أرشيف الوسم : government

The new Tunisian parliament on Tuesday held its inaugural session, a landmark event in the nation’s transition to democracy after the 2011 revolution in the country that fuelled the region’s Arab Spring. After singing the national anthem, the National Constituent Assembly’s (NCA) speaker Mustapha Ben Jaafar opened the parliament of 217 members elected in October. “Tunisia has managed to secure …

Iraqi security forces, allied with local tribesmen, battled extremist group Islamic State (IS) on Wednesday to defend the governor’s office the city of Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province. Kurdish peshmerga forces were also engaged in battle against the IS for hours in the province of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. “We are defending and protecting the governmental complex” in …

Human rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday published a report titled “There Is No Freedom Here: Silencing dissent in the UAE”, criticizing the nation for its treatment of activists and use of repressive tactics to silence the government’s critics. In the report, the NGO reveals how dissidents are harassed, arrested, and even tortured, maintaining a climate of fear since 2011, …

By Ramzy Baroud As I was finalizing my research for this article, I found myself browsing through a heap of hilarious videos by mostly Egyptian TV show hosts Tawfiq Okasha and Amr Adeeb. In one of his numerous videos on youtube, Okasha, the star and host of the Cairo-based privately funded al-Faraeen channel, tries to explain the differences between the …

By Fatima Syed Welcome to Canada. We lied about the opportunities. That is the realistic undertone to the new immigration policy announcement by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander on October 31, 2014, which declared that Canada aims to welcome as many as 285,000 new permanent residents next year. The last time Canada admitted as many as 280,000 permanent residents …

Syrian authorities on Thursday jailed veteran dissident Louay Hussein, arrested a day before as he tried to visit his family abroad, his lawyer said. The 54-year-old was detained at the Lebanese border, from where he planned to travel to Spain, his movement Building the Syrian State said on Wednesday. A judge later accused him of “weakening national sentiments” and spreading …

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has accused Hamas of trying “to destroy” efforts to mediate national unity, alleging that the Palestinian movement was responsible for the bomb blasts in Gaza this past week. Speaking at the 10th death anniversary of veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Tuesday, Abbas said that Hamas was responsible for the Gaza attacks which targeted leaders of …

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on former Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh and two Huthi commanders, only two days after Saleh walked out on the new government. The sanctions follow Saturday’s UN sanctions on the three, imposed for threatening peace in Yemen. The US Treasury said that it was blacklisting Saleh, Abd al-Khaliq al-Huthi and Abdullah Yahya al-Hakim …

Documentary filmmaker Amar Wala tackles the subject of Canadian anti-terrorism and hope to shed light on the treatment of Muslims held by the federal government on suspicion of terrorist links with his film Secret Trial 5. The project started as a final assignment for Wala to finish film school at York University over five years ago. A professor had suggested …

By Ramzy Baroud Israel’s decision to shut down al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday, 30 October, is not just a gross violation of the religious rights of Palestinian Muslims. In fact, the rights of Palestinian Muslims and Christians have been routinely violated under the Israeli occupation for decades, especially in Jerusalem, and more recently in Gaza. During the 51-day war on the …