https://arab.news/yw4eh
BEIRUT: Beirut MP Cynthia Zarazir joined on Wednesday the angry depositors who have been resorting daily to force to recover their money that has been withheld by Lebanese banks since 2019.
She managed to get $8,500 from her deposit hours after entering the bank and negotiating with the bank’s management.
Zarazir, one of the MPs who has participated in the protests that Lebanon witnessed since 2019, entered the Byblos Bank branch in Antelias, 12 km from Beirut, on Wednesday morning without a prior appointment.
She waited for a customer to come out of the bank and entered by force, but she was not, like the rest of the intruders, carrying a weapon or incendiary materials to threaten to ignite it.
Zarazir's storming of the bank came less than 24 hours after a Lebanese diplomat, George Siam, stormed the Intercontinental Bank in Hazmieh, 6 km from Beirut.
Bank storming operations are no longer confined to retired soldiers, merchants, or people with limited income whose deposits are suspended in banks and they need to pay school or university fees for their children, pay off accumulated debts, or pay for the treatment of cancer patients.
MP Zarazir was accompanied to the bank by a group of lawyers and was later joined by MP Halima Kaakour.
Zarzir said she acted as an "ordinary citizen," declaring that she "relinquished her immunity as a deputy" when she entered the bank. She said the amount she asked for was to pay her insurance company for surgery.
Lawyer Sharif Suleiman, one of the attorneys of MPs demanding change, including Zarazir, told Arab News that the bank management asked Zarazir to sign an agreement not to disclose what happened inside the bank in terms of giving her part of her deposit in dollars.
Suleiman said that "When Zarazir left the bank, she tore up the pledge and said it was illegal, and challenged the bank's management to go to court and sue her."
Suleiman added: “What Zarazir did shows that she is just like the rest of the Lebanese people. She did not act like an MP to prevent any future political blackmailing.”
#WATCH: Lebanese MP Cynthia Zarazir inside a branch of Byblos Bank north of #Beirut to demand access to her savings supposedly to pay for an upcoming surgery. (video: @janoubia_news)https://t.co/O8zoo1tFHX pic.twitter.com/M1PRRVlsY9
The storming of Lebanese banks by depositors comes as a result of the political class not setting a strategic plan and a timeline to release people’s deposits, three years after they were seized.
In Beirut’s southern suburbs, depositor Hussein Chokr, a retired security officer, protested in a Credit Libanais branch, demanding his saving to pay his children’s university tuitions.
Such acts took a more violent turn, as a person fired a weapon at a Bank of Beirut branch in the northern city of Byblos after the branch’s security guard prevented him from entering because he did not have a prior appointment.
This led the depositor, a Lebanese citizen, to pull out a machine gun from his car and fire at the bank, causing material damage. Police have launched an investigation.
Hassan Moghnieh, the head of the depositors’ association, told Arab News: “I expect the depositors’ protests to increase and the situation to further deteriorate. I am not proud of it.
“Closing the banks will not solve the crisis. What is needed is the formation of a crisis cell that would set priorities, as up until now, nobody has tried to solve the crisis. The protests taking place will continue and might take advanced forms.”
Some activists on social media said that what Zarazir did will encourage others to adopt illegal methods to get their rights. Others questioned the way the security forces dealt with the protesters after they arrested them and let Zarazir go because she enjoys parliamentary immunity.
Meanwhile, a group of people protested in front of the central bank in Beirut and set tires on fire. The protest was ringed by strict security and an altercation took place between the protesters and the police.
Moghnieh said these movements are different from the depositors’ protests, "as they are politically motivated and the participants are affiliated with the president’s party, which is demanding the dismissal of the governor of the central bank, accusing him of corruption."
Lebanese banks accuse the political class of “having withdrawn from the central bank the amount of $62.670 billion, which was wasted on maintaining the subsidies, fixing the exchange rate, the high-interest rates, electricity sector and the state’s import needs among others.”
Depositors accuse the banks of transferring their capital and that of the politicians’ abroad, considering that they both share the same responsibility and blame when it comes to the theft of people’s deposits.
