Gaza’s battle-hardened medics always on duty

Ibrahim Talalqa on duty during a recent protest that was part of the Great March of Return.Mohamed Hajjar

Amjad Ayman Yaghi-30 August 2018

Since the beginning of the Great March of Return at the end of March, the Israeli military has left no doubt that it will not feel restrained in dealing with Gaza’s demonstrations.

With rules of engagement that have left at least 125 demonstrators dead, more than 5,000 wounded by live fire, among them over 800 children, the message is clear: Protest and risk death and injury.
But even those not protesting are not safe. Israeli forces have killed two journalists and at least 90 have been injured. Three medics have also been killed.

Still they come: demonstrators, journalists and, of course, medics.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, there have been at least 370 instances of paramedics being injured during the demonstrations and nearly 70 ambulances have sustained damage.

“I believe in the saying, he who saves a life, saves all humanity,” said 43-year-old Muhammad al-Hissi, a paramedic with two decades of experience.

Al-Hissi, now director of emergency medical services at the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, is an ever-present figure at the demonstrations of the Great March of Return. And his 20 years on the job also make him a veteran of the entire second intifada and all three Israeli wars on Gaza.
He has the scars to prove it.

A sense of duty

He was first injured, he told The Electronic Intifada, in an Israeli airstrike 2002 that left him needing several surgeries to remove shrapnel from his right hand.

In 2014, during Israel’s 51-day offensive on Gaza, he was injured again in the same hand in another airstrike, and this time needed a metal implant that he still carries around. And during the latest protests he was hit in the chest by a tear gas canister leaving him out of action for five days.
Yet he is not discouraged.

“Our humanitarian work is greater than the Israeli occupation,” al-Hissi told the Electronic Intifada.
A sense of duty, he said, carried him through the tear gas, the blood and rubble.

“It’s hard to save people from buildings that have been shelled. The rubble keeps coming down over our heads. When that happens, I try to remember the injured, and I decide to pull myself together,” al-Hissi said. “My job is to save people’s lives.”

In the line of fire

Al-Hissi said he has been shocked at the number of casualties and not just among protesters. He has reached out to international organizations including the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization to help them pressure Israel not to target paramedics doing their jobs.

Among the many injured multiple times in the line of duty during the Great March of Return is Ibrahim Talalqa, 23. Talalqa volunteered in a civil defense medical services team for three years to become a certified paramedic.

He has been wounded three times in the past three months, most recently on 3 August when he was strafed by shrapnel while attending to an injured youth. The shrapnel, he said, came from an exploding bullet that detonated near his ambulance as it was approaching the injured person.

“In Gaza, paramedics leave home not knowing if they will ever come back to their families,” Talalqa said. He does his best to ease his family’s concerns, he added. “My mother worries about me, but she stands strong before me and supports my choice. When I get injured, I do not tell her until I am back home.”

Muhammad al-Hissi says he has appealed to international bodies to pressure Israel to stop targeting paramedics. Mohamed Hajjar

Talalqa remembers the 14 May protests as the worst – these also claimed the most casualties of any of the series of demonstrations to date. He was not wounded on this occasion, but it was close.

At one point, he had to crawl on his stomach to reach a youth who had been injured near the boundary. When he finally got there, he had to try to carry the young man, who had a chest injury, back to an ambulance. Yet he initially could not reach the ambulance because of the intense shooting. Talalqa ended up having to drop to the ground and wait with the wounded man until an ambulance could finally pick them both up.

Perhaps worse was when he saw a colleague shot in the leg as he was carrying an injured 12-year-old who was then again wounded with a shot in the back. Eventually the medical teams nearby succeeded in extricating both child and medic from the scene. Both survived.

Battle-hardened medics

Adel al-Masharawi is another veteran paramedic. The 41-year-old began in 2000 and says the situation has only become worse.

He has fainted four times during the recent protests as a result of inhaling tear gas and is convinced that the chemical composition of the gas has changed over the years. He worries that too much exposure will result in future diseases.

But, like the other medics, he is determined to carry on.

“We are part of the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “It is our duty to work and save lives whatever their injuries and where they may be.”

Adel al-Masharawi comes to the aid of a colleague exposed to tear gas.
 Mohamed Hajjar

It may be a duty for these battle-hardened medics, but those who are rescued will always be grateful.
On 3 August, Bashar al-Muzaini, 18, found himself on the edge of the protests waving a flag and wearing the distinctive black-and-white Palestinian kuffiyeh.

He and friends were staying at a distance of 500 meters from the boundary, a distance they thought would be safe. But at one point, as a thick cloud of tear gas descended on the group, al-Muzaini found himself alone, nauseous and disoriented.

Eventually al-Masharawi found his way to the confused youth, helping him get away from the gas and providing him with medicine to take away the nausea.

