AFP Asia Business

US government lawyers pushed Friday for the case of a pro-Palestinian protest leader slated for deportation to be moved to a Louisiana court thought to be sympathetic to President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown.Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil — a prominent face of the protest movement that erupted in response to Israel’s war in Gaza — was arrested and taken to Louisiana earlier this month, sparking protests. Several other foreign student protesters have been similarly targeted.Also Friday, Columbia University’s interim president stepped down, one week after the Ivy League school announced a package of measures to placate Trump and his criticisms over student protests and alleged campus anti-Semitism. He has targeted the school with hundreds of millions in funding cuts. Katrina Armstrong will be replaced by Board of Trustees co-chair Claire Shipman, who will serve until a permanent replacement is hired, Columbia said in a statement.”Dr Armstrong accepted the role of interim president at a time of great uncertainty for the University and worked tirelessly to promote the interests of our community,” Board of Trustees chair David Greenwald said.Shipman noted her “clear understanding of the serious challenges before us.”The government has not accused Khalil of any crime, but instead ordered his deportation and canceled his resident’s permit, alleging he was undermining US foreign policy.At a hearing in New Jersey, government lawyer August Flentje said that “for jurisdictional certainty, the case belongs in Louisiana.”But Khalil’s lawyer Baher Azmy accused the government of seeking to move the case to bolster its “retaliation.”The judge said he would not rule immediately on shifting the case to the Western District of Louisiana, a more conservative bench that has previously leaned towards Trump’s policies.Khalil was not present at the hearing, but his wife Noor attended with several supporters.- ‘Witch hunt’? -Khalil’s arrest has outraged Trump opponents, free speech advocates and some on the political right, who say the case will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.Immigration officers have similarly detained and sought to deport a Tufts University student from Turkey, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Columbia student Yunseo Chung, a US permanent resident originally from South Korea.Like Khalil, Ozturk has been detained in Louisiana despite her initial arrest in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.Ozturk’s lawyer said Thursday that “we should all be horrified at the way (officers) abducted Rumeysa in broad daylight” after footage of masked, plainclothes officers surrounding the veiled student circulated online.A federal judge in Massachusetts on Friday issued a court order saying “Ozturk shall not be removed from the United States until further Order of this Court,” while the jurisdiction of her case is reviewed.Students at Columbia have described a culture of fear in the wake of the action against the college and its students.- ‘Retaliation’ -“Nothing can protect you,” said a Hispanic-American student who participated in last year’s protests calling for a Gaza ceasefire and for Columbia to divest from Israel.”I take precautions, I check if someone is following me. Before, I wasn’t afraid to leave my apartment door unlocked; now I lock it in case an agent comes in to check my stuff.”Nadia Urbinati, a professor of political theory at Columbia, told AFP that “writing papers, teaching, having new research, researchers or fellows becomes more restricted, controlled and monitored.”A foreign student, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, said Trump had sought to “isolate” activists. “We try to laugh,” said another, but “the feeling of fear and paranoia is widespread.”Dozens protested in support of Khalil outside the New Jersey courthouse, holding Palestinian flags and banners.As well as targeting foreign students at Columbia University, the Trump administration has sought to slash $400 million of federal funding and grants over alleged anti-Semitism on campus.Last week the university announced a package of measures to placate Trump, including “improvements to our disciplinary processes.” Columbia said it would require protesters to identify themselves when challenged, even if they wear masks, as many did during the height of the pro-Palestinian protests.It also announced the expansion of its security team, including hiring 36 officers empowered to remove or arrest those that break university rules.The Trump administration had demanded that the university deploy external oversight, but the school stopped short of that, instead vowing to engage with outside academics on the issue.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologized Friday for failing to defend an Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker who said he was attacked by Israeli settlers.The group, which hosts and awards the Oscars each year, wrote to members after movie stars including Joaquin Phoenix, Penelope Cruz and Richard Gere had slammed its initially muted response to the incident.The Academy “condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world” and its leaders “abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances,” said the letter, seen by AFP.Hamdan Ballal co-directed “No Other Land,” which won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards. This week, he said he had been assaulted by settlers and detained at gunpoint by soldiers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Unlike multiple other prominent filmmaker groups, the US-based Academy initially did not issue a statement. On Wednesday, it sent a letter to members that condemned “harming or suppressing artists for their work or their viewpoints,” without naming Ballal.By Friday morning, more than 600 Academy members had signed their own statement in response. “It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its filmmakers just a few weeks later,” the members said.”We stand in condemnation of the brutal assault and unlawful detention of Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal by settlers and Israeli forces in the West Bank,” they wrote.The Academy leadership’s response “fell far short of the sentiments this moment calls for,” said the members.The Los Angeles-based group’s board convened an extraordinary meeting Friday to confront the deepening crisis, according to trade outlet Deadline.Later Friday, it issued an apology to Ballal “and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement.””We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr Ballal and the film by name,” it wrote.”No Other Land” chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta — an area Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.Despite winning the coveted Oscar, the film has struggled to find a major US distributor.Following Monday’s incident, Ballal told AFP the “brutality” of the attack “made me feel it was because I won the Oscar.”During his detention at an Israeli military center, Ballal said he noticed soldiers mentioning his name alongside the word “Oscar” during shift changes.He was released Tuesday, after being detained the previous day for allegedly “hurling rocks.” Yuval Abraham, who also co-directed and appears in the documentary, has spoken out against the Academy’s response.”After our criticism, the academy’s leaders sent out this email to members explaining their silence on Hamdan’s assault: they need to respect ‘unique viewpoints’,” he wrote on X, sharing a screenshot of the Academy’s letter.

