Region

ISMAILIA, Egypt — Suez Canal maritime traffic was “normal” on Monday after a cargo vessel carrying Ukrainian grain ran aground but was then refloated and towed away, said the Egyptian authority running the vital waterway.

The incident involving the 225 metre-long Marshall Islands-registered M/V Glory had briefly sparked fears of a repeat of a major 2021 blockage when the giant container ship Ever Given became diagonally wedged in the canal.

That closure for nearly a week of the man-made waterway linking Asia and Europe cost billions of dollars through shipping delays. It also cost the life of a Suez Canal Authority (SCA) employee in the operation to free the mega-ship.

SCA chief Osama Rabie gave the all-clear Monday when he said “traffic is moving normally on the Suez Canal” after the authority had “mobilised four tugboats to tow the ship” allowing it to resume its passage through the canal.

“The canal is on track to register 51 vessels passing in both directions Monday,” he said in a statement.

Smooth traffic through the Suez Canal is vitally important for Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, which is currently battered by an economic crisis that has seen the currency lose 75 per cent in value in less than a year.

The waterway, used for about 10 per cent of the world’s maritime trade, is one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency revenue, bringing in more than $7 billion a year.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi approved a project last year to widen and deepen the southern section of the canal where the Ever Given got stuck.

‘Sudden technical failure’ 

In 2021, the Ever Given became wedged diagonally across the canal when visibility was sharply reduced during a sandstorm, disrupting trade flows for nearly a week.

According to the SCA, Egypt lost between $12 million and $15 million every day of the closure, while insurers estimated that global maritime trade suffered billions in lost revenue per day.

Fears of a costly new blockage were sparked on news of Monday’s incident.

PARIS — Iran has handed down three more death sentences for offences related to the civil unrest triggered by Mahsa Amini’s death, the judiciary said Monday, fuelling international protests against the regime.

The latest sentences — for three men who were convicted of the killings of three security forces members — bring to 17 the official total of detainees condemned to death in connection with the nearly four months of protests.

Four executions have been carried out while six of those convicted have been granted retrials.

Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said Monday at least 109 protesters now in detention have been sentenced to death or face charges that can carry capital punishment.

The Islamic republic has been rocked by a wave of protests since the September 16 death in custody of Kurdish Iranian Amini, 22, following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.

In the latest ruling, Saleh Mirhashemi, Majid Kazemi and Saeed Yaghoubi were sentenced to death for “moharebeh” — or waging “war against God” — under Iran’s Sharia law, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

In addition to the sentences, which can still be appealed, they were found guilty of belonging to a “criminal group with the intention of disrupting the security of the country”, a charge that carries a 10-year jail term.

Iran has blamed the unrest on hostile foreign forces, and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that authorities had been dealing “seriously and justly” with those implicated in the “riots”.

“There is no doubt that there are economic and livelihood problem, but can this problem be solved by burning trash cans and rioting in the streets?” he said according to his official website.

“Undoubtedly, these actions are treason, and the responsible institutions deal with treason seriously and justly.”

The crackdown and executions have sparked global outrage and new Western sanctions against Tehran.

In a report, IHR gave an updated death toll on Monday of 481 killed protesters, including 64 minors.

Iranian authorities say hundreds, including members of the security forces, have been killed since the unrest began.

Human rights groups have also accused Iran of thousands of arrests and a failure to grant due legal process to defendants and extracting forced confessions.

Germany summoned Iran’s ambassador to Berlin on Monday in protest against Tehran’s bloody crackdown and the latest executions, carried out Saturday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.

Baerbock said the envoy had been called “to make unmistakably clear that the brutal repression, the oppression and the terrorising of its own population as well as the most recent two executions will not remain without consequence”.

The French foreign ministry also summoned Iran’s envoy to Paris “to convey our firmest condemnation of these executions and the current repression in Iran”, it said.

Pope Francis on Monday appealed for an end to the death penalty around the world, including Iran.

“The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims but only fuels the thirst for vengeance,” he said.