Al-Muzaini later realized that he had been lucky to escape only with tear gas poisoning. The area had been the site of heavy shooting while he was lost in the fog. But when he tried to thank al-Masharawi he was almost rebuffed.

“When I went to thank the medic he told me this happened every day,” al-Muzaini told The Electronic Intifada. “I wasn’t the first, and I won’t be the last that he will rescue like this.”

Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.

Trump Wants to Help Israel by Cutting Aid to Palestinians. Why are Some Israelis Worried?

Cuts could deepen economic crisis in the West Bank and Gaza and lead to violence.

Palestinian students at a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency on Aug. 29. (Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) 

By Neri Zilber- August 29, 2018, 6:38 PM

TEL AVIV, Israel–In early 2014, workers for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the seven-decade-old body that provides basic services for Palestinian refugees, went on strike in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The cause was an internal battle between management and teaching staff over budget cuts and layoffs. For two months, across the refugee camps of the Palestinian territories, UNRWA schools shut down, garbage piled up in the streets, and health care clinics remained closed. Officials on all sides expressed concern about the strike, but none more stridently than Israeli military officers. “This is a security interest for all of us,” one senior officer from the military unit that runs the West Bank told me at the time. “We don’t want kids to be bored, and to start throwing rocks.”

Now, the Trump administration seems determined to end all U.S. funding to UNRWA and cut other aid to the Palestinians. Some of Trump’s closest advisors, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, believe the refugee agency undermines Israeli interests and stokes the refugees’ hopes for repatriation in Israel. As with Trump’s decision last year to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the withholding of aid money is seen as one more way that the U.S. government, the historic peace process mediator, is aligning itself with hard-line elements within Israel.

But while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu basks in the unmitigated support he gets from Trump, top Israeli security officials are worried. Some of them told the Israeli Cabinet that the move could backfire badly on Israel, “setting fire to the ground,” according to a report on Israeli television this past weekend. Others are cautioning that the void created by any decline in UNRWA services would be filled by the Islamist Hamas group.

The reasons for the concern are not difficult to discern. As an international diplomat in Jerusalem once told me, UNRWA is effectively a “quasi-government” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, providing education, health, and other essential services to some 2 million people.

In the West Bank alone, nearly 800,000 Palestinians are registered as refugees, many residing in the 19 refugee camps scattered across the territory (camps is a misnomer; these days they are urban concrete slums usually connected to major Palestinian cities). Almost 50,000 pupils study at the 96 schools UNRWA operates, with the agency responsible for an additional 43 health care centers, 15 community rehabilitation centers, two vocational training centers, and 19 women’s program centers.
The situation in Gaza is even more acute. One million Palestinians, half the population of the blockaded coastal enclave, depend on UNRWA for food aid; a quarter million refugees study at the agency’s 267 schools; some 21 health centers dispense care to a war-ravaged population. In a territory with a 40 percent unemployment rate, the highest in the world, UNRWA employs almost 13,000 staff–many of them registered refugees themselves.

The U.S. government, historically UNRWA’s biggest donor, provides more than a quarter of the agency’s budget. Its plan to eliminate $350 million in funding will leave UNRWA with a massive shortfall and has already forced layoffs. The school year is set to start on time, but officials at the agency can’t guarantee that it will extend past the end of September. Gaza in particular is of utmost concern, with the territory already on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and Israel and Hamas teetering on the edge of war. Israeli security officials have consistently described Gaza as a “ticking bomb”–one that Israel and Hamas (which rules the Strip) are now trying to defuse via indirect talks.

Washington also seems bent on stripping millions of Palestinians across the region of their status as refugees–a highly evocative issue tied to the Palestinian “right of return” demand. Critics contend that this refugee status (imparted as well on descendants of those Palestinians who fled during Israel’s creation in the 1948 war) artificially perpetuates the conflict, impelling refugees to believe they may someday return to their homes inside Israel. “This relates to the core of the Palestinian narrative,” Lt. Col. Alon Eviatar, a retired Israeli intelligence officer with long experience in Palestinian affairs, told me. “It could have even more dramatic implications than the budget cuts.”

The Trump administration, though, hasn’t just stopped with UNRWA. Late last week, the State Department announced that it was cutting $200 million in aid to Palestinians in the West Bank, primarily development and infrastructure projects run through USAID. Beyond the larger damage to the Palestinian economy of stopping these initiatives–roads, sewage, electrical transmission, water and the like–there is a more personal and immediate problem. All told, tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians benefit, whether directly or via extended family circles, from employment in these projects. “In terms of work, there aren’t alternatives for all these people,” Eviatar said. “If you cut one hand then you have to make sure the other hand feeds [them],” he said, alluding to the wider danger of a political vacuum.

Tellingly, the United States refrained from slashing direct aid ($60 million) to the Palestinian Authority security forces, a sign that Washington does value their work, especially the tight cooperation with their Israeli counterparts. Yet even if continuing this funding were politically tenable for the Palestinians–an open question given the tattered state of their relations with the Trump administration–this is arguably a limited understanding of security.

