Tag Archives: international support

Hong Kong protesters seek international support on rights

By Felix Tam

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong protesters rallied outside diplomatic missions on Thursday to urge foreign governments to follow the United States and pass human rights bills to raise pressure on Beijing and support their pro-democracy campaign.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed legislation last month requiring the State Department to certify, at least once a year, that Hong Kong retains enough autonomy from Beijing to justify favorable U.S. trading terms.

About 1,000 people, most of them dressed in black and wearing face masks, marched on a route that took them by the consulates of Australia, Britain, the European Union, the United States, Japan and Canada, to drop off a petition.

British, EU and U.S. diplomats came out to receive it and took photographs with the protesters.

“What happens in Hong Kong is not just a local issue, it is about human rights and democracy. Foreign governments should understand how this city is being suppressed,” said Suki Chan, who participated in the protest.

“We need to continue to seek international attention and let them know this movement is not losing momentum.”

Hong Kong has been rattled for more than six months by anti-government protests amid growing anger over what many see as Chinese meddling in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Beijing has denied such meddling, blaming the unrest on “foreign forces” and saying attempts to interfere in the city are doomed to fail.

The U.S. legislation, which also threatens sanctions for human rights violations, followed similar “citizen diplomacy” petitions in Hong Kong this year and has been cheered by protesters.

Beijing denounced the U.S. legislation and Hong Kong’s government said it sent the wrong signal to the demonstrators and increased economic uncertainty in Hong Kong, a major financial hub.

The marchers’ petition condemned what it called police brutality and urged governments to pass legislation to punish Chinese and Hong Kong officials by denying them visas and freezing their assets.

The police say they have acted with restraint.

Police said separately on Thursday they had arrested four people suspected of money laundering in relation to the protests and had frozen HK$70 million ($9 million) in bank deposits.

Chan Wai Kei, from the police’s financial investigation and narcotics bureau, told reporters the four were part of a group that had asked for donations for arrested and injured protesters but used some of the money for personal investments.

‘LOVE CHINA, LOVE MACAU’

Beijing says it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula that guarantees a high degree of autonomy.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has this week visited the neighboring gambling hub of Macau, a former Portuguese colony, which he praised on Thursday, drawing a contrast with the Hong Kong protests.

“Love China, love Macau has become the core value of the whole society,” Xi told local officials.

The Macau government and “all parts of society deeply understand that harmony leads to prosperity, (and the importance of) unity, negotiation, no argument, no internal conflict, resisting external interference.”

On Friday Xi was due to attend ceremonies for the 20th anniversary of Macau’s handover to China, and was expected to announce economic perks as a reward for its stability and loyalty.

At the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong, protesters called for U.S. Congress to pass a “Be Water Act”, legislation championed by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and named after a protest slogan borrowed from martial arts legend Bruce Lee.

The bill would freeze assets of Chinese nationals and state-owned enterprises believed to have contributed to suppressing freedom of speech in Hong Kong.

Thursday also marked the 35th anniversary of a treaty between China and Britain on Hong Kong’s future, which set the stage for its handover.

British Foreign secretary Dominic Raab urged China in a statement to open dialogue with the protesters and respect the commitments in the treaty.

The Chinese foreign ministry said in 2017 the 1984 joint declaration, signed by then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang, was a historical document that no longer had any practical significance.

Hong Kong’s special status, which helped it grow into a global financial center and avoid U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, is important to Beijing, which uses the city as its main gateway to global capital.

(Reporting by Felix Tam, Mari Saito, Clare Jim, Donny Kwok; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Robert Birsel and Frances Kerry)

As world looks on, Venezuela’s Guaido to keep up pressure on Maduro

Juan Guaido, President of Venezuela's National Assembly, holds a copy of Venezuelan constitution during a rally against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government and to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the end of the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez in Caracas, Venezuela January 23, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Brian Ellsworth

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s opposition on Thursday will seek to maintain pressure on isolated President Nicolas Maduro after congress chief Juan Guaido swore himself in as interim head of state with the support of nations around the region.

Guaido won diplomatic backing from the United States, Canada and right-leaning Latin American governments on Wednesday after declaring himself leader before ebullient supporters who thronged the streets of Caracas in hopes of change.

