Author: afp

  • At Cannes, Palestinian films ‘more important than ever’

    At Cannes, Palestinian films ‘more important than ever’

    Veteran Palestinian film director Rashid Masharawi was abroad when the Gaza war broke out last year, so he decided to hand over the camera to other filmmakers still inside the besieged territory.

    “They are the story” of Masharawi’s project, which he presented at the Cannes Film Festival in France, more than seven months after the conflict erupted.

    “They were fighting to protect their lives, their families, to search for food, for wood to make a fire,” said Masharawi.The result is a collection of short films called Ground Zero recounting the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and ensuing humanitarian disaster from the perspective of civilians on the ground.

    In one, a mother displaced by the conflict plops her daughter in a large white bucket and, with a clean Turkish coffee pot, gently pours water over her to bathe her. In another, a man recounts his 24-hour ordeal under rubble after the building he was in collapsed.

    Masharawi directed the 20 teams in Gaza from abroad – a process he described as “very, very, very difficult”. “Sometimes we needed to wait one week to 10 days just to be in contact with somebody, or just to have internet to upload material,” said Masharawi, who was born in Gaza.

    At other times, teams were busy searching for a tent, finding insulin for a director’s mother, or “an ambulance to go and save some kids”. The films are part of several Palestinian tales screening at the festival, including Mehdi Fleifel’s Athens-set refugee drama To A Land Unknown.

    Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to health ministry figures in the region. Thousands of miles away from the conflict, Israel’s pavilion in Cannes is promoting its filmmaking.

    Palestinian cinema does not have its own tent at the event, but Algeria has made space for its filmmakers at the other end of the international market in Cannes.

    “Our narrative and storytelling is more important than ever,” Norway-based Palestinian director Mohamed Jabaly said.He finished filming his latest project, Life is Beautiful, just before the war started. A close friend who shot the last scene of the film has not survived the war. “He was killed while waiting for food aid,” said Jabaly.

    Munir Atallah, of US-based Watermelon Pictures, is hoping to bring the quirky family portrait to North American audiences, saying Palestinians have “for too long been shut out by the gatekeepers of the industry”.

    One Palestinian who has already found viewers in the United States is Cherien Dabis, who made 2009 film Amreeka and co-directed hit Hulu series Ramy. But the shooting of her latest film – a historic epic – was disrupted by the Gaza war.

    One of the crew on the ground in the occupied West Bank town of Ramallah, Ala Abu Ghoush, has responded by making a documentary about the stalled project, which they are calling Unmaking Of. “The film is really asking the question: What is the importance of doing films and art in this kind of situation, in this war?” said Abu Ghoush.

  • Modi’s struggling rival Gandhi votes as India election resumes

    Modi’s struggling rival Gandhi votes as India election resumes

    New Delhi, India – Key Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi voted Saturday as the country’s six-week election resumed, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rivals accusing his government of unjustly targeting them in criminal probes.

    Modi, 73, remains roundly popular after a decade in office and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win a third term next month after a poll hit by recurrent early summer heatwaves.

    His prospects have been further bolstered by several criminal investigations into his opponents, sparking concerns from UN rights chief Volker Turk and rights groups over the poll’s fairness.

    Gandhi, the most prominent leader of India’s opposition Congress party, cast his ballot at a polling station in New Delhi, where temperatures were forecast to reach 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit).

    A son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, Gandhi paused after voting to take a selfie with his mother Sonia but did not speak to crowds of reporters.

    The scion of a dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades, he was convicted of criminal libel last year after a complaint by a member of Modi’s party.

    His two-year prison sentence saw him disqualified from parliament until the verdict was suspended by a higher court.

    Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, 55, leader of the opposition Aam Aadmi party, who was detained in March in a long-running graft case, was due to vote later Saturday.

    The Supreme Court bailed Kejriwal earlier this month and he returned to the campaign trail, urging Indians to vote against what he called a nascent “dictatorship”.

    “Modi has started a very dangerous mission,” he said soon after his release. “Modi will send all opposition leaders to jail.”

    Congress is spearheading an opposition alliance of more than two dozen parties competing jointly against Modi, including the Aam Aadmi party.

    Kejriwal’s organisation grew out of an anti-corruption movement a decade ago — its name means Common Man’s party — and has been elected to office in the Delhi region and the state of Punjab, but has struggled to establish itself as a nationwide force.

    In February authorities froze several Congress bank accounts as part of a running dispute over income tax returns filed five years ago, a move Gandhi said had severely impacted the party’s ability to contest the election.

