Month: July 2024

Washington — A Mongolian court on Friday sentenced a prominent journalist to nearly five years in prison in a move that local analysts and journalists say marks a concerning development for the country’s media.

In a closed-door trial, the court convicted Unurtsetseg Naran of spreading false information, tax evasion, money laundering, revealing personal secrets and illegal acquisition of state secrets. Unurtsetseg, who denies wrongdoing, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison.

Unurtsetseg, who is the editor-in-chief of the news site Zarig, was first arrested in December 2023 on accusations of spreading false information and contempt of court.  More serious charges were later added, but the journalist was released in February to house arrest.

Unurtsetseg will have the opportunity to appeal the conviction.

Anand Tumurtogoo, a freelance journalist based in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, told VOA the conviction has created anxiety among some of the country’s reporters.

“It is a dark day in Mongolia’s media sector,” said Anand, who has contributed to news outlets that include Foreign Policy, ProPublica and VOA Mandarin Service.

“It gives a horrible, chilling effect among Mongolian media. If you go against people who have power, you might face these kinds of consequences,” Anand said.

Unurtsetseg is well-known in Mongolia for her critical coverage. In one of her best-known investigations, the journalist questioned companies that had defaulted on loans to the Development Bank of Mongolia. She also uncovered sexual abuse in a Buddhist boarding school and exposed violence in the military.

Mongolia’s Washington embassy did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Galbaatar Lkhagvasuren, a lawyer at the pro-democracy Mongolian group Globe International Center, told VOA that Unurtsetseg’s case underscores how two violations in Mongolia’s criminal code — spreading false information and illegal acquisition of state secrets — should be abolished.

“These provisions risk unduly restricting investigative journalism and freedom of expression,” said Galbaatar.

“This event shows that there is a real risk that journalists will be convicted again and again if the provisions of the Criminal Code, which are characterized by undue restrictions on the professional activities of journalists and the stifling of critical voices, are still in force,” Galbaatar said. “As a result, journalists have the consequences of fear and self-censorship.”

Unurtsetseg has faced previous legal threats related to her work. She faced 12 defamation complaints in 2019 and four in 2020, all filed by politicians mentioned in her reporting, according to the International Federation of Journalists.

Defamation cases are often used to retaliate against journalists in Mongolia, according to press freedom groups.

Unurtsetseg’s conviction comes two months after another Mongolian journalist was charged.

In early May, Bayarmaa Ayurzana, editor-in-chief of the Mongolian news website Tac.mn, was briefly detained and then charged with “threatening to disseminate information that might cause serious damage” to Mongolia’s deputy prime minister.

Bayarmaa has reported extensively on suspected embezzlement by the deputy prime minister. Her trial date has not been announced, according to Reporters Without Borders, or RSF. If convicted, she could face up to eight years behind bars.

Mongolia currently ranks 109 out of 180 on the RSF World Press Freedom Index, where 1 shows the best media environment. RSF’s analysis of Mongolia notes the country “broadly respects the principles” of a free press, but that its “flawed defamation laws facilitate arbitrary lawsuits against journalists.”
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ISLAMABAD — Under pressure from right wing protesters, Pakistan’s government declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a terrorist Friday, demanding the leader be brought to justice for alleged war crimes against Palestinians. 

The statement by Rana Sanaullah, adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on political and public affairs, was part of a deal with a religious political party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan or TLP, to end its days-long sit-in on a key road outside the capital.  

“Netanyahu is a terrorist and a perpetrator of war crimes,” said Sanaullah, acceding to a key TLP demand. The adviser sat flanked by TLP leaders and Minister for Information Attaullah Tarar at a press conference in Islamabad. 

Thousands of TLP supporters rallied near the capital last Saturday to condemn Israeli strikes in Gaza. They demanded the government declare Netanyahu a terrorist, boycott Israeli products and send aid to Palestinians. 

