Data collected by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) reveals mostly men are testing positive for COVID-19 in conflict-affected countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. The figures released on Wednesday are fuelling concerns that COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, is spreading silently among women struggling to access already limited testing and treatment facilities in parts of the Middle East and Africa.
The IRC reports that in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Chad, and Central African Republic the disparities are particularly worrying, with over 70% of COVID-19 cases having been detected in men, and 30% or less in women. Those figures are in stark contrast to the ratio in Europe, for example, where it is roughly a 50/50 split between men and women.
“This data suggests women are being under tested for COVID-19 in many places where the IRC works,” said IRC Senior Technical Advisor of Emergency Health Stacey Mearns. “Both men and women in conflict-affected countries experience great difficulty in accessing healthcare, but data shows women have a slimmer chance of seeing a doctor than men in countries such as Pakistan.”
Mearns says that in countries where the disparity is at play, women may not have the same freedom of movement as men but often perform caring roles and are front-line workers, placing them at equal or higher risk of contracting the highly contagious virus.
“The numbers do not add up. What we are seeing is a situation in which women are potentially being left out of testing and their health deprioritized,” Mearns argued in a June 24 press release.
“There is a need for a major increase in testing for everyone in the countries where we work, but we must pay particular attention to ensure women are getting equal access to testing and health care.”
The United Nations has also warned that as with conflict situations, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to deepen pre-existing inequalities between men and women and could undo limited gender equality gains made in recent years.
“Across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impacts of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their sex,” the UN said on April 9 when it released a policy brief detailing the impacts of COVID-19 on women.
In addition to unequal access to health care, women around the world have been subject to an alarming increase in domestic and family violence exacerbated by virus lockdowns, and data shows women have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 job cuts.
The IRC says it needs an additional $30 million to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and support for its efforts to improve female education and access to COVID-19 testing and treatment.
Hosted by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the inaugural International Migration Film Festival was an opportunity to shine a light on the plight of refugees and the role of film in telling migrant stories.
Turkey has an acute interest in the world’s response to the refugee crisis, being home to the largest number of refugees in the world. Estimated at approximately four million, Turkey’s refugee population includes 3.6 million people from neighboring Syria.
The week-long festival was originally scheduled to take place in April in the city of Gaziantep, home to approximately 500,000 refugees. However, organizers moved it online due to the coronavirus crisis. From June 14-21, 45 films from 30 countries were available to stream online.
The festival also comprised online masterclasses, which were open primarily to refugees and migrants, on the art of filmmaking and storytelling. Participants had the opportunity to learn from Bosnian director Danis Tanovic, Mexican producer and writer Michel Franco, and three time Oscar-winning British costume designer Sandy Powell.
The festival’s Instagram featured talks by American actor and director Danny Glover, Iranian-American actor Shabab Hosseini, and American actor and director Matt Dillon. Regarding the festival’s vast offerings, director of programming Hulya Sungu said, “We hope to reach refugees around the world.”
Among the films featured at the festival were “For Sama,” the award-winning story of Waad al-Kateab’s life during the uprising in Aleppo and her family’s debates over whether to leave the city, and “Omar and Us,” the story of a retired Turkish Coast Guard captain who overcomes his prejudices to help his Syrian neighbors.
Inaugural International Migration Film Festival winners
“For Sama” won the award for Best Film with filmmaker al-Kateab, herself once a refugee in Turkey, advising audiences to watch the film to understand why refugees flee their homeland and the difficulties they face.
Among the other films recognized at the festival were “Just Like My Son,” a story by Italian director Costanza Quatriglio that focuses on two brothers who escaped from Afghanistan for Europe, which won the Most Inspiring Script award, and “Children of the Shore” by Amelia Nanni, which won the UNICEF International Short Film award.
Nanni said the award encourages her to shoot her next film and she dedicated a share of her prize money to assisting creatives without access to support. She said, “I will share half of the price with other people, friends who do their arts in this crisis in a system where art is discredited and with friends in Belgium who don’t have the ‘right’ paper and passport to study there.”
The full lineup and winners can be found on the festival website.
