Category: Foreign

• Death toll in Sudan’s clashes climbs to 822

A report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council this week said that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias, currently fighting for control of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), have seized residential buildings.

The move was aimed at using the buildings as operational bases for hostile manoeuvres, potentially harming civilians, it was learnt yesterday.

The death toll in the armed clashes between the Sudanese Army and the RSF has climbed to 822, the Sudanese Doctors Union said yesterday.

“The number of civilian deaths since the beginning of the clashes has climbed to 822 with 3,215 injuries,” the nongovernmental organisation said in a statement.

The casualty statistics cover the national capital Khartoum, the capital of North Kordofan State El-Obeid and the capital of West Darfur State Geneina, the union noted.

Many Sudanese citizens have taken to social media platforms to report that such RSF actions are now prevalent in Khartoum.

“I first thought that these reports were propaganda disseminated by army loyalists against the RSF. But they now seem to be true,” said Khaled Mahmoud, a journalist specialising in Sudanese affairs.

“I cannot decide whether the RSF actions are part of a strategy or the result of a fear of defeat, resulting in their spreading terror throughout the city,” he added.

The RSF were established by ousted former Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir in 2013. They are mainly comprised of Janjaweed militias accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur conflict between 2003 and 2019.

The Janjaweed hail from Arab Bedouin tribes in Darfur and West Kordofan in Sudan. Al-Bashir used them to quell the demands of non-Arab groups in Darfur, such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa. He also directly affiliated them to himself and not to the armed forces.

RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is said to have acquired his nickname “Hemedti” from the Arabic words for “support” and “my protection.”

“I live in Buri [Downtown Khartoum], and my brother lives in Bahari [Khartoum North]. The two areas are connected via the Al-Mek Nemer Bridge,” Khartoum resident Amal Al-Rayyeh told Al-Ahram Weekly by telephone.

Buri is a middle-class district of the Sudanese capital and is close to the city centre. Its residents have been affected by the fighting between the SAF and the RSF to control the army general command.

Khartoum North is in the northeastern part of the capital and has a number of army and railway facilities, such as the Waburat neighourhood that controls transport to the north of the country and up to the Egyptian border.

“I called my brother last week to check up on him, but I couldn’t reach him. More than a day later, I was able to reach him, and he told me that the RSF had kicked him and his children out of their house to use it as a base,” Al-Rayyeh said.“He has managed to get to my house in Egypt. His neighbour fled to Egypt as soon as the Janjaweed seized my brother’s house,” she added.

Khartoum is one of the largest metropolises in Africa and the Arab world. The majority of its inhabitants reside in modest single or double-storey housing, with only a handful of apartments available in selected areas.

Michael E. Duggan is the Mayor, City of Detroit, Michigan. Speaking at a Foreign Press Center briefing attended by United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU, he talks about Nigerian immigrants in the city, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Transportation and Trade Ministerial Meetings in Detroit as well as Detroit’s economy and the revitalisation of the city. Excerpts:

From bankruptcy to buoyancy

It was almost exactly 10 years ago that the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, and that got a lot of international attention, and the city was down then. We had an unemployment rate of 20 percent, there were 40,000 abandoned buildings in this city, half the streetlights were out, and investment had been leaving Detroit for a long time.

And 10 years later you’re going to get a chance to visit a very different city. Our unemployment rate is now down below 6 percent this month, the lowest it’s been in almost 25 years. We’ve seen businesses come back in a big way. The new Jeep plant Stellantis built on the east side is employing 5,000 Detroiters putting out the Jeep Grand Cherokees. General Motors built its first electric plant, called Factory ZERO, here in Detroit. They retrofitted the old Poletown plant and they are now building electric Hummers, electric pickups, and the electric self-driving cruisers in Detroit. Ford Motor Company took the long-abandoned train station and now it is the center of their research for the electric and automated vehicle of the future, with 5,000 employees.

We’ve got probably 3,000 hotel rooms and residences under construction, and we’re really pleased about the fact that USA Today has named the Detroit riverwalk for the third year in a row the finest riverwalk in America. The Detroit that I grew up in – and I’ve lived here my whole life – was an industrial riverfront. We didn’t know, when you lived in Detroit, we had a riverfront. And now it’s enjoyed by thousands of residents from Detroit and the surrounding communities every weekend.

