Iran arrests two young women for public dancing: report
Iran arrests two young women for public dancing: report/node/2473716/middle-east
Iran arrests two young women for public dancing: report
Demonstrators hold placards in support of women's activism in Iran, including a portrait of Iranian artist Elham Modaressi (2nd L)(alternatively spelled "Modaresi" or "Modarresi") currently detained in Iran for her alleged participation in anti-government protests, during a march as part of the International Women's Rights Day, in Paris, on March 8, 2024. (AFP)
Iran arrests two young women for public dancing: report
Updated 09 March 2024
AFP
TEHRAN: Two young women were arrested in Tehran after the publication of a video in which they danced to celebrate the coming of the Persian New Year, Iranian media said Saturday.
The clip of the two women hip shaking near Tajrish square, a popular gathering spot for young people in the north of the Iranian capital, went viral on social media.
“The Tehran prosecutor ordered the arrest of two women who broke social norms by dancing in Tajrish,” the Tasnim news agency reported.
The two women were dressed up as Hadji Farouz, a red-clad folklore character whose dancing and songs announce the coming of Nowruz, the Persian New Year that will begin on March 20.
Islamic law as practiced in Iran prohibits mixed dancing or women being alone in public.
Numerous videos of women dancing in public places, especially the metro, have gone viral in recent months in Iran, after a mass protest movement shook the country in late 2022 following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in September of that year.
A 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, Amini had been arrested by the morality police in Tehran for not respecting the strict dress code in force in the Islamic republic.
Syria’s new rulers aim for normalcy one week after Bashar Assad’s fall
‘The new path will have challenges, but that is why we have said Syria is for all and we all have to cooperate’
The militants sought to bring order in Damascus by replicating the structure of its governance in Idlib
Updated 21 sec ago
AP
DAMASCUS: At Damascus’ international airport, the new head of security – one of the militants who marched across Syria to the capital – arrived with his team. The few maintenance workers who showed up for work huddled around Maj Hamza Al-Ahmed, eager to learn what will happen next. They quickly unloaded all the complaints they had been too afraid to express during the rule of President Bashar Assad, which now, inconceivably, is over. They told the bearded fighter they were denied promotions and perks in favor of pro-Assad favorites, and that bosses threatened them with prison for working too slowly. They warned of hardcore Assad supporters among airport staff, ready to return whenever the facility reopens. As Al-Ahmed tried to reassure them, Osama Najm, an engineer, announced: “This is the first time we talk.” This was the first week of Syria’s transformation after Assad’s unexpected fall. Militants, suddenly in charge, met a population bursting with emotions: excitement at new freedoms; grief over years of repression; and hopes, expectations and worries about the future. Some were overwhelmed to the point of tears. The transition has been surprisingly smooth. Reports of reprisals, revenge killings and sectarian violence have been minimal. Looting and destruction have been quickly contained, insurgent fighters disciplined. On Saturday, people went about their lives as usual in the capital, Damascus. Only a single van of fighters was seen. There are a million ways it could go wrong. The country is broken and isolated after five decades of Assad family rule. Families have been torn apart by war, former prisoners are traumatized by the brutalities they suffered, tens of thousands of detainees remain missing. The economy is wrecked, poverty is widespread, inflation and unemployment are high. Corruption seeps through daily life. But in this moment of flux, many are ready to feel out the way ahead. At the airport, Al-Ahmed told the staffers: “The new path will have challenges, but that is why we have said Syria is for all and we all have to cooperate.” The militants have so far said all the right things, Najm said. “But we will not be silent about anything wrong again.” Idlib comes to Damascus At a torched police station, pictures of Assad were torn down and files destroyed after insurgents entered the city Dec. 8. All Assad-era police and security personnel have vanished. On Saturday, the building was staffed by 10 men serving in the police force of the militants’ de facto “salvation government,” which for years governed the militant enclave of Idlib in Syria’s northwest. The militant policemen watch over the station, dealing with reports of petty thefts and street scuffles. One woman complains that her neighbors sabotaged her power supply. A policeman tells her to wait for courts to start operating again. “It will take a year to solve problems” he mumbled. The militants sought to bring order in Damascus by replicating the structure of its governance in Idlib. But there is a problem of scale. One of the policemen estimates the number of militant police at only around 4,000; half are based in Idlib and the rest are tasked with maintaining security in Damascus and elsewhere. Some experts estimate the insurgents’ total fighting force at around 20,000. Right now, the fighters and the public are learning about each other. The fighters drive large SUVs and newer models of vehicles that are out of reach for most residents in Damascus, where they cost 10 times as much because of custom duties and bribes. The fighters carry Turkish lira, long forbidden in government-held areas, rather than the plunging Syrian pound. Most of the bearded fighters hail from conservative, provincial areas. Many are hard-line Islamists. The main insurgent force, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, has renounced its Al-Qaeda past, and its leaders are working to reassure Syria’s