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For Aisha, sexual slavery was something you only heard about happening to others in television reports, until she found herself locked in a living "hell" in Libya.

"I had left a nightmare only to fall into hell," said the migrant from Guinea, lured to the North African country that criminal gangs have turned into a den of racketeering.

Aisha fled her home country after five miscarriages: for her in-laws and the neighbourhood, she was either sterile or a witch.

But the young woman was simply diabetic.

"I just wanted to disappear from my country," said Aisha, a graduate in hotel management.

She contacted a former classmate who appeared to have made a life for herself in neighbouring Libya and who lent Aisha money to join her.

"I didn't even see the country. As soon as I arrived, I was locked up, I was a slave. She brought men to me and she got the money."

Locked in a room with a toilet, she only saw the "friend" who had duped her when she was brought in food,"like a dog".

"The men came drunk. I'd rather not remember it," said Aisha, still trembling. "I thought my life was over."

Wouldn't wish that on worst enemy

After three months, a Libyan man took pity on her, threatened her captor and put Aisha on a bus to Tunisia with 300 Libyan dinars (RM269) in her pocket.

After her diabetes was treated, she even gave birth to a baby girl late last year.

She now dreams of Europe, but returning to Libya is out of the question.

"I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy."

For the past two years, she has lived with other migrant women in Medenine, southern Tunisia.

Most of the others who'd experienced Libya had also been forced into prostitution, raped or sexually assaulted, said Mongi Slim, head of the local Red Crescent.

"Some of them, if they had the protection of a man, they fared better. But for single women, it's almost systematic," said Slim.

Some migrants said they had been advised to take a three-month contraception jab before departure, and some travel with morning-after pills, according to UN reports.

Mariam, an Ivorian orphan, left with 1, 000 euros (RM4,971) to pay for the crossing from Abidjan to Libya via Mali and Algeria.

She hoped to earn enough in Libya to reach Europe.

But she ended up spending most of her year there in prison, where she was sexually exploited, before fleeing to Tunisia in 2018.

"I worked for six months with a family, then I set off by sea from Zuwara," a port in western Libya, said Mariam, 35.

"Armed men caught us, took us to prison and abused us," she said.

Mariam said she had fallen into the hands of militiamen who run illegal migrant camps where extortion, rape and forced labour are common.

Official centres under Libyan government control, and where the European Union-funded coastguard transfers would-be exiles it intercepts, are also riddled with corruption and violence, including sexual assault, according to the United Nations.

Impunity

"Every morning, a chief would make his choices and send the chosen girls to Libyans who had rented special rooms," said Mariam.

"They fed me bread, sardines and salad. I stayed there a month until they moved me to another place," she recalled, her voice spiked with anger.

"They were armed, they smoked drugs, they paid the chief but not me."

According to rights groups, men and boys are also sexually abused.

"Sexual violence continues to be perpetrated with impunity by traffickers and smugglers along migration routes, in detention centres, judicial police prisons, and against urban migrants by militants and armed groups", the United Nations said in a 2019 report.

Such criminality increased with the intensification of the Libyan conflict from 2014.

Three migrant detention centres in Libya were closed in mid-2019 and the establishment in March of a new UN-sponsored transitional government has raised hope of a decline in impunity and violence.

The UN decided last year to deploy protection officers to combat sexual crimes.

But they have yet to even be recruited, and intercepted migrants are still turned back to Libya, to the dismay of international organisations.

On June 12, a record of more than 1, 000 people caught at sea were sent back to Libyan jails, according to the UNHCR. - AFP

Link:
Women migrants reduced to sex slaves in Libya 'hell' - The Star Online

Something unusual happened on Friday. FIFA announced the new rankings only for 12 teams in Asia so the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) can, on July 1, go ahead with the draw for the third round of qualification for the 2022 World Cup.

This will separate the surviving dozen into two groups of six who will battle it out from September to March, with the top two from each automatically going to Qatar. Sounds easy but while the who and the when are already decided, the issue that is going to dominate in the cramped corridors of AFC house in Kuala Lumpur over the next few weeks with countries still battling COVID-19 is where.

