Month: January 2020

For the foreign students on lockdown in China where a deadly flulike coronavirus has emerged, days are marked by fear, frustration and boredom.

“I wear a mask all the time,” said Redwan Mohamed Nur, an accounting student who told VOA he is one of 14 Somalis at Wuhan University and among 5,000 Africans studying in China. 

“I [am] so scared that I didn’t dare to open the window because I’m afraid the wind would blow the virus in.”

Wuhan is home to dozens of universities and colleges. On Jan. 23, China closed off Wuhan, the center of a deadly outbreak of the coronavirus; 16 cities are locked down, more than 6,000 cases worldwide have been confirmed and at least 132 people are dead.

Stuck in his dorm, he said he has left only once, and that was to walk to where school authorities distribute food to foreign students every other day. Elsewhere in China, foreign students stay indoors, worried of exposure to the coronavirus.

Nur says the Somalis are a tight knit community. Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdi, one of four Somali students at China University of Geosciences, is studying petroleum engineering. 

“You can get infected without showing the symptoms,” he said. “Therefore you are safe to be indoors.” But he has run out of food and is planning to go out to find an open supermarket.

Yassin Abdi Said, a Somali student living in Wuhan, told VOA the Somalis were remaining calm, but “the situation in Wuhan is very, very dangerous. The city is on lockdown, most shops are closed. Authorities are not allowing anyone to go out or come in.”

Indonesian students — Yuliannova Lestari Chaniago, Patmawaty Taibe and Gerard Ertandy — sent VOA a message from Wuhan’s Central China Normal University, saying they asked their government to evacuate them immediately to their home country.

In Jakarta, the Indonesian Air Force has said they have three airplanes to help evacuate Indonesians from Wuhan, but are waiting for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a decision. Wuhan is home to 102 Indonesians, most of them students.

“We — Yuli, Eva and Gerald — are asking to be evacuated immediately from the city of Wuhan as this city is no longer healthy for us,” said Yuliannova Lestari Chaniago, 26, an international relations student.

Chaniago said she’d received a week’s allowance from Indonesia’s embassy in Beijing, but added that shops and drugstores are closed. She and her friends are surviving on homemade chicken soup. 

“We understand that it’s hard for supplies to be sent in as the city is still in lockdown,” she said. “But we are puzzled as how to survive and protect ourselves from getting infected while at the same time being in the center of the outbreak, without enough food, water and medications.”

She said she and her friends are wearing two masks at once.

“There are masks handed out by the campus to survive, but they’re too thin,” she said. “It’s not the prescribed masks to prevent (the spread of) the virus.”

At the Hubei University of Technology in Wuhan, “They have closed the dormitory doors so that nobody can go out,” Yusuf Abdullah, a Bangladeshi student told VOA. “If you order the food in the canteen, they will cook it for you and then they’ll send. But you can’t go outside.”  

Abdullah said the Bangladeshi Embassy had opened a chat group on the Chinese WeChat platform to share information and concerns. On the group chat, Abdullah told VOA that participants asked the embassy to “evacuate us as soon as possible.”

Sithu Htun is one of 57 students, and three parents, living in isolation in the international students’ dormitory on the Wuhan University campus. All the students all are scholars under the educational and cultural exchange program between China and Myanmar.

The environmental engineering graduate student at the Wuhan University of Technology said everyone was in good health but worried about the supply of food and medicines. He told VOA that the Myanmar Embassy keeps in touch with them about possible evacuation.

He said it would be great if developed countries offered assistance to evacuate them, as Japan and U.S. sent aircraft to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan. He said Burmese students are helping each other avoid feeling depressed about negative comments on social media that reflect a widespread distrust of China among Burmese. 

“My parents are very worried about my safety because I am an only child, an only son,” said Keat Pocheang, 24, a Cambodian student at Wuhan University. “They video call me about 10 times a day.” He said he is “disappointed” that his government has not taken steps to evacuate its nationals.

