Tag: Arab Revolution

Africa
Sudan

Sudan reforms harsh Islamist legal code

After more than 30 years of Islamist rule, Sudan’s interim Sovereignty Council has unveiled a sweeping reform of the sharia-based legal code. The revisions aim to bring Sudan’s laws in line with the Constitutional Declaration that established the country’s transitional government a year ago, and included guarantees for basic rights and freedoms. Most significantly, the amendments abolish the crime of “apostasy”—meaning conversion from Islam, which had carried the death penalty and was widely used to target political opposition. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Greater Middle East
bahrain

Bahrain upholds death penalty for protesters

The high court of Bahrain upheld a decision to execute two protesters, despite evidence that suggests their confessions were unlawfully extracted. The two men, members of Bahrain’s traditionally excluded Shiite majority, were sentenced to death in 2014 for planting a bomb in the village of al-Deir that killed a police officer involved in repression of a riot in the village. After multiple appeals, the high court, known as the Court of Cassation, overturned the death sentences in 2018. The court accepted evidence of medical records showing signs of torture. However, in January a lower court successfully reinstated the death penalty, which the Cassation Court has now reaffirmed. (Photo of 2011 protests in Bahrain: Wikipedia)

Syria
Atmeh

Syria: protests against ex-Nusra rule in Idlib

Protesters gathered in the town of Atmeh in Syria’s opposition-held Idlib province to demand the release of a locally based British aid worker arrested by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist militia formerly known as the Nusra Front that now controls much of the province. Tauqir Sharif, a British Muslim, was working with a grassroots aid and media group called Live Updates from Syria. He was detained by HTS in a raid on his home. Footage of the protest showed many women and children among dozens chanting and holding banners calling for Sharif to be freed. The crowd finally gathered outside the closed gates of a compound guarded by masked militiamen. Demonstrators also protested the closure of education and social services by HTS, chanting “We want schools to open.” (Photo via Middle East Eye)

Greater Middle East
hegazi

Egyptian LGBT activist a suicide in exile

Three years after her arrest and torture by security forces in her native country, Egyptian LGBT activist Sarah Hegazi killed herself in exile in Canada, prompting an outpouring of sympathy and anger on social media. Hegazi, 30, an openly gay woman and rights advocate, was among a group of activists arrested in September 2017 after raising a rainbow flag at a Cairo concert of the Lebanese indie band Mashrou Leila, which includes gay members. Hegazi was charged with joining an illegal group promoting “deviant thought.” She fled to Canada after being released on bail in January 2018. The incident was followed by a harsh crackdown on Egypt’s LGBT community. (Photo via Middle East Eye)

Syria
suwayda

Anti-Assad protests re-emerge in Syria

Amid spiraling inflation and fast-rising prices for food and other basic goods, protests are again emerging in regime-controlled areas of Syria—some reviving slogans of the 2011 revolution. One angry protest was held in the western city of Suweida. Crowds moved through the city’s central streets, eventually gathering in front of the governorate building, where they chanted, “The people want to topple the regime!” “Revolution, freedom, social justice!” and “Down with Bashar al-Assad!” The protest was particularly significant, as the Druze-majority province of Suweida has remained loyal to Damascus throughout the nine years of the Syrian uprising. (Photo: Suwayda-24 via Syria Call)

Africa
Nuba

Clashes threaten Sudan democratic transition

Recent inter-communal fighting in Darfur and Kassala State threatens Sudan’s fragile democratic transition, United Nations officials warn. The government has dispatched the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to South Darfur and Kassala states, with orders to act decisively “to secure the country, lives and property.” But the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan expressed grave concern about RSF fighters collaborating with perpetrators of the violence. Sudanese civil society groups are calling for RSF commanders responsible for human rights violations to be held legally accountable. (Photo: Nuba Reports)

Africa
Sudan

SCOTUS: Sudan liable for terrorism damages

The US Supreme Court ruled in Opati v. Republic of Sudan that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act permits a punitive damages award against Sudan for the role it played in the 1998 bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Plaintiffs in the case argued that Sudan had harbored al-Qaeda leaders who plotted the attacks, including Osama bin Laden. Officials in Khartoum have been seeking a settlement with the victims outside the court. Sudan is in a precarious economic situation following the ouster of long-ruling strongman Omer Hassan al-Bashir, now exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration made it clear that Sudan must settle all terrorism-related claims to get off the US list of “state sponsors of terrorism”—a precondition for Washington’s support for debt relief for the African country. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Planet Watch
iraq.pipeline

Yes, ‘peak oil’—but demand, not supply

After oil prices went negative for the first time ever last month, they are now starting to rise again as lockdowns imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic are gradually lifted. US crude is now back to nearly $30 a barrel. But this is less than half what the price was a year ago, and a third what it was a dozen years ago. Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, is at the forefront of the cartel’s effort to squeeze supply to consumer nations, as part of its recent deal to curb output. Baghdad just announced a 30% cut of exports to Asia. But it remains to be seen if such measures will jack up prices and ease the economic pain that has led to a remobilization of anti-regime protests, despite pandemic fears. (Photo via Iraqi News Agency)

Iraq
Iraqi_female_protester

Detainee amnesty as Iraq protests re-emerge

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council ordered courts to release all protesters jailed since anti–government demonstrations erupted last October. The Council cited Article 38 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to protest. This order comes days after Prime Minister Mustafa al–Kadhimi addressed the nation, promising to “hold to account all those who shed Iraqi blood” during months of political unrest, and urging parliament to reform the electoral laws. Al–Kadhimi’s address spurred a new wave of nationwide protests, demanding immediate government action on political reform. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Planet Watch
peru exodus

Poor persecuted in COVID-19 police state

In countries across the world, the impoverished are in a grimly paradoxical position: disproportionately impacted both by COVID-19 and by the police-state measures imposed in response to the pandemic—and consequent economic pain. In Lebanon, which had been in the midst of a national uprising before the lockdown, protests have been re-ignited—and with far greater anger. In Venezuela and Argentina, harshly overcrowded prisons have exploded into uprisings over emergency restrictions that leave inmates incommunicado. As in India, stranded migrant laborers line the highways in Peru, defying lockdown orders that have left them destitute, far from home and without employment. UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet warns that “the public health emergency risks becoming a human rights disaster, with negative effects that will long outlast the pandemic itself.” (Photo: RebeliĂłn)

Africa
Sudanese_Women

Sudan outlaws female genital mutilation

Sudan’s new government officially criminalized female genital mutilation (FGM), in a reform of the legal code hailed by the UNICEF representative in the country. Although FGM is still widely practiced in other countries where it has been criminalized—such as in Egypt—the amendment has been praised as a step in the right direction for women’s rights in Sudan. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Syria
Syrian refugee children

From revolution to genocide: Syria’s grim anniversary

Nine years ago this week, the Syrian Revolution began with peaceful pro-democracy protests. The first demonstrations broke out in the city of Deraa after local schoolchildren painted a mural depicting scenes and slogans from the recent revolutions in other Arab countries, and were detained and brutalized by the police. The Bashar Assad regime responded to the demonstrations with serial massacres. After months of this, the Free Syrian Army emerged, initially as a self-defense militia to protect protesters. But the situation soon escalated to an armed insurgency. The regime lost control of areas of the country, and local civil resistance committees backed by the FSA seized control. Assad then escalated to levels of violence rarely seen on Earth since World War II. (Photo of refugee children on Jordanian border: Peter Biro/ECHO via The New Humanitarian)