After leading Australia to top spot in Group B, coach Graham Arnold admitted that he was in the dark as to whether the Socceroos will be able to play Down Under any time soon. Youre asking me whats going to happen next with the Socceroos? I dont know, Arnold said last week. I dont know if well play in Australia at all this year and where well play overseas, Ive got no idea.

Ideas are starting to be thrown around, however. Officially, at the moment, the games will be played in the traditional home-and-away format but, as things stand in terms of the travel restrictions that are in place in a number of countries, there are questions as to whether this will be possible.

That will be the first priority. It is possible that given the importance most nations place on the World Cup, that hitherto-reluctant authorities will be willing to host home legs in the coming weeks and months. If enough are ready to do so (Iraq and Syria dont play at home anyway), then even if there are a couple of serious dissenters,they will be given a choice: To follow the format or play their home legs at least in the early stages away.

This may not be possible, however, and could mean a huge headache.

The second half of the second round was played at centralized venues, but while there was plenty of debate, there wasnt a huge amount of rancor.Iran were angry at being sent to Bahrain, partly as it meant they played seven out of eight games away from home but this was partly due to the fact the team were struggling at the time. Smaller teams were not in the running for top spot so didnt mind so much being hosted in, for example, Saudi Arabia or Japan. That wont be the case in the third round with the big boys battling for a World Cup place.

As one AFC official said, The second round was relatively easy to sort out. Most of the big nations hosted the games and there werent many complaints aside from Iran. Australia also had to go away but as their governments travel restrictions were so tight, they understood. Also, playing Nepal twice on foreign soil was not seen as a major problem but playing Japan twice in Japan would be very different.

If there are centralized venues, the simple question is one that is very difficult to answer. Who hosts them? With the World Cup at stake, most of the 12 will be very keen to have home advantage.

You can imagine the rows if Japan have to play all their games in South Korea or vice-versa, said the official. There could be rotating hosts with one country hosting two or three games at a time, but this also leaves the games at the mercy of travel restrictions.

While the AFC will wait until the draw is made to really start investigating the issue, there are possible solutions. At the moment, the expectation is that it will be easier to sell neutral venues to the contenders. This happened as recently as the1990 and 1994 World Cups with the final games being played in Singapore and Qatar respectively.

The obvious option now is Qatar. The country successfully hosted AFC Champions League games last year and with the World Cup just over a year away, it has the stadiums and the know-how and, crucially, is not involved in qualification. Officials believe there will be plenty of pushback but that would fade as countries realize there are not many better options and the important thing is just to finish qualification.

After being on the backfoot and reacting to events throughout the second round, the AFC now wants to be as proactive as possible and the feeling is that Qatar offers as much certainty as is possible at the moment.

The question then changes into when. If the games take place along the already-set FIFA windows, it means a lot of traveling for some countries and almost none for others, and there may be a push for a second neutral venue over in the east.

All 10 games (per team) taking place over an intensive month would be ideal, but back in the 1990s there were few Asian players in Europe meaning that it was a case of just organizing domestic leagues. Now, many of the biggest stars dont play in Asia and would not be released by clubs for a month of busy football.

Some feel that the best way forward is reducing the number of games with the thinking being that, if there is a neutral venue then you dont need home-and-away legs. Playing five games instead of 10 means that enough space can be found in the calendar.

There is no easy option, however, and that means a lot of difficult conversations following the draw on July 1.

Originally posted here:
Sudan overcome Libya to reach 2021 FIFA Arab Cup as the first of the qualifiers - Arab News

A soldier has been on the run from police in Belgium since mid-May after being implicated in the theft of weapons from a military base in Flanders.

The federal prosecutor charged Jrgen Conings with attempted murder and the illegal possession of weapons in a terrorist context after he was connected with threats to kill Belgiums top pandemic virologist, Marc Van Ranst.

The case highlights the countrys much overlooked problem with extremism on the right and how these politics have become entangled with the pandemic.

It is not just fringe far-right conspiracy groups, such as QAnon and Viruswaanzin, that have been exploiting the COVID-19 crisis. Several Belgian right-wing parties and movements are using the pandemic to spread misinformation and fuel resentment.