According to London-based rights group Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in its use of the death penalty, with at least 314 people executed in 2021.

Protest outside prison 

In the latest Iranian ruling, two others were handed prison terms for the incident that led to the deaths of the three security force members in the central province of Isfahan on November 16, Mizan said.

One of them is professional footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani, 26, who received sentences totalling 26 years in prison on three different charges including assisting in “moharebeh”.

Under Iranian law, he should serve them concurrently, meaning he would be behind bars for 16 years, it said.

Nasr-Azadani’s case and the risk of him being sentenced to death had raised alarm abroad, mainly by FIFPRO, the world union of professional footballers.

More rallies against the Iranian regime have been held in London and Paris in recent days, while protest continued inside Iran.

Protesters gathered late Sunday outside a prison in the northern city of Karaj after reports that two inmates had been transferred to solitary confinement ahead of execution, according to several rights groups based abroad.

Protest monitor tasvir1500 said a crowd, including the mother of death row inmate Mohammad Ghobadlou demonstrated in front of Gohardasht prison, also known as Rajai Shahr, “to save the lives” of him and another prisoner, Mohammad Boroghani.

Both had been convicted of attacks on security forces and their appeals have been rejected.

Videos shared by tasvir1500 show the crowd chanting slogans against the death sentences and comforting Ghobadlou’s mother, who tells the crowd her son had been “deliberately” framed. AFP was unable to immediately verify the footage.

BEIRUT — International aid groups warn that millions of people in northern Syria could be completely cut from lifesaving assistance should a United Nations vote fail to extend cross-border aid operations from Turkey.

The concerns revive those of six months ago before the Security Council eventually extended the cross-border mechanism for another half-year, as demanded by Syria’s ally Russia.

A new UN vote was scheduled later Monday.

The aid delivery mechanism across Turkey’s border into rebel-held Syria at the Bab Al Hawa crossing is the only way UN assistance — everything from nappies and blankets to chickpeas — can reach civilians without navigating areas controlled by Syrian government forces.

The mechanism, in place since 2014, will expire on Tuesday without another UN extension.

“To many, humanitarian aid has become a lifeline, especially people who are displaced,” Ammar Ammar of the UN Children’s Fund [UNICEF] told AFP.

“Without UN cross-border access, hunger will increase,” he said, calling the aid critical for millions “trapped in the northwest”, where allied rebels are in control.

The Idlib area is Syria’s last main rebel bastion.

Russia has, for years, pressured international organisations to pass exclusively through Damascus to distribute aid throughout the country — going as far as vetoing cross-border extensions that exceeded six months.

But the organisations say such arrangements cannot replace a cross-border operation and that they do not trust the regime to distribute the aid fairly to areas under rival control.

Aid workers also say a shorter period makes it difficult to plan delivery.

“Ending cross-border aid now would be equivalent to a death sentence for many of those that depend on it,” Hiba Zayadin of Human Rights Watch told AFP.

‘Bare minimum’ 

Such a move would derail the lifesaving supplies delivered from across the Turkish border into Syria to an average of 2.7 million people who benefitted from it every month in 2022, according to UN figures.

The last UN vote in July only extended the mechanism for six months, after Russia vetoed a one-year extension favoured by Western countries.

“Council members should be guided by humanitarian imperatives rather than politics,” David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement last week.

“This resolution is the bare minimum: secure and predictable assistance should be non-negotiable.”

In 2014, international aid could flow to Syria through four border crossings, but after years of pressure from China and Russia, only the Bab al-Hawa route has remained operational.

More aid must now go through Damascus to reach areas outside its control, raising concerns among rights groups. But even so, in the past two years only a handful of these convoys has crossed from government-held areas to the northwest, said Diana Semaan of Amnesty International.

‘Medical disaster’ 

The UN halted cross-border aid from Iraq to Kurdish-held parts of northeast Syria in 2020, after Russia and China vetoed UN Security Council resolutions authorising a crossing there to remain open.

The region has since faced “severe shortages in all essential aid... because the Syrian government has restricted the access of aid delivery”, Semaan said.