    “We have no money to campaign, we cannot support our candidates,” the 53-year-old told reporters in March.

    Modi’s political opponents and international rights campaigners have long sounded the alarm on India’s shrinking democratic space.

    US think-tank Freedom House said this year that the BJP had “increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents”.

    Heatwave ‘red alert’

    India is voting in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging an election in the world’s most populous country.

    Turnout is down several percentage points from the last national poll in 2019, with analysts blaming widespread expectations of a Modi victory as well as hotter-than-average temperatures heading into the Indian summer.

    India’s weather bureau this week issued a heatwave “red alert” for Delhi and surrounding states where tens of millions of people were casting their ballots on Saturday.

    The India Meteorological Department warned of heightened health risks for infants, the elderly and those with chronic diseases.

    Extensive scientific research shows climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense, with Asia warming faster than the global average.

    More than 968 million people are eligible to vote in the Indian election, with the final round of polling on June 1 and results expected three days later.

    abh-asv/slb/sco

    © Agence France-Presse

  • No foul play in Raisi chopper crash: Iran

    No foul play in Raisi chopper crash: Iran

    Iran’s army has so far found no evidence of suspicious activity in a helicopter crash that killed the country’s president Ebrahim Raisi and seven others, state media reported.

    President Raisi, 63, along with his entourage died on Sunday after his helicopter went down in the country’s mountainous northwest while returning from a dam inauguration on the border with Azerbaijan.

    “No bullet holes or similar impacts were observed on the helicopter wreckage,” said a preliminary report by the general staff of the armed forces published by the official IRNA news agency late on Thursday evening.

    “The helicopter caught fire after hitting an elevated area,” it said, adding that “no suspicious content was observed during the communications between the watch tower and the flight crew”.

    Raisi’s helicopter had been flying on a “pre-planned route and did not leave the designated flight path” before the crash.

    The report said the wreckage of the helicopter had been found by Iranian drones early on Monday but the “complexity of the area, fog and low temperature” hindered the work of search and rescue teams.

    The army said “more time is needed” to investigate the crash and that it would announce more details later.

    Raisi was laid to rest in his hometown of Mashhad on Thursday, concluding days of funeral ceremonies in major cities of Iran, including the capital, attended by throngs of mourners.

    Among the people killed in the incident was Foreign Min­ister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who was also buried on Thursday, in the town of Shahre Ray, south of Tehran.

  • UK police arrest 16 protesting against Israeli genocide of Gaza at Oxford University

    UK police arrest 16 protesting against Israeli genocide of Gaza at Oxford University

    UK police have arrested 16 people at a protest organised by a pro-Palestinian student group at Oxford University, in the latest flare-up on a prestigious campus over the genocide in Gaza.

    Thames Valley Police said the individuals were arrested Thursday on suspicion of aggravated trespass, while one was also held on suspicion of common assault.

    It follows protests in recent weeks at more than a dozen UK universities, including at world-renowned Oxford and Cambridge, emulating similar actions on campuses in the United States and elsewhere.

    Demonstrators opposed to Israel’s genocide in Gaza have made various demands, including that universities sever academic and financial ties with the country.

    In Oxford, the arrests came after students entered a university administrative building on Thursday morning, claiming they had “exhausted all other avenues of communication” with administrators.

    “Instead of engaging in dialogue with her students, the vice-chancellor chose to evacuate the building, place it on lockdown, and call the police to make arrests,” a spokesperson for the Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) protest group said.

    “We demand the administration meet with us to negotiate immediately.”

    Videos posted on social media showed people sitting on the ground in front of a police van being dragged away by officers, as onlookers chanted “shame”.

    Oxford University said in a statement that demonstrators had “gone beyond” peaceful protest, and that had “culminated in forced entry and temporary occupation” of some university offices.

    It added that OA4P had “escalated their protest actions from mainly peaceful to direct action tactics”, creating a “deeply intimidating environment” to community members, including Jewish students and staff.

    The university’s union, which represents academics, lecturers and staff, condemned “bringing in police to violently arrest” students who were “engaged in peaceful protest”.

  • Israel army says retrieved bodies of three Gaza hostages

    Israel army says retrieved bodies of three Gaza hostages

    The Israeli military said Friday its forces had retrieved the bodies of three hostages in an overnight operation in the northern Gaza Strip’s Jabalia.

    The bodies of Israeli hostage Chanan Yablonka, Brazilian-Israeli Michel Nisenbaum and French-Mexican Orion Hernandez Radoux “were rescued overnight” and their families were notified after forensic identification, the military said in a statement.