Turkey intensified its crackdown on anti-government protests on Friday, arresting the lawyer of the jailed Istanbul mayor and targeting more journalists, as the country faces its biggest wave of unrest in more than a decade.Nine days after the arrest and subsequent jailing of Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, demonstrators were again out on the streets on Thursday night, despite a growing sense of fear.Overnight, police raided more homes, and Imamoglu — seen as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest political rival — said his lawyer Mehmet Pehlivan had been “detained on fictitious grounds”, in a post on X published via his legal team.”As if the coup against democracy was not enough, they cannot tolerate the victims defending themselves. The evil that a handful of incompetent people are inflicting on our country is growing,” the mayor wrote. “Release my lawyer immediately!”It was not clear on what grounds Pehlivan had been detained but opposition broadcaster Halk TV said it was linked to allegations of “laundering assets originating from a crime”.He was later freed on condition that he does not leave the country.The Istanbul Bar Association, meanwhile, said that 20 minors had been arrested between March 22 to 25 on charges of violating a ban on protests.Seven were still in custody, it said.Turkey’s repressive response to its worst bout of street unrest since 2013 has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised concerns over Ankara’s handling of the protests and French President Emmanuel Macron denounced its “systematic attacks” on opposition figures and freedom of assembly.- Media arrests -Police detained two Turkish women journalists in dawn raids on their homes, the Turkish Journalists’ Union (TGS) said on X.”Another dawn raid. Two of our colleagues who were following the #Sarachane protests were detained,” it said, referring to the name of the district where Istanbul City Hall is located. “Let journalists do their job! Stop these unlawful detentions!” the union said.Swedish journalist Joakim Medin has also been jailed, his employer Dagens ETC said Friday, after he was held a day earlier as he arrived in the country to cover the demonstrations.Turkish media said that Medin has been accused of having “insulted the president”, and being a “member of an armed terrorist organisation”.”I know that these accusations are false, 100 percent false,” his newspaper’s editor-in-chief Andreas Gustavsson wrote on his X account.Gustavsson confirmed Medin’s jailing to AFP in a text message.Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said the country was taking his arrest “seriously”.Medin’s detention came just hours after the authorities released the last of 11 journalists arrested in dawn raids on Monday for covering the protests, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.”The decision to throw me in jail came even though my identity as a journalist was known, and evidence provided to prove it,” Akgul told AFP after he was freed on Thursday. “I hope no other journalists will face a situation like this. But unfortunately, I fear that arbitrary acts to silence journalists and stop them from doing their job will continue in Turkey.”Turkish authorities held BBC journalist Mark Lowen for 17 hours on Wednesday before deporting him on the grounds that he posed “a threat to public order”, the broadcaster said.In a statement late on Thursday, Turkey’s communications directorate said Lowen had been deported “due to a lack of accreditation”.Baris Altintas, co-director of the MLSA NGO that is helping many detained people, told AFP that authorities “seem to be very determined on limiting coverage of the protest and as such we fear that the crackdown on the press will not only continue but also increase”.In its first statement on the protests, Britain said it expected Ankara to ensure “the rule of law, including timely and transparent judicial processes”, a foreign ministry spokesperson said. Turkey’s broadcasting watchdog RTUK also slapped a 10-day broadcast ban on the opposition TV channel Sozcu on Thursday, pointing to alleged violations linked to incitement to “hatred and hostility”.- ‘I’m scared’ -During Thursday night’s protest, student demonstrators could be seen being rounded up by the police and taken away, an AFP correspondent said. “We’re here for our rights but I’m scared,” a 21-year-old protester called Raftel told AFP, his words echoing the unease felt by many as thousands of young demonstrators flooded Istanbul’s streets.”There are some very serious illegal things going on here, young people have been beaten for days,” said Baturalp Akalin, 25, a rare protester with his face uncovered.”We young people are on the streets of Istanbul to defend our country’s democratic rights.”More than 1,879 people have been detained since March 19, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Thursday. 

