls short of the NATO target of spending 2% of its gross domestic product on defense.

“Well he’s two-faced,” Trump told reporters. “And honestly, with Trudeau he’s a nice guy, I find him to be a very nice guy but you know the truth is that I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2% and I guess he’s not very happy about it.”

Redmond Shannon✔@RedShannon

Donald Trump on Justin Trudeau: “He’s two-faced… I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2%”

Trudeau had a quiet word and a handshake with Trump as he arrived at the summit Wednesday, and later tried to shrug off the episode.

“As you all know, we have a very good and constructive relationship between me and the president,” Trudeau told reporters at a news conference.

Asked if the incident had given him pause for thought, Trudeau said that ensuring the focus of attention remained on matters of substance “is something that we’re all going to try to do a little harder.”

Sarah Sears@iamSas

PM Trudeau was asked about his “jaw drop” comment that was caught by microphones last night. Here was his explanation – and a nod that his team was also caught off guard by last night’s video.

Johnson, meanwhile, professed ignorance when asked by reporters about the conversation.

“That’s complete nonsense,” he said, adding: “I really don’t know what is being referred to there.”

Leaders of the 29 NATO states met to mark the 70th anniversary of the military alliance — and trying to patch up differences over defense spending, the alliance’s strategic direction and member nation Turkey’s military action in northern Syria.

The two-day gathering ended with a show of unity, as the leaders declared their commitment to the alliance’s principle of collective defense, saying in their final declaration that “an attack against one Ally shall be considered an attack against us all.”

(AP)

The black boxes from two French military helicopters that collided and killed 13 soldiers during an operation against alleged militants in Mali have been recovered, France has announced.

French military spokesman Colonel Frederic Barbry told BFMTV on Wednesday that the boxes “will be handed over to the relevant authorities to be analyzed.”

A French Tiger attack helicopter and a Cougar military transport helicopter collided under yet unknown circumstances on Monday, during an operation — also involving a third helicopter and a squadron of Mirage jets — to provide air cover for ground troops pursuing alleged militants.

All the 13 soldiers on board the two aircraft were killed in the incident.

Barbry did not rule out any scenario as to the cause of the crash. But he seemed to suggest that the collision might have taken place due to low visibility. It was a moonless night, he said, and flight conditions at the time were “extremely difficult.”

The deaths brought to 41 the number of the French troops killed in the Sahel region since France intervened purportedly against militants in northern Mali in 2013.

Source: Presstv

Pope Francis announced on Tuesday he would declare the use and possession of nuclear weapons “immoral” in the Catholic Church’s official manual, after visiting the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where atomic bombs were dropped during World War II.

The cities are the only areas to have been targeted by nuclear weapons, the 1945 attacks by the United States killing 224,000 people.

The catechism is the church’s official instruction book, which summarizes the principles of the faith. 

“I have said that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral,” the pontiff told reporters during his flight back to Rome.

“This must go into the catechism of the Catholic Church, not just use but also possession,” he said, adding that “a government’s madness can destroy humanity”.

In 2018, Pope Francis added a categorical opposition to the death penalty to the document. 

Francis criticized international organisations such as the United Nations Security Council for not taking decisive action to reduce arms or avoid wars.

He also blamed “the hypocrisy of those who produce weapons”, referring to Christian countries in Europe. 

“They talk peace and they live for weapons, it’s called hypocrisy,” he said.

“A nation must have the courage to say, I cannot speak of peace because my economy is gaining a lot with weapons manufacturing.”

On the subject of nuclear energy, he stopped short of calling for a complete phase-out but said he believed its use came with risks.

Francis has long hankered after a trip to Japan ever since he was a young missionary.

The pope also reiterated his dream of travelling to China, saying he loves the country and would like to go to Beijing.

Source: Presstv

French President Emmanuel Macron says 13 French troopers have been killed in a helicopter crash during an operation against militants in Mali.

The president’s office said in a statement on Tuesday that the accident occurred on Monday evening.

Macron also expressed his “deep sadness” over the incident and sent his condolences to the soldiers’ families.

Earlier this month, a French soldier was killed in northern Mali when an explosive device went off near his vehicle.

The West African nation has suffered violence since 2012, when militants and allied Tuareg rebels took over the country’s north.

The French military then intervened militarily.

Violence continues nonetheless, with the militants — linked to al-Qaeda and Daesh — using northern Mali to launch attacks on other countries in the region.

Source: Presstv

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper fired the Navy’s top civilian on Sunday over his handling of the case of a Navy SEAL who was convicted of battlefield misconduct in Iraq and later won the support of President Donald Trump.

Esper also determined that the sailor in question, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, should be allowed to retain his Trident pin designating him as a SEAL – effectively ending the Navy’s efforts to carry out a peer review that could have ousted him from the elite force.

Trump, who publicly opposed taking away Gallagher’s Trident pin and had intervened in the case to restore his rank, cheered the moves.

“Eddie will retire peacefully with all of the honours that he has earned, including his Trident Pin,” Trump said on Twitter.

The fired Navy Secretary Richard Spencer last week suggested a possible split with Trump by telling Reuters that Gallagher should still face a peer review board.ADVERTISING

The SEAL was acquitted by a military jury in July of murdering a captured and wounded Islamic State fighter in Iraq by stabbing him in the neck, but it convicted him of illegally posing with the detainee’s corpse. That had led to his rank being reduced.

The White House said in November that Trump had restored Gallagher’s rank and had pardoned two Army officers accused of war crimes in Afghanistan. Critics had said such actions would undermine military justice and send a message that battlefield atrocities will be tolerated.

In a letter published in media reports, Spencer took parting shots at Trump and defended the need to preserve “good order and discipline throughout the ranks” — something Navy officials had believed the peer review board would help ensure.

“The rule of law is what sets us apart from our adversaries,” Spencer wrote, according to the reports.

“Unfortunately it has become apparent that in this respect, I no longer share the same understanding with the Commander in Chief who appointed me.”

The Pentagon declined to immediately provide a copy of Spencer’s letter.

However, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman offered a different version of events leading up to Spencer’s dismissal, saying Spencer also had a private line of communications with the White House.

“Secretary Spencer had previously and privately proposed to the White House – contrary to Spencer’s public position – to restore Gallagher’s rank and allow him to retire with his Trident pin,” Hoffman said.

Spencer never informed Esper of his private proposal, Hoffman said.

Esper decided to ask for Spencer’s resignation after “losing trust and confidence in him regarding his lack of candor over conversations with the White House,” Hoffman said.

Esper had favored letting the review process “play itself out objectively and deliberately, in fairness to all parties,” Hoffman said. But that now appeared impossible.

“At this point, given the events of the last few days, Secretary Esper has directed that Gallagher retain his Trident pin,” Hoffman said.

Trump said he would nominate the U.S. envoy to Norway, Ken Braithwaite, to replace Spencer as Navy Secretary.

In an appearance on Fox News Channel on Sunday, Gallagher indicated that he hoped to retire next Saturday, “without the board” convening to decide whether he could continue to be a SEAL, considered among the most elite of U.S. fighting forces. 

(REUTERS)