Tag Archives: Blockade

Pakistan issues ‘last warning’ to Islamists blocking entrance to capital

Pakistan issues 'last warning' to Islamists blocking entrance to capital

By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s government on Friday issued a final warning to members of a hard-line Islamist party who have blocked a main road into the capital since last week, raising fears of a violent clash as they refuse to budge.

Hundreds of supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan party have been blocked the road to Islamabad for nearly 10 days, demanding that the minister of law be sacked for what they term blasphemy.

“You all are being given a last warning,” the Islamabad deputy commissioner said in the order.

A court had already ordered the party to end the protest, the order added. “After this final announcement, you all are being warned to end the illegal sit in immediately.”

Tehreek-e-Labaik blames the minister, Zahid Hamid, for changes to an electoral oath that it says amounts to blasphemy. The government puts the issue down to a clerical error.

Pakistan’s blasphemy law has become a lightning rod for Islamists, especially since 2011 when the liberal governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was murdered by a bodyguard for questioning the law that mandates the death penalty for insulting Islam or the Prophet Mohammad.

A spokesman for the Labaik party, Ejaz Ashrafi, refused to comply with the order.

“We’re not moving,” he told Reuters by phone form the sit-in.

A government official, Khalid Abbasi, said the protesters had set up pickets along the route they are occupying manned by party members carrying iron rods and sticks.

Since they got the warning, he said, hundreds of more party workers have joined the sit-in.

Fearing violence, the government has blocked several roads with shipping containers to corral the protesters, but that has caused hours-long traffic jams in and around the capital.

In 2007, a confrontation between authorities and supporters of radical preachers at an Islamabad mosque led to the death of more than 100 people.

“All resources can be used to break this sit-in,” the deputy commissioner’s warning said.

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.N. pleads for end of Yemen blockade or ‘untold thousands’ will die

U.N. pleads for end of Yemen blockade or 'untold thousands' will die

GENEVA (Reuters) – The heads of three U.N. agencies issued a fresh plea on Thursday for the Saudi-led military coalition to lift its blockade on Yemen, warning that “untold thousands” would die.

The coalition closed all air, land and sea access to Yemen last week following the interception of a missile fired toward the Saudi capital, saying it had to stem the flow of arms from Iran to its Houthi opponents in the war in Yemen.

Yemen already has 7 million people on the brink of famine, but without the reopening of all ports that number could grow by 3.2 million, the statement said.

“The cost of this blockade is being measured in the number of lives that are lost,” David Beasley, Antony Lake and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the heads of the World Food Programme, UNICEF and the World Health Organization, said in the statement.

“Together, we issue another urgent appeal for the coalition to permit entry of lifesaving supplies to Yemen in response to what is now the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

Saudi Arabia has since said that aid can go through “liberated ports” but not Houthi-controlled Hodeidah, the conduit for the vast bulk of imports into Yemen.

For months, the U.N. has warned that the closure of Hodeidah would dramatically escalate the crisis.

“Without fuel, the vaccine cold chain, water supply systems and waste water treatment plants will stop functioning. And without food and safe water, the threat of famine grows by the day,” the U.N. agency heads said in the statement.

At least one million children are at risk if a fast-spreading diphtheria outbreak is not stopped in its tracks, and there is also the risk of a renewed flare-up in cholera, which was on the wane after the most explosive outbreak ever recorded – with over 900,000 cases in the past six months.

“If any of us in our daily lives saw a child whose life was at immediate risk, would we not try to save her? In Yemen we are talking about hundreds of thousands of children, if not more,” the joint statement said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Yemen set to run out of fuel and vaccine in a month: UNICEF

A boy is being treated at a malnutrition treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen November 4, 2017.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Yemen’s stocks of fuel and vaccines will run out in a month unless a Saudi-led military coalition allows aid into the blockaded port of Hodeidah and Sanaa airport, UNICEF’s representative in the country said on Friday.

Meritxell Relano, speaking by phone to reporters in Geneva, said fuel prices had risen 60 percent and there were urgent concerns about a diphtheria outbreak, as well as food shortages because of the port closure.

“The situation that was already catastrophic is just getting worse,” she said. “The impact of this is unimaginable in terms of health and diseases.”

After two years of civil war, Yemen has 7 million people on the brink of famine and has had 900,000 suspected cholera cases in the past six months.

The number of new cases has fallen consistently for the past eight weeks, according to data from the World Health Organization.

But progress against cholera, which has killed 2,196 people, could be reversed by the blockade, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva.