These mostly conservative, pro-Flemish-independence parties include the right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and the extreme far-right Vlaams Belang. Both have been vocal about the way the caretaker governments led by former temporary prime minister Sophie Wilms have handled the pandemic. The criticism grew even louder when a seven-party coalition took over in October 2020. Even though N-VA and Vlaams Belang were the largest elected parties in Flanders in 2019, they have been reduced to an opposition role in the current federal government.

This has been a bitter pill to swallow, especially for Vlaams Belang, which had hoped to form a coalition with the N-VA in order to bypass a 1989 ruling aimed at keeping it out of government because of its extreme politics.

The tense political climate has been further exploited by the Flemish alt-right movement Schild & Vrienden to sow even more division.

It is in this complex context that pro-Conings groups have been popping up online ever since his news of disappearance was broadcast in May.

Conings had been on a terror watch list since February as a potentially violent extremist and was known to be connected to another former soldier, convicted neo-Nazi Tomas Boutens. Yet neither the Belgian army nor the Belgian minister of defence appear to have been informed about this.

A Facebook group supporting Conings soon attracted more than 50,000 members before being banned and relocating to encrypted messaging app Telegram, which is harder to regulate. Posts praised his actions with fascist memes which are popular among the Flemish alt-right and extreme far-right.

At least three support marches have taken place since his search warrant was issued one of them coinciding with protests against COVID-19 measures in Brussels.

A number of scientific experts have become targets during the pandemic. As well as Van Ranst, infectious diseases specialist Erika Vlieghe and vaccinologist Pierre Van Damme have had to endure online attacks.

Belgiums record-breaking federal government formation talks did not help either. Politicians from the caretaker government quickly passed on all responsibility to a team of scientific experts at the start of the crisis. Trying to save political face, most of the pandemic communication was left to the experts. This is how Van Ranst, head of Belgiums pandemic planning team and an opinionated Twitter user, became the personification of the pandemic.

Mainstream politicians from the traditional right and extreme far-right have played a part in fuelling personal attacks against experts. Calling Van Ranst doctor Hatred in a previous Twitter dispute, N-VA politician Theo Francken, infamous for his anti-immigration stance, set the tone again at the start of the crisis. Quoting a satirical article, he sent out and subsequently deleted a tweet targeted at Van Ranst. The tweet combined the Dutch word for pandemic with the gay slur sissy, suggesting the virologist was being overly dramatic about the pandemic.

Van Grieken and his party have taken advantage of their social media know-how during the pandemic, often publicising content from Vlaams Belang-linked alternative news sites, such as the Flemish nationalist t Scheldt. Recurrent themes are xenophobic conspiracy theories and the constant suggestion that Van Ranst is the leftist hand puppet to Belgiums illegitimate federal government, associating him with Chinas alleged communist dictatorship.

Dries Van Langenhove, Schild & Vriendens leader and now independent Vlaams Belang politician, has participated in the bashing of Van Ranst as well. In a recent meme-packed video, he even compared Van Ranst to Stalin for advising against reopening hospitality businesses too soon.

This excessive trolling, often accompanied by death threats, has had a concrete impact on all experts involved: before the Conings case, Van Ranst already spoke about being prank-called by groups of drunk youngsters, often ending their calls by singing the Flemish national anthem and calling him leftist vermin.

The pandemic climate has proven to be an excellent breeding ground for extremists. It has provided them with an excuse to go after what they see as the freedom-destroying establishment.

In this climate, Conings is portrayed as a Flemish resistance fighter by many sharing his feelings of exclusion despite being wanted for extremely serious crimes. The way people have responded to his case shows there is an urgent need to more closely inspect Belgiums homegrown far-right extremism problem.

In my research, I have been looking at how continental urban terrorist violence materialises both online and offline in the aftermath of the Paris 2015 and Brussels 2016 attacks. This pandemic-driven case teaches us that present-day terrorist threats do not only stem from Jihadist milieus, as is often assumed. The actions of people such as Conings who appear, on the surface, to be outliers or lone wolves need to be analysed as part of a wider sociopolitical environment, particularly when political parties appear to feel so comfortable spreading misinformation.

