African migrants suffer under crackdown in Tunisia

African migrants suffer under crackdown in Tunisia
Ivorians wait near the embassy of Ivory Coast in Tunis, Tunisia February 27, 2023. (Reuters)
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Updated 01 March 2023

African migrants suffer under crackdown in Tunisia

African migrants suffer under crackdown in Tunisia

TUNIS: Since Tunisia’s president announced a crackdown on illegal immigration last week using language the African Union denounced as racialized, Malian construction worker Mohamed Kony has been evicted from his apartment and sacked from his job.
Unemployed, homeless and without legal residency, he now fears he will face the fate of several of his friends who have been attacked on the street.
“I am confused and worried,” said Kony, 32, who has lived in Tunis for five years and appeared well liked in his neighborhood, where Tunisian residents said they enjoyed his cheerful demeanour and often employed him for small repair jobs.
“I can’t believe we are a problem here,” he said, his eyes skipping to each end of the road in case of a police car.
Kony’s problems began last week, when President Kais Saied said there had been a conspiracy to change Tunisia’s racial makeup, ordering security forces to stop all illegal immigration and to expel any migrants living in Tunisia illegally.
“The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations,” he said.
Saied’s speech — repeating the “great replacement” theory that political elites are replacing native inhabitants with immigrant supporters — was called “shocking” by the African Union and praised by French far-right politician Eric Zemmour.
When Saied issued a second statement last week, he denied being racist and said he only wanted police to implement Tunisian law, but he repeated the idea that there had been a conspiracy to change Tunisia’s demographics.
Social media has, meanwhile, filled with accounts by darker-skinned people in Tunisia, including migrants with and without valid visas, African students and Black Tunisians, of ill treatment and fear.
They have described detentions for not carrying identity papers, insults, stone throwing, evictions and job losses.
The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), a group that works with migrants, said it had documented hundreds of arbitrary arrests and hundreds of evictions without notice.
More disturbingly, it said it had documented some violent assaults, including with knives, that police had been slow to respond to. The Interior Ministry has said it will comply with all national laws and international treaties with full respect for human rights.
Outside the Ivory Coast’s Tunis embassy, dozens of the country’s citizens stood this week, seeking repatriation.
“After the president’s speech, we were attacked. We are afraid. We were kicked out of the house,” said one, Berry Dialy Stephan.
Another, Foufana Abou, said people in his district had insulted and attacked him.
“They threw stones and pieces of wood at us,” he said. “Why? We are all Africans!” he added.

CRACKDOWN
Saied’s critics say the crackdown is consistent with his increasingly fiery, conspiracy-laden rhetoric as he pursues a parallel crackdown on political opponents, accusing them of plotting against the state with foreign backing.
Both were preceded by social media campaigns among online groups of Saied supporters that his critics say were increasingly intertwined with his approach to rule.
It also comes at a difficult time for the president as ultra-low turnout in parliamentary elections casts doubt over popular support for his political program after seizing most powers in 2021, and amid an economic crisis.
“The presidential campaign aims to create an imaginary enemy for Tunisians to distract them from their basic problems,” said Ramadan Ben Amor, a spokesperson for FTDES.
After racially charged language by some media commentators, the journalists syndicate and the independent media regulator both responded by urging press to be more careful in their language to avoid racist incitement.
Official figures say there are 21,000 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries in Tunisia. FTDES said the true figure was likely higher, but not more than 50,000.
Tunisia introduced visa-free travel for many African countries over the past decade. Getting a residency permit can be very difficult.
Many migrants in Tunisia aim to cross illegally to Europe but cannot afford the hundreds of dollars to get to Italy — a journey also taken by growing numbers of Tunisians.
Mamuella, an Ivorian woman who has stayed inside her apartment in Tunis for over a week for fear of arrest, said Tunisians had no reason to fear her or her compatriots.
“We just want to arrive on the other side of the Mediterranean where we can find opportunity,” she said.


