World Information Thursday

Clashes mark Palestinian protest
against West Bank wall
Agence France-Presse . Nilin, West Bank
Brief clashes broke out during a protest in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, one of several planned to mark four years since the world court called for partial demolition of Israel’s separation barrier.
Israeli soldiers fired teargas at teenagers who stoned their vehicles before the situation calmed down again within minutes as one of the protest organisers, Salah al-Khawaja, waved an olive branch and a Palestinian flag.
About 200 Palestinians and international activists marched from the West Bank town of Nilin towards the site where the barrier is being built. Israeli troops in four jeeps rushed to the scene and fired teargas as teenagers climbed aboard a bulldozer and hurled stones at the vehicles.
Other protests were planned to mark four years since the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding resolution that calls for parts of the barrier built inside the West Bank to be torn down, and construction to be halted along the planned route inside the territory.
‘Our goal is to stop the bulldozers,’ said Khawaja, who is also one of the organisers of weekly protests staged at the construction site, demonstrations which often lead to clashes between troops and protesters.
‘The goal of the protests is peaceful,’ he added, while admitting that there had been incidents of rock-throwing.
‘What do they expect from farmers who see their trees are being uprooted? They want to live, they want to send their children to university.’
Palestinian schoolteacher Hassan Musa, 33, who attended the protest with his seven-year-old son, said ‘the building of the wall affects everyone’s life. They want to expel us from our land.’
Israeli authorities says the barrier is needed to stop potential attackers from infiltrating Israel and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, but Palestinians denounce it as an ‘apartheid’ wall aimed at grabbing their land and undermining the viability of their promised state.
Israel has pressed ahead with construction of the barrier and completed about 200 kilometres since the ICJ issued its order.
To date Israel has built 57 per cent of the projected 723 kilometres of steel and concrete walls, fences and barbed wire, according to UN figures.


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Militants in Southeast Asia rely
on donations: experts
Reuters/bdnews24.com . Manila
Islamic militants across Southeast Asia have become increasingly dependent on donations, including zakat (alms), to finance bombings because governments have tightened bank controls, according to security experts.
More than 50 per cent of terrorist financing in Southeast Asia now comes from individual donations, said Arabinda Acharya of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.
‘It’s now the largest source of money for militants because it’s difficult to detect,’ Acharya said at a workshop on countering the financing of terrorism in Manila this week, adding Islamic jihadists have been avoiding formal channels.
But, he believed the money passing through informal methods, such as couriers, was not as substantial as that funnelled by al-Qaeda support groups before the 2001 deadly attacks in the United States.
After the September 11 attacks, Acharya said militants elsewhere in the world had moved their funds out from banks and invested them in stocks, gems, real estate, insurance and other financial instruments.
‘We learned that Islamic militants in India were speculating in stocks and those in Africa were buying diamonds and other gem stones,’ he said, adding that those in Southeast Asia rely more on donations from charity organisations and from zakat, which is usually but not exclusively collected at mosques.
In the Philippines, Acharya said the deadliest militant group, the Abu Sayyaf, was forced to go into kidnapping and extortion because the money it was getting from foreign and local donors was not enough to finance bombings.
Citing a classified Philippine police report, Acharya said the Abu Sayyaf abandoned a plot in 2006 to blow up targets in Manila as well as build a chemical plant in the south because its funds from abroad were drying up.


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‘Singapore falls short on rights’
Agence France-Presse . Singapore
Despite its impressive economic development, Singapore fails to meet international standards for political and human rights and there are concerns about the independence of its judiciary, an association of lawyers said.
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute identified a number of areas in which Singapore fell far short of international norms, said the association’s executive director Mark Ellis.
‘In particular, democratic debate and media comment are extremely restricted and government officials have initiated numerous successful defamation suits against both political and media critics,’ he said in a statement released late Tuesday in London.
The rights institute also issued 18 recommendations, which it said Singapore’s government should implement urgently.
The group has published a 72-page report on the issue, several months after the IBA held its annual convention in Singapore. The association represents 30,000 lawyers globally.
‘Singapore cannot continue to claim that civil and political rights must take a back seat to economic rights, as its economic development is now of the highest order,’ the report said, calling human rights universal and indivisible.
The IBA’s rights institute ‘strongly encourages Singapore to engage with the international community in a more constructive manner, and to take steps to implement international standards of human rights throughout Singapore.’
It called for Singapore to take its place as a regional leader on human rights, democracy and rule of law, as well as in business and economic development.
Singapore holds the rotating chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose new charter calls for establishment of a regional human rights body.
The IBA report said the cases of opposition politicians JB Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan illustrate concerns over the use of defamation laws to stifle political opposition and expression.
JB Jeyaretnam, 82, a lawyer, was disbarred when declared bankrupt in 2001 after failing to pay libel damages to members of the ruling People’s Action Party, including a former prime minister.


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24 in killed Sri Lanka fighting
Agence France-Presse . Colombo
At least 22 Tamil Tiger rebels and two government soldiers have died in the latest clashes in northern Sri Lanka, the island’s defence ministry said Wednesday.
The fighting, which took place on Tuesday, was centred around the Weli Oya, Vavuniya and Mannar regions, the statement said. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam did not comment on Tuesday’s fighting.
But guerrillas said 50 civilians were killed in the rebel-held north in June, including seven who died in roadside mine attacks blamed on army commandos.
Casualty figures given by either side cannot be independently verified as the defence ministry bars journalists and rights groups from travelling to the frontlines.
The latest figures given by the ministry raises the number of rebels killed by government forces to 4,811 since January, while 432 soldiers have died in the same period.


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