It has been nearly a decade since Muammar Gaddafi was ripped from his hiding place in Sirte’s sewers and killed by Libyan rebels. Nine years later, and what started out as a revolution against a decades-old dictatorship has evolved into a prolonged civil war fueled by foreign war profiteering.
On both sides of the conflict, foreign mercenaries—often recruited from vulnerable populations in other war torn countries—have served as a decisive tool in the conflict. Since 2014, Russia and Turkey have competed for influence in Libya through mercenary proxies within the Libyan National Army (LNA) and Government of National Accord (GNA), respectively.
However, unlike the Kremlin’s covert ties to mercenary groups through private military corporations—most notably, the infamous Wagner group—Ankara has been more open about its support for the UN-recognized GNA.
In January, the Turkish parliament voted in favor of deploying military forces to Libya’s Eastern Front in a bid to support the GNA’s resistance to military strongman Khalifa Haftar and the LNA’s campaign to take Tripoli. Since then, the GNA has made significant gains over the LNA, recapturing territory in Western Libya once occupied by Haftar’s forces and pushing the front lines further east.
The GNA, backed by Turkish-funded mercenaries, has left devastation in its wake in its eastward push. Allegations of “revenge killings” and widespread looting have emerged from the cities taken by the GNA in recent months.
International observers have accused Turkish-funded mercenary units of using child soldiers within their ranks, especially Syrian children coerced into joining for promises of high wages as a soldier on the front lines in Libya.
Libya has shown that Ankara is willing to follow the Kremlin’s model for international diplomacy, favoring the use of covert mercenaries and political interference as a means of extending its influence. However, whereas Moscow has continually denied involvement in such operations, Turkey has broken with precedent by openly violating international law in pursuit of its agenda.
The war profiteer pipeline
When Field Marshal Haftar broke with the GNA, his subordinates in the LNA followed suit, leaving the GNA with a skeleton crew of a military. Composed primarily of a network of loosely-connected militia groups, the GNA’s forces have often been accused of offering quarter to Islamist extremists, leading to a breakdown in the GNA’s relationships with Egypt and the UAE.
Since then, the GNA has relied on the foreign support of the Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Initially, Turkey provided the GNA with crucial military equipment, including anti-aircraft guns, armored vehicles, and self-propelled artillery. Recently, Turkey has taken on a more direct approach, bankrolling the GNA’s efforts to bolster its ranks through mercenary recruitment.
Turkey has supplied the GNA with advanced weaponry and military equipment, in an open violation to the arms embargo on the country.
In searching for mercenaries, both Moscow and Ankara have laid sights on their previous target for military adventurism: Syria. Both sides have exploited the poor economic conditions in war-torn Syria in order to coerce former soldiers and rebels to join the fray in Libya as soldiers of fortune.
In Syria, Ankara, Moscow, and their respective local allies still widely advertise promises of high pay for mercenaries willing to fight in Libya. Overnight, a Syrian mercenary could go from earning $46 a month in Afrin to $2,000 a month in Tripoli, or so the recruiters say. For thousands of potential recruits in war-torn Syria, the pay was more than enough to justify a stint as a foreign fighter in Libya.
By June, nearly 12,000 Syrians had taken up the offer, being transported to Libya to serve on the front lines of an ever-escalating conflict. However, many of these volunteers would only come to realize the horrors of the conflict in Libya after arriving.
Among these fighters are not only ex-rebels and military deserters, but also hundreds of child soldiers and impoverished civilians with little hope for a sustainable future in their conflict-devastated home country.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, fighting in Libya has killed more than 351 Turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries—among them, at least 20 children.
Warriors without restraint
Over the course of the conflict in Libya, all parties involved have faced allegations of war crimes. Civilians, healthcare workers, journalists, and refugees have all become legitimate targets as the civil war intensifies. Between the LNA and the GNA, war crimes have marred the Libyan landscape, with civilians bearing the greatest cost.
Civilian infrastructure bear the greatest scars of the conflict between the GNA and the LNA, with both sides accused of war crimes.