UAE’s mandatory midday work break starts June 15

UAE’s mandatory midday work break starts June 15
Updated 02 June 2023

UAE’s mandatory midday work break starts June 15

UAE’s mandatory midday work break starts June 15
  • Working in open spaces and under direct sunlight is not allowed from 12:30 p.m. until 3:00 p.m.
  • Companies are also required to provide shaded areas where workers can rest during the midday break

DUBAI: The UAE’s mandatory midday break for all outdoor workers will start on June 15, the 19th consecutive year the ban has been enforced to protect employees from the intense summer heat.

Working in open spaces and under direct sunlight is not allowed from 12:30 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. until Sept 15 this year, with daily working hours in both morning and evening shifts restricted to eight hours.

Any employee made to work more than eight hours in a 24-hour period will be considered to have worked overtime and must be compensated for it.

Companies are also required to provide shaded areas where workers can rest during the midday break.

Employers found flouting the regulations will be fined approximately $1,360 for each worker they require to work during required midday break, with a maximum of $13,614 penalty in case multiple workers are involved.

The implementation of the midday break is in line with Ministerial Resolution No. (44) of 2022 on Occupational Health and Safety and Labor Accommodation, which aims to provide adequate working environments that protect workers from occupational hazards and prevents work-related injuries or illnesses, a report from state news agency WAM said.

“We are confident that employers across the country will comply with the provisions of the ban. Over the past years, we have seen impressive compliance rates, which confirms the level of awareness in the market about the importance of this decision and its effective role in protecting workers from the hazards of direct exposure to sunlight or working in open spaces around naloon,” according to Mohsen Al-Nassi, assistant undersecretary for inspection affairs at the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation.

There are however exemptions to the midday break, particularly jobs that “require work to continue uninterrupted and they are exempted from implementing the midday work ban for technical reasons,” WAM reported.

These include laying asphalt or pouring concrete – when it is impractical to postpone these tasks – as well as works needed to contain hazards or repair damage that affects the community, such as interruptions to water supply or electricity, cutting off traffic, and other major issues.

“The exemptions also include works that require a permit from a relevant government authority to be implemented, given their impact on the flow of traffic and services. These tasks require non-stop work, including cutting or diverting main traffic routes, power lines, and communications,” WAM said.

Employers are also required to provide sufficient cold drinking water for workers exempted from the midday ban, as well as provide hydrating food, such as salts and/or other food items approved for use by the local authorities.


Restoration lags for Syria’s famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites

Restoration lags for Syria’s famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites
Updated 02 June 2023

Restoration lags for Syria’s famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites

Restoration lags for Syria’s famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites
  • Many sites were damaged by the war and more recently by the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck a wide area of neighboring Turkiye and also Syria in February.
  • Before the war, Palmyra — one of Syria’s six UNESCO world heritage sites — was the country’s archaeological crown jewel, a tourist attraction that drew tens of thousands of visitors each year

PALMYRA: At the height of the Daesh group’s rampage across Syria, the world watched in horror as the militants blew up an iconic arch and temple in the country’s famed Roman ruins in Palmyra.
Eight years later, Daesh has lost its hold but restoration work on the site has been held up by security issues, leftover IS land mines and lack of funding.
Other archaeological sites throughout Syria face similar problems, both in areas held by the government and by the opposition. They were damaged by the war or, more recently, by the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck a wide area of neighboring Turkiye and also Syria in February.
Youssef Kanjou, a former director of Syria’s Aleppo National Museum, said the situation of heritage sites in his country is a “disaster.”


