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In this mailing:
- Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians:
Silencing and Intimidating Critics
- Burak Bekdil: Turkey and EU:
Can this Marriage be Saved?
- Kaswar Klasra: Pakistan Earned
U.S. Designation as "Country of Particular Concern"
by Khaled Abu Toameh • December
27, 2018 at 5:30 am
- Palestinian
columnist Sami Fuda denounced the Hamas crackdown on its
critics in Gaza: "Apparently, freedom of expression is
unacceptable to the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip... The
policy of intimidating and imprisoning writers will not deter them
and is completely ineffective and unacceptable."
- While these few
Palestinians have expressed concern over Hamas's effort to
silence its critics, international human rights organizations,
including some that operate in the Gaza Strip, continue to
turn a blind eye to this assault on public freedoms. They are
either afraid of Hamas, or they do not give a damn about human
rights violations unless they can find a way of pointing an
accusatory finger at Israel.
- Hamas is prepared to
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a rally marking the
31st anniversary of its founding, but says it
cannot afford to provide financial aid to impoverished
Palestinians. Meanwhile, any Palestinians who dare to ask
Hamas the wrong questions will find themselves behind bars.
What does
the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas do when it is not firing
rockets at Israel or sending Palestinians to clash with Israeli
soldiers along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel? It
sends its security officers to arrest, interrogate, intimidate and
harass anyone who dares to criticize Hamas. Pictured: Palestinians
in Gaza prepare to attack Israeli soldiers at the border fence with
Israel on May 14, 2018. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
What does the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas do
when it is not firing rockets at Israel or sending Palestinians to
clash with Israeli soldiers along the border between the Gaza Strip
and Israel? It sends its security officers to arrest, interrogate,
intimidate and harass anyone who dares to criticize Hamas.
It is not as if anyone was expecting Hamas to act
differently. The terms democracy and freedom of expression have
never been in Hamas's dictionary. For Hamas, it is either you are
with us or you are against us. There is no third option for
Palestinians living under Hamas's rule in the Gaza Strip, even for
those who were previously associated with Hamas, but later changed
their minds and dared to express a different opinion or, worse,
criticize the Islamist movement.
In the past week alone, Hamas has arrested two
Palestinian academics on suspicion that they voiced criticism of
the group: professor of biology Salah Jadallah and writer Khader
Mihjez.
by Burak Bekdil • December 27,
2018 at 4:45 am
- In Freedom House's
democracy index, Turkey belongs to the group of "not
free" countries, performing worse than "partly
free" countries including Mali, Nicaragua and Kenya.
- Just as there cannot
be a "not free" member of the EU, there cannot be a
member that blatantly ignores rulings of the European Court of
Human Rights.
- "I think that,
in the long term, it would be more honest for Turkey and the
EU to go down new roads and end the accession talks ...
Turkish membership in the European Union is not realistic in
the foreseeable future." — Johannes Kahn, EU Enlargement
Commissioner; interview in Die Welt.
In
September 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she will seek
an end to talks for Turkish membership in the European Union.
Pictured: Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meet in
Berlin, September 28, 2018. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
When Turkey first applied for full membership in the
European Union in 1987, the world was an entirely different place
-- even the rich club had a different name: the European Economic
Community. U.S. President Ronald Reagan had undergone minor surgery;
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a
third term; Macau and Hong Kong were, respectively, Portuguese and
British territory; the Berlin Wall was up and running; the
demonstrations at the Tiananmen Square were a couple of years away;
the Iran-Contra affair was in the headlines; the First Intifada had
just begun; and what are today Czech Republic and Slovakia were
Czechoslovakia.
In March 2003, just a few months after he was
elected Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that
Turkey was "very much ready to be part of the European Union
family." In October 2005, formal accession negotiations
between Turkey and the EU began.
by Kaswar Klasra • December 27,
2018 at 4:00 am
- "Occupations
deemed as 'dirty' and 'shameful' are reserved for Christians,
and many believers are victims of bonded labor. Pakistan's
notorious blasphemy laws target religious minorities but
affect Christians the most...". — Open Doors.
- "Christians
continue to be killed for accusations of blasphemy, as well as
for their low status in society. In June 2017, a Christian
sewage worker died in a hospital because three Muslim doctors
refused to touch him, thereby making themselves unclean, during
their Ramadan fast." — Open Doors .
- "Abusive
enforcement of the country's strict blasphemy laws resulted in
the suppression of rights for non-Muslims, Shi'a Muslims, and
Ahmadis." — United States Commission on International
Freedom.
U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo presents a report on international
religious freedom, May 29, 2018. (Image source: U.S. State
Department)
Pakistan was among the nations recently designated
by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as "Countries of
Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act of
1998 for having engaged in or tolerated 'systematic, ongoing, [and]
egregious violations of religious freedom.'"
Islamabad promptly issued an angry response, which
reads, in part:
"Pakistan rejects the US State Department's
unilateral and politically motivated pronouncement... Besides the
clear biases reflected from these designations, there are serious
questions on the credentials and impartiality of the
self-proclaimed jury involved in this unwarranted exercise.
"Around 4 percent of our total population
comprises citizens belonging to Christian, Hindu, Budhists [sic]
and Sikh faiths. Ensuring equal treatment of minorities and their
enjoyment of human rights without any discrimination is the cardinal
principle of the Constitution of Pakistan..."
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