After the rally, many continued a sit-in at a busy interchange that connects Islamabad to the neighboring garrison city of Rawalpindi, causing a severe disruption for commuters. 

“We demand that he [Netanyahu] be put on trial,” the Pakistani prime minister’s top aide said Friday. “We wholeheartedly condemn this cruelty [Israel’s actions in Gaza], Israel, and all the powers that are involved in it.”   

The radical TLP has a history of bringing the government to its knees through public agitation. In 2017, thousands of its supporters held a nearly three-week sit-in against an amendment to the oath for parliamentarians, paralyzing the capital. 

Pakistan does not have diplomatic or trade ties with Israel, a state Islamabad has not recognized. It supports the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders. 

Despite no trade ties between the two countries, many Pakistanis have called for a boycott of Israeli products as well as Western brands seen as supportive of the Middle Eastern state. 

“We will not only boycott Israel, but all products related to it, and companies that are directly or indirectly involved in this cruelty or are helping those forces,” Sanaullah said, adding that the government will form a committee to research which products had links to Israel. 

The government also promised the radical party it will send more than 1,000 tons of relief supplies for Palestinians by the end of the month. Since October of last year, Pakistan has sent nine humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza. 

More than 38,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed and public service infrastructure decimated in Israeli operations meant to eliminate Hamas. The military action came after the militant group struck Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 civilians and taking more than 250 hostages. 

On Friday, the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, declared Israel’s settlement policies and exploitation of natural resources in the Palestinian territories were in breach of international law. 

South Africa is pursuing a genocide case against Israel in the U.N.-affiliated court, based at The Hague in the Netherlands. While the court declined to declare Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide, it has called on Israel to halt military actions in parts of the Gaza Strip and not engage in actions that could cause further harm to Palestinians.     

The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court recently sought arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  

Israel and the United States condemned the court’s action, saying Israel had the right to defend itself. 

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, has called the situation in Gaza a genocide. 

In April, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a non-binding resolution Pakistan presented on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, calling for an end to the sale, transfer and diversion of military arms and equipment to Israel.  
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Washington — Six months after a controversial election delivered a third consecutive victory to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the government of Bangladesh is faced with the most serious outbreak of public unrest in a decade. The January elections were marred by an opposition boycott, but the challenge the government faces this month comes from university students with no apparent political affiliation.  

The students have been protesting since the beginning of July, demanding an end to a quota system for government jobs that allocates 56% to applicants from special categories and the remaining 44% to general applicants. That, students say, discriminates against most applicants with the required qualifications.  

The protests turned deadly Thursday as the students enforced a country-wide shutdown, triggering widespread clashes with police that have left at least 19 dead and scores wounded. The deaths follow violence on Tuesday when at least six people were killed.  

Some media outlets put the death toll much higher. 

Observers and media reports put the blame for much of the violence on the police and the Bangladesh Chhatra League or BCL, the student wing of Hasina’s ruling Awami League party.  

The government is reeling from an economic crisis, with increasing costs of living hitting ordinary households hard, said political analyst Mushtuq Hussain. 

Lingering public discontent over the elections, recent revelations of massive corruption in high places and on-going strikes by public university teachers over pension provisions have combined to make it a perfect storm for Hasina.  

“The student movement has spread, and various groups seem to have become involved in this, which is turning into the most serious and widespread political challenge this government has faced,” Hussain told VOA in an interview.  

Hussain, a former general secretary of the Dhaka University Central Students Union, said the government appears to have branded agitating students as their enemy and painted them in a political color. Hussain said the government has miscalculated badly, by thinking the students’ movement could be suppressed through violence. 

“The government is already using violence against the protesters and if opposition political parties get involved in the violence, then the situation will spin out of everyone’s control,” Hussain warned.  

The initial student protests over job quotas took place in 2018 when students urged the government to cancel the 30% reservations for the grandchildren of veterans of Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971.  

In the early years following independence, the quotas were reserved for war veterans themselves, then expanded to include their children in 1997 and grandchildren in 2010. 

