Day: November 9, 2019

With a strong cyclone approaching Bangladesh on Saturday, authorities used more than 50,000 volunteers and officials to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people to shelters across the low-lying delta nation’s vast coastal region.

More than 300,000 people had already moved to safer places and up to 1.8 million were expected to be evacuated by the evening, said Enamur Rahman, Bangladesh’s junior disaster management minister.

Cyclone Bulbul was expected to hit the country’s southwestern and southern coasts on Saturday evening. More than 5,000 shelters had been prepared by the morning.

The weather office in Dhaka, the capital, issued the most severe storm signal for Bulbul, which was packing maximum sustained winds of 74 kilometers (46 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 150 kph (93 mph).

It said the southwestern Khulna region could be the worst hit. The region has the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans.

The weather office said coastal districts were likely to be inundated by storm surges of 1{-2 meters (5-7 feet) above normal tide because of the impact of the approaching cyclone.

Several ships from Bangladesh’s navy and coast guard were kept ready in parts of the region for any emergency response, said the domestic TV station Independent.

According to U.S.-based AccuWeather Inc., Bulbul strengthened from a deep depression into a tropical cyclone on Thursday morning, and by Friday afternoon had strengthened into a severe cyclone.

With winds around 130-140 kph (80-87 mph), Bulbul is currently the equivalent of a Category 1 or 2 hurricane in the Atlantic, it said.

Rahman said government offices suspended work in 13 coastal districts on Saturday.

As the day progressed, the volunteers used loudspeakers to ask people to move to shelters in Chittagong and other regions, according to the ministry. In the Cox’s Bazar coastal district, tourists were alerted to stay in their hotels while a few hundred visitors were stuck on Saint Martins Island.

Authorities suspended all activities in the country’s main seaports, including in Chittagong, which handles almost 80% of Bangladesh’s exports and imports. All vessels and fishing boats were told to stop operating.

Local authorities ordered school buildings and mosques to be used as shelters in addition to dedicated cyclone shelters — raised concrete buildings that have been built over the past decades.

Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million people, has a history of violent cyclones. But disaster preparedness programs in recent decades have upgraded the country’s capacity to deal with natural disasters, resulting in fewer casualties.

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Iran defended on Saturday its decision to block an U.N. inspector from a nuclear site last week.

A spokesman for Iran’s atomic agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said that the Iranian government “legally speaking” had done nothing wrong in stopping the female inspector from touring its Natanz nuclear facility on Oct. 28.

Iran alleges the inspector tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates. The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has disputed the claim.

“The reason that this lady was denied entrance was that she was suspected of carrying some material,” said Kamlavandi, referring to the allegations.

He added that Iran was exercising its “rights” under its agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency when it revoked “her entrance and accreditation.”

It marked the first known instance of Iran blocking an inspector amid tensions over its collapsing nuclear deal with world powers. The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the deal over a year ago.

Kamalvandi said Iran hasn’t imposed any restriction on inspections.

“We welcome the inspections,” he said, while warning against using them for “sabotage and leaking information.”

State TV carried Kamalvandi’s remarks from the Fordo nuclear site where Iran Thursday injected uranium gas into centrifuges aimed at producing low-enriched uranium as fuel for nuclear power plants.

Under the 2015 deal, Iran was not supposed to enrich uranium at the site until 2030.

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Germany marked the 30th anniversary Saturday of the opening of the Berlin Wall, a pivotal moment in the events that brought down Communism in eastern Europe.

Leaders from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic attended a ceremony at Bernauer Strasse — where one of the last parts of the Berlin Wall remains — before placing roses in gaps in the once-fearsome barrier that divided the city for 28 years.

Axel Klausmeier, head of the Berlin Wall memorial site, recalled the images of delirious Berliners from East and West crying tears of joy as they hugged each other on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989.

Klausmeier paid tribute to the peaceful protesters in East Germany and neighboring Warsaw Pact countries who took to the streets demanding freedom and democracy, and to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of reforms.

The protests and a stream of people fleeing East Germany piled pressure on the country’s Communist government to open its borders to the West and ultimately end the nation’s post-war division.

Thirty years on, Germany has become the most powerful economic and political force on the continent, but there remain deep misgivings among some in the country about how the transition from socialism to capitalism was managed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged this in a recent interview with daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, saying that “with some things, where one might have thought that East and West would have aligned, one can see today that it might rather take half a century or more.”

Speaking at a memorial service in a small chapel near where the Wall once stood, Merkel commemorated those who were killed or imprisoned for trying to flee from East to West Germany and insisted that the fight for freedom worldwide isn’t over.

“The Berlin Wall, ladies and gentlemen, is history and it teaches us: No wall that keeps people out and restricts freedom is so high or so wide that it can’t be broken down,” she said.

Merkel also recalled that Nov. 9 remains a fraught date in German history, as it also marks the anniversary of the so-called Night of Broken Glass, an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1938 that foreshadowed the Nazi’s Holocaust.

Light installations, concerts and public debates were planned throughout the city and other parts of Germany to mark the fall of the Wall, including a concert at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.
 

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Self-exiled Cambodian opposition figure Sam Rainsy landed in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on Saturday after promising to return home to rally opponents of authoritarian ruler Hun Sen.

“Keep up the hope. We are on the right track,” Rainsy said on arrival at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in a message to supporters. “Democracy will prevail. Democracy has prevailed in Malaysia. Democracy will prevail in Cambodia.”