In cities recently recaptured by the GNA—and their Turkish-funded mercenary allies—accusations of systematic violence against civilians are widespread. In the wake of the GNA’s counteroffensive in formerly-held LNA territory, allegations of “revenge killings” in the recaptured cities have raised concerns over mercenary outfits’ willingness to comply with international law.
In the days following the retreat of LNA-aligned forces, videos began to surface online showing widespread looting and property destruction in the newly “liberated” cities. The United Nations has since argued that many of these incidents appeared to be “acts of retribution and revenge” by the GNA and its allies.
In its stronghold of Tripoli, human rights groups have accused the GNA of exploiting migrants and refugees, using them both as sources of labor and as human shields against the LNA’s extensive shelling campaign.
For its part, the LNA has also faced accusations of crimes against humanity, ranging from indiscriminate bombing campaigns to abductions and disappearances. However, unlike Turkey, the LNA’s supporters—namely, Russia, the UAE, and Egypt—can hide behind the defense of plausible deniability when LNA-affiliated mercenary outfits commit atrocities.
In Ankara’s case, allegations of war crimes by mercenary outfits directly connected to the Turkish government reflect poorly on the Erdogan regime itself. Rather than being the actions of unlawful soldiers of fortune, crimes against humanity committed by Turkish-funded mercenaries are instead seen as the result of state-sanctioned violence.
The Kremlin model
The Kremlin’s history of interfering in the political affairs of other countries is widely known; however, this has often been accomplished covertly, without Moscow getting its hands dirty. Ankara has broken with this precedent, openly violating the international arms embargo on Libya and bankrolling an increasingly influential mercenary force in the North African country.
As Erdogan emulates the aggressive diplomatic strategy of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, mercenaries in Libya have become the newest currency for foreign powers to purchase influence.
Libya, as one of the most prominent theatres for the proxy war between Turkey and its rivals, has seen its political future fall into the hands of various mercenary outfits, concerned more about profit margins than conflict resolution.
As a result, as Turkey and Russia compete to become Libya’s kingmaker, the civilians caught in the middle face atrocities by both parties, with no end in sight.
Born to Algerian parents, Faiza Guene grew up in the suburbs on the outskirts of Paris. She began writing as an adolescent and by the age of 19 had penned a best-selling novel.
“Kiffe Kiffe Demain” (Just Like Tomorrow) explores the life of 15-year-old Doria, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants, as she, like Guene, comes of age in a suburb on the outskirts of Paris. Narrated by Doria, the story describes her life and her mother’s emotional recovery after her husband abandoned the family for a younger woman.
The book, which has sold over 400,000 copies in France, is available in 26 languages and is recognized as one of the first books to employ the Arabic-infused verlan that is popular among youths in the suburbs of France. Increasingly present in popular culture, some previously looked down upon verlan as a corruption of the French language and as a signifier of a lower class immigrant background.
At the time of “Kiffe Kiffe Demain’s” release, French media were fascinated by the “girl from the suburbs.” Guene notes, “I was the first of my kind and was treated like a court jester, a freak” by the very white, inner-Parisian media and literary crowd.
Stereotyping continues
Guene says, “Today, I’m an Algerian who was born and lives in France…I don’t define myself at all the way I did when I was 20.” This classification is driven in-part by the inescapable stereotyping she continues to face.
Despite having published five novels since “Kiffe, Kiffe Demain,” her North African origins remain central to much of the literary world’s perceptions of her. Guene explains, “Every single time I’m brought back onto this terrain. People perceive me through tiny little prisms and I’m expected to talk about the banlieues.”
The constant positioning of her as an outsider has left Guene angry. It is an anger directed at the lie of being told she was a French citizen, but unlike her white French compatriots, forever having to justify and prove it only to remain “othered.”
As she attempts to work through this anger in her writings, Guene hopes that her daughter’s generation will be able to overcome the prejudice the first generation of French-born children of immigrant parents have faced.
Growing diversity in French literature
French publishers and the broader literary community are increasingly embracing diverse voices and stories. In 2018, the verlan-heavy “Grand Frere” (Older Brother) by French-Turkish author Mahir Guven won the Goncourt First Novel Prize. As with Guene’s “Kiffe Kiffe Demain,” the novel centers on the lives of the children of immigrants in France.