The European Union stopped short of recognizing Guaido as leader but said the democratic will of Venezuelans “cannot be ignored” and called for his “civil rights, freedom and safety” to be respected.

Guaido, 35, an industrial engineer catapulted almost overnight to national leader, has promised free and fair elections, a transition government to revive the hyperinflation-riddled economy and an amnesty for military officers if they help push Maduro from power.

He faces the daunting task of pushing forward the transition plan without control over crucial state institutions and armed forces that have disavowed him.

Military commanders, including Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, have so far promised to stick with socialist Maduro. Padrino was scheduled to speak on Thursday in support of Maduro, hours after he said the armed forces would not recognize a president “imposed by shadowy interests.”

On Thursday morning, Venezuelan state television broadcast four separate messages from regional military commanders, surrounded by troops, voicing support for Maduro. The recorded messages were broadcast one after the other.

Russia, which has invested heavily in Venezuela’s oil industry and provided support to its armed forces, accused Washington of trying to usurp power in the country and warned against U.S. military intervention.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had not received a Venezuelan request for military help and declined to say how it would respond if it did. But he said Maduro was the legitimate president.

Turkey took a similar line, with President Tayyip Erdogan calling Maduro to offer support.

Among investors holding defaulted debt issued by the government and state-run oil company PDVSA, the political developments fueled hopes that a resolution of the crisis might be coming closer.

Sovereign dollar and PDVSA bonds extended their rally on Thursday, having surged the previous day after Washington backed Guaido. Its 2024 sovereign dollar bond is now at its highest since autumn 2017 when Maduro publicly called for a debt restructuring.

REAL POWER

A total of 14 people were killed in violence linked to anti-government protests on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to local rights groups Provea and the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict. Some of the deaths resulted from looting.

Many opposition sympathizers are concerned Guaido could be arrested like other political activists, including his mentor Leopoldo Lopez, who remains under house arrest for his involvement in street protests in 2014.

“While it’s true that Guaido has been recognized internationally, the real power of the state is still in the hands of Nicolas Maduro,” said Ronal Rodriguez, a political science professor who focuses on Venezuela at Rosario University in Bogota.

With the country’s economy disintegrating and annual inflation approaching 2 million percent, Maduro has relied extensively on the military to maintain power.

Foreign backing could allow Guaido to raise funds abroad to obtain food and medicine for a population struggling under economic crisis, Rodriguez said, but he would face challenges in getting goods through ports controlled by Maduro allies.

Guaido on Wednesday promised that humanitarian aid would be distributed with the oversight of Congress. He did not announce activities for the coming days.

Referring to Wednesday’s anti-government protests, the EU said Venezuela’s people had “massively called for democracy and the possibility to freely determine their own destiny. These voices cannot be ignored.

“The Venezuelan people have the right to peacefully demonstrate, to freely choose its leaders and decide its future,” the 28-nation bloc said in a statement.

The EU has imposed sanctions on Venezuela and boycotted Maduro’s swearing-in for a second term this month following a widely-boycotted election last year that many foreign governments called a sham.

It aims to set up an international contact group with South American nations in February to seek talks between Maduro and the opposition, which diplomats said would need to include Guaido.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who coordinates EU governments from Brussels, took to Twitter to call on “all of Europe to unite in support of democratic forces” in Venezuela.

(Additional reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Karin Strohecker in London and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Bill Trott)

Flare-up with Israel tests Hamas effort to keep Gaza on low boil

Schoolgirls stand next to bus stop bomb shelters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, close to the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip January 8, 2018.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Lee Marzel

ISRAEL-GAZA BORDER (Reuters) – The worst fighting on the Gaza Strip front since 2014 is being calibrated by Hamas, which wants to signal defiance of Israel and the United States while being careful not to trigger a new war for the enclave’s penned-in Palestinians.

Since President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Palestinians in Gaza have launched 18 cross-border rockets or mortars – a third of all such attacks in 3-1/2 years of relative quiet.

For Israel’s part, though residents in the south have raised a clamour for harsh retaliation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has counselled caution and targeted mostly unmanned Hamas facilities in night-time airstrikes.

The careful moves reflect the balancing act maintained both by Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, and the Israeli government, old foes who share a reluctance to go to war again.

Gaza’s neighbourhoods still bear the scars of the destruction caused by Israeli attacks during a seven-week conflict in 2014. In Israel, there is little eagerness to endure the daily sirens warning of rocket strikes.