For more than two years, the Israeli military has aggressively promoted a policy of economic development in the West Bank, in an effort to disincentive violence against Israel and allow Palestinians to live reasonable, undisrupted lives. As one senior Israeli security official told me last year, “I very much value the civilian and economic component … it was the reason why there wasn’t a Third Intifada.” In two fell swoops, the Trump administration may undo much of this hard-won stability, potentially putting untold numbers of Palestinian workers, students, and refugees out onto the streets.

“It’s clear to me that there will be a storm and [these steps] may lead to a wave of terror,” Col. Grisha Yakubovich, a retired Israeli military officer who served in the unit that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, told me.

The administration is clearly hoping that the economic pressure will get the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table, pressure Hamas in Gaza, and force reforms on a bloated and inefficient UNRWA. But Eviatar, the retired Israeli intelligence officer, said the chances of success were not high. “They’ll get the opposite result,” he told me, referring to the Trump team. “The Palestinians won’t come back to the table. It just won’t happen.”

Kushner, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to mind if the collapse of UNRWA and these other intricate moves cause collateral damage. “Our goal can’t be to keep things stable and as they are. … Sometimes you have to strategically risk breaking things in order to get there,” he said earlier this year in an internal email leaked to Foreign Policy. An easy thing, perhaps, for someone thousands of miles away to say, but a different proposition altogether for all those on the ground–Palestinians and Israelis both–who risk getting broken in the process.

U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question

Two women, Maria and Lupita, whose U.S. citizenship is in question, stand for a portrait in Brownsville, Tex. Although they were born in the United States, the government is questioning their citizenship because it suspects their birth certificates are fraudulent, even though they were issued by the state of Texas decades ago. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

By Kevin Sieff-August 29 at 4:25 PM

PHARR, Tex. — On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.

His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.

But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.

As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.

In a statement, the State Department said that it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications,” adding that “the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.”

But cases identified by The Washington Post and interviews with immigration attorneys suggest a dramatic shift in both passport issuance and immigration enforcement.

President Trump spoke to ICE and CBP agents on Aug. 20, and launched attacks against "open border extremists." (Reuters)

In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States. As the Trump administration attempts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration, the government’s treatment of passport applicants in South Texas shows how U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.

Juan said he was infuriated by the government’s response. “I served my country. I fought for my country,” he said, speaking on the condition that his last name not be used so that he wouldn’t be targeted by immigration enforcement.

The government alleges that from the 1950s through the 1990s, some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. In a series of federal court cases in the 1990s, several birth attendants admitted to providing fraudulent documents.

Based on those suspicions, the State Department during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations denied passports to people who were delivered by midwives in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The use of midwives is a long-standing tradition in the region, in part because of the cost of hospital care.

The same midwives who provided fraudulent birth certificates also delivered thousands of babies legally in the United States. It has proved nearly impossible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate documents, all of them officially issued by the state of Texas decades ago.

 While some migrants worried about separations, others felt seeking asylum was worth the risk

For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: 'Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’ (Zoeann Murphy, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

A 2009 government settlement in a case litigated by the American Civil Liberties Union seemed to have mostly put an end to the passport denials. Attorneys reported that the number of denials declined during the rest of the Obama administration, and the government settled promptly when people filed complaints after being denied passports.

But under President Trump, the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives.

“We’re seeing these kind of cases skyrocketing,” said Jennifer Correro, an attorney in Houston who is defending dozens of people who have been denied passports.

In its statement, the State Department said that applicants “who have birth certificates filed by a midwife or other birth attendant suspected of having engaged in fraudulent activities, as well as applicants who have both a U.S. and foreign birth certificate, are asked to provide additional documentation establishing they were born in the United States.”

“Individuals who are unable to demonstrate that they were born in the United States are denied issuance of a passport,” the statement said.

When Juan, the former soldier, received a letter from the State Department telling him it wasn’t convinced that he was a U.S. citizen, it requested a range of obscure documents — evidence of his mother’s prenatal care, his baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when he was a baby.

He managed to find some of those documents but weeks later received another denial. In a letter, the government said the information “did not establish your birth in the United States.”

“I thought to myself, you know, I’m going to have to seek legal help,” said Juan, who earns $13 an hour as a prison guard and expects to pay several thousand dollars in legal fees.

In a case last August, a 35-year-old Texas man with a U.S. passport was interrogated while crossing back into Texas from Mexico with his son at the ­McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge, connecting Reynosa, Mexico, to McAllen, Tex.

His passport was taken from him, and Customs and Border Protection agents told him to admit that he was born in Mexico, according to documents later filed in federal court. He refused and was sent to the Los Fresnos Detention Center and entered into deportation proceedings.

He was released three days later, but the government scheduled a deportation hearing for him in 2019. His passport, which had been issued in 2008, was revoked.