Marwa fled Taliban rule in Afghanistan because she wanted to study, work, wear jeans and go to the park without a male chaperone. Now she is under lock and key in Costa Rica, along with hundreds of other migrants expelled by the United States to third countries in Central America.Costa Rica is one of three Central American countries, along with Panama and Guatemala, that have agreed to receive migrants from other countries and to detain them until they are sent to their home nations or other host countries. A fourth country — El Salvador — took a group of Venezuelans and jailed them in a maximum-security prison after the United States claimed, without providing evidence, that they are gang members.AFP spoke to several migrants from a group of about 200 people, including around 80 children, detained at a facility near Costa Rica’s border with Panama.All said they feared for their lives in their homeland. Marwa, 27, said she was terrified at the thought that she, her husband and two-year-old daughter could be sent back to Afghanistan.Her husband Mohammad Asadi, 31, who ran a construction company back home, was threatened by the Taliban for selling materials to American companies.”I know if I go back I will die there. I will be killed by the Taliban,” Marwa told AFP in English, in an interview conducted through the center’s perimeter fence.Alireza Salimivir, a 35-year-old Iranian Christian, said he and his wife face a similar fate.”Due to our conversion from Islam to Christianity… it’s jail or the death penalty for us,” he said.- Tropical limbo -On his return to office in January, US President Donald Trump launched what he vowed would be the biggest migrant deportation wave in American history and signed an order suspending asylum claims at the southern border.Citing pressure from “our economically powerful brother to the north,” Costa Rica said it had agreed to collaborate in the “repatriation of 200 illegal immigrants to their country.”But only 74 of the migrants have been repatriated so far, with another 10 set to follow, according to the authorities.The rest are in limbo.They refuse to be deported to their homelands, but no other country — including Costa Rica itself, which has a long tradition of offering asylum — has offered to take them in.”We can’t go back, nor can we stay here. We don’t know the culture and don’t speak Spanish,” said Marwa, who said she wanted to be close to relatives “in Canada, the United States or Europe.”- Prison or war -German Smirnov, a 36-year-old Russian former election official, said he fled to the United States with his wife and six-year-old son after flagging up fraud in last year’s presidential election.He said his request for asylum in the United States was “totally ignored, like it had never existed.”If returned to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, he said: “They will give me two options, sit in prison or go to war (in Ukraine).”Marwa and her husband also said they wanted to seek asylum in the United States when they arrived at the US-Mexican border earlier this year after a grueling overland journey through 10 countries, starting in Brazil.But they were never given the chance to file an asylum claim. Instead, they were detained and flown to Costa Rica 18 days later.Asadi said an immigration official verbally abused Marwa for wearing a hijab and singled her out to pick up trash, alone.Smirnov said they treated the migrants, including women and children, “like scum.”- Costa Rica policy change -At the Costa Rican facility, the group said they were well fed and allowed to use their cell phones, but their passports had been seized by the police.”There is a systematic pattern of human rights violations in a country that has always prided itself on defending them,” said former Costa Rican diplomat Mauricio Herrera, who has filed a legal challenge to the migrants’ detention.”This is a very serious setback for Costa Rica,” he told AFP.Michael Garcia Bochenek, children’s rights counsel at Human Rights Watch, warned Costa Rica in a statement against being “complicit in flagrant US abuses.”

Stock markets plunged Friday as a closely watched US inflation reading heated up amid intensifying concerns over fallout from President Donald Trump’s incoming wave of tariffs.Shares in automakers fell further as they brace for 25 percent US tariffs due to kick in next week along with a raft of “reciprocal” surcharges tailored to different countries.The …

Global markets slide as fears over US tariffs intensify Read More »

