Myanmar : Reuters journalists given seven years in jail, sparking outrage

A Myanmar judge on Monday found two Reuters journalists guilty of breaching a law on state secrets and jailed them for seven years, in a landmark case seen as a test of progress towards democracy in the Southeast Asian country. On 12 December 2017, members of Myanmar’s police force arrested Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo at a restaurant in Yangon after inviting them to dinner. The two journalists were independently investigating the mass grave found in Inn Din prior to their arrest. According to the journalists, they were immediately arrested after being presented documents by policemen they had never met before. The police made no reference to the restaurant meeting in their press releases, stating that the journalists were arrested outside on the outskirts of Yangon. The pair was charged with possessing classified documents in violation of the colonial-era “Official Secrets Act”, which carries a possible sentence of 14-years in prison. Reuters called for their immediate release, insisting that they were arrested for their investigation. After the court’s final hearing of their case on 8 February 2018, Reuters released all the findings in their journalists’ investigation.

Myanmar police captain Moe Yan Naing, who was arrested for violating Myanmar’s Police Disciplinary Act on the same day the journalists were arrested, testified as a witness of the prosecution on 20 April 2018 that he and his colleagues were ordered by their superiors to entrap the journalists by providing them “secret documents” at the restaurant they had agreed to meet two policemen at. He also claimed that he and other officers were threatened with imprisonment by their superiors if they did not carry out the arrests. A police spokesman later commented that Naing “spoke based on his own feelings” and that his testimony “cannot be assumed as true”. Naing’s family was evicted from police-accommodated housing on 21 April 2018 and Naing was sentenced to a year in prison on 29 April 2018 for violating the Police Disciplinary Act.

On 2 May 2018, a judge deemed Naing’s testimony reliable and rejected a request from the prosecution to classify him as a hostile witness. Naing was allowed to provide further information a week later on 9 May 2018, testifying in court that police brigadier general Tin Ko Ko orchestrated the plan to entrap Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and that he threatened Naing and his colleagues with arrest if they did not “get Wa Lone”. In his testimony, Naing told the judge overseeing the proceedings, “I know that police brigadier general Tin Ko Ko instructed police lance corporal Naing Lin to give Wa Lone documents related to our frontline activities in order to have him arrested.” A police spokesman later commented that brigadier general Tin Ko Ko had “no reason to do such a thing,” and lance corporal Naing Lin later denied that such orders were given to him.

 A court charged the two journalists with obtaining secret state documents in violation of the “Official Secrets Act” on 9 July 2018, taking the case to trial after a period of preliminary hearings that lasted six months. The pair pleaded not guilty to the charges and vowed to testify and prove their innocence. On 3 September 2018, the two journalists were found guilty by a court and sentenced to seven years in prison, prompting condemnation from several members of the international community, including the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, who called the decision “deeply troubling”, and the British ambassador, who said that the United Kingdom and the European Union were “extremely disappointed” by the verdict and that the judge in the case “ignored evidence and Myanmar law.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iraq is worse than ever before, so what was the invasion and war all for?

Firemen hose down a burning building at the site of car bomb attack in Baghdad al-Jadeeda, an eastern district of the Iraqi capital. 

Syrian War : Streets of Aleppo

Residents look for survivors at a damaged site after what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in the Al-Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria.

Madaya is a test for the modern world

The siege of Madaya has become a big test for the conscience of our modern world. According to reports, the blockade began six months ago and as a result, 40,000 people are now suffering from lack of food. Women, children and old people are those worst affected by the crisis, and horrible pictures of dying people have started circulating on social media. Now, it’s seems that Bashar Al Assad has finally got the licence to kill with the help of Iran and Russia.

Despite the worsening situation, the world is doing nothing to stop it. Madaya serves as a proof of how Al Assad and his allies are using siege and starvation as a weapon of war. According to the United Nations (UN), 250,000 Syrians have died in the conflict during the last five years. Heavy use of air power has resulted in the destruction of various places, and what used to be beautiful buildings are now wreckage. More than 10.000 women and children have been killed as a result of heavy fighting in urban areas. In addition, three million people, with the majority of them being women and children, have been forced to leave their homes and migrate to neighbouring countries including Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Now, a large number of people are living in refugee camps without access to basic necessities. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the lack of food and unclean water is affecting children the most. However, despite the horrible destruction of the country and killings of thousands of people, the world is helpless. Divisions within the Security Council means that they are still not able to introduce a no-fly zone, nor can they assure the safety of Syrians.

However, it is not only Syria that has been affected by the crisis, everyone is paying a high price, including Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Jordan is hosting 2.5 million Syrian refugees, which is half equal to its own population. Similarly, Lebanon is facing internal division between pro and rival Al Assad groups, which has resulted in several people losing their lives due to the heavy fighting.

KHAWAJA UMER FAROOQ

Pictures of the year : The Guardian named Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis

 The Guardian named Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis as their 2015 photographer of the year.