Without a coordinated preservation and restoration effort, said Kanjou, now a researcher at Tübingen University in Germany, “We will lose what was not destroyed by the war or the earthquake.”
Before the war, Palmyra — one of Syria’s six UNESCO world heritage sites — was the country’s archaeological crown jewel, a tourist attraction that drew tens of thousands of visitors each year. The ancient city was the capital of an Arab client state of the Roman Empire that briefly rebelled and carved out its own kingdom in the third century, led by Queen Zenobia.
In more recent times, the area had darker associations. It was home to the Tadmur prison, where thousands of opponents of the Assad family’s rule in Syria were reportedly tortured. IS demolished the prison after capturing the town.
The militants later destroyed Palmyra’s historic temples of Bel and Baalshamin and the Arch of Triumph, viewing them as monuments to idolatry, and beheaded an elderly antiquities scholar who had dedicated his life to overseeing the ruins.
Today, the road through the desert from Homs to Palmyra is dotted with Syrian army checkpoints. In the town adjacent to the ancient site, some shops have reopened, but signs of war remain in the form of charred vehicles and burned-out or boarded-up stores and houses.
The Palmyra Museum is closed, and the much-loved lion statue that used to stand in front of it has been moved to Damascus for restoration and safekeeping.
Nevertheless, Syrian and foreign tourists have begun to trickle back.


“We thought it was impossible that foreigners would return to Palmyra,” said Qais Fathallah, who used to run a hotel there but fled to Homs when IS took over. Now he is back in Palmyra, operating a restaurant, where he said he serves tourists regularly.
On a recent day, a group of tourists from countries including the United Kingdom, Canada and China, and another, with Syrian university students, were wandering through the ruins.
Some of the Syrian tourists had visited in better days. For communication engineering student Fares Mardini, it was the first time.
“Now I’ve finally come, and I see so much destruction. It’s something really upsetting,” he said. “I hope it can be restored and return to what it was.”
In 2019, international experts convened by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, said detailed studies would need to be done before starting major restorations.
Youmna Tabet, program specialist at the Arab states unit of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center, said restoration work often involves difficult choices, particularly if there isn’t enough original material for rebuilding.
“Is it worth it to rebuild it with very little authenticity or should we rather focus on having 3D documentation of how it was?” she said.
Missions to the site were held up at first by security issues, including land mines that had to be cleared. IS cells still occasionally carry out attacks in the area.
Money is also a problem.
“There is a big lack of funding so far, for all the sites in Syria,” Tabet said, noting that international donors have been wary of breaching sanctions on Syria, which have been imposed by the United States, the European Union and others.
US sanctions exempt activities related to preservation and protection of cultural heritage sites, but sanctions-related obstacles remain, such as a ban on exporting US-made items to Syria.
Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, has begun restoring Palmyra’s triumphal arch, the largest-scale project underway to date at the site.


“We have some funding from some friends in some places, but it is not sufficient in relation to the disaster that occurred,” said Mohammad Nazir Awad, director general of Syria’s department of Antiquities and Museums.
It doesn’t have to be this way, said Maamoun Abdulkarim, who headed the antiquities department at the time of the IS incursion. Abdulkarim pointed to the international push to recover damaged heritage sites in the city of Mosul in neighboring Iraq, also controlled by the militants for some time, as an example of a successful restoration.
“We need to make some separation between political affairs and cultural heritage affairs,” said Abdulkarim, now a professor at the University of Sharjah. He warned that damaged structures are in danger of deteriorating further or collapsing as the rehabilitation work is delayed.
The deadly Feb. 6 earthquake caused further destruction at some sites already damaged by the war. This includes the old city of Aleppo, which is under the control of the government, and the Byzantine-era church of Saint Simeon in the Aleppo countryside, in an area controlled by Turkish-backed opposition forces.
About one-fifth of the church was damaged in the earthquake, including the basilica arch, said Hassan Al-Ismail, a researcher with Syrians for Heritage a non-governmental organization. He said the earthquake compounded earlier damage caused by bombings and vandalism.
The group tried to stabilize the structure with wooden and metal supports and to preserve the stones that fell from it for later use in restoration.
Ayman Al-Nabo, head of antiquities in the opposition-held city of Idlib, appealed for international assistance in stabilizing and restoring sites damaged by the earthquake.
Antiquities should be seen as “neutral to the political reality,” he said. “This is global human heritage, which belongs to the whole world, not just the Syrians.”