PARIS: Schoolgirls chanted slogans, workers went on strike and street clashes erupted in Iran on Saturday, as protests over the death of Mahsa Amini entered a fourth week in defiance of a bloody crackdown. Anger flared over the death of the 22-year-old Iranian Kurd on September 16, three days after she was arrested in Tehran by the notorious morality police for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women. “Woman, life, freedom,” girls were heard chanting at a school in Amini’s hometown Saqez, in Kurdistan province, where another group of girls were seen swinging headscarves above their heads on a street, in videos the Hengaw rights group said were recorded on Saturday. In another video it shared, a group of girls could be heard chanting the same phrase — the catchcry of the protests — as they entered a school in Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province. The protests followed calls for people to take to the streets again overnight. “We are not afraid anymore. We will fight,” said a large banner placed on an overpass of the Modares highway that cuts through central Tehran, according to online images verified by AFP. In another widely shared video, a man is seen altering the wording of a large government billboard from “The police are the servants of the people” to “The police are the murderers of the people.” Hengaw, a Kurdish rights group based in Norway, said “widespread strikes” were taking place in Saqez, Sanandaj and Divandarreh, in Kurdistan province, as well as Mahabad in West Azerbaijan province. Shots could be heard as protesters clashed with security forces on a street in Sanandaj, in a video shared by the 1500tasvir social media channel that monitors violations in the Islamic republic. The same source said there were protests in the southern city of Shiraz. It also shared videos of demonstrators in Karaj, a city west of Tehran, and the southern city of Kerman, where drivers honked their car horns as dozens of people gathered on the roadside. AFP was unable to immediately verify the footage from 1500tasvir. Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights says at least 92 protesters have been killed by the security forces. The crackdown has fueled tensions between Iran and the West, especially its arch enemy the United States. Ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi, who took part in a ceremony on Saturday at a Tehran university marking the start of the academic year, has blamed the unrest on outside forces. “Despite all the efforts of ill-wishers, the strong and hardworking people of Islamic Iran will overcome the problems ahead with unity and cohesion,” he was quoted as saying on the presidency’s website.
RAMALLAH, West Bank: Israeli forces killed two Palestinians on Saturday in clashes that erupted during an arrest raid in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said, the latest incident in recent months around the flashpoint city of Jenin.
The Israeli military said that security forces on an operation to arrest a wanted gunman from of the Islamic Jihad militant group, came under Palestinian fire.
“Dozens of Palestinians threw explosives and Molotov cocktails at the forces and fired at them. The forces fired at armed suspects. Hits were identified,” the military said on Twitter.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed and 11 were wounded. There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The latest in a near-daily series of incidents around Jenin, a militant stronghold, underlined once more the volatile security climate in the West Bank as Israel heads toward elections on Nov. 1.
“The more the occupation perpetrates its crimes, the tougher the resistance will be,” Islamic Jihad said in a statement.
More than 70 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Israel launched its Operation Breakwater against militants on March 31 in response to a string of fatal Palestinian street attacks in Israel. The toll includes militants and civilians.
The surge in violence in the West Bank, where Palestinians have limited self-rule, has been one of the worst such waves there in years.
US-brokered peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, collapsed in 2014 and show no sign of revival.
Israeli security officials have called on the PA to do more to rein in violence by gunmen.
However the PA, increasingly unpopular among many in the West Bank, says its ability to exert its rule has been systematically undermined by Israel’s incursions.
DUBAI: The US Navy held a joint drone drill with the United Kingdom on Friday in the Arabian Gulf, testing the same unmanned surveillance ships that Iran twice has seized in recent months in the Middle East. The exercise comes as the US Navy separately told commercial shippers in the wider Mideast that it would continue using drones in the region and warned against interfering with their operations. The drone drill — and the American pledge to keep sailing them — also comes as tensions between the US and Iran on the seas remain high amid stalled negotiations over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers and as protests sweep the Islamic Republic. Friday’s drill involved two American and two British warships in the Arabian Gulf, as well as three Saildrone Explorers, said Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet. The drones searched for a target on the seas, then sent the still images its cameras captured back to both the warships and the 5th Fleet’s command center in the island kingdom of Bahrain. There, an artificial intelligence system worked through the photos. The 5th Fleet launched its unmanned Task Force 59 last year. Drones used by the Navy include ultra-endurance aerial surveillance drones, surface ships like the Sea Hawk and the Sea Hunter and smaller underwater drones that resemble torpedoes. But of particular interest for the Navy has been the Saildrone Explorer, a commercially available drone that can stay at sea for long periods of time. That’s crucial for a region that has some 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) of coastline from the Suez Canal, down the Red Sea to the Gulf of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz and into the Arabian Gulf. It’s a vast territory that stretches the reach of the Navy and its allies and has seen a series of attacks amid the atomic accord’s collapse. It also remains crucial to global shipping and energy supplies, as a fifth of all oil traded passes through the Strait of Hormuz. “No matter what forces you have, you can’t cover all that,” Hawkins told The Associated Press. “You have to do that in a partnered way and an innovative way.” But Iran, which long has equated America’s presence in the region to it patrolling the Gulf of Mexico, views the drones with suspicion. In August and September, Iranian regular and paramilitary forces seized Saildrones in both the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, alleging without providing evidence that the drones posed a danger to nearby ships. Iran ultimately released the drones after the US Navy arrived to the sites. Cameras on the Saildrones involved in the Red Sea incident went missing. Iranian state-run media did not acknowledge the drill Friday. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Recent events notwithstanding, we have been operating these systems safely, responsibly and in accordance with international law and will continue to do so,” Hawkins said. The Navy underscored its plan to keep operating the drones in notices sent to shippers and sailors in the region beginning Thursday. It said that the drones would continue to broadcast their location via their Automatic Identification System trackers. Ships are supposed to keep their AIS trackers on, but Iranian vessels routinely turn theirs off to mask their movements as Tehran faces international sanctions over its nuclear program and human rights abuses. “US Navy (drones) are US government property and will lawfully operate in international waters and through straits in accordance with internationally recognized rights and freedoms,” the Navy said in the notice. “Any interference with US Navy (drones) will be considered a violation of the norms of international maritime law.”