On the shores of Lesbos : Boats, Dinghies and Life Vests

The northern coastline of Lesbos is peppered with abandoned boats, deflated dinghies, life vests and inflatable tubes. With thousands of refugees and migrants landing on the island each day, the wintry waters are punctuated by old boats – wooden, battered and decrepit – left by human smugglers to rot after the passengers have reached land and continued on their journey to find safety in Europe.

Others are merely piles of rubber, the deflated dinghies and shells of motors that delivered refugees to European territory and are left unclaimed. These are just the vessels that successfully delivered refugees to Europe. Not all seeking to cross the Mediterranean are so lucky. In 2015 alone, more than 3,500 refugees or migrants drowned at sea or still cannot be accounted for, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, as the overcrowded watercraft carrying them sank in the waves.

The destruction of a Roman-era temple in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra

An image distributed by Islamic State militants on social media purports to show the destruction of a Roman-era temple in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. Syria’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters the images did appear to show the destruction of the ancient Baal Shamin temple and correlated with descriptions given by residents about an explosion on Aug. 23.

Shooting in Ferguson, Missouri

Protesters yell at a police line shortly before shots were fired in a police-officer involved shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Two people were shot in the midst of a late-night confrontation between riot police and protesters, after a day of peaceful events commemorating the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white officer one year ago. 

Fiery protests in Greece

Riot policemen stand guard in front of the Greek Parliament before clashes in Athens, Greece.

The Tour de France

The Tour de France is an annual multiple stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally making passes through nearby countries. The race was first organized in 1903 to increase paper sales for the magazine L’Auto; it is currently run by the Amaury Sport Organisation. The race has been held annually since its first edition in 1903 except when it was stopped for the two World Wars (1915-1919; 1940-1947). As the Tour gained prominence and popularity the race was lengthened and its reach began to extend around the globe. Participation expanded from a primarily French field, as riders from all over the world began to participate in the race each year. The Tour is a UCI World Tour event, which means that the teams that compete in the race are mostly UCI ProTeams, with the exception of the teams that the organizers invite.

The Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España make up cycling’s prestigious, three-week-long Grand Tours; the Tour is the oldest and generally considered the most prestigious of the three. Traditionally, the race is held primarily in the month of July. While the route changes each year, the format of the race stays the same with the appearance of time trials, the passage through the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and the Alps, and the finish on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The modern editions of the Tour de France consist of 21 day-long segments (stages) over a 23-day period and cover around 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi). The 2014 edition consisted of 9 flat stages, 5 hilly stages, 6 mountain stages with 5 high-altitude finishes, and 1 individual time-trial stage. The race alternates between clockwise and anticlockwise circuits of France.

The number of teams usually varies between 20 and 22, with nine riders in each. All of the stages are timed to the finish; after finishing the riders’ times are compounded with their previous stage times. The rider with the lowest aggregate time is the leader of the race and gets to don the coveted yellow jersey. While the general classification garners the most attention there are other contests held within the Tour: the points classification for the sprinters, the mountains classification for the climbers, young rider classification for riders under the age of 26, and the team classification for the fastest teams.

The Tour originally ran around the perimeter of France. Cycling was an endurance sport and the organisers realised the sales they would achieve by creating supermen of the competitors. Night riding was dropped after the second Tour in 1904, when there had been persistent cheating when judges could not see riders. That reduced the daily and overall distance but the emphasis remained on endurance. Desgrange said his ideal race would be so hard that only one rider would make it to Paris.

A succession of doping scandals in the 1960s, culminating in the death of Tom Simpson in 1967, led the Union Cycliste Internationale to limit daily and overall distances and to impose rest days. It was then impossible to follow the frontiers, and the Tour increasingly zig-zagged across the country, sometimes with unconnected days’ races linked by train, while still maintaining some sort of loop. The modern Tour typically has 21 daily stages and not more than 3,500 km (2,200 mi). The shortest and longest Tours were 2,428 and 5,745 km (1,509 and 3,570 mi) in 1904 and 1926, respectively.

The first organizer was Henri Desgrange, although daily running of the 1903 race was by Lefèvre. He followed riders by train and bicycle. In 1936 Desgrange had a prostate operation. At the time, two operations were needed; the Tour de France was due to fall between them. Desgrange persuaded his surgeon to let him follow the race. The second day proved too much and, in a fever at Charleville, he retired to his château at Beauvallon. Desgrange died at home on the Mediterranean coast on 16 August 1940. The race was taken over by his deputy, Jacques Goddet.

Prize money has always been awarded. From 20,000 old francs the first year, prize money has increased each year, although from 1976 to 1987 the first prize was an apartment offered by a race sponsor. The first prize in 1988 was a car, a studio-apartment, a work of art and 500,000 francs in cash. Prizes only in cash returned in 1990.