Another Cambodian student, Tang Chivhour, 20, a native of Phnom Penh, is a student at Hubei University in Wuhan. He has lived in China for three years and speaks fluent Chinese. For the past week, Tang Chivhor said boredom has been the biggest challenge. 

“I have a few Korean friends who are stuck here. So, I hang out with them, chatting and reading together.”

Shipon Hussein, a Bangladeshi doctoral student studying at East China Normal University in Shanghai, said university authorities are not allowing outside people to enter foreign students’ residential quarters. 

“There has been talk about evacuation process,” he said. He added he knew some Bangladeshi students stranded in Wuhan “wanted to go back to Bangladesh.”

In China’s capital, Francisco Sithoi Jr., 22, a Mozambican student at the Beijing University of Technology, echoed what students trapped in Wuhan said, that it was becoming hard for him to get the food he needed, having to “go from supermarket to supermarket.”

Jannatun Nahar, a Bangla student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, echoed that the university officials were “taking care of us” and offering free meals and basic items like sanitizer. And while she, too, feels isolated, she says, she doesn’t want to go home.

“I don’t want to go back … because in my country, the population density is huge,” she said. “If the virus is in my body … if I come back to my country, it might effect my family, my relatives, my country. In my personal opinion, I want to stay in China, I don’t want to spread the virus in my country.”

Reporters from VOA’s Bangla, Burmese, Indonesian, Khmer, Portuguese and Somali services contributed to this report, which was written in the Mandarin service.

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The death of American basketball great Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter in a Calabasas, California, helicopter crash, Jan. 26, 2020, sent shockwaves throughout the world, especially in Africa where many looked up to him.  VOA spoke with fans in Kenya and a basketball official in Ivory Coast about the NBA star’s sudden death.  Salem Solomon has the story.

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Authorities in Bangladesh in partnership with the United Nations will expand educational programs for hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya children living in refugee camps who are currently receiving only basic lessons, officials said Wednesday.
    
The children, who fled with their families from neighboring Myanmar to the camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, now attend about 1,500 learning centers run by UNICEF that provide basic education, drawing and other fun activities. Under the new program starting in April, they will receive a formal education using a Myanmar curriculum from grade 6 to 9, the U.N. said in a statement.
    
Mahbub Alam Talukder, Bangladesh’s refugee, relief and repatriation commissioner, said the government agreed in principle with a proposal from the U.N. that the Rohingya children be provided with a Myanmar education.
    
“They will be taught in Myanmar’s language, they will follow Myanmar’s curriculum, there is no chance to study in formal Bangladeshi schools or to read books in the Bengali language,” he said by phone. “There’s no scope for them to stay here in Bangladesh for long, so through this approach they will be able to adapt to Myanmar’s society when they go back.”
    
The U.N. said initially 10,000 Rohingya children will be enrolled in a pilot program using the Myanmar curriculum, which will allow them to fit into the Buddhist-majority nation’s national educational system when they return to their homeland.
    
The decision was hailed by human rights groups and the United Nations.
    
‘We believe this is a positive step and a clear indication of the commitment by the government of Bangladesh to ensure access to learning for Rohingya children and adolescents, as well as to equip them with the right skills and capacities for their future and return to Myanmar when the conditions allow,” the U.N. said.
    
About 400,000 Rohingya children currently live in the refugee camps, and global rights groups have been demanding that the Bangladesh government allow them to have a formal education.
    
More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since August 2017, when Myanmar’s military launched what it called clearance operations in Rakhine state in response to an attack by an insurgent group. Security forces have been accused of committing mass rapes, killings and burning thousands of homes. In total, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees currently live in Bangladesh.
    
Myanmar’s government has long considered the Rohingya to be migrants from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. They are also denied freedom of movement and other basic rights including education.

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Pompeo’s battle with National Public Radio and tweeted out more media criticism, one target familiar and the other less so.