Attorneys say these cases, where the government’s doubts about an official birth certificate lead to immigration detention, are increasingly common. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center — U.S. citizens,” said Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville.

Diez represents dozens of U.S. citizens who were denied their passports or had their passports suddenly revoked. Among them are soldiers and Border Patrol agents. In some cases, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrived at his clients’ homes without notice and taken passports away.

The State Department says that even though it may deny someone a passport, that does not necessarily mean that the individual will be deported. But it leaves them in a legal limbo, with one arm of the U.S. government claiming they are not an American and the prospect that immigration agents could follow up on their case.

It’s difficult to know where the crackdown fits into the Trump administration’s broader efforts to reduce legal and illegal immigration. Over the past year, it has thrown legal permanent residents out of the military and formed a denaturalization task force that tries to identify people who might have lied on decades-old citizenship applications.

Now, the administration appears to be taking aim at a broad group of Americans along the stretch of the border where Trump has promised to build his wall, where he directed the deployment of National Guardsmen, and where the majority of cases in which children were separated from their parents during the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy occurred.

The State Department would not say how many passports it has denied to people along the border because of concerns about fraudulent birth certificates. The government has also refused to provide a list of midwives whom it considers to be suspicious.

Lawyers along the border say that it isn’t just those delivered by midwives who are being denied.

Babies delivered by Jorge Treviño, one of the regions most well-known gynecologists, are also being denied. When he died in 2015, the McAllen Monitor wrote in his obituary that Treviño had delivered 15,000 babies.

It’s unclear why babies delivered by Treviño are being targeted, and the State Department did not comment on individual birth attendants. Diez, the attorney, said the government has an affidavit from an unnamed Mexican doctor who said that Treviño’s office provided at least one fraudulent birth certificate for a child born in Mexico.

One of the midwives who was accused of providing fraudulent birth certificates in the 1990s admitted in an interview that in two cases, she accepted money to provide fake documents. She said she helped deliver 600 babies in South Texas, many of them now being denied passports. Those birth certificates were issued by the state of Texas, with the midwife’s name listed under “birth attendant.”

“I know that they are suffering now, but it’s out of my control,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of her admission.

For those who have received passport denials from the government, it affects not only their travel plans but their sense of identity as Americans.

One woman who has been denied, named Betty, said she had tried to get a passport to visit her grandfather as he was dying in Mexico. She went to a passport office in Houston, where government officials denied her request and questioned whether she had been born in the United States.

“You’re getting questioned on something so fundamentally you,” said Betty, who spoke on the condition her last name not be used because of concerns about immigration enforcement.

The denials are happening at a time when Trump has been lobbying for stricter federal voter identification rules, which would presumably affect the same people who are now being denied passports — almost all of them Hispanic, living in a heavily Democratic sliver of Texas.

“That’s where it gets scary,” Diez said.

For now, passport applicants who are able to afford the legal costs are suing the federal government over their passport denials. Typically, the applicants eventually win those cases, after government attorneys raise a series of sometimes bizarre questions about their birth.

“For a while, we had attorneys asking the same question: ‘Do you remember when you were born?’ ” Diez said. “I had to promise my clients that it wasn’t a trick question.”

Ways to Change the World: Jameela Jamil

Krishnan Guru-MurthyPresenter

My latest guest on the Ways to Change the World podcast is actor, campaigner and former presenter Jameela Jamil.

Jameela Jamil does not want to be known as a ‘double agent of the patriarchy’. Star of Netflix’ The Good Place and former Radio 1 DJ, she is rallying against a culture of airbrushing, weight-loss and vanity. She chats to me about her latest ‘I Weigh’ campaign, being in Hollywood during the Me Too movement and why she thinks the Kardashians are a toxic influence on young girls.

Listen and subscribe

You can listen to, download and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts here.

Or on Spotify, Acast, CastBox and other good podcast apps.

The direct download is here.

So join us as we explore the big ideas changing the way we think, act and live  – with top politicians, exciting writers and leading academics – and how much impact we can really have as individuals.

A filmed version of each interview is available on our Channel 4 News YouTube channel – hit subscribe to keep updated on when a new episode is published.

Congress raps Modi over 'failed' demonetisation

Rahul Gandhi, President of India's main opposition Congress party, addresses his supporters during a rally described as Jan Aakrosh or public anger at Ramlila ground in New Delhi, India, April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Altaf Hussain/File Photo

Krishna N. Das-AUGUST 30, 2018

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India’s main opposition Congress party on Thursday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed that his shock 2016 move to ban high-value notes failed to meet his key objective of flushing out money hidden from the tax man.
Modi withdrew 500 and 1,000 rupee notes from circulation to make hoarded cash, or black money, worthless. It aimed to bring billions of dollars worth of cash in unaccounted wealth into the mainstream economy and to hit the finances of militant groups suspected of using fake 500 rupee notes to fund operations.

