A Palestinian civil rights group on Sunday said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's administration is ignoring a rising tide of lawlessness, including illegal arrests and torture carried out by its own security forces.
Presenting its report for last year at a news conference in Ramallah, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights (PICCR) said Arafat's Palestinian Authority appeared to be losing its grip on security in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"It is clear that within the Palestinian Authority there is a shortage in decision making," PICCR chairman Mamdouh Aker told reporters. "They are disabled and incapable of enforcing law and order."
Commission director Said Zaydani said that while there were 48 domestic murders in the Palestinian areas last year, police had not only failed to arrest any suspects but had not launched serious investigations.
Palestinians put some of the blame on Israel. During the first part of the current conflict, Israeli forces destroyed numerous Palestinian police installations, charging that the forces were involved in terrorism. Now the police say they are short of facilities.
Aker said the police also turned a blind eye to car theft and failure to license and insure vehicles, while court orders often went unenforced, leading to a danger that vigilante groups would arise to take the law into their own hands.
"When killings and other violations of law take place, and the Palestinian Authority doesn't take serious measures to confront them, the people will not trust the law," he said.
For some time Palestinian analysts and Israeli intelligence officials have warned of a growing wave of anarchy in the West Bank and Gaza, with the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority losing ground to armed militia groups in several areas, while authorities are unwilling to confront them directly for fear of sparking civil war.
"The phenomenon of people taking the law into their own hands is not new in the Palestinian Authority, but it is lately on the rise," Zaydani said.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
RSS