The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Eritrea on Wednesday because of aid that council members say the Horn of Africa country has given to Islamist insurgents in Somalia.
A resolution supported by 13 of the 15 council members slapped an embargo on arms imports and exports by Eritrea, as well as asset freezes and travel bans on individuals and firms to be designated by an existing sanctions committee. Those hit would include members of the country’s leadership, it said.
The US and other nations accuse Eritrea of supplying al Shabaab rebels with funds and arms as they fight to topple a fragile UN-backed transitional government in Somalia, a state that has been virtually lawless for 18 years. Eritrea has repeatedly denied the allegation.
Libya, which has no veto in the council, voted against the resolution, while veto-holder China abstained.
The resolution demanded that Eritrea “cease arming, training, and equipping armed groups and their members including al Shabaab, that aim to destabilize the region” and also resolve a border dispute with Djibouti.
It said “Eritrea’s actions undermining peace and reconciliation in Somalia as well as the dispute between Djibouti and Eritrea constitute a threat to peace and international security.”
It was the first time UN sanctions had been imposed on Eritrea, a partly Muslim, partly Christian state that won independence from Ethiopia in 1993.
The last country to suffer UN sanctions for the first time was Iran in December 2006.
Diplomats said Uganda, which has peacekeeping troops in Somalia that have been targeted by al Shabaab, drafted the resolution after the African Union (AU) called on the council in May to punish Eritrea over its role in Somalia.
But Eritrea charged that its true author was the US.
Eritrean UN Ambassador Araya Desta described the resolution as “shameful” and told reporters it was based “on fabricated lies, mainly concocted by the Ethiopian regime and the US administration.”
Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 with tacit US backing to rout an Islamic courts movement from Mogadishu. It withdrew its troops earlier this year.
“We have never supported any insurgents or any opposition in Somalia,” Desta said. “We don’t want to take sides in Somalia. Somalis are our brothers.”
Libya opposed sanctions against any African country and believed the issue should have been postponed until after an AU summit next month, he said.
Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yesui (張業遂) said sanctions “should not replace diplomatic efforts to resolve disputes through dialogue and negotiations.”
But British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said Eritrea had merited sanctions for violating a UN arms ban on Somalia.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS