Rilek1Corner

Tag: Palestine

  • Gaza Ibarat ‘Penjara Terbuka’, Dibelenggu Masalah Kemiskinan Dan Pengangguran

    Gaza Ibarat ‘Penjara Terbuka’, Dibelenggu Masalah Kemiskinan Dan Pengangguran

    SEMENANJUNG GAZA: Tahun lalu, laporan PBB meramalkan bahawa Semenanjung Gaza akan menjadi ‘tidak boleh didiami” pada tahun 2020.

    Ibarat ‘penjara terbuka’, Gaza dibelenggu dengan kemiskinan dan masalah pengangguran.

    Bagi golongan muda di Gaza, akibat kekurangan peluang, satu-satunya penyelesaian adalah dengan meninggalkan tanah air mereka.

    Dua tahun lalu, Mohammed Abu Hassira mengalami kecederaan di kakinya dalam pertempuran dengan Israel.

    Walaupun peperangan berakhir dan kecederaannya semakin pulih, namun, luka dari segi psikologi masih nyata.

    Kesannya- beliau mengambil keputusan untuk meninggalkan tanah air dan memulakan perjalanan yang berliku menuju ke Eropah.

    Mohammed berkata ada rakan-rakannya yang sampai ke Sweden, Norway dan Belgium melalui jalan laut dan darat.

    Tahun lalu, Mohammed memohon untuk mendapatkan visa untuk ke Turki.

    Seperti kebanyakan warga Gaza, permohonannya gagal.

    Untuk diluluskan, ia memerlukan pasport Palestin, bukti pekerjaan dan $500 dalam akaun bank.

    Syarat-syarat itu adalah di luar jangkauan kebanyakan warga Gaza. Namun, Mohammed tidak putus asa dan mencuba satu lagi jalan.

    Beliau terpaksa beratur di sebuah pejabat pelancongan memandangkan tiada kedutaan di Gaza.

    Pejabat seperti itu menjadi pengantara antara mereka yang mahu meninggalkan Gaza dan mereka yang mahu mendapatkan visa untuk ke negara lain.

    Menurut seorang penyelidik, separuh dari penduduk Gaza mahu berhijrah dan tidak hairanlah jumlah ini semakin meningkat.

    Namun, seorang pegawai tinggi Hamas menolak kenyataan itu dan berkata penghijrahan bukan penyelesaian kepada perjuangan rakyat Palestin.

    Ternyata, realitinya berbeza. Bagi kebanyakan warga Gaza, satu-satunya pilihan adalah untuk melarikan diri dari negeri sendiri.

    Source: http://berita.mediacorp.sg

  • Re-Entry Issue For Singaporean With UK Passport

    Re-Entry Issue For Singaporean With UK Passport

    Orthopaedic surgeon Ang Swee Chai is due to be inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame on Friday for her work in Palestinian refugee camps in the 1980s and 1990s.

    However, she is struggling to obtain the clearance she requires to enter the country.

    Dr Ang, 67, is the widow of alleged communist activist Francis Khoo. She has spent the last 39 years overseas but has not been able to secure a special travel document to come to Singapore from London, where she lives.

    She needs the special papers because she holds both British and Singapore citizenship and does not want to give up either.

    “I can come into Singapore with a British passport, but unless there is assurance that the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) will not strip me of my Singapore citizenship, I must not risk it,” she told The Straits Times in an e-mail.

    “The ICA has pointed that out to me… I stand to lose my citizenship if I do so,” she added.

    Dr Ang is due to be feted at a gala dinner at the Shangri-La Hotel. The Women’s Hall of Fame is administered by the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO) and counts among its 133 honourees women such as war heroine Elizabeth Choy, who helped British internees during World War II.

    Dr Ang returned to Singapore once, in 2012, on a Singapore Travel Document, to bring home her husband’s ashes but a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) spokesman said it was a “one-off” approval based on compassionate grounds.

    Mr Khoo lived in exile after he fled Singapore in 1977 to avoid questioning by the Internal Security Department during a security sweep targeted at communists. He died in 2011 in Britain.

    An MHA spokesman said the Government does not allow citizens to hold dual citizenship, and will not issue travel documents if they have not renounced their foreign citizenship. She said Dr Ang’s 2012 travel document was issued with a “clear understanding that she would resolve her dual citizenship status expeditiously”.

    Since then, ICA has reminded Dr Ang to do so four times – the last reminder was last month, on Feb 4, a spokesman said. “ICA will process her request for such a document, once she shows proof she has started the process of renouncing her British citizenship.”

    But in an e-mail to SCWO, Dr Ang wrote: “My right of abode and right to work as a surgeon in the UK is conditional on British citizenship.”

    SCWO general manager Selina Gan said: “We’re always disappointed when an inductee cannot come to the induction dinner but, of course, they will still be inducted, and they will be represented by a relative or friend.”

     

    Source: www.straitstimes.com

  • Starving Animals Up For Sale At Gaza Zoo

    Starving Animals Up For Sale At Gaza Zoo

    GAZA — A Gaza zoo owner is putting the last of his starving animals up for sale.

    Mr Mohammad Oweida once hosted family and school outings at his zoo in Khan Younis in the southern part of the Palestinian territory. But war and economic hardship intervened to turn the venture into what is now a sad collection of 15 emaciated animals that he can no longer afford to feed.

    “I have to sell them in order to save them,” said Mr Oweida, 24, sitting near the cage of a tiger who had not eaten for four days.

    In all, he said, some 200 animals, many of them smuggled across the tightly controlled Egyptian border in tunnels, have starved to death in the zoo since a seven-week war between Israel and Palestinian militants in 2014 prevented him getting enough food for them.