View original post here:
Jrgen Conings: the case of a Belgian soldier on the run shows how the pandemic collides with far-right extremism - The Conversation UK

On a recent episode of "Democracy Now!," Professor Carol Anderson discussed her book"The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America"that describes how the Second Amendment was written to empower local militia groups to put down slave revolts and protect plantation owners. She writes the Second Amendment is rooted in fear of Black people, to deny them their rights, to keep them from tasting liberty.

In light of that, those (with their Tarzan yells) who beat their chests about the Second Amendment are most likely alt-right/white supremacist scaredy-cats who are terrified of people of color, esp. blacks.

Recently attorney Alexandria Kinaid said We are committed to continuing to challenge the erosion of Second Amendment rights in Idaho.

Since the Second Amendment was created to suppress blacks (esp. freed slaves), it SHOULD be eroded.

I have to ask our local Second Amendment advocates (Steve Wasylko, Ron Korn, Dan McDonald, Scott Herndon and Jeff Avery)do you condemn the January 6thriot and mob attack of our nations capital? Dont beafraid, speak up and go on the record about your position on the Jan. 6insurrection.

Remember, intelligence is a gift and ignorance is a choice. Its sad that so many on the right prefer the latter.

LEE SANTA

Sandpoint

Continued here:
The Second Amendment is a racist document - Bonner County Daily Bee

It is often hard to try to derive a national message from a single byelection. The effect on party morale usually dwarfs that felt on government policy. The election of Liberal Democrat Sarah Green as the MP for Chesham and Amersham, a commuter-belt seat north-west of London, stuns on both counts. The result will make Conservative MPs in relatively liberal and educated constituencies very jumpy. But it will also slow the progress of Boris Johnsons planning reforms. Voters in bucolic Buckinghamshire plainly feared that these would make it easier for developers to concrete over the countryside.

What the result shows is that the Liberal Democrat cause is not a hopeless one. With just 11 parliamentarians and languishing at 7% in national polls, Sir Ed Davey appeared to be taking his depleted ranks and marching them towards the sound of gunfire. Chesham and Amersham has been held by the Conservatives since its creation in 1974. Yet Ms Green overturned a 16,000-strong Tory majority to take the seat by just over 8,000 votes, a swing of 25%, and upset the odds. The energy of the Tories vaccine bounce seems dissipated. Clearly the death of Liberal England has been prematurely foretold.

But is this a successful revival or a false dawn? In 2016 a swing of 22% saw Londons Richmond Park won by the Lib Dems. Three years later the party won the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection in Wales with a swing of 14%. What was telling was that on both occasions, the Lib Dems benefited from electoral pacts that consolidated a part of the remain vote. These divisions have not been erased just because Britain has left the European Union. Chesham and Amersham voted remain, and it would appear that substantial numbers of pro-EU Labour supporters voted Lib Dem.

The Compass thinktank has identified two clear battlegrounds in England: one between Labour and the Conservatives, another between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. There are few seats where Labour and the Lib Dems square off. It makes sense to join hands to defeat a common enemy. This thought also dovetails with a creeping political realignment in British politics.

The trend is for older, school-leaver Brexit supporters in the north switching to the Conservatives while the ruling party is losing ground among the more middle-class suburban graduates who leaned towards remain. Mr Johnsons divisive nationalism and levelling up rhetoric risks trading red wall gains, such as in Hartlepool last month, for blue wall losses. The new Tory coalition can be divided in other ways: the HS2 high-speed railway is widely welcomed in the north and the Midlands where it ends, but less so in the leafy southern constituencies, such as Chesham and Amersham, that it runs through.

To keep the momentum going will require more than the politics of protest. Sir Ed must see the possibility of a major political restructuring and shape it. He should make a virtue of positions that decentralise power, free the individual citizen and promote quality in public services. He needs policies that are not only popular but also clearly associated in the minds of voters with the Lib Dems. Being a responsible partner to the EU, rather than a troublesome neighbour, would be a good start. Liberalism is its own creed, and its adherents ought to make the case that it remains the one most capable of meeting the challenges ahead.

See original here:
The Guardian view on the Liberal Democrats: seeing and shaping politics - The Guardian