Human rights violations: US imposes more sanctions on N Korea indiviudals

The US Department of Treasury on Thursday issued new sanctions on seven individuals and three entities of North Korea over what it called human rights abuses.

"Today's sanctions target the North Korean military and regime officials engaged in flagrant abuses of human rights," Xinhua quoted US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as saying.

Pyongyang's financial facilitators "who attempt to keep the regime afloat with foreign currency earned through forced labour operations" were also targeted, Mnuchin added.

Among the sanctioned individuals were North Korea's military security officials and Labour Minister Jong Yong Su. North Korea's consul general in Shenyang, China, and a diplomat at its embassy in Vietnam were also targeted.

As a result of the saction, any property or interests of the designated persons in the US will be blocked and transactions by Americans involving these persons are generally prohibited.

The new moves came a month after the US Department of Treasury slapped sanctions on eight banks and 26 individuals linked to North Korea financial networks in response to the country's ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction.

The North Korea successfully tested two intercontinental ballistic missile and a hydrogen bomb this year, triggering two new economic sanctions by the UN Security Council.
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3,250 killed in Raqqa battle, including 1,130 civilians: Monitor

The more than four-month-long battle for Raqqa, which US-backed forces declared over on Tuesday, has left at least 3,250 people dead, more than a third of them civilians, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 1,130 civilians were among those killed since the start of the operation in early June. Hundreds more were still missing and may have been buried alive in their homes by shelling, bombs and air strikes.

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Driving ban lifted: I am my own guardian, say Saudi women on Twitter

Overjoyed Saudi women celebrated on Wednesday after King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud issued a historic decree allowing them to drive in the Kingdom.

The decree is slated to take effect from June 2018.
The announcement was reported late Tuesday by the state-run Saudi Press Agency and state TV. Praise for the move poured in from inside the Saudi kingdom as well as abroad.

Until now, only men were issues licences and women who drove in public risked being arrested and fined.

Manal al-Sharif, an organiser of the Women2Drive campaign who was earlier imprisoned for driving, said on Twitter that Saudi Arabia would "never be the same again", reports the BBC.

The hashtags "I am my own guardian" and "Saudi Women Can Drive" quickly gained traction on social media.

US President Donald Trump said it was a positive step towards promoting women's rights. US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert called the move "a great step in the right direction".

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres echoed that sentiment.

Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was detained for 73 days in 2014 for flouting the ban, tweeted "thank God".
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Workers' lives be damned as Trump seeks to milk Papua New Guinea gold mines

The Grasberg Mine is a massive scar 14,000 feet atop West Papua’s part of New Guinea’s Central Cordillera. It’s is the world’s biggest, most profitable gold mine and the world’s third biggest copper mine, with estimated reserves of $100 billion.

Some 20,000 people work there, making it the largest employer on the divided island and the largest source of revenue in all of Indonesia. Many of those engaged in the dangerous work of mining come from the 40,000-year-old indigenous community of New Guinea, a people the Indonesian authorities are slowly pushing into non-existence.

In 1962, the Indonesians, with the connivance of the US, grabbed the western half of New Guinea. Since then, the destruction of the environment and the local communities has advanced as Indonesians displace the indigenous population and scramble over valuable resources. Although Indonesia has barred a full accounting, there have been hundreds of thousands of deaths—many in the most brutal and deliberate fashion.

Responsibility for the destruction and slow genocide now rests securely with the Indonesian government. But the US continues to defer to its ally in the same way it does to, say, Saudi Arabia: in short, weak complaints and no action.

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Justice in Syria: 5 ways to prosecute international crime

The conflict in Syria has seen atrocities committed by all sides for six long years. Barbarities are an everyday occurrence.

There are rules governing the conduct of warring parties. The 1949 Geneva Conventions form the core of international humanitarian law. Violating these rules is a war crime. Some atrocities go even beyond this level of criminality. Genocide, for instance, is an international crime in itself, while the systematic killing of political opposition would constitute a crime against humanity.

The existence of these offences counts for little, of course, unless the law is enforced. This raises the question: is there any way of prosecuting any side of the Syrian conflict? These are some options that could help inform the way forward.

1. International Criminal Court investigation

The International Criminal Court (ICC), based in the Hague, is designed to prosecute “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole”. So perhaps it could act in Syria.

The court operates on a consensual basis, so that (perhaps counterintuitively) states must sign up to it to allow the exercise of ICC jurisdiction. Syria is not a party to the court.

There is a workaround though. The ICC can investigate international crimes in any country if the UN Security Council requests it to do so. This happened to Sudan in 2005 and Libya in 2011. Despite best efforts by lobbying states, the same has not happened in the case of Syria. Both Russia and China blocked a proposed referral in 2014 and there is little sign of them changing their minds.
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Cuba to President Trump: US in no 'condition to lecture us' on human rights

In response to President Donald Trump's announcement that he is reversing the Obama administration's steps to thaw ties with Cuba, the Castro government has hit back strongly saying the Unites States is in no "condition to lecture us."

The statement by Havana asserted by Trump's Miami address to announce the rollback was "full of hostile rhetoric", adding that the announced policies will "revert" the progress achieved between the two countries in the past two years, reports CNN.

Under the President's executive order, the Trump administration will begin strictly enforcing the exemptions that allow travel between the US and Cuba and prohibit commerce with Cuban businesses owned by the military and intelligence services.

Trump also directed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to convene a task force on expanding Internet access on the island and reiterated the United States' opposition to efforts in the United Nations to lift the Cuban embargo until more is done to honor human rights.

During his speech, Trump had also slammed Cuba for human rights abuses, saying, "The Castro regime has shipped arms to North Korea and fueled chaos in Venezuela. While imprisoning innocents, it has harbored cop killers, hijackers and terrorists. It has supported human trafficking, forced labor and exploitation all around the globe."

Giving a strong rebuttal, the Cuban government stated that Trump's executive order betrays a double standard on human rights.

"We have deep concerns by the respect and the guaranties of the human rights in that country, where there is a large number of cases of murder, brutality and police abuse, particularly against the African Americans; the right to live is violated as a result of deaths by firearms," the statement read.
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