But ordinary Israelis and Palestinians are keenly aware that even a single incident – a rocket causing multiple fatalities in Israel or Israeli forces killing a militant leader – could set off a conflagration that would be beyond their leaders’ control.

Two Hamas gunmen have died in retaliatory Israeli air strikes and 15 protesters from Israeli gunfire.

“The recent weeks of rockets and Israeli bombardment proved an explosion is possible,” said Gaza political analyst Akram Attalla. “How long will Hamas continue to take Israeli strikes to its positions without a response? And how long will Israel’s Netanyahu tolerate internal criticism? There is no guarantee.”

While there have been no Israeli fatalities or serious injuries in the rocket strikes, farmers in communities close to the Gazan border think twice about tilling fields where they might be exposed and children practice duck-and-cover drills should air raid sirens sound.

“Lately we do feel that there is more presence of the army. We have been told to be more careful, to clear the bomb shelter just in case. You never know when the next rocket will come,” said Hila Fenlon, resident of the farm collective Nativ Haasara.

Hamas has responded to Trump’s move by mobilising mass protests at the border and turning a blind eye to other factions firing into Israel in two weeks of daily attacks, which have tailed off recently.

“This saves face for Hamas, as it appears to be the one that stands behind these protests without the need to go to war,” said Attalla.

A more violent response was tamped down in debate among Palestinian factions who agreed that an armed confrontation could erode the international support Palestinians have won diplomatically and shift attention from the political process.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said no-one should underestimate the potential for hostilities to resume under what he called an Israeli occupation, however.

Israel withdrew troops and settlers from the territory in 2005 but remains the conduit for the passage of goods and supplies most of its electricity. Israel and Egypt, citing security concerns, maintain tight restrictions on the passage of Palestinians through their borders with the enclave.

“The situation in Gaza is very difficult and is not tolerable and is doomed to explode,” he told Reuters.

IRANIAN SUPPORT

Israel sees an outside catalyst for the violence – Iran, which both Hamas and its sometime ally Islamic Jihad say has pledged unlimited assistance for them as the Syrian civil war, where Tehran deployed reinforcements for Damascus, winds down.

Israel has gone out its way to blame Islamic Jihad and other groups for the rocket and mortar attacks, rather than Hamas, and even gave grudging credit to Hamas for being mindful of Palestinian civilian needs.

“Calls to respond with full force against Hamas are irresponsible,” the top Israeli general, Gadi Eizenkot, said in a speech last week. He noted Gaza’s “danger of humanitarian collapse”, which, he said, had forced Hamas to engage with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and secured a renewed power supply to the enclave.

Israel also has problems elsewhere.

Having neutralised much of the rocket threat from Gaza with their Iron Dome interceptor system, and hard at a work on an underground wall that would block guerrilla tunnels from the territory, Israeli defence officials say they worry more about Iran and the combustible northern front with Syria and Lebanon.

They also fear that the $1.1 billion sensor-equipped barrier on the 60-km (37-mile) frontier could tempt Gaza militants to use their tunnels to strike Israel before they lose them.

A range of economic initiatives have been broached, from the construction of an island off Gaza to handle direct imports by sea to the issuing of more permits for Palestinian labourers or agricultural exports to enter Israel.

“There is an effort to help the (Palestinian) population in a way that will not go to the armed wing of Hamas,” said Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli military intelligence chief and head of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, which has prepared a 180-page memorandum on the Gaza crisis.

Israeli concern about worsening Gaza’s internal problems has put it at odds even with the Trump administration, which has threatened to cut U.S. contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that provides essential aid for Palestinian refugees in the enclave, supporting and administering hundreds of schools and dozens of health facilities.

Israel says funds should be cut gradually and UNRWA should ultimately be dismantled and its responsibilities transferred to the United Nations’ global refugee agency.

Cutting aid to UNRWA would spell “huge pressures on Gaza’s residents,” said Saleh Naami, another Palestinian political analyst.

Peter Lerner, a former Israeli military spokesman, agreed.

“While UNRWA is far from perfect, the Israeli defence establishment, and the Israeli government as a whole, have over the years come to the understanding that all alternatives are worse for Israel,” he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Sonya Hepinstall)