“The same will happen in the northwest if the resolution is not renewed.”

In the Idlib region medical professionals staged a small sit-in Sunday to demand the aid mechanism’s renewal, an AFP correspondent reported.

Closing the border to aid would spell “a medical disaster” that would put 41 health care centres out of service, Hussam Korra Mohammed, an official at the Idlib Health Directorate, told AFP.

Basic medicine for chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure would no longer be available, he told AFP.

In a statement the UN warned that many in northern Syria would “not have access to food and shelter... to safe water”, should the operation cease.

The statement was signed last week by chiefs of several UN agencies, including the World Health Organisation.

“Most of them are women and children who need assistance just to survive at the peak of winter and amidst a serious cholera outbreak,” it said.

TEHRAN — Iran's judiciary announced on Sunday jail terms of up to 10 years for people who called for strikes as part of a months-long protest movement.

It is the first time the judiciary has announced prison sentences for such incitement during the nationwide protests trigged by the September death in custody of Mahsa Amini.

The judiciary's Mizan Online news website said the four defendants received between one and 10 years in prison. They were not identified and may still appeal the verdicts.

Activists on social media had called for three-day nationwide strikes starting on December 5, in support of the movement which began with the death of Amini, 22. She had been arrested by morality police for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.

Mojtaba Ghahramani, head of the judiciary for Iran's southern province of Hormozgan, said the four were sentenced principally "for having incited drivers to strike", and for vandalism. He was quoted by Mizan.

According to Ghahramani, "none of the defendants is a driver or has anything to do with the transport sector".

"One of the defendants was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment and another to five years for forming a group with the aim of disrupting national security," Ghahramani said.

Two others have been given a year in jail each and a fine for "disturbing public order and destroying truck windows", he said.

On December 5 local media reported that authorities sealed a jewellery shop and restaurant in Tehran belonging to football legend Ali Daei, after he backed the protesters' strike calls.

Iranian authorities have described the protests mostly as "riots" and accuse hostile foreign nations of stoking the unrest.

Officials say hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed and thousands arrested since September 16.

Four men, including two on Saturday, have been executed for killing and wounding security force members in connection with the protests.

CAIRO — Laser beams illuminate a darkened restaurant turned dance hall in Cairo as revellers move to thumping beats from female DJs — part of a generation of women shaking up Egypt’s underground electronic music scene.

“All my life, I’ve seen men behind the decks,” said party-goer Menna Shanab, 26, as psychedelic visuals reflected off the waters at the Nile-side venue.

“It’s good to see the music scene evolving,” said the young Cairo resident, decked out in fashionable streetwear.

In Egypt’s patriarchal society, the music industry remains male-dominated, while the conservative country’s cultural establishment marginalises and even bans electronic music artists.

Female party-goers for years have complained about harassment on the dance floor, while many revellers find mainstream venues too pricey.

Now, a generation of young women DJs are forging their own path, seeking to create more inclusive spaces for performers and party-goers alike.

A small but vibrant electronic music scene is “booming” in the Egyptian capital, according Yemeni music journalist and occasional DJ Hala K, asking like others AFP interviewed to be identified only by her stage name.

“A lot of female talents feel more confident and empowered to pursue DJing,” the Amsterdam-based Hala K said by telephone.

Aspiring artists are taking inspiration from female DJs from the region, she added — such as Palestinian Sama Abdulhadi, who has performed from Egypt to France and at premier US festival Coachella.

In Cairo, there are “powerful, talented women at the turntables: They know how to make people dance”, Hala K said.

‘Party in peace’ 

DJ and promoter A7ba-L-Jelly decided to establish her own collective as part of making the underground electronic dance music scene more inclusive.

“I wanted to organise events where I would feel safe myself, without harassment,” said the 32-year-old.

“I just wanted to go and party in peace.”

More than 90 per cent of women in Egypt aged between 18 and 39 said in 2019 that they had experienced some form of sexual harassment, according to the Arab Barometer public opinion research network.