But the move, widely known as demonetisation, badly hurt India’s cash-dependent economy and caused tremendous hardship to people forced to line up outside banks before the notes ceased to be legal tender.

Data released on Wednesday by the RBI showed that almost the entire amount of withdrawn currency had returned to banks, meaning Modi may have misjudged cash hoarding.

The data gave Congress a major issue to hit back at Modi months before three big state polls and a general election due early next year.

“The PM had promised that black money, terror funding, and fake currency will be eradicated,” Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, the fourth-generation politician from the fabled Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, told a news conference.

“The RBI annual report proves that all his objectives failed,” said Gandhi, adding he believed the demonetisation was meant to benefit a handful of Modi’s “capitalist friends”.

People wait for a bank to open to withdraw and deposit their money, after the scrapping of high denomination 500 and 1,000 Indian rupees currency notes, in Ahmedabad, India, December 5, 2016. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo

“TAX-COMPLIANT”

Congress then flooded its Twitter page with graphics purporting to show that demonetisation had cost India 1.5 million jobs, some 80 billion rupees ($1.13 billion) in printing of new notes and a 1.5 percentage point drop in economic growth.

Modi’s office did not immediately respond to an email after business hours on Thursday seeking comment on the Congress accusations.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, one of Modi’s top trouble shooters, said demonetisation had helped India to move from a “tax non-compliant society to a tax-compliant society”.

He said the number of income tax returns filed in 2017/18 nearly doubled to around 69 million from the levels of 2013/14.

“When cash is deposited in the banks, the anonymity about the owner of the cash disappears,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post. “The deposited cash is now identified with its owner giving rise to an inquiry, whether the amount deposited is in consonance with the depositor’s income.”

Since demonetisation, he said, about 1.8 million depositors had been identified for enquiry, with many of them penalised.

Modi has said the cash ban was a success because “our intention was to bring all money into the formal banking system and we achieved success in completing the task”.

Slideshow (2 Images)

More than four years in office, Modi remains the most popular politician in India and likely to win another term. But his popularity fell below 50 percent for the first time in July from 53 percent in January, a survey by India Today magazine showed.
($1 = 70.7400 Indian rupees)

Reporting by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Gareth Jones

Love speaks…bold, brilliant and beautiful: A look at Iranian women

Iran is a wonderful country with rich history, stunning architecture, breathtaking nature, kind and helpful people, though with loads of strict rules controlling social life. 

by Anwar A Khan-Aug 25, 2018

Aug 24, 2018

( August 24, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Iran is a land of rich history, culture, and beautiful Persian women. Iran which was famous as Persia is one of the oldest civilisation on the earth. The country is also renowned for its exotic beauty. Persian girls have fair skin and black hair, which is a killer combination. Most of the Iranian Woman inherited the genes of Caucasus, Middle East, Central Asians, South Asian and Africa.

Persian women are very romantic, intelligent, caring and straightforward. They care more about their beauty and very particular about their dressing style. Well if you are looking single Iranian woman and wanted to date her then your chances are pretty low, as they want the best life partner. If you can find Iranian Girlfriend, then you don’t have to worry about your food, as they are very good at cooking traditional Iranian dishes.

The moment I entered the country sometime in 2015, I was very eager to see, more than anything else, the women of Iran. And that’s how my entire trip went, that’s all I mostly remember from Iran…how amazingly beautiful the women of Iran are. How much grace, how much elegance they have, how they have mastered the art of being beautiful under the restrictions of a dress code. They are the most beautiful women I have ever seen. And I confess that what seemed at the beginning a cool thing to do, wearing a hijab, it became at the end of my trip a burden. And if wearing it is not a personal choice, then my heart bends towards all the women who are obeying rules that do not represent their choices.

Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages in the world. It’s soft-sounding, romantic and full of passion. For Iranians, poetry plays a significant part in their culture, and they study it as part of the curriculum from a young age at school.

Iranians consider the eyes as the most beautiful part of one’s face. No wonder, they are totally correct. They apply good eye makeup so that the onlooker’s full attention is directed to the eyes. This makes them look more appealing and beautiful. Eye liner, primer, kajal, kohl and eye shadow, all these eye products should be applied properly to make their eyes look more dramatic and beautiful.

Iran is a wonderful country with rich history, stunning architecture, breathtaking nature, kind and helpful people, though with loads of strict rules controlling social life. In principle, separate wedding parties for men and women, no kissing and touching in public, secret dates, staying reserved about matters of sexuality. However, I suppose young Iranians must have found their way how to live with this phenomenon. Young people are usually so witty and courageous in overcoming any obstacles in love.