Students argued that was clearly discriminatory and needed to change. 

Hasina initially resisted their demands, but then took everyone by surprise by scrapping the entire quota system – including the reservations for women, minorities and disabled people. There were protests from civil society groups who called for reform of the quotas, rather than outright cancellation, but the government remained unmoved, and the agitation died down.  

Trouble reared its head again in June 2024, when a group of people, including relatives of war veterans, went to the High Court and challenged the government’s 2018 order to cancel the quotas. The court ruled that the government order was illegal and restored the quotas in their entirety.  

The government appealed the High Court ruling, and several students took the matter to the Supreme Court. The quota case has now moved to the top court, where judges have urged students to wait for them to issue a ruling. But the agitation has continued, as student leaders fear that the whole court saga is a government ploy to have the quotas restored.  

“We don’t want quotas, any type of quotas,” one of the leaders of the movement Mohiuddin Roni told VOA. “Minorities and other marginalized communities should come and join us, and we can discuss how to minimize the quotas.”  

Quotas in government jobs are not new in Bangladesh – they have existed since the days of British colonial rule, to ensure fair representation of regions, women, ethnic minorities, etc. But young people are now forcefully questioning a system that they see as depriving them of opportunities.  

“This young generation has become victims of jobless growth … the economy shows growth, but jobs are not created,” professor of economics Anu Muhammad wrote in the local Daily Star newspaper. “The total uncertainty in getting jobs … created frustration and anger among the students.”  

Six years after the original movement, the student anger against the quota system appears to have remained as strong as before. Thousands have taken to the streets, setting up blockades, disrupting traffic in cities and on highways and battling both police and BCL activists.  

To put a lid on the unrest, public universities around the country shut their campuses and ordered students residing in college dormitories to vacate the premises. Sensing the gravity of the situation, Hasina took to the airways and addressed the nation Wednesday.  

She acknowledged the serious nature of the violence and promised a judicial inquiry into the killings. But she was noncommittal on the central issue of the unrest.  

“I am urging everyone to be patient until the Supreme Court delivers its judgment on the issue. I am sure the student community will get justice from the highest court; they will not be disappointed,” Hasina said. 

Hussain said Hasina appeared to have toned down her rhetoric, but she did not announce any step to reform the quota system, which is the core demand of the students. This was a missed opportunity, he said.  

“This government is hugely experienced; it is a political government and knows how to defuse a situation. If it does not move quickly and the violence spreads further, then the country’s education system, democracy, everything will come under threat,” he said.  

This story originated in VOA’s Bangla service.
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LAHORE, Pakistan — Authorities in Pakistan said Friday they had caught an internationally designated senior al-Qaida operative, describing him as a close aide of the terror network’s slain leader, Osama bin Laden.

The Counter-Terrorism Department, or CTD, in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, made the announcement, identifying the detainee as Amin ul Haq, an Afghan national, and accusing him of planning a “large-scale terrorism project” in Pakistan.

The statement said the terror suspect was apprehended during a successful “intelligence-based operation” in the town of Sarai Alamgir.

“Amin ul Haq was a close associate of Osama bin Laden since 1996 and was involved in many terrorist activities,” the CTD stated.

It noted that Haq’s name was included in the United Nations’ list of global terrorists, saying his arrest was “an important development in the ongoing efforts to combat terrorism” in Pakistan and globally.

Friday’s announcement came nearly two weeks after the U.N. Security Council sanctions monitoring team said in its latest report that Pakistani authorities had arrested Haq “for illegal possession of weapons while crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan in March 2024.” The report shared no further details.

It was not immediately known whether the United States played a role in helping Islamabad arrest the senior al-Qaida operative. The U.S. Treasury Department has listed Haq as a specially designated global terrorist.