And so we’re very much part of the global economy, and I am a strong supporter of trade as mayor. And I’m just really pleased to be able to host the leaders of these economies in the next two weeks.

Welcoming the world to Detroit

We’re celebrating AAPI month by welcoming the world to the city of Detroit. I don’t know how we could do it better than that. Not just the conference itself, but I’m going to be having the leaders of the various economies to our homes, where my wife, Dr. Sonia, and I will be hosting them in our house at a reception. And the city of Detroit embraces AAPI month with – in a manner that many cities in America do, with city council resolutions celebrating the rich heritage, with social media posts and continual reminders to the community.

Our relationship with the Chinese is something that needs to be restarted. It was something I placed a high priority on when I got elected, and I went to China with Governor Snyder on a trade mission back about six or seven years ago. And we in particular were partnering with the city of Shenzhen. The leadership – both the mayor and the party leader – came here to Michigan, and we talked about building to a sister city relationship.

And then I went to China, visited Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, spent time with Terry Gou and the Foxconn leadership, and spent a lot of time – I bet I met with 15 or 20 leaders of manufacturing in China. The next year the leadership of Shenzhen came back here and we signed a friendship agreement, which as you may know is one step short of a formal sister city relationship, and we had a number of cultural exchanges with Shenzhen. After the 2016 election, the relations between the two countries became a little bit more unpredictable, and then COVID happened.

And so I am very anxious to get back to rebuilding it, and of course I know President Biden is doing everything he can to move the relationship where the Chinese and Americans can compete economically without having to be political rivals. And I’m very anxious for us to get back to that and go back to building a strong economic partnership with the Chinese economies.

The innovation center

 I am a proud graduate of the University of Michigan, and there are a lot of residents of the 21 economies who are graduates. When I was in China, we started – in each city we started breakfast with University of Michigan graduates who are Chinese citizens who came and told us all that they were accomplishing.

And so what we are doing is this: The University of Michigan, of course, has an international reputation. It started in Detroit in the 1800s and moved to Ann Arbor, about an hour west of Detroit, about 150 years ago.

And the university has decided that they are going to build a high-end graduate school in the city of Detroit for engineering, mobility, climate change, finance, and the like, because Detroit has come back so fast on the tech side, on the mobility side, that the top students coming out of school want to come here, want to have internships here, want to have job opportunities here. And so before the end of the year, the University of Michigan is going to break ground on that graduate school, and we do expect to see the top undergrads from around the country and from around the world come to the University of Michigan in Detroit for graduate school in these programs.

Sister city

Well, I’ve got a sister city relationship with Toyota city, which is actually Detroit’s oldest sister city relationship. And I was in Toyota, Japan, to celebrate that with – it was a remarkable event, the – I’ve never seen such hospitality. The Toyota leadership actually held a three-hour-long fireworks in honor of what was then the 50-year anniversary of our sister city relationship. I got to drive a hydrogen-powered vehicle – a Toyota, of course – on the streets of Japan. And so that has been the oldest one, and I am certainly hopeful that the next one – and as you know, the sister city, you start by developing relationships and cultural exchanges, you move to friendship city status, and then ultimately you make a commitment to sister city status, and I am hopeful Shenzhen will be the next city that actually elevates to the point of sister city status.

National events

The city of Detroit has hosted the biggest national events, from Super Bowls for football to the Final Fours for college basketball. But this is as large an international event as Detroit has hosted in quite some time. We’re very excited about it, and I hope the journalists on this call – that many of you get a chance to come visit our city.

The real estate market

The property values in Detroit have between doubled and tripled from neighborhoods from one end of the city to the other, and so it’s very exciting. We’ve had 10,000 houses that were vacant 10 years ago that people have bought and renovated, and it is so exciting when you see a house that was empty that’s got a family moved back in. And this may not mean a lot to you, but in the City of Detroit, our largest department store – the Hudson’s Department Store was demolished 40 years ago. There is now the second-tallest building in Michigan going up on that site that’ll be office, apartment, and hotels.

We are seeing the long-abandoned AMC headquarters has been demolished for a new auto supplier part. The old Hudson Motors building, been empty since the 1980s, was demolished, and the Lear Corporation has just built a new seating plant on it. And we’re really glad to have a French company, Faurecia, that has got a supplier part on the west side of Detroit.

So it’s very exciting. We are watching blighted properties being transformed into highly productive properties every single month. And I think if you get a chance to come, you’ll be surprised at what you’ll see in Detroit.