I wanted to know more. How Iranians fall in love, get married, how they live their love lives in Iran. Luckily, I have some Iranian friends who answered my curious questions, “It is very rare that a girl would flirt with a boy. Iranian girls want to be chased. If a girl shows affection towards a man, she does it very decently. She would try to get closer to the guy and talk to him, but she would never behave too pushy. This scenario happens mostly when the guy is rich or very handsome. I remember, there was a girl at university who was interested in me. So, I asked her why she likes me. She replied that I am a sarbazir, which means something like looking down, not flirting with girls but focusing on my studies. University is basically a public place, where people often talk behind your back if you date someone. So, I preferred not to date anybody that time.”

The young ladies I saw and spoke are surely not enough to express the immensity of their beauty, as I was busy staring with my mouth open many times and couldn’t focus on taking pictures of women who were passing by. Many times I felt uncomfortable to ask for pictures, as probably they would not understand why I am so fascinated about their beauty, and many were shy or embarrassed thinking they cannot be beautiful because of the hijab they have to wear. But to me they seemed even more beautiful without hijab.

The most common question I have been asked was how do I feel about wearing a hijab, what do I think about it, and most of them were telling me apologetic that it is not their choice to wear it but they have to… I thought maybe that’s the price they have to pay for their majestic beauty.

And so, for all the women of Iran, I bow in front of their beauty, I bow in front of their grace, I bow in front of their everyday fight to conquer again the pride to be a beautiful woman. I had the opportunity to meet a middle-aged Iranian woman. Her name is Ms. Leila Hatami (means glorified and a legendary female character). She is an inspiration to me because of her exotic beauty, becharming or amazeballs! In Iran most of people do not know why they should cover themselves, they assume that this coercion is not compatible with their freedom. There are plenty of men who appreciate the exotic, charming, and passionate nature of Iranian women!

From the moment I first laid eyes on her, I knew she was a perfect match for me. I love everything about her. Meeting her had been the highlight of my life. I want to spend all my tomorrows finding out more and more reasons to be in love with her. Her beauty mesmerized me. Her sense of humour put a smile on my face. Her kindness and compassion filled me with awe. Thank you for being all that I could ask for in a woman and so much more.

Life is so much richer and more fulfilling since I met her. She filled a void in my heart that no one else could ever fill. I love her! Through all of life’s mountaintops and valleys, I was so blessed to be able to share this roller coaster of life with her for a few days. When I have to spend time apart I miss everything about her. I miss all those intimate moments we have shared, and I can’t wait until we can be together again.

Before I met her, I didn’t truly understand what it meant to love someone. Now that we were together I could not imagine what life would be like without her. I am giving my heart now and forever. My goal is to make sure that I always made her feel loved, appreciated, and accepted. No other woman in the world can hold a candle to her beauty, charm, and grace. I was so grateful that we were together! I cherish every memory we had ever made together and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for us. I love her so much! I ask from the great and merciful God to send her happiness and heath.

-The End –

Aung San Suu Kyi won't be stripped of Nobel peace prize despite Rohingya crisis

Prize was awarded for past achievements, says panel after UN report on mass killings by Myanmar’s military
Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded a Novel peace prize for her fight for democracy. Photograph: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images

Thu 30 Aug 2018 05.37 BST

Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel peace prize will not be withdrawn in the light of a United Nations report that said Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings of Muslim Rohingya.

On Monday, UN investigators said Myanmar’s military carried out killings and gang rapes with “genocidal intent”, and the commander-in-chief and five generals should be prosecuted for the gravest crimes under international law.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the Myanmar government and won the Nobel peace prize in 1991 for campaigning for democracy, has been criticised for failing to speak out against the army crackdown in Rakhine state.

Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, the UN’s human rights chief, told the BBC Aung San Suu Kyi’s attempts to excuse the crisis were “deeply regrettable”, saying she could have stayed silent “or even better, she could have resigned”.

Since the operation began a year ago, tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have died and 700,000 have fled. Most are living in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Olav Njoelstad, the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said on Monday: “It’s important to remember that a Nobel prize, whether in physics, literature or peace, is awarded for some prize-worthy effort or achievement of the past.

“Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel peace prize for her fight for democracy and freedom up until 1991, the year she was awarded the prize.”

The rules regulating the Nobel prizes did not allow for a prize to be withdrawn, he said.
The Norwegian Nobel committee consists of a panel of five Norwegians, mostly former politicians and academics, reflecting the different forces in the Norwegian parliament. The other Nobel prizes are awarded in Sweden.

In 2017 the head of the committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, also said it would not strip the award after previous criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in the Rohingya crisis.

“We don’t do it. It’s not our task to oversee or censor what a laureate does after the prize has been won,” she said. “The prizewinners themselves have to safeguard their own reputations.”

US senators demand sanctions against Chinese officials over Muslim abuses

 

(File) A person wearing a white mask with tears of blood takes part in a protest march of ethnic Uighurs asking for the European Union to call upon China to respect human rights in the Chinese Xinjiang region and ask for the closure of "re-education center" where Uighurs are detained, during a demonstration around the EU institutions in Brussels on April 27, 2018. Source: AFp

30th August 2018

CHINA has been accused of a massive brainwashing campaign to get one million of its detained ethnic Muslim Uighurs to renounce their faith.

