Region

PARIS — Iranian security forces have killed at least 537 people in a crackdown on protests that erupted in September, a rights group said on Tuesday, sharply revising upwards its previous toll.

Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) also said that while four people had been executed in this period on protest-related charges, over 300 more had been hanged on other accusations in the same time frame in what it described as a broad tactic to "intimidate" society.

The protest movement began in mid-September after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurd who had been arrested for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women.

Protesters took to the streets urging not just an end to clothing obligations like the obligatory headscarf for women, but also the ousting of Iran's Islamic theocracy which has ruled the country since 1979.

The authorities responded with a crackdown which rights groups say saw protesters directly targeted with live ammunition across the country.

IHR’s previous toll was of 488 protesters killed in the crackdown, and it said the new figure of 537 was due to new deaths being openly verified.

The most deaths took place in late September with 223 killed, October when 100 lost their lives, and November when 173 died, it said in a report marking 200 days since Amini’s death.

The most deaths, 134, were recorded in Sistan-Baluchistan province in the southeast, where the Baluch Sunni minority has held weekly protests.

At least 69 deaths were recorded in Tehran, and 57 and 56 in the provinces of Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan which are populated by the Kurdish minority.

Four men were executed in protest-related cases after what IHR described as “show trials” that prompted an international outcry.

But the group said in the same period 309 people were also put to death on other charges, including 180 for drug-related offences, without a murmur of dissent from the international community.

The group said this showed how capital punishment in Iran was used as a “tool to intimidate society”.

“These are the ‘low-cost’ victims of the regime’s execution machine,” IHR Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told AFP.

“Nobody knows them, their executions don’t receive any condemnation, but the aim is the same; to spread fear and prevent more protests.”

SANAA — Two Yemeni YouTubers and a producer jailed by Houthi rebels for publishing videos critical of the Iran-backed insurgents have received pardons, according to the group's official media.

The trio, who were sentenced last month along with a third YouTuber, were pardoned by the Houthi's political leader, Mahdi Al Mashat, the SABA news agency said.

The Houthis, who follow an austere form of Shiite Islam, seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention and fighting that has devastated the country.

YouTubers Mustafa Al Mawmari and Ahmad Hajar had been sentenced by a Sanaa court to 18 months and 12 months respectively at a court, while producer Hammoud Al Mesbahi received a six-month term.

There was no mention of Ahmad Elaw, a third YouTuber sentenced alongside the trio in March, who was jailed for three years, the longest sentence.

In December, Hajar was the first of the group to be detained after he accused the Huthis of "robbing the Yemeni people", in a video watched around half-a-million times.

The group was charged with "spreading misinformation", "harming public interest", and "inciting the masses to commit acts of chaos", according to court documents seen by AFP when they were sentenced.

Each of them was also ordered to pay a fine of nearly $20,000, their lawyer said at the time.

Yemen's war has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, both directly and indirectly, and pushed the nation to the brink of famine.

Meanwhile, the Houthis have increasingly limited individual liberties, including free speech and the movement of women in areas they control.

Court documents had said the YouTubers' influence was seen as "serving the aggression... against Yemen" by the Saudi-led coalition.

The four men were sentenced a day after Houthi-controlled media released videos of them renouncing their earlier criticisms, prompting a strong reaction from some Yemenis who suspected the statements were coerced.

TUNIS — Tunisia's main opposition coalition pressed the government on Monday to explain a days-long public "absence" of President Kais Saied, saying it had information that he was sick.

Saied, 65, has not appeared in public or held any meetings since March 22, according to posts on his Facebook page, the presidency's only official channel of communication.

The lack of statements or videos has sparked rumours over the state of Saied's health.

"We ask the government to address the Tunisian people and say if the president has health problems that have forced him to be absent," Ahmed Nejib Chebbi of the National Salvation Front (NSF) opposition coalition told journalists.