According to the U.N. website, Haq, also known as Dr. Amin, coordinated security for bin Laden and was designated for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts” and “supplying, selling, or transferring arms and related material” to support activities of bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America, was killed by U.S. special forces during a 2011 raid on his hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

Haq served as bin Laden’s security chief at the Battle of Tora Bora with U.S. forces in late 2001 before fleeing to Pakistan. He emerged from years of hiding in his native eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar in August 2021, when the Taliban regained control of the country after all U.S.-led NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

Washington accused the then-Taliban government in Kabul of harboring al-Qaida leaders and allowing them to orchestrate the 9/11 terror strikes on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington.

The attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, prompted U.S. and allied troops to invade Afghanistan nearly a month later as part of the global “war on terror” and ousted the Taliban from power for refusing to surrender bin Laden.

The Taliban regrouped in neighboring Pakistan, allegedly with the support of that country’s spy agency, and waged insurgent attacks on U.S.-led foreign troops as well as their Afghan allies in the years that followed before reclaiming power on August 15, 2021.

The U.S. military says it killed or captured hundreds of al-Qaida members during its presence in Afghanistan and significantly degraded the terror network’s ability to threaten the United States and its allies.

However, the U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team report, released on July 10, 2024, said al-Qaida has established several new training camps in over a dozen Afghan provinces, and the group “still uses Afghanistan as a permissive haven under the Taliban, raising questions about Al-Qaida’s intent.”

The Taliban have repeatedly pledged they would not allow any foreign group to use Afghan territory to threaten other nations, but critics continue to question those claims.

A U.S. drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded bin Laden as al-Qaida leader, in a posh residential neighborhood in the Afghan capital in July 2022. The Taliban denounced the strike but has never acknowledged whether al-Zawahiri was present in Kabul, saying an investigation into the alleged incident was underway.

The U.N. stated in its report this month that militants linked to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a globally designated terrorist group, are also receiving training and being armed at al-Qaida training camps on Afghan soil, enabling them to intensify their cross-border attacks against Pakistan.
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Dhaka — Television news channels in Bangladesh were off the air and telecommunications were widely disrupted on Friday amid violent student protests against quotas for government jobs in which nearly two dozen people have been killed this week.

There was no immediate word from the government.

French news agency AFP reported that the death toll in Thursday’s violence had risen to 32. Reuters had reported that 13 people were killed, adding to six dead earlier in the week, and could not immediately verify the higher number.

India’s Economic Times newspaper reported that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government “was forced” to call in the army late on Thursday to help “maintain order.” Reuters could not independently verify the information.

Authorities had cut some mobile services on Thursday to try to quell the unrest, but the disruption spread across the country on Friday morning, Reuters witnesses in Dhaka and New Delhi said.

Telephone calls from overseas were mostly not getting connected and calls through the internet could not be completed.

Web sites of several Bangladesh-based newspapers were not updating on Friday morning and their social media handles were also not active. 

Only some voice calls were working in the country and there was no mobile data or broadband on Friday morning, a Reuters photographer in Dhaka said. Even SMSes or mobile-to-mobile text messages were not going through, he added.

News television channels and state broadcaster BTV were off the air while entertainment channels continued normal transmission, a Reuters witness said.

Some news channels displayed a message which said they were not able to broadcast due to technical reasons and that programming would be back soon, the witness said. 

Streets in the capital Dhaka were deserted on Friday, which is a weekly holiday in the country. There was little traffic and very few rickshaw pullers on the streets and thin crowds near a vegetable and fish market, he said, adding that a protest rally had been called at the main mosque at around 0800 GMT. 

The nationwide agitation, the biggest since Hasina was re-elected earlier this year, has been fueled by high youth unemployment. Nearly a fifth of the country’s 170 million population is out of work or education. 

Protesters are demanding the state stop setting aside 30% of government jobs for the families of people who fought in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. 

Hasina’s government had scrapped the quota system in 2018, but a high court reinstated it last month. The government appealed against the verdict and the Supreme Court suspended the high court order, pending hearing the government’s appeal on Aug. 7. 
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