Now, US senators are calling for sanctions to be imposed on those involved.

Saying the country has turned into a “high-tech” police state, a bipartisan group of senators comprising nine Republicans, seven Democrats and one Independent, called for sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act against senior Chinese government and Communist Party officials overseeing the policies on the Xinjiang region.

According to Reuters, the group, led by Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Chris Smith, Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Executive Commission on China, made the call in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

SEE ALSO: China testing facial-recognition systems to track Uighur community 

In their letter, the lawmakers said Muslims in the Chinese western autonomous region were “being subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, egregious restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a digitized surveillance system so pervasive that every aspect of daily life is monitored.”

“The Chinese government is creating a high-tech police state in (Xinjiang) that is both a gross violation of privacy and international human rights,” the letter said.

Originally designed to target Russian Rights violators, the Magnitsky Act is used for sanctions for abuses anywhere in the world.

The United Nations estimates one million Muslim Uighurs are being held in internment camps to undergo an indoctrination process that lasts several months.

(File) This picture taken on June 26, 2017 shows police patrolling as Muslims leave the Id Kah Mosque after the morning prayer on Eid al-Fitr in the old town of Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Source: Johannes Eisele/ AFP

Apart from being forced to renounce Islam, the detainees are being told to criticise their Islamic beliefs and recite Communist Party propaganda songs. Some media reports have said inmates were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, which goes against Islamic beliefs.

The authorities handling these internment camps are also accused of the torture and murder of detainees. However, the Chinese government insists that the camps were “vocational centres” for criminals.

The Chinese government has imposed tighter security measures in recent years owing to the deaths of hundreds in Xinjiang who were killed as violence flared in the region.

SEE ALSO: China: Govt bans ‘overly religious’ Muslim names in Xinjiang – report  

The US lawmakers said the Chinese authorities who put the Muslims in “political re-education” centres or camps, required “a tough, targeted, and global response.”

“No Chinese official or business complicit in what is happening … should profit from access to the United States or the US financial system,” the letter said.

Other observers have criticised security and surveillance steps in Xinjiang have created near martial law conditions, with the setting up of police checkpoints, re-education centres and mass DNA collection.

'Huge blow': Saudi-Canada row throws both healthcare systems into chaos

Canadian hospitals scramble to find trainees to fill places of over 1,000 Saudi medical students whose future training remains in limbo

Former Saudi health minister Abdullah al-Rabia during 2010 operation to separate conjoined twins (AFP)

Jillian D'Amours

Thursday 30 August 2018 

MONTREAL, Canada – The diplomatic row between Canada and Saudi Arabia has left both countries scrambling to contain major disruptions to their healthcare systems.

Earlier this month, after Canada’s minister of foreign affairs drew ire from the Saudi government for calling for the release of jailed Saudi human rights activists, the kingdom stopped funding scholarships and training programmes in Canada and recalled all Saudi students.

Our patients will be the first to continue to suffer if we do not complete our training

- Saudi doctor training in Canada

Just over 1,000 Saudi medical residents and fellows were given weeks to leave the country and pick up their training elsewhere, a directive that has left the student and their Canadian colleagues in a panic.

In Canada, where Saudi trainee doctors make up to 85 percent of the workforce in some hospitals and treat patients at no cost to taxpayers, surgeries have already had to be cancelled in at least one province. 

The future of the doctors who were expected to return to Saudi Arabia with specialities in fields like paediatrics and oncology is also in limbo, as are the long-term implications for their future Saudi patients. 

“I’ve never seen this before, to be honest,” Dr Nadia Alam, president of the Ontario Medical Association, told Middle East Eye this week.

In an apparent reprieve, the Saudi Ministry of Education sent a message to residents and fellows in Canada this week, saying they would now be permitted to continue their training programmes "until such time as they have obtained final admission into equivalent training programs in other countries".

But rather than clarifying the situation, health professionals told MEE they remain confused about whether the Saudi students will be allowed to complete their residencies or fellowships in Canada – or if they will have to repeat their training and tests in another country. 

“Is it a U-turn? How many of us will have to leave? Will we be able to finish our studies? None of this is clear,” a Saudi doctor training in Canada told MEE on condition of anonymity.

Specialised medical training in Canada

Funded by the Saudi government, the decades-old postgraduate training scheme gives Saudi medical graduates a chance to receive specialised training in Canada. They’re called “visa trainees,” holding visas similar to student visas. 

They work with us in the emergency departments, hospital wards, outpatient clinics for cancer treatment, kidney failure

- Nadia Alam, president of the Ontario Medical Association

Countries like Saudi Arabia and India have less robust training in medical specialties and that’s what pushes graduates to do residencies and fellowships in Canada, the US and the UK, said Ivy Bourgeault, a professor at the University of Ottawa and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research chair in Gender, Work and Health Human Resources.