Trump introduced Pompeo at an East Room announcement of the administration’s Mideast peace plan, saying it was “very impressive” that he got a standing ovation from the White House workers and guests.

“That reporter couldn’t have done too good a job on you,” the president said. “I think you did a good job on her, actually.”

NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly angered Pompeo with a short interview Friday, then he reportedly berated her afterward in his office. The State Department then notified NPR reporter Michele Kelemen on Monday that she would not be allowed on Pompeo’s upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia.

John Lansing, NPR’s president and chief executive officer, wrote to Pompeo on Tuesday, seeking an explanation for why Kelemen had been left off the trip.

Without an answer by Wednesday, when the trip is scheduled to depart, NPR “will have no choice but to conclude that Ms. Kelemen was removed from the trip in retaliation for the content of NPR’s reporting,” Lansing wrote.

There was no immediate response from the State Department to requests for comment.

Earlier Tuesday, the president tweeted an insult at CNN’s Don Lemon, who received some criticism in conservative media for hosting a segment over the weekend where two of his guests made fun of the “rube demo” that backed Trump.

Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!). https://t.co/iQXCc7lvCt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2020

Trump also tweeted criticism of his favorite network, Fox News Channel, for “trying to be ‘politically correct’ ” by having a Democratic senator discuss impeachment on the network. He also said Fox’s Chris Wallace, who on Monday challenged a Fox contributor for not having her facts straight in a discussion about impeachment witnesses, shouldn’t be on the network.

…..So, what the hell has happened to @FoxNews. Only I know! Chris Wallace and others should be on Fake News CNN or MSDNC. How’s Shep Smith doing? Watch, this will be the beginning of the end for Fox, just like the other two which are dying in the ratings. Social Media is great!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2020

“What the hell has happened to Fox News?” Trump tweeted. “Only I know!”

 

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A U.N. report says Islamic State militants in Iraq are often not getting fair trials and the judicial processes in the country are not up to international standards.  The report, jointly published by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq and the U.N. Human Rights Office, is based on hundreds of trials monitored between May 2018 and October 2019. 

The report says those responsible for widespread atrocities in Iraq must be held accountable.  At the same time, it says it is important that those accused of crimes be given a fair trial.  It says justice must be seen to be done.

U.N. human rights spokesman Jeremy Laurence says the report is based on independent monitoring of 794 criminal trials of suspected Islamic State militants who were prosecuted under Iraq’s anti-terrorism laws.  

“Prosecutions under the anti-terrorism legal framework mainly focused on membership of a terrorist organization, without distinguishing between those who participated in violence, committed international crimes, and those who joined ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] for survival and/or through coercion,” said Laurence.

The report notes trials of IS defendants generally are conducted in an orderly, organized manner and judges are prepared with investigation files.  However, it says defendants are placed at a serious disadvantage because they have limited access to lawyers and usually are unable to challenge the evidence presented by the prosecution.

Laurence tells VOA Iraq’s judicial system is unfairly applied to all defendants even in cases where the death sentence is imposed.  He cites one case that UNAMI observed in a court in Baghdad in which the defendant was sentenced to death.

“The court appointed the defense lawyer on the day of the trial itself,” he said. “He had not seen his client and had not had access to the court files before the hearing and during the course of the trial remained silent.”  

Of the 794 criminal trials monitored by the U.N., Laurence notes 109 defendants were sentenced to death.  

The report expresses grave concern at the court’s over-reliance on extracting confessions and frequent allegations of torture.  It says these actions violate the human rights of defendants and strip Iraq’s judicial system of any semblance of fairness.  

 

 

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U.S. health officials are expanding their checks of international travelers for signs of a worrisome new virus from China, even as they say the risk to Americans so far is very low.

For “the individual American, this should not be an impact on their day-to-day life,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters Tuesday.

So far, there are five confirmed cases of this new virus in the U.S., and no sign that they have spread the respiratory illness to anyone around them.