religious and ethnic communities that the future will be pluralist and tolerant. But many Syrians remain suspicious. Some fighters sport ribbons with Islamist slogans on their uniforms and not all of them belong to HTS, the most organized group. “The people we see on the streets, they don’t represent us,” said Hani Zia, a Damascus resident from the southern city of Daraa, where the 2011 anti-Assad uprising began. He was concerned by reports of attacks on minorities and revenge killings. “We should be fearful,” he said, adding that he worries some insurgents feel superior to other Syrians because of their years of fighting. “With all due respect to those who sacrificed, we all sacrificed.” Still, fear is not prevalent in Damascus, where many insist they will no longer let themselves be oppressed. Some restaurants have resumed openly serving alcohol, others more discretely to test the mood. At a sidewalk café in the historic Old City’s Christian quarter, men were drinking beer when a fighter patrol passed by. The men turned to each other, uncertain, but the fighters did nothing. When a man waving a gun harassed a liquor store elsewhere in the Old City, the militant police arrested him, one policeman said. Salem Hajjo, a theater teacher who participated in the 2011 protests, said he doesn’t agree with the militants’ Islamist views, but is impressed at their experience in running their own affairs. And he expects to have a voice in the new Syria. “We have never been this at ease,” he said. “The fear is gone. The rest is up to us.” The fighters make a concerted effort to reassure On the night after Assad’s fall, gunmen roamed the streets, celebrating victory with deafening gunfire. Some security agency buildings were torched. People ransacked the airport’s duty free, smashing all the bottles of liquor. The militants blamed some of this on fleeing government loyalists. The public stayed indoors, peeking out at the newcomers. Shops shut down. Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham moved to impose order, ordering a nighttime curfew for three days. It banned celebratory gunfire and moved fighters to protect properties. After a day, people began to emerge. For tens of thousands, their first destination was Assad’s prisons, particularly Saydnaya on the capital’s outskirts, to search for loved ones who disappeared years ago. Few have found any traces. It was wrenching but also unifying. Militants, some of them also searching, mingled with relatives of the missing in the dark halls of prisons that all had feared for years. During celebrations in the street, gunmen invited children to hop up on their armored vehicles. Insurgents posed for photos with women, some with their hair uncovered. Pro-revolution songs blared from cars. Suddenly shops and walls everywhere are plastered with revolutionary flags and posters of activists killed by Assad’s state. TV stations didn’t miss a beat, flipping from praising Assad to playing revolutionary songs. State media aired the flurry of declarations issued by the new insurgent-led transitional government. The new administration called on people to go back to work and urged Syrian refugees around the world to return to help rebuild. It announced plans to rehabilitate and vet the security forces to prevent the return of “those with blood on their hands.” Fighters reassured airport staffers – many of them government loyalists – that their homes won’t be attacked, one employee said. But Syria’s woes are far from being resolved. While produce prices plunged after Assad’s fall, because merchants no longer needed to pay hefty customs fees and bribes, fuel distribution was badly disrupted, jacking up transportation costs and causing widespread and lengthy blackouts. Officials say they want to reopen the airport as soon as possible and this week maintenance crews inspected a handful of planes on the tarmac. Cleaners removed trash, wrecked furniture and merchandise. One cleaner, who identified himself only as Murad, said he earns the equivalent of $15 a month and has six children to feed, including one with a disability. He dreams of getting a mobile phone. “We need a long time to clean this up,” he said.
‘Endless torture’: Turkish inmate recalls hell of Syria jails
Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Mehmet Erturk finally made it back to his home to Magaracik on Monday evening
After he was sentenced to 15 years, the prison authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon
Updated 15 December 2024
AFP
MAGARACIK, Turkiye: Finally home in Turkiye, Mehmet Erturk cannot eat the bread his wife has made him. After 20 years jailed in Syria, half his teeth are missing and the other half are threatening to fall out.
“It was torture after torture,” he said, miming the truncheon blows to the mouth the guards would give him at a notorious Damascus prison known as the Palestine Branch, where he spent part of his time incarcerated.
Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Erturk finally made it back to his home to Magaracik on Monday evening, a village perched at the top of a winding road dotted with olive trees some 10 minutes from the Syrian border.
“My family thought I was dead,” said the 53-year-old, whose face and manner of walking make him look 20 years older.
On the night of his release, he heard gunshots and began to pray.
“We didn’t know what was happening outside. I thought I was finished,” he said.
Then he heard loud hammer blows and within minutes the prison gates were flung open by the militants who ousted Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.
“We hadn’t seen him for 11 years. We had no hope,” admitted his wife Hatice, sitting cross-legged outside their home preparing bread with their youngest daughter, who was barely six months old when her father was arrested.
After he was sentenced to 15 years, the prison authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon, at the mercy of brutal guards.
“Our bones would pop out of the socket when they hit our wrists with hammers,” he said.