    Both Yablonka, 42, and Hernandez Radoux, 32, were abducted from a music festival when Hamas militants stormed southern Israel from Gaza on October 7, triggering the ongoing war.

    Nisenbaum, a 59-year-old resident of the Israeli town of Sderot near Gaza, was last contacted on his way to an army base on the border to pick up his granddaughter on the day of the attack.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under increasing domestic pressure to secure the release of remaining hostages, said in a statement Friday that “together with the Israeli people, my wife Sara and I bow our heads in deep sorrow and embrace the grieving families in their difficult time”.

  • UK PM Sunak calls general election for July 4

    UK PM Sunak calls general election for July 4

    UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday set a general election date for July 4, ending months of speculation but not the doom-laden forecasts about the size of the government’s expected defeat.

    The poll will be the first time Sunak, 44, faces the public while in charge, after he was appointed leader of the largest party in parliament by Conservative MPs in October 2022.

    The vote — the third since the Brexit referendum in 2016 — comes as Sunak seeks to capitalise on better economic data to woo voters hit by cost-of-living rises.

    Halving inflation within a year from historic highs of above 11 percent at the end of 2022 was one of the former financier’s five key pledges.

    That happened last year and on Wednesday rates slowed to a near three-year low at 2.3 percent, prompting finance minister Jeremy Hunt to declare: “This is proof that the plan is working.”

    Sunak, in a Downing Street statement made in driving rain after he gathered his top ministers, said he had spoken to head of state King Charles III and requested the dissolution of parliament.

    “The king has granted this request and we will have a general election on July 4,” he said, adding: “Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future.”

    Parliament will be prorogued — suspending the current session — on Friday, then formally dissolved next Thursday, before campaigning begins.

    Keir Starmer, whose resurgent Labour party is widely tipped to win power in a landslide, called the vote a chance to “turn the page” on 14 years of Tory “chaos”.

    Bounce?

    Political commentators have increasingly suggested that Sunak could try to seek a pre-election bounce from the healthier economic outlook.

    But critics point out that it is more to do with changes in the global economy than government policy.

    Sunak had previously batted back all efforts to name a date, saying only that he would go to the country in the second half of this year.

    Speculation mounted again after Sunak and his top officials on Wednesday refused to deny fresh talk that he was about to call an election on the back of the more positive data.

    Rumours went into overdrive when Foreign Secretary David Cameron was recalled from a trip to Albania and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps delayed a trip to eastern Europe to attend a cabinet meeting.

    Hunt also cancelled a scheduled television interview for Wednesday evening, ITV’s political editor said, as journalists, photographers and camera crews flocked to Downing Street.

    Uphill task

    The economy — hit by external factors such as Covid and more self-inflicted wounds such as Brexit and former premier Liz Truss — will be a key battleground.

    But Sunak faces an uphill task to convince the public that the country’s finances are still safe in Tory hands after 14 years in power.

    Sunak has tried to steady the ship since succeeding Truss, whose 49-day tenure ended after her unfunded tax cuts sent household bills soaring, spooked the markets and crashed the pound.

    Immigration — another key issue since the government’s vote-winning pledge to “take back control” of Britain’s borders after Brexit — remains politically troublesome.

    Sunak — the Tories’ fourth leader since 2016 — has talked tough to “stop the boats” of irregular migrants crossing the Channel from northern France.

    But his controversial scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda has yet to get off the ground, as costs and legal challenges mount.

    Starmer’s Labour has meanwhile been consistently ahead of the Tories by 20 points for almost two years.

    “It really is Labour’s to lose at this stage,” finance worker Stephen Mann, 55, told AFP in central London.

    Wipe-out?

    Desperate polling for Sunak has sparked talk of a landslide similar to the first of Tony Blair’s three election victories for Labour in 1997 — and even a near wipe-out for the Tories.

    Starmer, 61, and his top team have in recent weeks been honing their election pitch, nearly five years after the party was thrashed by Boris Johnson and his vow to “Get Brexit Done”.

    Last week, Starmer set out six key pledges that were notably more electorally friendly than the hard-left policies of his divisive predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

    Starmer, a pro-European centrist, promised economic stability, shorter health service waiting times and a new border security command to tackle irregular immigration.

    He also vowed to establish a publicly owned clean energy company, crack down on anti-social behaviour with more neighbourhood police and recruit 6,500 new teachers.

    pdh-phz/bc

    © Agence France-Presse

  • Iran’s Raisi to be laid to rest in home town

    Iran’s Raisi to be laid to rest in home town

    Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash, will be buried Thursday in his hometown after two days of funeral processions attended by thousands of mourners.