While reports from China suggest that people there may have spread the illness before showing symptoms, there is no evidence of that in the U.S., stressed Dr. Robert Redfield.

And while some other viruses are known to occasionally spread before symptoms are obvious — such as the flu — health officials say that’s far less of a concern than the obviously contagious patients.

The CDC already has been checking arrivals at five U.S. airports that once had direct flights from the hardest-hit section of China. While China has instituted broad travel bans, people who had been in other parts of China still may be arriving via other countries.

The CDC is now beefing up screening at 15 more “quarantine stations” around the country, airports and other places where health workers regularly check arriving travelers for signs of illness.

But travelers may not be sick right then, CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier said. The screenings also are an opportunity to educate travelers that if they develop symptoms — such as fever or a cough — after returning from the outbreak zone, they should contact their doctor, she said. That’s exactly what the first two U.S. patients did.

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Puerto Rico opened only 20% of its public schools on Tuesday following a strong earthquake that delayed the start of classes by nearly three weeks as fears linger over the safety of students.

Only 177 schools were certified to open after engineers inspected them for damage caused by the magnitude-6.4 earthquake that killed one person and damaged hundreds of homes on Jan. 7. But the inspections were not to determine whether a school could withstand another strong earthquake or had structural shortcomings such as short columns that make it vulnerable to collapse, further worrying parents.

“Of course I am afraid,” said 38-year-old Marien Santos, who attended an open house Monday at her son’s Ramon Vila Mayo high school in the suburb of Rio Piedras where officials gave her a copy of the inspection report and evacuation plans.

Her concerns were echoed by the director of the school, Elisa Delgado. While she believes engineers did a thorough inspection of the school, built in the early 1900s, they warned her not to use the main entrance in an evacuation because it leads to an area filled with gas lines. The problem is that the other exits are too narrow to handle the school’s 450 students, she told The Associated Press.

“It’s not ideal,” she said.

Overall, engineers have inspected 561 of the island’s 856 public schools, finding at least 50 too unsafe to reopen, leaving some 240,000 students out of school for now. Ongoing tremors also are forcing crews to automatically re-inspect schools following any quake of 3.0 magnitude or higher, according to Puerto Rico’s Infrastructure Financing Authority.

Since the 6.4 quake, there have been several strong aftershocks, including a 5.9 magnitude one that hit Jan. 11 and a 5.0 that struck Saturday. The biggest quake flattened the top two floors of a three-story school in the southern coastal city of Guanica on Jan. 7, two days before classes were scheduled to start.

Overall, experts say that some 500 public schools in Puerto Rico were built before 1987 and don’t meet new construction codes. A plan to retrofit all schools that need it, an estimated 756 buildings, would cost up to $2.5 billion, officials have said, noting those are preliminary figures.

Education Secretary Eligio Hernandez noted that another 51 schools are scheduled to start classes on Feb. 3 and that his department is reviewing recommendations on how best to proceed with the other schools.

“The Department of Education is going to take the time it needs and will take all necessary actions so that parents … feel satisfied,” he told reporters Monday.

Alternatives for students

Gov. Wanda Vazquez said Tuesday that her administration is still trying to find appropriate options for the roughly 28,000 students who have been unable to return to schools.

“It’s not that easy,” she said, adding that holding classes outdoors under tarps poses problems including how bathrooms, meals and transportation will be handled. She said hotels and convention centers in the area are being considered.

Meanwhile, Elba Aponte, president of Puerto Rico’s Association of Teachers, told the AP that she has received complaints and pictures from parents and school employees of at least 10 schools that have reopened but that they feel are still unsafe.

Most of the pictures are of cracks in the walls and roofs of those schools, she said.

“Their concerns are quite valid,” Aponte said, adding that she would share them with the island’s education secretary.