He said the NSF had been "informed from day one that President Saied was suffering from health problems, but did not react, as anyone can have a temporary health problem".

Chebbi said Prime Minister Najla Bouden would run Tunisia in the event of a temporary power vacuum, but that a permanent vacancy would present the country with a "great catastrophe" due to a legislative void.

Saied, who staged a dramatic power grab in July 2011 and has since ruled by decree, last year rammed through a constitution giving his office unlimited powers and neutering parliament.

Under the new document, were Saied to be incapacitated, the president of the Constitutional Court would run the country pending a new presidential election, but the court has not yet been created.

Chebbi said Saied’s health “concerns all Tunisians”, and that in the event he is incapacitated, Tunisia should hold “serious and open consultations so that the Tunisian people and the civil and political forces agree on a power transfer mechanism”.

DUBAI — The United Nations’ Yemen envoy warned on Sunday the war-ravaged country faces a “critical time” and urged steps towards lasting peace, exactly a year since a truce has dramatically reduced fighting.

Swedish diplomat Hans Grundberg called the UN-brokered truce that took effect in April 2022 a “moment of hope” and said it was largely holding, despite lapsing in October.

“But the truce’s most significant promise is its potential to jumpstart an inclusive political process aimed at comprehensively and sustainably ending the conflict,” the UN secretary-general’s special envoy said in a statement.

Nearly a decade of war in Yemen has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, both directly and indirectly, and set off one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

“There are still significant risks,” Grundberg said, calling to “protect the gains of the truce and to build on them towards more humanitarian relief, a nationwide ceasefire and a sustainable political settlement that meets the aspirations of Yemeni women and men”.

A landmark reconciliation deal announced last month between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two regional powerhouses that back rival sides in Yemen’s war, added to the optimism that started last year with the truce.

Riyadh is leading a military coalition on behalf of the ousted Yemeni government while Tehran backs Houthi rebels, who seized control of the capital in 2014.

Amid renewed deadly fighting and warnings from the rebels, the UN envoy said: “The military, economic and rhetorical escalation of recent weeks is a reminder of the fragility of the truce’s achievements.”

He urged the government and the Houthis to “sit together and responsibly engage in serious dialogue” that would lead to “a peaceful resolution of the conflict”.

Yemen remains deeply fractured along regional, confessional and political lines, and riven with rival factions including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

“At this critical time, any new temporary or partial arrangement needs to include a clear commitment from the parties that ensures it is a step on the course of a peaceful solution... in an inclusive political process,” Grundberg said.

“Moments like now are fleeting and precarious,” he warned.

“More than ever, now is the time for dialogue, compromises, and a demonstration of leadership and serious will to achieve peace.”

GOMA, DRC — South Sudanese soldiers arrived in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Sunday, an AFP journalist saw, joining a regional military force in an area battered by the M23 rebellion.

At least 45 soldiers touched down in the city of Goma in the late morning, with further contingents expected to arrive at later dates.

The South Sudanese soldiers are part of the seven-nation East African Community (EAC) military force, which was created last June to stabilise eastern DRC.

Much of the region is plagued by dozens of armed groups, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.

In North Kivu province, M23 rebels have captured swathes of territory and advanced within several dozen kilometres of its capital Goma since reemerging from dormancy in late 2021.

The EAC force — which comprises Kenyan, Burundian and Ugandan troops as well as South Sudanese — is due to supervise a planned pull-back of M23 rebels.

“Welcome to Goma,” said Col. Jok Akech, an officer with the EAC force, addressing the new South Sudanese arrivals.

“Now you are in a different operational environment. You have to be ready.”

It is not yet clear how large the South Sudanese contingent will be, nor where it will deploy. In December, South Sudan said that it would send 750 soldiers to the DRC.

Failed initiatives 

The M23 first came to international prominence in 2012 when it captured Goma, before being driven out and going to ground.

But the Tutsi-led group reemerged from dormancy in late 2021, arguing that the government had ignored a promise to integrate its fighters into the army.