Israel said on Friday it will strike anywhere in Lebanon it sees a threat, after rocket fire prompted it to bomb Beirut for the first time during the fragile four-month-old truce with Hezbollah.Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam described the strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs as “a dangerous escalation” and French President Emmanuel Macron called it an “unacceptable” truce violation.The health ministry reported no casualties from the Beirut attack but said Israeli strikes in the south killed five people.It was the second time rockets had been launched at Israel from Lebanon since the November ceasefire — the first was last Saturday — and the second time Iran-backed Hezbollah denied involvement.”The equation has changed,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “We will continue to enforce the ceasefire with force, strike everywhere in Lebanon against any threat to the State of Israel.”Israel has continued to carry out often-deadly air raids in southern and eastern Lebanon since the ceasefire, striking what it says are Hezbollah military targets that violated the agreement.But Friday’s was the first in the capital’s southern suburbs since the ceasefire. It came after the military warned residents to “immediately evacuate” the area.It said the attack targeted a “site used to store UAVs by Hezbollah’s Aerial Unit (127) in the area of Dahieh, a key Hezbollah terrorist stronghold”.Israel heavily bombed the area during its war with the group last year.At a joint press conference with Macron in Paris, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said an investigation will have to be conducted but all indications are “Hezbollah is not responsible” for the latest rocket fire.An AFP photographer at the scene said the Israeli strike completely destroyed the targeted building. Black smoke rose into the sky and fire burned in the rubble.Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israel also bombarded around a dozen areas of the south, killing three people in Kfar Tebnit near Nabatieh and two in nearby Yohmor.- ‘Very afraid’ -Israel’s warning sparked panic in the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut, AFP correspondents reported.”We’re very afraid the war will return,” said Mohammed, 55, a taxi driver rushing to pick up his daughter from school and leave the area.The Israeli military said two “projectiles” were fired towards Israel, with one intercepted and the other falling inside Lebanon.Hezbollah said it “confirms the party’s respect for the ceasefire agreement and denies any involvement in the rockets launched today from the south of Lebanon”.Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel was due to complete its troop withdrawal from Lebanon by February 18 after missing a January deadline, but it has kept soldiers in five places it deems “strategic”.The agreement also required Hezbollah to pull its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.The Lebanese army deployed as the Israeli army pulled back.Salam urged his army chief “to act quickly to… uncover those behind the irresponsible rocket fire that threatens Lebanon’s stability” and arrest them.His office said he had contacted foreign officials including the US deputy special envoy for the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus.The United States chairs a committee which also includes France and is tasked with overseeing the truce.The Lebanese army said it identified the site of the rocket launch, just north of the Litani River.- UN fears -At the press conference in Paris, Macron said he would be discussing the Israeli attack with US President Donald Trump and then with Netanyahu.”There is no activity that justifies such strikes,” Macron said.But the Trump administration again defended Israel, blaming the Lebanese government for not doing more to disarm Hezbollah.”As part of the cessation of hostilities agreement, the government of Lebanon is responsible for disarming Hezbollah, and we expect the Lebanese armed forces to disarm these terrorists to prevent further hostilities,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.Iran described the “excuses” put forward to justify Israel’s attack on Beirut as “completely unjustified and baseless”.Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei called for “decisive measures” from the international community to address the “lawlessness” of Israel’s continual use of military force from Gaza to Syria and Lebanon.UN special envoy for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called the cross-border exchange of fire “deeply concerning”. She urged restraint by all sides and said a return to wider conflict “must be avoided at all costs”.burs/it/kir/jsa

Movie stars including Joaquin Phoenix, Penelope Cruz and Richard Gere have blasted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for failing to defend an Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker who said he was attacked by Israeli settlers.Hamdan Ballal co-directed “No Other Land,” which won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards. This week, he said he had been assaulted by settlers and detained at gunpoint by soldiers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Unlike multiple other prominent filmmaker groups, the US-based Academy initially did not issue a statement. On Wednesday, it sent a letter to members that condemned “harming or suppressing artists for their work or their viewpoints,” without naming Ballal.By Friday morning, more than 600 Academy members had signed their own statement in response. “It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its filmmakers just a few weeks later,” the members said.”We stand in condemnation of the brutal assault and unlawful detention of Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal by settlers and Israeli forces in the West Bank,” they wrote.The Academy leadership’s response “fell far short of the sentiments this moment calls for,” said the members.The Los Angeles-based group’s board convened an extraordinary meeting Friday to confront the deepening crisis, according to trade outlet Deadline.The Academy did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. “No Other Land” chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta — an area Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.Despite winning the coveted Oscar, the film has struggled to find a major US distributor.Following Monday’s incident, Ballal told AFP the “brutality” of the attack “made me feel it was because I won the Oscar.”During his detention at an Israeli military center, Ballal said he noticed soldiers mentioning his name alongside the word “Oscar” during shift changes.He was released Tuesday, after being detained the previous day for allegedly “hurling rocks.” Yuval Abraham, who also co-directed and appears in the documentary, has criticized the Academy — both for its initial silence, and then for its subsequent statement.”After our criticism, the academy’s leaders sent out this email to members explaining their silence on Hamdan’s assault: they need to respect ‘unique viewpoints’,” he wrote on X, sharing a screenshot of the Academy’s letter.