One year prior, French-Moroccan author Leila Slimani won the 2016 Goncourt Prize for her novel “Chanson Douce” (published in English as “The Perfect Nanny: A Novel”).
Now working for French publishing house Lattes, Guven is responsible for expanding the diversity of voices published, a sign the French literary establishment has belatedly realized that literature must reflect society.
Guven says that “storytelling comes from your cultural milieu,” and in France that includes the 11% of the population with immigrant backgrounds.
In an interview with the Associated Press published on June 24, Benjamin Pogrund stated that Israeli annexation would turn Israel into an apartheid state. “There will be Israeli overlords in an occupied area. And the people over whom they will be ruling will not have basic rights,” Pogrund described the potential future of Israel.
Prolific denier
Benjamin Pogrund was born and raised in South Africa and witnessed its Apartheid-era atrocities firsthand. He became a renowned writer on the topic and fostered friendships with Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe as he wrote on Black issues in the white-ruled South African state.
But while Pogrund strongly opposed Apartheid in South Africa until its fall in the 1990s, in 1997 he moved to Israel and became a prominent denier of the similarities between the two countries’ treatment of their native populations. Not counting those people living in the occupied territories as citizens, Pogrund denied their treatment as apartheid-like.
Like many Israel apologetics, he made the convenient distinction of not counting Israel’s atrocities and racism outside its walls and fences. He authored a 2007 New York Times op-ed highlighting several successful Arab Israeli citizens as evidence for an absence of racial discrimination, while ignoring the people in occupied territories under de-facto Israeli rule.
Cognitive dissonance
Pogrund would, in the same article, deny that Jews and Arabs receive different treatment while also arguing Palestinian refugees could not return because they would become a majority, destroying Israel’s “purpose” of being a Jewish state. Those who called for a boycott on Israel Pogrund would label as antisemitic, while interpreting Israeli acts as a “response to Palestinian terrorism.”
For decades Pogrund has ignored the obvious similarities between both apartheid regimes. He appears to have conveniently ignored that while South Africa was in its last stages of shaking off colonization, Israel is still actively colonizing native land.
He downplayed the wall seperating Israelis from the West Bank as “mainly a wire fence, except in populated areas” that was there “primarily to keep out would-be suicide bombers.” By Pogrund’s definition, if South African whites had chased away the country’s Black population and kept them in occupied areas as does Israel, there would not have been “apartheid.”
After decades of witnessing and opposing South African Apartheid, he has spent the rest of his career making pro-Israeli arguments, similar to those of the South African regime that justified violence against Black citizens, as a logical government response to “violent terrorists.”
Changing definitions
Pogrund opposes annexation because it would undermine the cognitive dissonance that he and many others have applied to the Palestinian people living in the occupied territories. Annexing their land would result in them being considered to be some sort of Israeli citizen, and suddenly their treatment would indeed “count” as apartheid.
“At least it has been a military occupation. Now we are going to put other people under our control and not give them citizenship. That is apartheid. That is an exact mirror of what apartheid was,” Pogrund said.
Pogrund started to have doubts when, in 2018, the Israeli parliament enacted the “Nation State Law.” This defined Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people while downgrading the status of another ethnic group, Arab Israelis. Yet, he frames his opposition not as revulsion with the treatment of local Arabs, but instead fears that it would reduce safety and prosperity for local Jewish Israelis.
Annexation
The increasingly colonial attitude of the Netanyahu government appears to have posed something of an intellectual crisis for Pogrund as he has slowly learned of his own complicity in defending Israeli actions. News about the government’s annexation plans made him unable to write on the topic: “I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” Pogrund said, adding that “quite frankly, I just feel so bleak about it, that it is so stupid and ill-advised and arrogant.”
Pogrund has long been a critic of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, describing the occupation of the West Bank as “tyrannical,” but has avoided using the word apartheid. He considers the term “a deadly word” that requires “intentionality” and “institutionalization.” That intentionality and institutionalization already exist in the occupied territories, and by annexing these areas, even deniers like Pogrund will no longer be able to refute the obvious.