Canada is a particularly popular destination for Saudi medical residents and fellows because, unlike the US and the UK, it does not require the students to retake strenuous qualifying exams for further study, requiring only tests showing language aptitude and understanding of basic anatomy and clinical aspects of care. 

Bourgeault said Canada remains a third choice overall though, with more Saudi medical graduates generally going to the US and the UK for their training. 

Many Saudi medical residents and fellows in Canada are in specialised fields or in medical research, and their training typically lasts several years.

In 2013, a Saudi health ministry official visits patients infected with the MERS virus in the eastern province of al-Ahsaa (AFP)

Most are expected to return to Saudi Arabia after completing their training in Canadian hospitals or family clinics. Through the programme, more than 5,000 doctors have come home “to take leading roles in the kingdom’s heath care system”, according to the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau.

“Canada gives us state-of-the-art training with minimum requirements to join that no other place in the world is giving us,” the Saudi doctor said.

“Our health sector is still developing and fragile. Many of our hospitals are depending on us returning after completion of our training in Canada to open new services highly needed for our Saudi patients.”

In 2017, about 800 visa trainees in Canada out of a total of around 2,300 were from Saudi Arabia, Bourgeault said.

So the swift change in the programme has set off tidal waves across the Canadian system.

“They work with us in the emergency departments, hospital wards, outpatient clinics for cancer treatment, kidney failure,” Alam explained.

“Because [the training] lasts so long and it’s individualised for each trainee – they’re irreplaceable. You can’t just take them like a widget and move them from one training programme to another.”

Students devastated, hospitals strained

In the weeks since the Saudi government’s order, very few Saudi students affected by the decision have openly spoken to the media about its impact on their lives. 

A group called the Coordinating Committee for Saudi Students in Canada – which is advocating anonymously for Saudi students to be allowed to stay in the country – said on 18 August that more than 90 Saudi students have applied for asylum in Canada.

According to the committee’s website, a Saudi PhD student, known only as Mohammad A, applied for asylum when he couldn’t find another solution.

Many of our hospitals are depending on us returning after completion of our training in Canada to open new services highly needed for our Saudi patients

- Saudi doctor training in Canada

“I spoke to Saudi Arabia Cultural Bureau in Canada but sadly they refused all my attempts to stay in the country. They asked me to return to the country immediately or I could lose my scholarship grant permanently,” he said.

“Their tone was also aggressive and they added that anyone refusing to return maybe [sic] committing a treason for our nation and the royal family.”

For the medical trainees in particular, the recall is particularly difficult since they are already in “the most stressful period of time in a physician’s life,” said Bourgeault, the co-author of a recent article in The Lancet about Saudi medical residents and fellows in Canada.

By abruptly ending their training, Saudi Arabia has added even more personal and professional stress on their shoulders, she said.

“Personal [stress] because you’re having to move and figure out where you’re going to stay … and professional [stress] in the sense that you may or may not be able to finish.”

'All hands on deck'

On the Canadian side, the snap decision to withdraw so many medical residents has forced many medical practitioners to question how the Canadian system became so reliant on Saudi doctors in the first place.

Hospitals affiliated with Montreal’s McGill University were expected to lose about 20 percent of their staff, since 225 of 1,250 medical residents are Saudi trainees, according to the report in The Lancet. The University of Toronto also counts 216 Saudi residents and fellows.

In Nova Scotia, on Canada’s east coast, surgeries have already started to be postponed or cancelled outright because the recall is causing a doctors shortage, Alam said.

“Canada’s already facing a physician shortage right across the country. I know that many of the provinces have had trouble recruiting more physicians; it’s been all hands on deck for decades now,” she said.

“We do really need to look at how did we get here?” said Maria Mathews, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University in Ontario.

A pharmacist in Toronto General Hospital (AFP)

Mathews, the other co-author of the study in The Lancet, said Canada should be asking whether it’s allowing enough international students, as well as new immigrants, to have access to residency and fellowship training in medicine.

“We have lots of doctors who have immigrated to Canada really hoping to practice here and be able to contribute … but so few opportunities to train in those residency positions,” she told MEE.

“Do we have the right balance between visa trainees and our own international medical graduates?”

Meanwhile, Alam said the Saudi medical system would also suffer the consequences of the government’s decision, since Saudi physicians won’t be able to go back and serve their communities as planned.

“My heart goes out to the patients and to the Saudi trainees themselves because they’re going to end up on the losing end of all of this.” 

The Saudi trainee who spoke to MEE said he was most worried about his future patients.

“Recalling Saudi doctors from Canada would be a huge blow to the developing health sector in the kingdom,” he said. “Our patients will be the first to continue to suffer if we do not complete our training.”