    Raisi, 63, died on Sunday alongside his foreign minister and six others when their helicopter crashed in the country’s mountainous northwest while returning from a dam inauguration.

    His final resting place will be at the holy shrine of Imam Reza, a key Shiite mausoleum in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where the ultra-conservative president was born.

    Images published by Iranian media on Wednesday showed officials in Mashhad preparing for the final day of funerary rites.

    Large photos of Raisi, black flags and Shiite symbols were erected throughout the streets of Iran’s second city, particularly around the Imam Reza shrine.

    Massive crowds had gathered for a funeral procession on Wednesday in the capital Tehran to pay their final respects to the president, whom officials and media dubbed a “martyr”.

    Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — whom Raisi had been widely expected to succeed — led prayers for the late president, kneeling before the coffins of the eight people killed in the crash.

    Among them was foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who will also be buried Thursday in the shrine of Shah Abdol-Azim in the town of Shahr-Rey south of the capital.

    – June 28 election –

    Tunisian President Kais Saied and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani attended an afternoon ceremony for Raisi on Wednesday in which around 60 countries took part, said state news agency IRNA.

    Member countries of the European Union were among the absentees of the ceremony, while some non-member countries, including Belarus and Serbia had their representatives.

    Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, has declared five days of national mourning and assigned vice president Mohammad Mokhber, 68, as caretaker president until a June 28 election for Raisi’s successor.

    A presidential election in Iran had not been expected until next year, and Sunday’s crash has caused some uncertainty as to who will succeed Raisi, with some expressing concern about the upcoming president.

    “How do I find someone like him? I’m really worried about that,” said 31-year-old cleric Mohsen at Wednesday’s funeral in Tehran. “As far as I know, we don’t have anyone of his stature.”

    Raisi was elected president in 2021, succeeding the moderate Hassan Rouhani at a time when the economy was battered by US sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear activities.

    The ultra-conservative’s time in office saw mass protests, a deepening economic crisis and unprecedented armed exchanges with arch-enemy Israel.

    After his death, Russia and China sent their condolences, as did NATO, while the UN Security Council observed a minute’s silence.

    Messages of condolence also flooded in from Iran’s allies around the region, including the Syrian government as well as Hamas and Hezbollah.

  • EU accused of funding migrant dumping in Sahara

    EU accused of funding migrant dumping in Sahara

    The European Union admitted on Tuesday to a “difficult situation” after a journalism consortium said Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania were dumping migrants in the desert, using the bloc’s funds.

    The wide-ranging investigation by Lighthouse Reports with outlets including Le Monde and The Washin­gton Post paints the EU as complicit in a “system of mass displacement” and serious rights abuses.

    “Europe supports, finances and is directly involved in clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU,” a report said.

    Such operations, it said, were “run thanks to money, vehicles, equipment, intelligence and security forces provided by the EU and European countries”.

    “This is a difficult situation. It’s a fast-moving situation, and we will continue to work on it,” European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer told reporters when questioned about the investigation.

    The report said refugees and migrants in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia were being “apprehended based on the colour of their skin, loaded onto buses and driven to the middle of nowhere, often arid desert areas”, without water or food.

    Others reportedly were taken to border areas where they were allegedly “sold by the authorities to human traffickers and gangs who torture them for ransom”. The 27-nation EU has struck deals with the three named countries with explicit financing to boost stopping irregular migration to Europe.

    Brussels has given 150 million euros ($160 million) to Tunisia under a recent accord, with more promised. It has also allocated 210 million euros to Mauritania and 624 million euros to Morocco under the cooperation agreements.

    Racially motivated practices

    The EU’s efforts to have African countries stem migration flows across the Mediterranean Sea go hand in hand with a newly agreed overhaul of the bloc’s asylum rules. These will make EU borders tighter and speed up the deportation of unsuccessful asylum seekers.

    The Lighthouse Reports said it interviewed more than 50 black migrants — all of them from sub-Saharan Africa and West Africa — who had been expelled from the three North African countries.

    Their testimony, including videos and photos, “helped us to recognise the systematic and racially motivated nature of the practices,” along with the consortium’s own evidence gathering, it said.

    It cited unnamed European officials as denying that EU funds were being used to violate migrants’ rights. But it said two EU sources acknowledged it was “impossible” to fully account for how the funding from Brussels was being used.