Nigerians in Detroit

A lot of small businesses have been started by immigrants from Nigeria and other African countries. And each year I actually enjoy the picnic from the African immigrants in which they have a huge soccer tournament – probably most of you call it football – at a giant park in Detroit. And the colors, the excitement, the day together is one of my favorite days of the years. And we just had – it’s – they aren’t from Nigeria; I shouldn’t say this offhand – but we have a – a new restaurant Baobab Fare that was just named by Forbes as one of the leading restaurants in America that was started with the help of a local programme we have here. And so we are a very welcoming city to immigrants from Nigeria and the other African countries.

French investment

The last company that came in of major scope from France was Faurecia, which is making dashboards for the Ford trucks on the west side of Detroit. They’ve been a great partner, and we are supporting them and continuing to expand. So we love them. You’re right. We are seeing investments in houses. We probably don’t have as many French restaurants as some other cities, but we would love to see more of that.

Crime

We are dealing with a crime issue, as is every other major city in America. It got worse during COVID for a lot of reasons. But we are down from the peak we had seven or eight years ago, but we’re putting a lot more effort into it. And people like your friend, the problem tends to be that they’ll be in the middle of a renovation and somebody will steal a furnace. And that has been an issue, but we’ve gotten it, I think, a long way under control. And right now I think people are doing very well. So I’m glad to hear your friend is doing well. And I should just let you answer the questions here for me.

Palestinians yesterday commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Nakba or Catastrophe, which is marked on May 15 to remember the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948 after the founding of Israel.

Thousands of flag-waving Palestinians participated in a mass rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah to mark the anniversary. Some of the participants held keys as a symbol of their hope to return to their homes in ancestral Palestine.

“Israel was founded on the ruins of 530 Palestinian villages, and its gangs committed more than 50 massacres that left 15,000 civilians dead,” Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told a press conference outside the mausoleum of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Wasel Abo Youssef, a member of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said 100,000 Palestinians have been killed and one million detained since the Nakba.

“Today, the Palestinian people affirm that they will not forget their sacred right to return,” he added.

The Palestine-Israel conflict dates back to 1917 when the British government, in the now-famous Balfour Declaration, called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the Nakba resulted in the displacement of nearly 800,000 Palestinians out of 1.4 million Palestinians who lived in historical Palestine in 1948 in 1,300 villages and towns.

The United States is seeing more indications that Russia and Iran are expanding an unprecedented defence partnership that will help Moscow prolong its war in Ukraine as well as pose a threat to Iran’s neighbours, the White House said yesterday.

As part of the cooperation, Iran is providing Russia with one-way attack drones, including more than 400 since August, national security adviser John Kirby said at a news briefing.

Read Also : Turkey, Russia, Iran, Syria hold ‘constructive talks’

“This is about a burgeoning defence relationship” that allows Russia to kill more people in Ukraine and also enables Iran to stock up on its military hardware and pose a greater threat to its neighbours, Kirby told reporters.

Drones are the primary military help Iran is providing to Russia, which is seeking to acquire advanced level types, he said.

The Unites States will be announcing additional designations targeting increased military cooperation between Russia and Iran, Kirby added.  

Turkey is set for a second round of voting after neither President Recep Tayyip Erdogan nor his main challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, were able to secure an outright majority in Sunday’s presidential election, the country’s electoral authority said.

Erdogan received 49.51% of the vote, while his main rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, came in second at 44.88%, according to the figures.

The third presidential candidate, Sinan Ogan, a nationalist politician, finished third at 5.17%.

With no candidate having crossed the 50% threshold for the presidency, Turkey is set for a runoff for the first time ever.

The second round of voting in the presidential election has been penciled in for May 28. 

Both candidates have said they would accept a second round. Turnout was high at over 88%, Ahmet Yener, the head of the Supreme Electoral Board, told the press, as reported by DW journalist Julia Hahn.

“But if people take us to a second round, we will respect that too,” Erdogan told his supporters.

Erdogan appeared confident that he would secure another term in office.

“I wholeheartedly believe we will continue to serve our people in the coming five years,” the 69-year-old leader said to huge cheers outside his party’s headquarters.

Erdogan is Turkey’s longest-serving leader and served as prime minister from 2003 until 2014, after which he stepped down as party leader to be the president. Overall, he has been in power for the last two decades.