“Come July 1, if we annex the Jordan Valley and the settlement areas, we are apartheid. Full stop. There’s no question about it,” Pogrund said.
Born in Minya in 1879 to an upper class family, Huda Sharawi was a lifelong advocate for women’s rights. From an early age she opposed the restrictions imposed on women and began to agitate for change.
Huda began her formal activism with a series of lectures, organized for women, on a variety of topics. These lectures brought many women outside of the home for the first time. In 1908, with the support of women from Egypt’s high society, Huda opened a dispensary and organized hygiene classes for women living in poverty. In 1919, Huda and her supporters expanded their operations to include reading and writing classes for illiterate poor women.
In 1923, Huda created the Egyptian Feminist Union, which she served as president of until her death in 1947. The union was dedicated to advancing women’s rights, including aims of allowing them access to university and the right to work and hold public office. The union’s work led to the introduction of 16 years as the legal minimum age of marriage for girls and the codification of the rights of girls to a secondary education.
Removing the face veil
In 1923, following a trip to Italy to attend a meeting of the International Women Suffrage Alliance, Huda publicly removed her veil at the Cairo train station and encouraged other women to do the same. A number of her colleagues followed suit.
Her friend and colleague Cesa Nabaraoui later explained the women’s motivations for doing so: “We can’t say that we are free in Rome and then wear the veil again upon our return [to Egypt].”
At the time, the face veil was worn exclusively by upper class women, with poorer women and women in rural areas covering only their hair. The veil was therefore as much a sign of social stratification as it was of religious devotion. Rejecting the face veil was an important step in fostering solidarity between women of different social classes.
Many have described the public removal of her face veil as one of Huda’s most memorable acts of protest.
Fight for Egypt’s independence
Alongside her work to advance women’s rights, Huda was also actively involved in the movement to end the British protectorate in Egypt.
In 1919, she helped organize the largest women’s demonstration against colonialism in Cairo and the following year formed and led the women’s arm of the movement for independence.
In 1922, the British acquiesced to Egyptian demands for independence, but women were excluded from participating in negotiating the terms.
In 1924, Huda expressed her disappointment to then Prime Minister Saad Zaghloul, alongside whom she had fought for independence, writing, “It is completely unjust that the Egyptian Wafd, which fights for the rights of Egypt and its liberation, denied half of the population the gains made from this liberation.”
Legacy
Huda Sharawi’s activism changed the lives of millions of Egyptian women across social classes. Google’s recognition of her work on the 141st anniversary of her birth is fitting tribute to her ongoing legacy.
A dreaded and much talked about second wave of COVID-19 hit Israel and Palestine this week.
On Wednesday morning, Israel’s Health Ministry confirmed it identified 420 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the largest single day spike in infections since April 22.
In response to surging case numbers, Israeli authorities reinstated on Wednesday a partial lockdown for the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad in central Israel and several majority ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in the northern city of Tiberias.
Israel declared Elad and five suburbs of Tiberias “restricted zones,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday. A day earlier, Netanyahu gave police the go-ahead to fine anyone failing to wear mandatory face masks.
The “restricted zones” will be closed to external visitors, except essential service providers and students completing exams, for the next seven days. During that period, gatherings of over 50 people are banned and residents can only leave to receive medical care, complete exams, engage in legal proceedings, attend funerals of close relatives, or work.
There are concerns from residents in the newly restricted zones that the move will do little to slow transmission but rather harm the local economy and stigmatize their community.
“This is not a real lockdown, you can enter, you can do whatever, this lockdown just hurts businesses and people and nobody cares,” an Elad resident told the Times of Israel on June 23.
The ultra-Orthodox community in Israel has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Around 14% of new cases this week came from just five mainly ultra-Orthodox areas, a COVID-19 military task force said on Wednesday.
More broadly, ultra-Orthodox patients account for 20% of Israel’s total number of active COVID-19 cases, while only constituting around 12% of the population — a phenomenon put down to close living conditions and the community’s interconnectedness.