Meanwhile, school and government officials are trying to figure out what to do with the roughly 240,000 students who aren’t able to go to school yet, either because their building was deemed unsafe or has not yet been inspected. No schools in the island’s southern and southwest region will reopen for now, officials say.

Options include placing students in other schools with revised schedules or holding classes in refurbished trailers or outdoors under tarps, Aponte said as she lamented the situation.

“It’s terrible,” she said. “If there was one place where they could feel safe, it was at school.”
 

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The pressure on Britain’s disgraced Prince Andrew increased Tuesday after the revelation by U.S. authorities that he has failed to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation into his ties with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Lawyer Lisa Bloom, who represents five of Epstein’s alleged sexual trafficking victims, said Tuesday that it’s time for Andrew “to stop playing games and to come forward to do the right thing and answer questions.”

Bloom said her clients were “outraged and disappointed at Prince Andrew’s behavior.”

Andrew remained out of the public eye Tuesday. Buckingham Palace and his legal team maintained a “no comment” policy one day after U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Andrew has provided “zero cooperation” to the FBI and the U.S. prosecutors seeking to speak with him about Epstein.

The statement Monday by Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, was the first official confirmation that the leading U.S. law enforcement agency had sought — and failed — to obtain evidence from Andrew, third child of Queen Elizabeth II, despite his pledge in November that he would cooperate with legitimate law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. decision to make the 59-year-old prince’s silence public may be part of a strategy to increase public calls for him to cooperate.

Andrew is being sought for questioning as a witness who may be able to shed light on the illegal activities of Epstein, who died in a New York prison in August while awaiting trial on sexually abusing teenage girls. There’s no indication that U.S. officials are pursuing criminal charges against the prince.

The FBI only has limited ways to try to convince Andrew to give evidence.

U.S. officials have not provided details, so it’s not clear if the FBI made an informal request through Andrew’s lawyers or went through formal police channels, which if successful would have led to an interview conducted by U.K. police, possibly with an FBI agent present.

“They can’t compel him to do any of those things,” said British lawyer Ben Keith, a specialist in extradition and law enforcement. “The next stage after that is to issue a formal Mutual Legal Assistance Request, which would go through the Foreign Office and be dealt with in the court system.”

That could lead, Keith said, to the prince giving evidence via video link to U.S. investigators.

Andrew has been accused by a woman who says that she had several sexual encounters with the prince at Epstein’s behest, starting when she was 17.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre says after meeting Epstein as a teenager in Florida in 2000, he flew her around the world and pressured her into having sex with numerous older men, including Andrew, two senior U.S. politicians, a noted academic, and the attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is now part of President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team.

Giuffre has said she had sex with Andrew three times, including once in London in 2001 at the home of Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre claims that she was paid by Epstein for her sexual encounters.

Andrew and Dershowitz have denied any wrongdoing. But the royal family forced Andrew to step down from his royal duties and charity patronages in November after giving a disastrous television interview in which he defended his friendship with Epstein and failed to express sympathy for the girls and women who Epstein abused.

Andrew is also being pursued by several lawyers representing Epstein victims who are pushing civil suits against Epstein’s estate.

Those lawyers could choose to bring their request to a British high court, seeking to have an examiner take a statement from Andrew or pursue other ways to obtain his evidence. So far they are only making public calls for him to make himself available and threatening to subpoena Andrew if he travels to the U.S.

The complex legal situation may make Andrew reluctant to visit the U.S., where his evidence is sought on both criminal and civil cases, but lawyers say it’s unlikely to restrict his travel to other countries.

New York criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby says it’s unlikely the prince will ever voluntarily agree to an interview and said the FBI doesn’t have the means to force him to.

“The likelihood of him participating is very, very small,” Kuby said. “Why would he? The last time Prince Andrew spoke on the relevant topic he was yanked from public life and universally ridiculed.”

Andrew, eighth in line to the throne, has been seen at occasional royal family events since November but has not commented on Epstein since his TV interview backfired.

 

 

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