Palestinian toddler critically wounded in West Bank, Israeli military says shooting unintentional

Palestinian toddler critically wounded in West Bank, Israeli military says shooting unintentional
Updated 02 June 2023

Palestinian toddler critically wounded in West Bank, Israeli military says shooting unintentional

Palestinian toddler critically wounded in West Bank, Israeli military says shooting unintentional
  • Latest bloodshed in a more than yearlong surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem
  • Fighting has picked up since Israel’s new far-right government took office in late December

JERUSALEM: A 3-year-old Palestinian boy was in a critical condition at an Israeli hospital Friday morning after being shot by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank. The army opened an investigation into what it said was an unintentional shooting.
In a statement, the military said that gunmen opened fire late Thursday toward the West Bank settlement of Nevez Tzuf. It said soldiers at a guard post returned fire.
Moments later, Israeli medics received reports that a Palestinian man and the child had been badly wounded. The man was rushed to a Palestinian hospital, while the baby, after being resuscitated by Israeli medics, was airlifted to Israel’s Sheba Hospital. The hospital said the boy was in critical condition.
The military released a grainy video showing what it said were the gunmen firing toward the settlement and said that it was searching for them.
But it said the incident was being reviewed, saying “it regrets harm to noncombatants” and that it does “everything in its power to prevent such incidents.”
The shooting was the latest bloodshed in a more than yearlong surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. That fighting has picked up since Israel’s new far-right government took office in late December.
Nearly 120 Palestinians have been killed in the two areas this year, with nearly half of them members of armed militant groups, according to an Associated Press tally. The military says the number of militants is much higher. But stone-throwing youths and people uninvolved in violence have also been killed.
Meanwhile, Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis in those areas have killed at least 21 people.
Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek these territories for a future state.
Some 700,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Most of the international community considers these settlements illegal or obstacles to peace.


US sanctions Iranian operatives accused of overseas plots

US sanctions Iranian operatives accused of overseas plots
Updated 01 June 2023

US sanctions Iranian operatives accused of overseas plots

US sanctions Iranian operatives accused of overseas plots

WASHINGTON: The US has imposed sanctions on members and affiliates of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and its external operations arm whom Washington accused of participating in terrorist plots targeting former US government officials, dual US and Iranian nationals and Iranian dissidents.

The US Treasury Department said the move targeted three Iran- and Turkiye-based individuals and a company affiliated with the IRGC-Quds Force and two senior officials of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization involved in plotting external lethal operations against civilians, including journalists.

In a statement, the Treasury said the five included Mohammed Reza Ansari, a Quds Force member whom it said has supported its operations in Syria, and Iranian citizen Shahram Poursafi, whom it said had planned and attempted to assassinate two former US government officials.

It also put sanctions on Hossein Hafez Amini, a dual Iranian and Turkish national based in Turkiye, whom it accused of using his Turkish-based airline, Rey Havacilik Ithalat Ihracat Sanayi Ve, to assist the Quds Force’s covert operations, including kidnapping and assassination plots targeting Iranian dissidents.

The airline was also placed under sanctions. The Treasury Department also said it had imposed penalties on two people linked to the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, which it described as a domestic and international unit focused on targeting journalists, activists, dual Iranian nationals, and others who oppose Iranian abuses and human rights violations.

It named these as Rouhallah Bazghandi, the former chief of the Intelligence Organization’s counterespionage department, and the Intelligence Organization’s chief, Reza Seraj.

As a result of the Treasury sanctions, all property of the five individuals and the company subject to US jurisdiction are blocked. In addition, carrying out some transactions with them can expose actors to “secondary sanctions” under which the US can penalize non-US individuals and entities.    