It then won a string of victories against the Congolese army and captured large chunks of North Kivu, triggering a humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands of people fled its advance.

Several regional initiatives intended to defuse the conflict have failed.

A ceasefire mediated by Angola was due to take effect on March 7, for example, but collapsed almost immediately.

March 30 was supposed to mark the end of the withdrawal of “all armed groups”, according to a timetable adopted in mid-February by the EAC.

The deadline was not respected.

The EAC force commander, Kenyan General Jeff Nyagah, told reporters on Friday that the planned M23 withdrawal would be “sequenced”.

‘Neutral force’ 

Although initially greeted with enthusiasm, many Congolese are increasingly critical of the EAC force because of dashed hopes that regional troops would take the fight directly to the M23.

On Sunday, the spokesman for the newly deployed Ugandan contingent Captain Kato Ahmad Hassan said the troops will be “neutral force and we will not fight the M23”.

M23 fighters are expected to withdraw from the areas occupied by the Ugandan military under the plan, he said.

The rebel group remains in control of substantial areas of North Kivu, and has almost completely surrounded Goma, which has Rwanda to its east and Lake Kivu to its south.

The DRC accuses its smaller neighbour Rwanda of backing the M23, something the United States, several other Western countries and independent UN experts agree with, but which Kigali denies.

Although there has been no major fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 for several weeks, fighting has with rival militias and insecurity remains rampant.

Fourteen people were killed in separate attacks in North Kivu over the weekend, in circumstances that remain unclear, according to residents, local officials and medical sources.

ALGIERS — An Algerian court on Sunday sentenced prominent journalist Ihsane El Kadi to three years in prison for “foreign financing of his business” in a case denounced by rights groups.

El Kadi, one of the last independent media bosses in the North African nation as director of the Maghreb Emergent news website and Radio M, was handed a five-year sentence, two years of which are suspended.

The court in Algiers also ordered during the public sentencing the dissolution of the company Interface Medias, the publisher behind El Kadi’s two outlets, and the confiscation of its assets.

The company was also fined 10 million dinars (about $73,500), while El Kadi himself was handed a separate 700,000-dinar fine.

His lawyer, Abdelghani Badi, told AFP he would appeal the sentence, though the defence team had boycotted Sunday’s session over the “absence of just trial conditions”.

Following his remand in December, El Kadi was accused of “receiving sums of money and privileges from people and organisations inside the country and abroad in exchange for carrying out activities that could harm state security”.

He had faced up to seven years in prison in line with an article in Algeria’s penal code which criminalises anyone who receives “funds, a grant or otherwise... to carry out acts capable of undermining state security”.

‘Ruthless campaign’ 

In January, Amnesty International said the accusations against El Kadi were “trumped-up state security related offences”.

“El Kadi’s unjustified detention by the Algerian authorities... is yet another example of their ruthless campaign to silence voices of dissent through arbitrary detention and the closure of media outlets,” said Amnesty’s Amna Guellali.

Earlier that month, 16 international media figures including Russian journalist Dmitri Muratov, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, called for his release and urged Algeria to lift “unacceptable” restrictions on his media outlets.

El Kadi was sentenced in June to six months in prison but remained at liberty at the time as a warrant was not issued for his arrest.

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, known by its French acronym RSF, previously launched a petition demanding El Kadi’s release that was signed by more than 10,000 people

Algeria ranks 134th out of 180 countries on RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index.

Also in January, the Human Rights League, the International Federation for Human Rights  and the World Organisation Against Torture criticised what they said was a constant attack on freedoms in Algeria since 2019 — the year protests unseated longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

The groups accused the authorities of trying to crack down on the Hirak protest movement, pointing to El Kadi’s imprisonment and the closure of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights as examples.

“The deterioration of the human rights situation in Algeria is more concerning than ever,” the three groups said in a statement at the time.