ALGIERS: Algerian primary schools have scrambled to introduce English lessons, in a move critics say was rushed but others hope could be a coup de grace against the language of former occupier France.
Language is a sensitive topic in the North African country, where French is still widely spoken six decades after independence that followed 132 years of colonial rule and a grueling eight-year war.
“The French language is war booty, but English is the international language,” President Abdelmadjid Tebboune told journalists in July.
Only weeks earlier, he had ordered the Education Ministry to introduce English into primary school curricula by the new term, which started on Sept. 21.
This was the first stage in a broader plan to boost English tuition in the coming years.
The status of French has been a hotly debated issue for decades in Algeria, which has only Arabic and the Berbers’ Tamazight as official languages.
French infuses public life, is used for teaching science and business, and is spoken by millions of diaspora Algerians, particularly in France.
Yet it also evokes memories of colonial rule.
“I want to drop the language of the colonizer and adopt the language used worldwide,” said Hacene, the father of a primary pupil in the capital Algiers.
“Teaching English in primary school is sensible,” said Farouk Lazizi, whose two children are at primary school in Algiers.
But he said he has mixed feelings on the president’s decision, which had set up a race against the clock.
In less than two months, 5,000 new teachers were recruited and put on a fast-track training program, while a new manual had been written and distributed to schools in record time.
“We need to prepare things well, because most Algerian parents aren’t ready to teach English to their kids,” Lazizi said.
The Education Ministry said some 60,000 people applied for the new jobs, which require an undergraduate degree in English or translation.
Officials have argued that moves to bolster English tuition are motivated by practical concerns rather than ideology but haven’t offered an explanation for the tight schedule afforded for the change.
The process was so rushed that the state hired translators who “aren’t even trained to teach” to make up the shortfall in English-speaking teachers, said linguist Abderzak Dourari.
On top of Arabic and French, some schools in the country also teach Tamazight, which is spoken by millions of Algerians.
Some education specialists worry that even if the glitches are ironed out, the addition of yet another language to classrooms would still be challenging.
“Teaching four languages to primary school children will confuse them,” said Ahmed Tessa, a pedagogy expert and former English teacher.
The decision on primary schools is the latest move in a bitter struggle that has pitted conservatives who want French scrapped altogether against supporters of the language, who tend to be more secular.
Sadek Dziri of UNPEF, a powerful teachers’ union, welcomed what he called an “overdue” decision to adopt English, “the language of science and technology.”
“Algeria will be able to drop French, which is the language of the coloniser and hasn’t brought good results,” said one parent in Algiers who asked to remain anonymous.
Another said that Francophone Algerians “don’t approve of this decision” and want to keep French in schools.
Abdelhamid Abed, who teaches English at an Algiers middle school, argued that “French has done its time”.
“We shouldn’t see this question in terms of rivalry between French and English, but from a practical standpoint.”
But linguist Dourari said it would be hard to simply replace French with English, given Algeria’s history and its cultural and economic ties with France — including tourism.
“There’s an Algerian diaspora of more than eight million living in France,” he pointed out.
“There are mixed families, who come and go.”
Tessa insisted that President Tebboune’s “war booty” remark — made in the run-up to an August visit by France’s Emmanuel Macron — reflected the benefits Algeria has reaped from having French in its “institutional and socio-economic life”.
“Those who are hostile to French believed it would be dropped entirely from primary school curricula,” he said. “They’re dreaming of seeing it disappear.”
RABAT: A Moroccan appeals court more than tripled to three years prison sentences against 18 African migrants over the deadly storming of a Spanish enclave in June, a lawyer said.
The migrants had been arrested after some 2,000 people, mostly from Sudan, tried to breach the frontier with the enclave of Melilla on June 24 in a bid to reach Europe. At least 23 migrants died in the crush.
“Eighteen migrants arrested on June 24 were sentenced to three years in prison” by the appeals court in Nador, a town near the border with Melilla, said defense lawyer Mbarek Bouirig.
The 18 migrants — among more than 60 arrested following the Melilla tragedy — had initially been sentenced to 11 months in prison.
The Moroccan Association of Human Rights denounced the ruling in a tweet, blasting what it described as a “repressive judicial system.”
The migrants had been convicted of “illegal entry into Morocco,” “violence against law enforcement officers,” “armed gathering” and “refusal to comply.”
The Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta have long been a magnet for people fleeing violence and poverty across Africa and seeking refuge via the continent’s only land border with the EU.
Since the June 24 incident, dozens of mostly Sudanese migrants have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from eight months to two years in prison without parole.