Asked whether he planned to return to Cambodia he said: “I cannot say anything. I do not deny, I do not confirm.”

The veteran opposition figure had planned to return to Cambodia on Saturday, Independence Day, in what Prime Minister Hun Sen characterized as an attempted coup against his rule of more than three decades.

But Sam Rainsy was blocked from boarding a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok in Paris on Thursday. He and other leaders of his banned opposition party have said they want to return to Cambodia by crossing the land border with Thailand.

Malaysia has no border with Cambodia.

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Sam Rainsy’s Planned Return to Cambodia Sparks Fears of Political Violence

In August, he announced his planned return to Cambodia on Independence Day, Nov. 9, to be accompanied by Cambodia National Rescue Party colleagues

An official of Rainsy’s banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in Thailand said that nobody would be returning Saturday.

“We will be returning as soon as possible,” Saory Pon, general secretary of the Cambodia National Rescue Party Overseas told Reuters, complaining that some party officials in Thailand had been harassed and followed by security services.

Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan said that if Sam Rainsy did return he would face outstanding charges against him in court.

“If he comes to cause instability and chaos, we will destroy him,” he said.

Opposition activists arrested

Some 50 opposition activists have been arrested in recent weeks.

In Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, security forces patrolled in pickup trucks on Saturday, which marks Cambodia’s 66th anniversary of independence from France. On Sunday and Monday, Cambodia celebrates an annual water festival.

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Cambodia Fortifies Border Town Ahead of Sam Rainsy’s Possible Return 

Uneasy calm will welcome opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party members, if they are able to reach Poipet; mixed security forces have garrisoned the town in anticipation of exiled leader Sam Rainsy’s possible return

Police armed with assault rifles lined up at Cambodia’s Poipet border crossing with Thailand, where Sam Rainsy had said he planned to cross, pictures posted on Twitter by the independent Cambodian Center for Human Rights showed.

Rainsy, a founder of the CNRP, fled four years ago following a conviction for criminal defamation. He also faces a five-year sentence in a separate case. He says the charges were politically motivated.

The 70-year-old former finance minister, who usually sports large, rimmed spectacles, has been an opponent of Hun Sen since the 1990s. He also vowed to return home in 2015 in spite of threats to arrest him, but did not.

The CNRP’s leader, Kem Sokha, is under house arrest in Cambodia after being arrested more than two years ago and charged with treason ahead of a 2018 election that was condemned by Western countries as a farce.

Before Sam Rainsy’s failed attempt to fly to Thailand, Malaysia detained Mu Sochua, his party’s U.S.-based vice president, at an airport before releasing her 24 hours later along with two other Cambodian opposition leaders detained earlier.

“We will continue our journey home,” Mu Sochua said on Twitter Saturday morning. “9 November is marked in history as our struggle for democracy.”

Rights groups have accused Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand of detaining and returning critics of neighboring governments, even those with United Nations refugee status.

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Dissension appeared to be spreading in police forces across Bolivia Friday as opposing sides in the country’s political divide held fast to their positions after 17 days of violent protests over the legitimacy of President Evo Morales’ claimed reelection.

Defense Minister Javier Zabaleta said a “police mutiny occurred in a few regions,” but he rejected the idea of a military intervention “at this time.”

The disputed results of the Oct. 20 election have triggered a wave of protests across Bolivia, which have resulted in three deaths and more than 300 injuries.

Earlier in the day, opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho vowed not to leave the capital of La Paz until Morales personally accepts a resignation letter drafted for him. At a separate public event, Morales repeated that he is not resigning.

In the evening, a small group of police officers staged a rebellion in the central city of Cochabamba, apparently demanding the resignation of their commander, who has been accused of siding with Morales’ supporters during clashes this week that left one person dead and more than 100 injured. The 18 officers stood on the roof of the special operations tactical unit, waving flags and singing the national anthem as a large crowd of people in the street cheered.

Hundreds of residents in other cities then clamored outside local police stations urging officers to “follow their example.” Police in Santa Cruz, an opposition stronghold, affixed a sign on their station saying they were in revolt. Police officers in other cities left the streets and returned to their stations, without explaining why.

Morales convened an emergency meeting with his ministers and military high command to analyze the situation.

“There is no order. There will be no military operation at this time. It’s discarded,” Zabaleta said after the meeting.

Gen. Yuri Calderon, head of the national police, had previously denied that a police rebellion was under way and called the Cochabamba incident isolated.

“There is normalcy in the rest of the country and we hope that services will resume,” he said.

Later, Morales went on Twitter to warn that “our democracy is at risk from the coup d’etat put in place by violent groups that are attacking the constitutional order.” His government issued a statement claiming that an opposition plot to oust the president was being led by Camacho and former President Carlos Mesa, who finished second in the Oct. 20 election.

There was no immediate comment from either Camacho or Mesa.

Morales declared himself the outright winner even before official results indicated he obtained just enough support to avoid a runoff with Mesa. But a 24-hour lapse in releasing vote results fueled allegations of fraud by the opposition.

The Organization of American States is conducting an audit of the election count and their findings are expected Monday or Tuesday. The opposition says it will not accept the results because they were not consulted on how the process would unfold.

Morales’ bid for re-election was controversial before it began. The former union leader, and Bolivia’s first indigenous president, has shepherded significant economic growth and an overhaul of the constitution. But he refused to accept the results of a referendum upholding term limits. The country’s constitutional court later ruled that term limits violated his human right to run for office, and the electoral court ultimately accepted his candidacy for a fourth term.

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