“In some places in Egypt, where they play more commercial music... you won’t enter because you are single, or because you don’t look rich enough,” A7ba-L-Jelly added.

“I book male and female DJs to create dance floors that are inclusive in terms of music, gender and social class,” she said.

From the Nile-side dance venue, DJ Yas Meen Selectress complained that regardless of gender, “there are no dedicated spaces for us where we can play our music”.

Locations are often gardens or other makeshift sites, organisers told AFP.

“Traditions, society and other factors mean that there are fewer women than men in the scene,” Yas Meen Selectress added. Less than 20 per cent of women are officially employed in the country of 104 million.

For the DJ in her late 20s, who lives between Cairo and New York, however, “to be only defined by one’s gender is reductive”.

For others like Dalia Hassan, it is a selling point.

Over the past two decades, she has made a name for herself playing at women-only events from Cairo to the Yemeni capital Sanaa and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

Hassan said she DJs at bachelorette parties, gender-segregated weddings and anywhere a female audience wants to “get dressed up and dance as they please”.

Having a woman at the turntables allows other women to let loose — “especially those who are veiled”, she added.

‘Dominated by men’ 

For France-based researcher Hajer Ben Boubaker, the lack of women DJs runs counter to Egypt’s strong tradition of women performers.

“Female singers have always been well represented in the Arab cultural scene,” she told AFP.

“The symbol par excellence of Egyptian music is still the mythical Umm Kalthoum,” she added, referring to the 20th-century diva revered around the Arab world.

But “women are barely represented in the Egyptian electro scene of mahraganat, which is the most popular music today,” she added.

Mahraganat relies heavily on computer-generated and synthesised beats and features blunt lyrics that tackle topics including love, power and money.

The country’s musicians’ union announced late last year it was abolishing the genre as part of a campaign to “preserve public taste”.

Frederike Berje from Germany’s Goethe-Institut in Cairo noted that Egypt’s “music industry, especially the electronic scene, is heavily dependent on private initiatives and the commitment of individual artists”.

Despite rising numbers of women DJs, however, it “remains dominated by men — especially when it comes to production and management”, she added.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel's new hard-right government announced on Friday that it will withhold some Palestinian Authority revenues in response to its move to seek "consequences" from the United Nations for the Israeli occupation.

The decision was taken at the first security cabinet meeting of the new government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is regarded as the most right-wing in Israel's history.

The prime minister's office said the Cabinet was acting in "response to the Palestinian Authority's decision to wage political and legal war against the State of Israel".

Last week, at the PA's request, the UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice to consider consequences for Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories, a day after the Netanyahu government took office. 

The General Assembly voted 87-26 with 53 abstentions on the resolution, with Western nations split but virtually unanimous support in the Islamic world,

"The current government will not sit idly by in the face of this war and will respond as necessary," Netanyahu's office said.

It said around $40 million of the tax receipts it withheld from the PA would be used to compensate "families of victims murdered in Palestinian terrorist attacks".

It said it would also withhold a sum equivalent to the amount spent in 2022 on "payments made by the PA to terrorists and their families", without specifying how much.

The PA has long made monthly payments to the families of Palestinians killed in clashes with the Israeli forces or while carrying out attacks against Israeli targets.

Under past peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel collects customs duties and other tax revenues on the PA's behalf, which it has often used as a bargaining counter with the Palestinian leadership in the past.

The Cabinet also ordered a “moratorium on Palestinian construction plans in Area C”, the largest part of the occupied West Bank which falls under Israeli administrative and security control.

The Palestinian foreign ministry said the Israeli reprisals were a “reflection of the Netanyahu government’s racist colonial platform against our people” and “a flagrant violation of Israel’s obligations as an occupying power”.

It said they would “not discourage our people and our leadership from continuing the struggle... to provide international protection for our people and to put an end to Israel’s continued impunity”.

The Islamist rulers of Gaza, Hamas, condemned the “punitive measures” and called on the Palestinian Authority “not to give in” to Israeli pressure.