UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday said that he was concerned about reported abuses by Iraqi pro-government forces, including militias, in their war against the Islamic State (IS).
“I am ... concerned by allegations of summary killings, abductions and destruction of property perpetrated by forces and militias fighting alongside Iraqi armed forces,” Ban said in a statement after meeting Iraqi President Fouad Massoum in Baghdad.
Ban also expressed concern that neither the Iraqi government nor the world community was capable of taking care of the more than 2.5 million Iraqis displaced in the conflict.
Photo: AFP / Handout / Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office
Ban visited Baghdad yesterday for talks with Massoum, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other top officials and also addressed the Iraqi parliament.
The UN mission in Iraq announced the meetings and speech on Twitter, but provided no details of the agenda of the talks.
Iraqi forces are battling to retake the city of Tikrit, the government’s largest military operation yet against the Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
However, the fact that Baghdad is receiving military assistance from both the US and Iran has created tensions, internally and internationally.
Illustrating this, demonstrators carried an image of Iranian foreign operations head Qassem Suleimani and burned US and Israeli flags at a march in southern Iraq yesterday in support of Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitaries who are fighting the IS.
Ban flew in from Egypt, where he attended an Arab League summit in Sharm el-Sheikh dominated by Saudi-led military action against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
He is expected to travel to Kuwait today for a meeting of international donors called to address a massive funding gap in the response to the conflict in Syria.
During their meeting, Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs Ibrahim al-Jaafari asked Ban to “provide more services and humanitarian support to the more than 2.5 million displaced people” in Iraq, a statement said.
The UN office of the Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report earlier this month saying that IS fighters might have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq.
The report also found that Iraqi forces and allied militias “carried out extrajudicial killings, torture, abductions and forcibly displaced a large number of people, often with impunity.”
In related news, the US-led coalition launched seven air strikes against IS militants near Mosul, Sinjar, Tal Afar and Tikrit since early on Sunday, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement yesterday.
The air strikes hit two units of militant fighters as well as a fighting position, several buildings and other targets, it said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique