This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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A dramatic standoff between the U.S. and Colombia unfolded Sunday with Colombian President Gustavo Petro turning back two U.S. military planes that were carrying deported migrants in shackles, saying immigrants should be treated with dignity. The two countries then traded tariff threats before announcing a deal in which Colombia would begin accepting flights of deported migrants. Meanwhile, Trump has sent 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, further militarizing the region. “We’re very, very concerned,” says immigration activist Fernando García of the El Paso, Texas-based Border Network for Human Rights, whose organization is among those providing resources like Know Your Rights training to immigrants now living under a regime of “anxiety and fear.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Maha Kumbh Mela officially began in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, on January 13. This 45-day-long spiritual gathering has been attracting thousands of pilgrims daily from across the country, seeking to participate in the auspicious rituals and holy dips.
Amid this fervor, reports have emerged of an incident involving the Tapti Ganga Express, traveling to the Kumbh Mela near Jalgaon in Maharashtra. It has been claimed that the train was attacked, with stones being thrown at its carriages, breaking the window panes. Following this, a video began circulating widely on social media, showing chaotic scenes near a railway track. The footage captured a crowd outside the train, and within moments, there is visible panic among passengers inside. They are seen closing windows and hiding. This video has sparked widespread concern, with several users sharing it alongside captions indicating an attack on passengers heading to the Maha Kumbh Mela.
Instagram user Samrat Bhoj Parmar shared this as footage of Kumbh Mela devotees being attacked.
Instagram user Dinaank Official wrote that the Surat Prayagraj train going to the Maha Kumbh was attacked near Jalgaon. This user also shared two other videos along with the viral video. (Archived link)
An Instagram user named Thakur Brand shared the video and called it an attack on a train going to Maha Kumbh. (Archived link)
View this post on InstagramA Facebook user named Sunil Chacha Hindu also shared the video with a similar claim. (Archived link)
*महाकुंभ जा रही ट्रेन पे पथराव कोई बड़ी साजिश तो नहीं*
Posted by Sunil Chacha Hindu on Wednesday 15 January 2025
Fact-check
We performed a reverse image search using a key frame of the viral video. We found the video in a tweet by Vivek Gupta, a journalist associated with News18 India, dated July 13, 2024. According to the information given in the tweet, several unidentified persons pulled the chain and pelted stones on a passenger train in the Amalner area of Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. (Archived link)
महाराष्ट्र के जलगांव जिले के पैसेंजर ट्रेन पर पथराव..
*जलगांव जिले के अमलनेर इलाके में चेन पुलिंग करके कई अज्ञात लोगों ने किया पथराव..*
भुसावल से नंदूरबार जा रही थी यह पैसेंजर ट्रेन..
पूरे मामले की जांच में जुटी है रेलवे पुलिस..#MaharashtraNews pic.twitter.com/cb7uGzX422
— Vivek Gupta (@imvivekgupta) July 13, 2024
We also came across news reports published on the Aaj Tak and Zee News websites that stated that on July 12, 2024, a mob pelted stones on the Bhusaval-Nandurbar passenger train in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, causing panic among the passengers. In addition, according to the reports, a viral video captured the incident. Around 25 people were seen pelting stones at the train while terrified passengers screamed and tried to escape in the footage. Following the incident, the Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF) began investigations and registered a case under the Railway Act 154. No formal complaint was filed and no injuries were reported.
To sum it up, a six-month-old video of stone pelting on the Bhusaval-Nandurbar passenger train was falsely linked to the Tapti Ganga Express carrying devotees bound for the Maha Kumbh Mela, with social media users falsely claiming that its passengers were injured.
The post Old video of stone-pelting on train falsely peddled as attack on Kumbh pilgrims appeared first on Alt News.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Pawan Kumar.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Read RFA coverage of this topic in Burmese.
The Myanmar military killed 19 people including 14 members of an insurgent militia in an air attack on a rebel position, the militia said, as the junta presses on with operations aimed at recovering territory it lost last year.
The attack was near an office in Sin Gut village, in central Myanmar’s Myingyan township, occupied by members of a pro-democracy People’s Defense Force, or PDF, groups of fighters that sprang up across the country after the military overthrew an elected government in early 2021.
PDFs and allied ethnic minority insurgent groups made stunning gains last year but the junta has vowed to recapture territory and defeat the PDFs while trying to coax the ethnic minority insurgent into peace talks.
A representative of the PDF in Myingyan, which is in the Mandalay region, said the Sunday air raid lasted for more than 20 minutes.
“First, they shot with a fighter jet. Then they came firing with machine guns from an Mi-35 helicopter,” said the militia member, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.
RFA tried to telephone the Mandalay region’s junta spokesperson, Thein Htay, for comment on the attack but he did not answer.
A building in Myanmar’s Sin Gut village badly damaged in by a junta air raid on Jan. 26, 2025. (Mandalay Free Press)RELATED STORIES
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A Myingyan PDF leader was among those killed, the PDF official said, adding that two children were among five civilians killed.
Bodies of the dead were so badly mutilated it was not possible to identify them before they were cremated, said a resident of the area who also declined to be identified.
Eight people were wounded in the attack, the PDF official said.
There had not been any fighting recently in the Myingyan area, which is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Mandalay city, unlike places to the north of the city, so the attack was a surprise, the resident said.
The military has made advances in recent days in its operations in the Mandalay region after anti-junta fighters last year took positions on the approaches to Myanmar’s second-biggest city.
There is no precise death toll for Myanmar’s war but U.N. experts said last month that more than 6,000 civilians had been killed.
“Thousands of lives have been cut short in indiscriminate attacks by the military, which often targets civilian homes and infrastructure. Unlawful killings by junta forces are common and are characterized by their brutality and inhumanity,” U.N. experts said in a report.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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While a ceasefire is largely holding in Gaza, Israel is intensifying attacks on the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military has killed at least 13 people in a major military operation targeting Jenin that began on Tuesday when Israeli troops raided the city, backed by airstrikes, drones and U.S.-made Apache helicopters, following a six-week siege. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have been “emboldened” by Trump’s lifting of sanctions on far-right Israeli settler groups. Further violence is increasingly likely, says Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and journalist based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. “We’re seeing Israel wage a war that very much resembles the practices they have committed in Gaza,” with Palestinians left “completely defenseless,” she says. “It’s a very slow slaughter of Palestinians. If you survive a bullet, you don’t know if you’re going to survive daily life.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In one of his first executive orders after taking office, President Trump ordered the United States to withdraw from the U.N.’s World Health Organization, putting numerous WHO programs at risk, including efforts to tackle tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, says the move is a “grave mistake for American national interests and our national security,” as well as “an attack on science, public health and public health institutions.” He warns that the U.S. will likely fall behind on public health innovation and disease prevention, putting the country and the world at greater risk to “the next pandemic.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Read RFA coverage of this topic in Burmese.
The Myanmar military killed 28 of its own soldiers and their detained relatives in an airstrike on insurgent positions near an ancient capital in Rakhine state, according to the rebels and a human rights group.
The Arakan Army, or AA, is fighting for control of Rakhine state and has made stunning gains over the past year, seizing 14 of its 17 townships from the control of the junta that seized power in an early 2021 coup.
The military has struck back with its air force, launching numerous bombing raids, which early on Sunday included a strike on Kyauk Se village, to the north of Mrauk U town.
“We don’t know the exact details yet but we do know that dozens are dead,” Myat Tun, director of the Arakan Human Rights Defenders and Promoters Association, told Radio Free Asia.
“There were no residents affected, it affected prisoners of war, including children,” he said.
The AA said 28 people were killed and 29 were wounded when the air force dropped three bombs on a temporary detention center run by the AA before dawn on Sunday.
“Those killed/injured in the bombing were prisoners and their families who were arrested in battles,” the AA said in a statement. “Military families were about to be released and were being temporarily detained in that place.”
Some of the wounded were in critical condition and the death toll could rise, the group said.
RFA tried to contact AA spokesperson, Khaing Thu Ka, and Rakhine state’s junta spokesperson, Hla Thein, for more information but neither of them responded by time of publication.
Bodies of some of the 28 people killed in the bombing of a detention camp in Myanmar’s Mrauk U, Rakhine State, released on Jan. 19, 2025. (AA Info Desk)RELATED STORIES
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Mrauk U is the ancient capital of Rakhine kings who were conquered by Burmese kings in 1784.
The AA has captured hundreds of junta soldiers, police officers and their family members, in its relentless advance across the state, from its far north on the border with Bangladesh, down to the south where AA fighters have launched probes into neighboring Ayeyarwady division.
Families of soldiers and police in Myanmar often live near them in family quarters.
This was not the first AA prison to be bombed.
In September, military aircraft struck a detention center and hospital in Pauktaw town, killing more than 50 prisoners of war, the AA said at the time.
On Jan. 8, junta airstrikes in Ramree township’s Kyauk Ni Maw village killed more than 50, including women and children, and some 500 homes were destroyed in a blaze that the bombing sparked.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Pro-democracy fighters in Myanmar launched a barrage of rockets at junta facilities in the eastern town of Loikaw as the deputy of the ruling military council was visiting, a rebel group said on Wednesday.
There was no confirmation from the junta of the Tuesday night attack and the anti-junta Brave Warriors for Myanmar, or BWM, militia force said it had no information about casualties.
The group said its members fired five 107 mm rockets to the State Hall in Loikaw, capital of Kayah state, and two rockets at a regional military command headquarters in the town as junta deputy Lt. Gen. Soe Win was visiting for Kayah State Day on Wednesday.
“We want to make sure that even the deputy leader of the junta council is worried about his life, that’s why we had to attack,” an official from the militia group told Radio Free Asia.
He said his group was trying to gather information about the attack, which was organized with help from two other militia groups, the Mountain Knight Civilian Defense Forces and the Anti-Coup People’s Liberation Force.
A Loikaw resident said that he heard loud explosions and the sound of shooting on Tuesday night while some pro-junta channels on the Telegram messaging service said rockets had exploded at Loikaw’s airport and nowhere else.
RFA tried to telephone the junta spokesman for Kayah state, Zar Ni Maung, but could not get through.
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Anti-junta forces have on several occasions used short-range 107 mm rockets in actual or planned attacks on junta leaders, including its chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
It was not the first time that Lt. Gen. Soe Win has been in the vicinity of an insurgent attack.
On April 8, 2024, anti-junta fighters used drones to attack the Southeast Regional Military headquarters in Mawlamyine town when he was visiting.
There was speculation at the time that he had been hurt in the attack and he was not seen in public for about a month afterwards, fueling rumors he had been wounded.
Military-controlled media on Wednesday made no mention of any rocket attack in Loikaw but newspapers did carry a Kayah State Day statement from the junta chief, in which he called for people to reject the armed opposition and blamed the democracy supporters and foreign countries for “terror acts.”
“The current instability and terror acts occurring within the country are the result of individuals claiming to be promoting democracy, but instead, they have resorted to electoral fraud to unlawfully seize state power,” he said, apparently referring to Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, which won elections in 2015 and 2020. He made no mention of any attack in Loikaw.
“Rather than resolving issues through lawful democratic methods, they have chosen armed terrorism approaches,” he said.
The military complained of fraud in the 2020 polls, despite there being no evidence of any major cheating, organizers said, and ousted Suu Kyi’s government in a coup on Feb. 1, 2021. She and many others have been locked up ever since.
Min Aung Hlaing also accused foreign countries of “supporting dictatorship disguised as democracy.”
“Some foreign countries, which claim to be defending democracy, are also supporting and encouraging armed terror attacks that are directly or indirectly against the democratic system,” Min Aung Hlaing said. He did not identify any countries.
While Aung San Suu Kyi and her government attracted diplomatic and economic support from Western countries and some Asian neighbors, no foreign governments are known to have supported any anti-junta forces.
The military gets most of its weapons from Russia and China.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Laura Flanders & Friends and was authored by Laura Flanders & Friends.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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A video has been widely circulating on social media showing a young man attempting to strangle a woman in the middle of a road while covering his face with a cloth. In the video, several bystanders can be seen intervening to rescue the woman from the attacker. The video is being shared along with claims that the incident took place in the Amroha district of Uttar Pradesh. It is further alleged that a Muslim man attempted to kill a Hindu woman after she rejected his advances.
An X handle under the name Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati, which joined the platform in September 2024, shared the viral video on social media platforms, asserting that the incident occurred in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh. The post claimed that a ‘Jihadi’ had attempted to harm a Hindu girl but was ultimately thwarted by Hindu men who came to her rescue. (Archived link)
Another user made the same claim while sharing the video, but later deleted the tweet. (Archived link)
A user named Namrata Singh also made a similar claim while sharing the video. (Archived link)
Fact Check
Alt News performed a keyword search using terms related to the incident. This led us to a report published on Amar Ujala’s website on January 6, 2025. According to the report, the incident occurred in Gajraula, a locality in Amroha district, Uttar Pradesh. The report stated that a young man attempted to strangle a medical college student using a muffler in broad daylight. Following the assault, the accused fled the scene and later sought refuge at his sister’s residence in Moradabad. However, police tracked him down, arrested him, and presented him in court, after which he was sent to jail. The accused was identified as Rahul, a resident of a nearby village in the same district.
We also reviewed the X handle of the Amroha Police, which provided further clarification. In a reply to the viral footage, the police issued a statement confirming that the accused had been apprehended and was currently in custody. They emphasised that both the accused and the victim belonged to the same caste and knew each other prior to the incident. The police also denied the communal narrative being spread on social media and urged people not to share misinformation about the incident. In other words, they confirmed that the accused was not a Muslim.
महोदय, कृपया अवगत कराना है कि उपरोक्त प्रकरण में प्राप्त तहरीर के आधार पर अभियोग पंजीकृत है, अभियुक्त को गिरफ्तार कर जेल भेजा जा चुका है। दोनो पक्ष सजातीय हैं तथा पूर्व परिचित हैं। कृपया भ्रामक खबर न फेलाये।
— Amroha Police (@amrohapolice) January 7, 2025
To sum up, many social media users falsely gave a communal angle to an incident in which a youth attacked a medical college student, claiming that the accused was a Muslim.
The post Attack on medical student in Amroha: Accused not a Muslim, incident given false communal angle appeared first on Alt News.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.
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Ja’Ronn Alex, a news reporter for KKCO/KJCT, was tackled and choked outside the Grand Junction, Colorado, TV station on Dec. 18, 2024, after being followed while driving a news vehicle and challenged over his nationality, according to police records and news reports.
A Colorado man, Patrick Egan, was arrested at the scene and charged with bias-motivated crimes and second-degree assault by strangulation — both felonies — and harassment by following and ethnic intimidation, a misdemeanor.
Alex told police that he believed Egan had followed and attacked him because of his ethnicity as a Pacific Islander.
The police affidavit said that Alex was driving back to the station from an assignment when Egan began following him in Delta, about 40 miles away. KKCO said in multiple reports that Alex was driving in a news vehicle, and Grand Junction’s Daily Sentinel newspaper reported that the vehicle had the TV station’s logos, citing KKCO/KJCT.
According to the affidavit, Alex said that Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to his car at a stoplight in Grand Junction and shouted “something to the effect of: ‘Are you even a U.S. Citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!’”
Alex then called the station’s general manager, Stacey Stewart, who told him to drive straight to the secure station building. Egan continued to follow Alex to the station, where both men parked in front of the building and got out of their cars. Egan chased Alex as he began to run toward the front door of the station, demanding to see his identification and asking him if he was an American, the affidavit said.
Egan then tackled Alex to the ground, put him in a headlock and began to strangle him. At that point, several station employees ran outside, pulled Egan away from Alex and held him down until police arrived. The attack was partially captured on surveillance cameras, the affidavit said.
Witnesses told police that Egan choked Alex for 45 to 90 seconds, and that his face turned red and he appeared to have difficulty breathing.
Alex, who sustained minor injuries in the attack, declined to comment. Stewart said she could not comment on the attack beyond the stations’ news reports.
At Egan’s initial court appearance on Dec. 23, Alex said of Egan: “He knows where I work, he knows exactly who I work for, and he still decided to charge at me and put me in a headlock.”
Egan appeared in court on Jan. 2, where KKCO reported that the judge kept a protection order in place. Egan posted $20,000 bail later that day.
His lawyer, Ruth Swift, did not return a voicemail requesting comment.
This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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At least two journalists were among those killed and seven others injured when suspected gang members opened fire in a Christmas Eve shooting at the General Hospital in the downtown area of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, according to news reports and two Haitian journalists who witnessed the attack.
The journalists were attacked around 11 a.m. Tuesday as they waited for Health Minister Duckenson Lorthe Blema to reopen a wing of the hospital, which was closed following a gang attack earlier this year.
“The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is appalled by this tragic attack on reporters doing their jobs,” a CPJ spokesperson said in New York on Tuesday. “We send deepest condolences to the families of those killed and call on Haitian authorities to swiftly bring these killers to justice.”A local gang leader, Johnson ‘Izo’ André, claimed responsibility for the attack in a video posted on WhatsApp, saying the Viv Ansanm gang coalition had not authorized the reopening.
The journalists’ bodies were later shown on social media and identified by colleagues as Jimmy Jean, a reporter with online outlet Moun Afe Bon, and Marckendy Natoux, who worked for Voice of America in Haiti.
A woman identified as the wife of one of the journalists killed during an armed gang attack on the Haiti’s General Hospital cries as an ambulance arrives with his body at another hospital in Port-au-Prince on December 24, 2024. (Photo: AP/Odelyn Joseph) Witnesses said a police officer was also killed in the gunfire.
“They shot at us. Some went down. They were hit by the bullets,” Jephte Bazil, one of the journalists who saw the attack, told CPJ by phone outside another nearby hospital where the injured were taken.
“Some of us were at the entrance and others were inside with the staff,” said Bazil, a reporter for an online media outlet, Machann Zen Haïti.
According to the United Nations, more than 5,350 people have been killed in gang-related violence in 2024 and another 2,155 injured.
The Haitian government issued a statement on Tuesday saying “this heinous act constitutes an unacceptable assault on the very foundations of our society” and pledging its “unfailing commitment to restoring order and bringing the perpetrators of this crime to justice.”
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Sulaymaniyah, December 20, 2024 —The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the killing of journalists Jihan Belkin and Nazim Dashdan in northern Syria in a suspected Turkish drone attack on their vehicle and calls for an investigation into whether they were targeted for their work.
“Journalists are civilians and must be protected at all times,” said CPJ Advocacy and Communications Director Gypsy Guillén Kaiser in New York. “We call on Turkey’s defense authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into the killings of journalists Jihan Belkin and Nazim Dashdan in Syria. It is imperative to ensure those responsible are held accountable.”
The journalists were killed in a suspected Turkish drone attack on their vehicle on the road between Tishreen Dam and the town of Sarrin, in northeastern Aleppo, according to multiple news reports and Belkin’s employer, who spoke to CPJ.
Belkin, 28, was a correspondent for the Hawar News Agency (ANHA), while Dashdan, 32, worked as a freelance journalist for multiple outlets including ANHA, Firat News Agency, and Ronahi TV. Both journalists were inside a car while moving between locations as they were covering the recent clashes between Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Turkish-backed opposition forces Syrian National Army (SNA), which has been supported by Turkish airstrikes during its offensive. Their driver, Aziz Haj Bozan, was also injured in the attack.
ANHA is a news agency affiliated with the Kurdish administration of northeast Syria and broadcasts in six different languages. ANHA, Firat News Agency, and Ronahi TV are pro-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey designates a terrorist organization.
ANHA manager Akram Barakat told CPJ via messaging app that the incident took place around 3:20 pm. “They were returning to Kobani city after covering the fighting near Tishreen when a Turkish drone deliberately targeted their vehicle, killing them instantly,” he said. Barakat said that Belkin had been working as a journalist in northern Syria since 2017, and Dashdan since 2014. “Both had consistently reported on wars and conflicts in the region for various outlets,” he said.
Barakat told CPJ that the journalists’ vehicle was clearly marked as “Press,” but that Turkey “continues to disregard” international laws.
“Turkish drone strikes have repeatedly targeted journalists in our region while the international community remains silent,” Barakat said. “We urge international organizations, human rights groups, and the global community to take immediate action to stop these attacks on journalists and hold the perpetrators accountable. This silence has only exacerbated the dangers faced by journalists in the region.”
CPJ’s email requesting comment from the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations did not receive a response. The Turkish Defense Ministry website did not provide access to allow CPJ to request comment.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The verdict by a Hong Kong court has generated widespread criticism after it found seven people — including former lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting — guilty of “rioting” when they tried to stop white-clad men wielding sticks from attacking passengers at a subway station in 2019.
Exiled former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui, who like Lam is a member of the Democratic Party, accusing authorities of “rewriting history.”
“It’s a false accusation and part of a totally fabricated version of history that Hong Kong people don’t recognize,” Hui told RFA Cantonese after the verdict was announced on Dec. 12.
“How does the court see the people of Hong Kong?” he asked. “How can they act like they live in two separate worlds?”
The District Court found Lam and six others guilty of “taking part in a riot” by as dozens of thugs in white T-shirts rained blows down on the heads of unarmed passengers — including their own — using rattan canes and wooden poles at Yuen Long station on July 21, 2019.
Lam, one of the defendants in the subversion trial of 47 activists for holding a democratic primary, is also currently serving a 6-years-and-9-month prison sentence for “conspiracy to subvert state power.”
Victim Galileo, a V, displays scarring and seven stitches following the July 21, 2019 attacks at Yuen Long MTR station in Hong Kong. While the defense argued that the men were defending themselves against the thugs, the prosecution said they had “provoked” the attacks and used social media to incite people to turn up and defend against the men.
Letters of thanks
The verdict came despite Lam and former District Councilor Sin Cheuk-lam having received letters from the Hong Kong Police thanking them for their role in the incident.
Sentencing in the trial, which began in October 2023, is expected on Feb. 27, with mitigation hearings set for Jan. 22.
A conviction for rioting carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment, although the District Court is limited to handing out sentences of no more than seven years.
Issuing his verdict on Dec. 12, Judge Stanley Chan said he didn’t believe that Lam had using his standing as a Legislative Councilor to mediate the conflict or monitor the police response, and accused him of trying to take advantage of the situation for his own political benefit.
Felt numb
A victim of the attacks who is now overseas and gave only the pseudonym Galileo for fear of reprisals said he felt numb when he heard Thursday’s verdict, as he had felt the result to be inevitable amid an ongoing crackdown on public dissent in Hong Kong.
“I used a fire extinguisher and sprayed water [during the attacks],” Galileo said, adding that he and journalist Gwyneth Ho were “beaten several times.”
Wearing a cycle helmet, Galileo, a pseudonym, left, tries to protect Stand journalist Gwyneth Ho, right, during attacks by thugs at Yuen Long MTR, July 21, 2019 in Hong Kong. “I was panicky and scared, and my instinct was to protect myself and others,” he said.
According to Galileo, Lam’s actions likely protected others from also being attacked.
“I felt that his presence made everyone feel calmer, because he was a member of the Legislative Council at the time,” he said of Lam’s role in the incident. “He kept saying the police were coming, and everyone believed him, so they waited, but the police never came.”
Police were inundated with emergency calls from the start of the attacks, according to multiple contemporary reports, but didn’t move in until 39 minutes after the attacks began.
In a recent book about the protests, former Washington Post Hong Kong correspondent Shibani Mahtani and The Atlantic writer Timothy McLaughlin wrote that the Hong Kong authorities knew about the attacks in advance.
Members of Hong Kong’s criminal underworld “triad” organizations had been discussing the planned attack for days on a WhatsApp group that was being monitored by a detective sergeant from the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, the book said.
Chased and beaten
According to multiple accounts from the time, Lam first went to Mei Foo MTR station to warn people not to travel north to Yuen Long, after dozens of white-clad thugs were spotted assembling at a nearby chicken market.
When live footage of beatings started to emerge, Lam called the local community police sergeant and asked him to dispatch officers to the scene as soon as possible, before setting off himself for Yuen Long to monitor the situation in person.
On arrival, he warned some of the attackers not to “do anything,” and told people he had called the police. Eventually, the attackers charged, and Lam and others were chased and beaten all the way onto a train.
One of the people shown in that early social media footage was chef Calvin So, who displayed red welts across his back following beatings by the white-clad attackers.
So told RFA Cantonese on Friday: “The guys in white were really beating people, and injured some people … I don’t understand because Lam Cheuk-ting’s side were spraying water at them and telling people to leave.”
He described the verdict as “ridiculous,” adding: “But ridiculous things happen every day in Hong Kong nowadays.”
Erosion of judicial independence
In a recent report on the erosion of Hong Kong judicial independence amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent that followed the 2019 protests, law experts at Georgetown University said the city’s courts now have to “tread carefully” now that the ruling Chinese Communist Party has explicitly rejected the liberal values the legal system was built on.
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Nowadays, Hong Kong’s once-independent courts tend to find along pro-Beijing lines, particularly in politically sensitive cases, according to the December 2024 report, which focused on the impact of a High Court injunction against the banned protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong.”
“In our view, at least some judges are issuing pro-regime verdicts in order to advance their careers,” said the report, authored by Eric Lai, Lokman Tsui and Thomas Kellogg.
“The government’s aggressive implementation of the National Security Law has sent a clear signal to individual judges that their professional advancement depends on toeing the government’s ideological line, and delivering a steady stream of guilty verdicts.”
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Luk Nam Choi and Edward Li for RFA Cantonese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Trigger Warning: Murder, Suicide, Violence Against Children
The story uses only screenshots in view of the graphic nature of the actual video.
A video is viral on the social media showing distressing footage of the lifeless bodies of three children and a woman. Users have claimed that this video is from Bangladesh, and depicts the brutality of ‘radical Islamists’ who apparently attacked the village of Giripur, in Mymensingh. Such claims have been viral against the backdrop of the unrest that has engulfed the country since the abdication of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, continuing to the present day, under the interim leadership of Mohammed Yunus.
X user @Sanatan Voice (@SanatanVoice_in) shared the video, claiming that ‘a mother and her three young children were injured in the attack.’ The tweet was later deleted. (Archive)
The X account Megh Updates (@MeghUpdates) shared the viral video, claiming that ‘radical Islamists’ had attacked the homes of Hindu residents in Mymensingh, committing rape and vandalism. The tweet had managed to accumulate more than 33,000 views and over 750 re-shares, but was eventually deleted by the user. (Archive)
Readers should note that Alt News has previously debunked several false claims by this user, including misinformation related to the Bangladesh situation.
Another verified X user, Sunanda Roy (@SaffronSunanda) shared the viral video, claiming that Muslim perpetrators had raped a woman and attacked her children, leaving them badly injured. At the time of this article being written, the post has garnered more than 19,000 views, and has been re-shared over 870 times. (Archive)
Another X user, Amitabh Chaudhary (@MithilaWaala), who has been called out by Alt News for sharing disinformation on social media on several occasions, also shared the viral video with the same claim. (Archive)
Below are a few more instances of the same claim being made along with the viral video.
Click to view slideshow.Fact Check
To verify the claim, we ran a relevant keyword search on Google, which led us to a news report by Times of India, from November 7. In the report, it is mentioned that on November 6, a 32-year-old woman by the name of Babita Devi had killed her three children, Riya, Suraj, and Sujeet, aged 8, 5, and 3, respectively. This had taken place at Kilpara village in Purnea district of Bihar.
After hanging her children from nooses inside their house, she had allegedly killed herself. During preliminary investigation, it was revealed that the woman was mentally unstable, and was on medication.
Taking a cue from this, we checked if any video or footage from this unfortunate event in Bihar could be found on the internet. A keyword search in Hindi led us to this YouTube video uploaded on November 7. We are not embedding the video in view of the graphic content.
Comparing the viral video with footage from the YouTube report, we could ascertain that the footage of the dead woman and her three children showed the woman from Purnea identified as Babita Devi, and her three children, whom she had killed before killing herself.
Further, we came across another YouTube video, uploaded by a news outlet called Khabar Seemanchal, which reported on the same event from Purnea, Bihar.
We were also able to find news reports by India TV News, ETV Bharat News, Aaj Tak, etc, that corroborated the circumstances under which the tragic event had transpired on November 6.
To sum up, the video that is viral on social media showing distressing footage of the dead bodies of a woman and three children are not linked in any way to any incident in Bangladesh. It is from Purnea, Bihar. The claims of the footage showing the aftermath of an attack on Hindus are entirely false.
The post Tragic deaths of mother & children in Purnea, Bihar, falsely viral as attack on Hindu family in Bangladesh appeared first on Alt News.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In June 2017, Indigenous Ñomndaa’ journalist Marcela de Jesus Natalia found herself fighting for her life. A gunman waited for her outside the radio station where she worked and shot her three times.
“I didn’t think he wanted to kill me,” she said. “I turned around. The first bullet went to my forehead. I put my hand up, [and] the bullet went in and came out. The second one shattered my jaw. Then this guy held me, dragged me, gave me a final shot in my head and laid me on the pavement.”
Though at first presumed dead, Marcela de Jesús survived the attack and, with the support of lawyers and advocates, as well as of UN Human Rights, continues to fight for justice for the crime perpetrated against her. Marcela de Jesús was attacked because she angered powerful people by informing Indigenous Peoples about their rights, such as the importance of education, justice, and in particular, violence against women, thus empowering them to fight against historical discrimination against them.
“Journalists who expose wrongdoing and show us the horrific reality of conflict are human rights defenders,” said Volker Türk, UN Human Rights Chief, in a statement commemorating the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, observed every year on November 2. “Attacks against them affect everyone’s right to freedom of expression and access to information, leaving us all less well informed.”
In 2023, 71 journalists and media workers were killed and over 300 imprisoned around the globe, Türk said.
Marcela de Jesús is an Indigenous Ñomndaa’ woman born in Xochistlahuaca, in the state of Guerrero, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. From a young age, Marcela de Jesús witnessed violence and attacks by men in positions of power and even the military. It was there that her desire to defend her people was born and she realised that to confront abusers she needed to learn Spanish.
Marcela de Jesús migrated to the state of Oaxaca, and by her own efforts, she managed to continue studying and encountered a radio station that was looking for an Indigenous person from Guerrero who spoke Ñomndaa’ and Spanish and had completed middle school.
“I went behind my husband’s back, took the exam and passed,” she said. “I remember that the director [of the radio station] said to me, ‘Why do you want to be an announcer?’ ‘I always wanted to be the voice of my people,’ I answered.” Later, she returned to the state of Guerrero and got a precarious job as a radio announcer, but with patience and hard work she managed to become the radio manager.
It was after her return to her home state that she began to encounter opposition to her “voice.” Marcela de Jesús was told by powerful people in her town that she was not supposed to inform Indigenous Peoples; that the only thing they were interested in was whether a goat or a cow was lost, and not to get into trouble. She fought against and won lawsuits filed against her for giving Indigenous Peoples news.
It is my conviction that my people should be guaranteed the right that is enshrined in the Constitution and in international treaties, that we have the right to information.
“They couldn’t [silence me] because what is legal is legal. What is morally good is morally good. And that is the reason for the attack against me,” said Marcela de Jesús.
According to UN Human Rights in Mexico, at least five journalists and one media worker have been killed and one more media worker was disappeared this year because of their work. This continuous danger in which journalists have had to operate for years, led universal and regional human rights mechanisms to recommend to the Mexican State the creation of a Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
…The gunman who shot Marcela de Jesus has been arrested and sentenced for his crime, but the ones who called for her shooting are still out there. She is hopeful for them to be brought to justice.
“I have a lot of faith that the alleged intellectual author will forget about me. I have faith that nothing is forever,” said Marcela de Jesús. She added: “Nothing and no one, not jail, not this attack with three bullets, takes away my desire to continue being the voice of my people, to continue with my activism, my defence of human rights. I am fulfilling my dream of being the voice of my people at the national and international level.”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2024/11/i-always-wanted-be-voice-my-people
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
