بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Headline News 27/09/2017
Headlines:
New Libyan Plan
The Kurdish Vote
No Privacy for Muslims
Details:
New Libyan Plan
Ghassan Salame, the UN's envoy for Libya, outlined a new action plan for Libya at a high-level meeting on Wednesday 20th September in New York. This took place as various Libyan representatives and world leaders were in New York for the UN's annual general assembly. Salame said the initiative would be led by Libyans to find a way out of the crisis that is split the nation among rival militias and governments. The UN said its road map for peace in Libya wasn't working in its current form and unveiled plans to revamp the agreement to unify the North African country and pave the way for new elections. The new plan would see the convening in Tunis of a committee to draft amendments to the original 2015 political agreement. A national conference will then be held in Tunis, under the auspices of the UN Secretary General to bring together Libyan groups. At this conference new members of the GNA Presidency Council would be elected as the councils term would end in December 2017. All of this with a one year timeline. Examining this new plan shows it is really the same as all the earlier plans. It promises a permanent government, with timelines and promises to represent all factions in Libya, which in the end it doesn't, and it will fail again like all the previous plans.
The Kurdish Vote
The Kurdistan Reginal Government (KRG) carried out its internationally condemned referendum for independence from the Baghdad government on September 26. Even before the results are announced its safe to say impendence from the Kurds will overwhelmingly win. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey threatened the Kurdish region with military intervention. Iran — which also opposed the vote — held military exercises along their border Sunday as a show of defiance. Statements from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed regret that the vote was held and said issues between Iraq's federal government and Kurdish region should be resolved through dialogue. Once the vote is finished and the dust settles, the Kurds in North Iraq fill find nothing has in reality changed and they remain a state within a state.
No Privacy for Muslims
Muhammad Rabbani the managing director of the British human rights organization Cage was convicted on Monday 25 September 2017, after a court found him guilty of willfully obstructing police officers carrying out their duties under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act after being stopped for questioning at London's Heathrow Airport early in the morning on 20 November 2016 following a flight from Doha, Qatar. Rabbani refused to share the passwords of his devices, as they contained confidential data on clients who were victims of torture and rendition. Rabbani refused to reveal the passwords for his electronic devices to police to protect the privacy of a client who claimed he had been tortured while in US custody. Rabbani’s lawyers further highlighted: “The only comfort in this outcome is that it exposes vividly how shoddy and shabby are the claims that Schedule 7 stops are carefully calibrated, proportionally applied measures that serve to protect national security. The reality is Mr Rabbani's experience boils down to having to run a capricious gauntlet of interference with every journey and with the Damocles sword of prosecution hanging over every stop.”