“They also poured boiling water down the neck of one prisoner. The flesh from his neck just slid all the way down” to his hips, he said.
Pulling up his right trouser leg, he shows his right ankle, the skin darkened by the chain he wore.
“During the day, it was strictly forbidden to talk... there were cockroaches in the food. It was damp, it stank like a toilet,” he said, recalling days “without clothes or water or food.”
“It was like being in a coffin.”
And there was huge overcrowding.
“They put 115, 120 people in a cell for 20 people. Many people died of starvation,” he said.
And the guards just “threw the dead into rubbish skips.”
Erturk said he paid the price for the hatred Syria’s authorities bore for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who early in the war urged Assad to leave.
“We Turks suffered a lot of torture for that,” he said, saying he was refused medication on grounds of his nationality.
He sank so low he even hoped they would hang him.
“They were taking us to a new prison block and I saw a rope hanging from the ceiling and I said: ‘Thank God, I’m saved’,” he said.
As he recounted the horrors, he often broke off to thank “our dear president Erdogan” for him being back, alive with his family and not one of the countless victims of Syria’s brutal prison system.
Those could number more than 105,000 people since the war began in 2011, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
One of his sisters passes him a handful of old photos.
In one, he is pictured with a lifelong friend called Faruk Karga, who ended up in the same prison with him shortly after the picture was taken.
But Karga never came home.
“He died of starvation in prison in around 2018,” said Erturk.
“He weighed about 40 kilos.”
Syria’s de facto leader not interested in new conflicts despite Israeli attacks
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights
Updated 15 December 2024
Reuters
DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad Al-Sharaa said on Saturday Israel is using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but that he is not interested in engaging in new conflicts as the country focuses on rebuilding following the end of Bashar Assad’s reign.
Sharaa — better known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — leads the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group that swept Assad from power last week, ending the family’s five-decade iron-fisted rule.
Israel has since moved into a demilitarised zone inside Syria created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, including the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon that overlooks Damascus, where it took over an abandoned Syrian military post.
Israel, which has said that it does not intend to stay there and calls the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure to ensure border security, has also carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles.
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
“Israeli arguments have become weak and no longer justify their recent violations. The Israelis have clearly crossed the lines of engagement in Syria, which poses a threat of unwarranted escalation in the region,” Sharaa said in an interview published on the website of Syria TV, a pro-opposition channel.
“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations. The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”
He also said diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that “uncalculated military adventures” were not wanted.
On Russia, whose military intervention almost a decade ago helped tip the balance in Assad’s favor and which gave asylum to the ousted leader earlier this week, Sharaa said that its relations with Syria should serve common interests.
“The current stage requires careful management of international relations,” he added.
“The strain on our resources has been substantial, worsening existing economic trouble,” Mikati said
“Today, and after the political transformation in Syria, the best resolution to this issue is for Syrians to go back“
Updated 15 December 2024
AFP
ROME: Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called Saturday for Syrians who sought refuge in his country to return home following the fall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar Assad.
“The consequences of the Syrian war made Lebanon home to the largest number of refugees per capita, with one-third of our population comprising of Syrian refugees,” Mikati said at a Rome political festival.
“The strain on our resources has been substantial, worsening existing economic trouble and creating fierce competition for jobs and services,” he said in English.
“Today, and after the political transformation in Syria, the best resolution to this issue is for Syrians to go back to their homeland,” he said.
Authorities say Lebanon, population 5.8 million, currently hosts around two million Syrians, while more than 800,000 are registered with the United Nations — the highest number of refugees per capita in the world.
Many fled Syria after its civil war began following the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Mikati told a festival held by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party that “the international community, particularly Europe, should assist in the return of Syrians.”
They should do so “by engaging in early recovery efforts in secure areas with Syria,” he said.
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met on Saturday with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Middle East envoy Brett McGurk
Updated 15 December 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: Thousands of Israelis demonstrated Saturday for a deal to release the remaining hostages still held in Gaza after more than 14 months of war against Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
“We all can agree that we have failed until now and that we can reach an agreement now,” Lior Ashkenazi, a prominent Israeli actor, told a crowd gathered in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
Itzik Horn, whose sons Eitan and Iair are still being held captive in Gaza, said: “End the war, the time has arrived for action and the time has arrived to bring everyone home.”
There has been guarded optimism in recent days that a ceasefire and hostage release deal for Gaza might finally be within reach after months of abortive mediation efforts.
Palestinian militants abducted 251 hostages during Hamas’s October 2023 attack, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Qatar, a key mediator in the negotiations, said last week there was new “momentum” for talks.
US Security of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Jordan on Saturday: “This is the moment to finally conclude that agreement.”
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met on Saturday with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Middle East envoy Brett McGurk.
“The meeting addressed efforts to reach an agreement for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange in Gaza,” El-Sisi’s office said.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack last year that resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,930 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