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Tunisia’s financial crisis leaves the sick struggling to find medicine

Tunisia’s financial crisis leaves the sick struggling to find medicine
Updated 01 June 2023

Tunisia’s financial crisis leaves the sick struggling to find medicine

Tunisia’s financial crisis leaves the sick struggling to find medicine
  • Hundreds of medicines have been missing for months, pharmacies say, including important treatments for heart disease, cancer and diabetes
  • "The issue of missing medicine has become very hard for patients," said Douha Maaoui Faourati, a Tunis doctor

TUNIS: Sick Tunisians face a frantic struggle to find some medicines because the cash-strapped state has reduced imports, leaving doctors unable to control debilitating health problems and patients turning to informal markets for their medication.
Hundreds of medicines have been missing for months, pharmacies say, including important treatments for heart disease, cancer and diabetes as well as more basic products such as medicated eye drops whose absence worsens chronic conditions.
“The issue of missing medicine has become very hard for patients. We have a real problem with some medicines for which there are no generics available,” said Douha Maaoui Faourati, a Tunis doctor specializing in kidney and blood pressure disease.
Faourati has had to ask patients to try to get drugs from Europe, including ones used to control dangerously irregular heartbeat, swelling and clotting, and for which she says no good alternative is available in Tunisia.
Her difficulties show how Tunisia’s worsening fiscal problems are hitting ordinary people and adding to public anger at a state barely able to maintain even basic services.
Since last year Tunisia has struggled to pay for other goods that are sold at subsidised rates, causing periodic shortages of bread, dairy products and cooking oil as foreign currency reserves dropped from 130 days of imports to 93 days.
Tunisia wants a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund bailout, without which ratings agencies have warned it may default on sovereign debt, but President Kais Saied has rejected key terms of the deal and donors say talks have stalled.
Tunisia imports all medicine through the state-owned Central Pharmacy, which provides drugs to hospitals and pharmacies around the country which offer them to patients at a subsidised rate.
The head of Tunisia’s Syndicate of Pharmacies, Naoufel Amira, said hundreds of medicines are no longer available, including for diabetes, anaesthesia and cancer treatment.
Amira and two officials at the Central Pharmacy who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to media, said the body owed large sums to foreign suppliers, which had restricted their sales to Tunisia in response.
“The problem is primarily financial,” Amira said.
Amira said the Central Pharmacy owed about 1 billion dinars ($325 million) to suppliers. The officials there said it owed about 800 million dinars, adding that public insurance companies and hospitals were delaying paying their bills by up to a year.
Tunisia’s Health Ministry and Central Pharmacy did not respond to requests for comment.

MEDICINE EXCHANGE
From the roof of his Tunis house, retired soldier Nabil Boukhili has opened an unofficial medicine exchange for his neighborhood in coordination with local doctors. “We have dozens of people coming here daily to get medication,” he said.
He sources medicine from people traveling overseas as well as leftover pills from people who have finished their own treatment, dispensing it free of charge to people who can show a prescription.
While Reuters was interviewing Boukhili, a woman arrived needing medicine for a thyroid problem. “I’ve been without this medicine for over a week,” said Najia Guadri, adding that she felt unable to function without it.
Sitting at his parents’ home in Tunis, Abdessalem Maraouni described how a lack of medicated eye drops has left him at risk of blindness and unable to go outside, forcing him to abandon his law studies at the university.
“This country can no longer provide even a box of medicine,” he lamented, sitting in the modest family home decorated with posters of his favorite football club but unable to see objects more than a few meters away.
The 25 year-old has not been able to find the medicine, or an alternative, for six months and has had to seek supplies from people traveling abroad, paying far more than he would from Tunisian pharmacies and rationing his use.
Maraouni’s father Kamal wept as he described how the state’s inability to import medicines had hit his son’s prospects.
“We don’t ask the state for money or grand places to live. We only ask for medicine. Is that too much?” he said.