    Mr Oweida stuffed 15 of the animals he lost, including a lion, a tiger and a chimpanzee, and put them on display for children to pet. But the visitors now stay away.

    He said he was negotiating to sell the hungry tiger for around US$23,000 (S$31,743) to a Gaza resident who used to raise lion cubs. Other animals on offer included an ostrich, a turtle and a pelican.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com

  • OIC Gesa Haramkan Produk Buatan Israel, Ikrar Sokongan Penuh

    OIC Gesa Haramkan Produk Buatan Israel, Ikrar Sokongan Penuh

    INDONESIA: Sebuah badan Islam global semalam (7 Mac) menggesa agar produk-produk yang datang dari Israel dan wilayah-wilayah yang didudukinya diharamkan dan berikrar akan memberi sokongan penuh kepada “hak-hak warga Palestin yang tidak terpisah”.

    Gesaan itu disuarakan di akhir Sidang Puncak Pertubuhan Muktamar Islam (OIC) yang diadakan di Indonesia, negara yang majoriti penduduknya beragama Islam, yang menghimpunkan para wakil dari 57 buah negara.

    OIC menyarankan agar, “negara-negara anggota dan masyarakat antarabangsa mengharamkan produk-produk yang dihasilkan di dalam atau di wilayah-wilayah ditakluki Israel yang tidak sah daripada pasaran mereka”.

    Meskipun begitu, negara-negara anggota tidak terikat dengan langkah tersebut.

    Penempatan merujuk kepada masyarakat Yahudi yang tinggal dalam kawasan yang diduduki Israel sejak tahun 1967.

    Penempatan sedemikian adalah tidak sah di bawah undang-undang antarabangsa dan juga merupakan hambatan kepada usaha perdamaian, dengan mereka di Tebing Barat dan Timur Baitul Maqdis menduduki tanah yang dilihat sebagai sebahagian daripada negara orang-orang Palestin pada masa akan datang.

    Sebelum ini, isu barangan import dari penempatan Israel menimbulkan ketegangan.

    Perdana Menteri Israel Benjamin Netanyahu menggantung hubungan diplomatik dengan Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (PBB) pada bulan November lalu berhubung proses damai Timur Tengah – yang sudah tergendala hampir dua tahun – berkaitan keputusan PBB untuk melabel barangan import sebagai dari wilayah penempatan Israel berbanding ‘Buatan Israel”.

    Penggantungan itu dihentikan pada bulan lalu apabila Encik Netanyahu mengadakan rundingan dengan Ketua Dasar Asing Kesatuan Eropah (EU).

    Di akhir sidang puncak yang berlangsung semalam, OIC turut berikrar memberikan “sokongan penuh kepada usaha-usaha politik, diplomatik dan undang-undang” bagi memastikan rakyat Palestin meraih “hak-hak mereka yang tidak terpisah”.

    Sidang puncak di Jakarta itu dihadiri oleh para pemimpin termasuk Presiden Palestin Mahmud Abbas dan Presiden Sudan Omar al-Bashir, yang diburu oleh Mahkamah Jenayah Antarabangsa atas tuduhan jenayah perang.

    Sidang puncak itu juga diadakan di tengah-tengah keganasan selama lima bulan di wilayah Israel dan Palestin yang mengorbankan 181 rakyat Palestin serta 28 rakyat Israel.

    Rundingan damai Israel-Palestin juga terhenti pada bulan April 2014 dan sejak itu keadaan bertambah buruk sehingga tidak memungkinkan satu dialog yang baru.

    Source: http://berita.mediacorp.sg

  • Walid J. Abdullah: The injustices in Palestine and Syria deserve equal outrage as the Paris attacks

    Walid J. Abdullah: The injustices in Palestine and Syria deserve equal outrage as the Paris attacks

    I am not disturbed at all by people who change their profile pictures to incorporate the French flag. Some do it because they studied/worked in France, or have learnt French, and therefore have a natural affinity for the country and its people. Some do it because it’s cool to jump onto the bandwagon. Some do it simply because all it takes is to press a button. It is all fine. There is really no need to get upset about that.

    Changing your profile picture does not need in any way imply you are fine with killing of innocent people elsewhere, so we must not make such tenuous claims.

    What does disturb me though, is when people say that talking about innocent lives being taken away elsewhere, or speaking on how Western foreign policy could be one of the causes of terrorism (not the only one, obviously), is somehow equal to devaluing human life, or is equivalent to justifying the murders in Paris. I think that is just absurdity of the highest order.

    Of course, we must in no way justify the Parisian murders, or devalue the lives lost. I just don’t see how saying that Palestinians go through similar stuff, or stating that Syrians have been through worse, or that many other peoples in the world face injustices everyday, ‘cheapens’ the lives lost in Paris.

    Worse still, some of the people who are saying such stuff, are usually completely silent when innocent people are killed elsewhere.

    If someone is vocal about the loss of innocent lives in Afghanistan, for example, and then says that we should not compare Paris to other countries, i can accept that, even if i may not agree with the premise.

    But for those who are silent on other issues, and yet see the need to lecture others who are expressing dismay at the loss of Palestinian lives, i think we know for sure who are the ones that actually ‘cheapen’ the lives of others.

    An innocent life is an innocent life: if we rush to condemn one act of terror vociferously, and then are silent towards others, i think it is good to check why on earth we are behaving in that manner, who is it that we are so eagerly trying to please, and whether that is indeed consistent with our own moral codes.

    It also seems to me like people who refuse to discuss the causes of terrorism properly, are perhaps not really interested in solving it.

    Source: Walid J. Abdullah