“If the closure is not stopped in the coming days, we may see that the progress is stopped,” Chaib said. “We can see even more cases and more deaths as a result of not being able to get access to people.”

The closure of Hodeidah port prevented a ship setting sail from Djibouti with 250 tonnes of WHO medical supplies on Wednesday. Trauma kits in particular are running short.

“If the hostilities continue and the ports remain closed, we will not be able to perform life-saving surgeries or provide basic healthcare,” Chaib said.

 

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Andrew Roche)

 

Ukraine halts all cargo traffic with rebel-held territory

FILE PHOTO: Activists walk along carriages loaded with coal from the occupied territories which they blocked at Kryvyi Torets station in the village of Shcherbivka in Donetsk region, Ukraine, February 14, 2017. REUTERS/Konstantin Chernichkin/File Photo

By Pavel Polityuk and Alexei Kalmykov

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday halted all cargo traffic with rebel-held territory in the east of the country, formalizing an existing rail blockade by Ukrainian activists that has fueled the worst political crisis in nearly a year.

In a standoff that is hurting the economies of both sides, separatists have seized control of some Ukrainian businesses in their territory after having their coal and steel shipments halted in the rail blockade.

Tensions have escalated in recent days, leading to clashes between law enforcement agencies and the activists, who have been joined by some members of parliament.

The blockade posed a dilemma for President Petro Poroshenko: breaking it up by force could provoke a major domestic backlash, but allowing it to proceed unilaterally risked undermining the state’s authority.

Poroshenko’s Security and Defense Council introduced the state-led cargo ban to counter what he described as the political and social threat posed by the unofficial blockade.

The decision “is dictated by the necessity to prevent the destabilizing of the situation in the country, which is being undermined by political operators,” he told the council.

“Our wish is to prevent social strife,” he said.

The suspension will remain until rebels hand back control of a number of Ukraine-registered businesses and comply with a 2015 peace agreement, according to the Security Council.

The asset seizures have mostly affected businesses in the financial and industrial group owned by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.

On Wednesday, Akhmetov’s DTEK Energy said its main mining assets in rebel-held territory, already idling because of the blockade, had been taken under separatist control. On the international debt market, its 2024 dollar bond fell 1.6 cents to a two-week low on the news.

The crisis has put pressure on Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman’s government just as it is about to lose its year-long immunity from facing any vote of no confidence. It was appointed last April by a fragile coalition that includes Poroshenko’s party, after the previous government fell.

Rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko said Ukraine’s decision had nothing to do with the separatists, saying it was instead “evidence of an internal power struggle in Kiev.”

The suspension will further squeeze the Ukrainian economy, already facing potential rolling blackouts and monthly economic losses of up to 4 billion hryvnias ($150 million) from the existing blockade, according to the government.

The central bank says expected economic growth could nearly halve this year to 1.5 percent if rail traffic does not resume.

Poroshenko expects the government on Thursday to come up with fresh forecasts for the impact of the broader ban on the economy, energy security and currency stability.

The trade squeeze has highlighted the complicated economic relationship between the two sides and represents a new phase in a stand-off that has killed more than 10,000 people.

Germany, which has taken a leading role in trying to end the conflict, said it was seriously concerned about “increasing partitionist tendencies” in eastern Ukraine.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer told a government news conference: “The danger of a military escalation is far from over.”

He said Berlin was urging Ukraine and Russia to live up to agreements made as part of the 2015 Minsk peace process, citing troubling actions by both sides, including the rebel asset seizures and the government’s decision to cut off trade.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Matthias Williams and Mark Trevelyan)

Israel Eases Gaza Border Blockade

The long-term ceasefire between Israel and terrorist group Hamas appeared to be holding on a second day as Israel took steps to ease the border blockade.

Israel said the economic blockade would allow Gaza residents to return to jobs or interact with businesses that they haven’t been able to do since Hamas began their attacks on Israel.

The ending of the economic blockade and easing of the border blockade was part of the demands of Hamas for entering into a long-term peace.  Israel had previously said they were not giving in to any of Hamas’ demands as part of the peace deal.

The chairman of the Council of Evangelical Churches in the Holy Land told the Christian Post the deal had to include the lifting of the economic blockade.

“They want a meaningful ceasefire to end the seven years of blockade and travel restrictions that make Gaza one large prison. They want a deal to make life livable,” Dr. Munir S. Kakish said. “The West did not address the problems in the Gaza strip. The blockade, travel restrictions, economic disaster, lack of any healthcare have all created a condition where life is not acceptable.”

The last long-term truce ended a week of fighting in 2012 when Hamas promised to stop firing rockets into Israel.