Fresh virus worries for Palestine
Meanwhile, Palestine is also experiencing an uptick in new virus numbers. On June 24, Palestinian Authority (PA) Health Minister Mai Alkaila announced 142 new cases had been confirmed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, taking the total number of COVID-19 cases to 1,517.
The majority, 1,311 of Palestine’s total active cases, are centred around the West Bank. This prompted the PA to place the city of Hebron under lockdown.
On June 20, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh ordered a five-day lockdown of Hebron Governorate and a 48-hour complete shutdown of Nablus city, another COVID-19 hotspot. Only essential services are allowed to operate under the fresh wave of restrictions in Hebron, and public gatherings have been banned in all West Bank governorates.
“There is no longer any room for tolerance in the matter. The safety procedures are very simple: compliance with COVID-19 social distancing orders, and the use of a facemask in markets, public places, workplace and others. This is a compulsory measure that all citizens have to abide by,” Shtayyeh said.
On June 22, US Senator Robert “Bob” Menendez sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to express “deep concerns” over a Turkish “escalation of aggression.” Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, expressed “deep concern” about recent moves by Turkey which the senator sees to be “threatening regional stability.”
Menendez pushes Pompeo
In Menendez’ letter to Pompeo, the senator, who receives detailed intelligence briefings as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, described Turkish foreign policy maneuvering as increasingly aggressive and in need of a US response. Menendez expressed concern that Turkish moves are threatening American “partners” in Greece, Cyprus, and Israel through Turkish foreign policy actions in Libya and Iraq.
As one of the Senate Democrats’ most outspoken hawks, Menendez has regularly shown a preference for strong retaliatory action against perceived opponents to US hegemony, with his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the “Iran Nuclear Deal,” as a rare exception. The senator now calls on the state department to implement sanctions over Turkish policies abroad and its recent procurement of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.
Russian missiles
The senator asked Pompeo to “follow the law” and apply an existing package of sanctions intended for nations who buy Russian military hardware. The move would come as punishment for Turkey’s recent purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system. Although the S-400 is considered to be a far superior defense system than the outdated US Patriot system, the US aggressively goes after any nation contemplating its purchase.
After China purchased S-400 technology, the US instantly applied sanctions, using the 2017 “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.” Menendez questioned Pompeo on the motivations for a lack of a similar response to Turkey. Recent revelations from former National Security Advisor John Bolton have renewed worries that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exercises disproportionate influence over US President Donald Trump.
Increasing aggression
The June 22 letter complained of the Turkish invasion of Kurdish Iraq as an act that further destabilizes “an already volatile and vulnerable region” and violates Iraqi sovereignty and international law. Menendez pitched Turkey’s role in the chaos in Libya as a breach of the Libyan arms embargo and an inconvenience to Greece and Cyprus, but made no mention of its role in the actual conflict.
More important, to Menendez, was the Turkish agreement with Tripoli’s government that allows Turkey to claim a large swath of the Mediterranean Sea as its own. The senator was concerned over Turkish violations to Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone and violations of Greek airspace by Turkish military aircraft. The violations, Menendez wrote, constitute evidence of Erdogan’s “lack of commitment to the rule of law.”
Bolton book
On June 23, Al-Monitor reported that Menendez sent another letter to Pompeo after John Bolton’s new book revealed details of Erdogan and Trump’s dealings. Menendez wrote that Erdogan had received confirmation from Trump that the US president would “take care” of “a Turkish firm accused of the largest violation of Iran sanctions in US history.”
Turkey’s state-run Halkbank has been under investigations for its alleged dealings with Iran. John Bolton revealed that Trump had agreed with Erdogan, and told the Turkish president he would make the issue “go away.” Menendez has asked Pompeo to respond to these allegations and explain progress on the Halkbank affair.
As a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Menendez will have a deep understanding of Turkish geopolitical maneuvering. Menendez also released a statement with others on June 19 to oppose Israeli annexation plans as Trump’s favored strongmen in the Middle East appear emboldened to act aggressively during the “historic opportunity” provided by the Trump presidency.