    The European Commission — the EU’s executive arm — did not respond explicitly to the report’s allegations. Commission spokeswoman, Ana Pisonero, said: “Sometimes the situation is challenging in our partner countries… (but they) remain sovereign states and they continue to be in control of their national forces.” She said the EU monitored programmes it provided funding for, and noted pledges from partner countries to uphold international law and human rights.

  • Israel recalls its envoys to Ireland, Norway, Spain

    Israel recalls its envoys to Ireland, Norway, Spain

    Israel recalled its ambassadors to Ireland, Norway and Spain on Wednesday and also summoned their envoys in protest at the three governments’ recognition of a Palestinian state.

    Foreign Minister Israel Katz charged that all three countries were rewarding the Palestinian group Hamas for their October 7 attack which sparked the Gaza war.

    “The twisted step of these countries is an injustice to the memory of the 7/10 victims,” he said in a statement.

    Israel’s envoys were being recalled from Dublin, Oslo and Madrid for “urgent consultations” and threatened “serious consequences”, the minister added.

    Katz said that the three countries’ ambassadors were also being summoned for a “conversation that would rebuke” their governments’ decision to recognise a Palestinian state by May 28.

    Israeli genocide against Palestinians has killed at least 35,647 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

    Katz said he would show the three ambassadors a video of the kidnapping of female Israeli soldiers during the Hamas attack.

    “They decided to award a gold medal to the murderers and rapists of Hamas,” Katz said. “We will demonstrate to them what a twisted decision their governments took.”

    mod-jd/fz

    © Agence France-Presse

  • Relieved travellers land in Singapore after deadly turbulence

    Relieved travellers land in Singapore after deadly turbulence

    Rattled travellers and crew landed in Singapore Wednesday after a terrifying high-altitude plunge on a flight from London during which an elderly passenger died and more than 80 were injured.

    Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 hit “sudden extreme turbulence” over Myanmar 10 hours into its journey on Tuesday, abruptly rising and plunging several times.

    One passenger said people were thrown around the cabin so violently they put dents in the ceiling during the drama at 11,300 metres (37,000 feet), leaving dozens with head injuries.

    Photos from inside the plane show the cabin in chaos, strewn with food, drinks bottles and luggage, and with oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling.

    The plane, carrying 211 passengers and 18 crew, made an emergency landing at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, where medical staff used gurneys to ferry the injured to ambulances waiting on the tarmac.

    A 73-year-old British man died, while Bangkok’s Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital said late Tuesday 71 people had been sent for treatment — six of them seriously injured.

    The airport in the Thai capital said 83 passengers and crew were hurt.

    A relief flight carrying 131 passengers and 12 crew landed at Singapore’s Changi Airport on Wednesday morning.

    Relieved relatives greeted the arrivals with hugs but all were too shaken to talk to waiting reporters.

    Andrew Davies, a British passenger aboard the Boeing 777-300ER, told BBC radio that the plane “suddenly dropped” and there was “very little warning”.

    “During the few seconds of the plane dropping, there was an awful screaming and what sounded like a thud,” he said, adding that he helped a woman who was “screaming in agony” with a “gash on her head”.

    Separately, he told a BBC podcast he feared the plane was going to crash.

    “Remembering the plane now — the huge dents in the roof that people had obviously hit with their head. There was a water bottle stuck in a gap in the ceiling,” he said.

    Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong sent his “deepest condolences” to the family and loved ones of the dead man — identified as Geoff Kitchen, a musical theatre director from near Bristol.

    The city-state is sending investigators to Bangkok to probe the incident and Wong posted on Facebook that they were “working closely with Thai authorities.”

    Of the passengers, 56 were Australians, 47 British and 41 Singaporeans, according to the airline.

    “In terms of exactly what happened, it’s too early to tell. But I think passengers are too casual on board commercial aircraft,” US-based aerospace safety expert Anthony Brickhouse told AFP.

    “The moment the captain turns off the seatbelt sign, people literally unbuckle.”

    Davies, the passenger, said “the plane suddenly dropped” at the very moment a seatbelt sign came on.

    Allison Barker told the BBC her son Josh, who was aboard the plane, texted her that he was on “a crazy flight” that was making an emergency landing.

    “It was terrifying,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t know whether he’d survived, it was so nerve-racking. It was the longest two hours of my life.”

    Scientists have long warned that climate change is likely to increase so-called clear air turbulence, which is invisible to radar.

    A 2023 study found the annual duration of clear air turbulence increased 17 percent from 1979 to 2020, with the most severe cases increasing more than 50 percent.