He commands fierce loyalty from pious Turks who once felt disenfranchised in secular Turkey. His political career has survived an attempted coup in 2016, as well as numerous corruption scandals.

However, his political standing was severely damaged by rising inflation and the devastating earthquakes in February this year.

Kilicdaroglu promised that if he wins, he will return to orthodox economic policies from Erdogan’s heavy management. He has also said he would seek to return Turkey to the parliamentary system of governance, from Erdogan’s executive presidential system passed in a 2017 referendum.

Kilicdaroglu has also promised to restore the independence of a judiciary that critics say Erdogan has used to crack down on dissent.

He expressed confidence that he would win in a runoff as he spoke alongside leaders of the six-party alliance he led into the election.

“If our nation says second round, we will absolutely win in the second round,” he said. “The will for change in the society is higher than 50%.”

The 74-year-old has been chairman of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) since 2007.

Turkish fact-checker Gülin Cavus told DW that people are more vulnerable to disinformation in highly charged environments like the elections. “This polarisation deeply affects this Turkish election and the amount of misinformation,” she said.

“It’s really important to understand the dynamics and atmosphere in Turkey’s media ecosystem. People actually don’t trust the media that much. They consume and get news from social media channels,” Cavus said.

The election’s outcome shows a “quite polarized” country, according to Sinem Adar, a Turkey researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

2.

Early results from Turkey’s national election yesterday showed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a solid lead after nearly 20% of ballot boxes were counted, the Turkish state-run news agency reported.

Erdogan had 55% of the vote, compared to 39% garnered by main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Anadolu Agency reported.

Opinion surveys indicated the increasingly authoritarian Erdogan entered his bid for reelection trailing a challenger for the first time.

Faik Oztrak, a spokesman for Kilicdaroglu’s centre-left party, cautioned the early returns were preliminary and said the ”picture is extremely positive” for the opposition.

Erdogan has ruled Turkey as prime minister or president since 2003. Pre-election polling suggested he faced the toughest reelection battle of his two decades leading the NATO member country, which has grappled with economic turmoil and the erosion of democratic checks-and-balances in recent years.

Polls closed in the late afternoon after nine hours of voting in the national election that could grant Erdogan, 69, another five-year term or see him unseated by Kilicdaroglu, who campaigned on a promise to return Turkey to a more democratic path.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the winner will be determined in a May 28 run-off.

Voters also elected lawmakers to fill Turkey’s 600-seat parliament, which lost much of its legislative power under Erdogan’s executive presidency. If his political alliance wins, Erdogan could continue governing without much restriction. The opposition has promised to return Turkey’s governance system to a parliamentary democracy if it wins both the presidential and parliamentary ballots.

Pre-election polls gave a slight lead to Kilicdaroglu, 74, who was the candidate of a six-party opposition alliance. He leads the center-left, pro-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP.

More than 64 million people, including 3.4 million overseas voters, were eligible to vote in the elections, which come the year the country will mark the centenary of its establishment as a republic — a modern, secular state born on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

Voter turnout in Turkey is traditionally strong, reflecting citizens’ continued belief in democratic balloting.

Yet Turkey has seen the suppression of freedom of expression and assembly under Erdogan, and it is wracked by a steep cost-of-living crisis that critics blame on the government’s mishandling of the economy. The president believes low interest rates tame inflation, in contrast to orthodox economic theory, and pressured the central bank to reflect his view.

Read Also: ‘Turkey earthquake to cost insurers over $22b’

The latest official statistics showed inflation at about 44%, down from around 86%, though independent experts believe costs continue to rise at a much higher rate. The price of vegetables became a campaign issue for the opposition, which used an onion as a symbol.

Turkey is also reeling from the effects of a powerful earthquake that caused devastation in 11 southern provinces in February, killing more than 50,000 people in unsafe buildings. Erdogan’s government has been criticized for its delayed and stunted response to the disaster, as well as a lax implementation of building codes that exacerbated the casualties and misery.

Internationally, the elections were being watched closely as a test of a united opposition’s ability to dislodge a leader who has concentrated nearly all state powers in his hands.

In 2016, Erdogan survived a military coup attempt he blamed on followers of a former ally, U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The attempt triggered a large-scale crackdown on Gulen’s supporters and other critics, including pro-Kurdish politicians, for alleged links to terror groups.