US President Donald Trump has repeated his accusation that China was responsible for the emerging Coronavirus, using the expression “Kung flu.”
The phrase is a play on “kung fu,” which refers to the famous Chinese martial art. Trump introduced the expression during his June 20 campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
During another rally in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump listed several names for the virus, including “Wuhan,” and “kung flu,” which was welcomed by those present during his speech.
He added that some also called it “Chinese flu,” a term which he himself has repeatedly used.
Trump had previously said he was confident that the virus was created in a Chinese virology laboratory.
Since the outbreak in China, several countries and international institutions, including the United States, have accused Beijing of ambiguity and of covering up the spread of the virus, and the US president said that withholding information allowed the epidemic to spread around the world.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro recently accused China of plotting to “seed” the virus, deliberately spreading it around the world by sending hundreds of thousands of its citizens abroad.
The Rand Research Center found in a recent study that there is strong evidence that the infection number reported in China is nearly 40 times less than the actual number, based on the researchers’ monitoring of commercial air traffic between countries.
The US is currently the worst affected country by the pandemic with over 2.39 million reported cases and more than 123,000 fatalities, as of June 24.
Scientists are racing time to create a vaccine or treatment in order to successfully curb the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump is seeking re-election in November against former Vice President Joe Biden, 77, who will be the Democratic Party’s candidate.
Hours after a ceasefire agreement was reached on Monday, June 22, fighting reportedly intensified in southern Yemen between the internationally-recognized government and Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces. The nominal allies traded cannon and mortar fire, both claiming they were responding to enemy fire and accusing the other of escalating tensions in contravention of the new truce agreement.
According to STC spokesman Nizar Haytham, STC forces responded in self-defense to a major government offensive on the separatists’ positions in Sheikh Salem village, located in the Al-Taryia region of Abyan governorate in southern Yemen.
“They (government forces) launched a big offensive from Shouqra, hours after agreeing to the truce. We are committed to the truce and implementing the Riyadh Agreement as long as the government abides by it,” Haytham told Arab News on Wednesday.
“We also affirm our legitimate right to defend ourselves against these serious threats and violations, and we salute the perseverance and persistence of our heroic southern forces on all fronts of the fighting,” Haitham tweeted a day earlier.
Meanwhile, an anonymous government source said the military, responding to STC and artillery fire on its positions east of the regional capital Zinjibar, hit back, successfully taking control of Al-Taryia.
“Fighting has not stopped for even one hour since the truce was announced,” the army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arab News.
Another military source told Turkish state-run news outlet Anadolu Agency “dozens” of STC militia were killed in the clashes on Tuesday, but failed to give any exact casualty figures.
On Monday, Saudi-led coalition spokesman Turki Al-Malki announced the STC and Yemeni government had reached a ceasefire agreement. The two parties welcomed the new truce as did the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. Many hoped it would help de-escalate Yemen’s “civil war within a civil war,” but Tuesday’s fighting has deflated such hopes.
Finding unity difficult
Saudi ceasefire observers arrived in the Abyan today amid calls from the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a nation-wide truce and north-south reunification. Guterres told the Associated Press that, although Yemeni’s have “always had difficulties in finding unity among themselves,” they deserve peace.
The secretary-general said the international community needs to put more pressure on conflict parties to turn progress on confidence-building measures like port and airport access into the “beginning of a political process.”
“I’m still confident that that is possible,” Guterres said on Wednesday. “We need to put all pressure on the parties to the conflict and all relevant actors in order to make sure that the intense discussions that we have had in this regard lead to a positive outcome.”
The STC separatists, backed by the UAE since 2015, are seeking a return to independence from the rest of the country, which they joined in 1990. Taking advantage of escalating clashes with Houthi militia in the north, the secessionist council took control of the government capital Aden and southern provinces in August 2019.
Saudi Arabia brokered a truce between the supposed coalition partners in November 2019, known as the Riyadh Agreement, but in April 2020, the STC declared self-rule. In-fighting escalated prior to the latest ceasefire agreement, culminating with the STC takeover of the strategically-located Socotra island over the weekend.
