Malaysia has scrapped an invitation for Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi to deliver a speech about Islam because of pressure from Iranian diplomats who warned the event could hurt bilateral ties, an official said yesterday.
Ebadi, who won the peace prize in 2003 for her work advocating greater rights for women and children in Iran, has often been at odds with her country’s hard-line government. Tehran has banned her Center for Protecting Human Rights in 2006, claiming it did not have a permit.
Ebadi had agreed to give a speech titled “Islam and Cultural Diversity” at Kuala Lumpur’s University of Malaya on Nov. 3, but the Malaysian Foreign Ministry sent a letter to organizers last month “strongly advising” them not to host her, an organizing official said.
A Foreign Ministry official in the department that sent the letter said he had no immediate comment. The official cannot be named because of ministry guidelines.
“We were told there would be big implications for bilateral relations,” the organizing official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “Our hands were tied. The invitation for her to speak had to be withdrawn.”
Organizers were informed that the Iranian embassy had objected to the planned speech and “were pushing for Malaysia to call it off,” the organizing official said. They were also warned that Iranian university students living in Malaysia might hold protests in Ebadi’s presence.
The speech was supposed to kick off a series of talks in Malaysia and Thailand over the next few months initiated by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation. Other speakers will include US civil rights speaker Jesse Jackson and East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta.
Ebadi was among the first women judges in Iran, before being removed from her job after the Islamic revolution in 1979. She has since become an attorney and a human-rights activist.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
ANGER: Unrest worsened after a taxi driver was killed by a police vehicle on Thursday, as protesters set alight government buildings across the nation Protests worsened overnight across major cities of Indonesia, far beyond the capital, Jakarta, as demonstrators defied Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s call for calm. The most serious unrest was seen in the eastern city of Makassar, while protests also unfolded in Bandung, Surabaya, Solo and Yogyakarta. By yesterday morning, crowds had dispersed in Jakarta. Troops patrolled the streets with tactical vehicles and helped civilians clear trash, although smoke was still rising in various protest sites. Three people died and five were injured in Makassar when protesters set fire to the regional parliament building during a plenary session on Friday evening, according to
STILL AFLOAT: Satellite images show that a Chinese ship damaged in a collision earlier this month was under repair on Hainan, but Beijing has not commented on the incident Australia, Canada and the Philippines on Wednesday deployed three warships and aircraft for drills against simulated aerial threats off a disputed South China Sea shoal where Chinese forces have used risky maneuvers to try to drive away Manila’s aircraft and ships. The Philippine military said the naval drills east of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) were concluded safely, and it did not mention any encounter with China’s coast guard, navy or suspected militia ships, which have been closely guarding the uninhabited fishing atoll off northwestern Philippines for years. Chinese officials did not immediately issue any comment on the naval drills, but they
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
RSS