ROME: Huge numbers turned out at pro-Palestinian rallies in Europe on Saturday, calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and the release of activists on board a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the territory.&nbsp;Organizers of the protest in Rome said hundreds of thousands of people had turned out for a fourth day running, after Israel intercepted the 45-strong flotilla seeking to reach Gaza earlier this week.&nbsp;Some 70,000 people, according to police, took to the streets in Barcelona, in one of several pro-Palestinian protests to take place across Spain.&nbsp;Elsewhere, several thousand people marched through the centre of the Irish capital, Dublin, to mark what organizers said was &quot;two years of genocide&quot; in Gaza.&nbsp;With Ireland, Spain is one of the fiercest European critics of Israel&#39;s military offensive in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas &nbsp;October 7, 2023, attack on Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.&nbsp;But in Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni&#39;s hard-right government has been criticized for its inaction on the siege of the Palestinian territory.&nbsp;On Saturday, Meloni accused demonstrators of defacing a statue of Pope John Paul II with graffiti in front of Rome&#39;s main train station, calling it a &quot;shameful act&quot;.&nbsp;&quot;They claim to take to the streets for peace, but they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace,&quot; she said in a statement.&nbsp;Protesters in the Italian capital, including families with children, shouted, &quot;We are all Palestinians&quot;, &quot;Free Palestine&quot; and &quot;Stop the genocide&quot;, with many carrying Palestinian flags and wearing black-and-white chequered keffiyehs.&nbsp;&quot;Usually, I don&#39;t appreciate large-scale demonstrations, but today, I couldn&#39;t bring myself to stay home,&quot; Donato Colucci, a 44-year-old scout leader accompanying 150 youths from a secular association, told AFP.&nbsp;&quot;I think countries like Italy, France, and Spain have developed a culture of resistance and democratic values more than others because they experienced dictatorship and violence.&quot;&nbsp;In Barcelona, Marta Carranza, a 65-year-old pensioner demonstrating with a Palestinian flag on her back, said Israel&#39;s policy &quot;has been wrong for many years and we have to take to the streets&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;SolidarityThe Global Sumud flotilla, which was intercepted on Wednesday, left Barcelona in early September and had been seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, where the United Nations says famine has taken hold.&nbsp;Around 50 Spaniards on the flotilla have been detained by Israel, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told public television in an interview aired on Saturday.&nbsp;The flotilla organisers say Israel&#39;s actions were &quot;illegal&quot; since they intercepted the vessels while they were traversing international waters.&nbsp;In Paris, where some 10,000 people gathered, a spokesperson for the French contingent of Global Sumud, Helene Coron, told the crowd: &quot;We&#39;ll never stop.&nbsp;&quot;This flotilla didn&#39;t get to Gaza. But we&#39;ll send another, then another until Palestine and Gaza are free.&quot;&nbsp;Jordi Bas, a 40-year-old primary school teacher waving a Palestinian flag in Barcelona, said he was not surprised by the huge turn-out.

Europe

Huge numbers turned out at pro-Palestinian rallies in Europe on Saturday, calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and the release of activists on board a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the territory

Hundreds of thousands turn out at pro-Palestinian marches in Europe

UNITED NATIONS: Rohingya Muslims pleaded with the international community at the first United Nations high-level meeting on the plight of the ethnic minority to prevent the mass killings taking place in Myanmar and to help those in the persecuted group lead normal lives. &ldquo;This is a historic occasion for Myanmar, but this is long overdue,&rdquo; Wai Wai Nu, the Rohingya founder and executive director of the Women&rsquo;s Peace Network-Myanmar, told ministers and ambassadors from many of the UN&rsquo;s 193-member nations in the General Assembly Hall. The Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar have suffered decades of displacement, oppression and violence, while seeing no action in response to determinations that they are victims of genocide, she said. &ldquo;That cycle must end today,&quot; Wai Wai Nu said. Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be &ldquo;Bengalis&rdquo; from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982. In August 2017, attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on Myanmar security personnel triggered a brutal campaign by the military that drove at least 740,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh. The military is accused of mass rape, killings and burning villages, and the scale of its operation led to accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide from the international community, including the UN. Myanmar has been wracked by violence since the military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and brutally suppressed nonviolent protests. That triggered armed resistance and fighting across the country by pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces seeking to oust the military rulers, including in western Rakhine state, where tens of thousands of Rohingyas still live, many confined to camps. The United States in 2022 said it had determined that members of the Myanmar military committed crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya. UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi, who recently visited Myanmar, told the high-level meeting on Tuesday that Bangladesh is now hosting close to 1.2 million Rohingya refugees, and since fighting reignited in Rakhine in 2024 between the military and the Arakan Army, an additional 150,000 have sought safety in the neighbouring country. The Arakan Army, the well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority, which seeks autonomy, now controls almost all of Rakhine state, Grandi said, and the situation of the Rohingya there has not improved. They still face discrimination, the burning of their villages, exclusion from work, a ban on moving freely, restricted education and health care and the threat of arrest, he said. &ldquo;They are subjected to forced labor and forced recruitment&rdquo;, and &ldquo;their lives are defined every day by racism and fear,&quot; Grandi said. Julie Bishop, the UN special envoy for Myanmar, said there was little sign that the political crisis could be settled, with no agreed ceasefire, pathway to peace or political solution. The government is preparing for elections starting in late December, but UN human rights chief Volker Turk said they will not reflect the will of the people or create a foundation for lasting peace. The election will be held under military control, the Rohingya can&rsquo;t vote because they have been deprived of citizenship, and ethnic Rakhine parties have been disqualified from running. Rofik Huson, founder of the Arakan Youth Peace Network, told the assembly that despite decades of persecution, the Rohingya&rsquo;s &ldquo;deepest wish&rdquo; is to live in their ancestral homeland, Myanmar, in peace and security. &ldquo;Yet, the past decade has shown that it&rsquo;s not possible for us without international support, without international pressure,&rdquo; he said. He called for the creation of a UN-supervised safe zone in northern Rakhine state along the border with Bangladesh. Maung Sawyeddollah, founder of the Rohingya Student Network, speaking in an impassioned voice, said that without self-determination for the Rohingya and international protection in Rakhine, there can be no lasting peace. &ldquo;The UN must mobilize resources to empower Rohingya,&quot; he told world leaders. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock, who chaired the meeting, ended it saying, &ldquo;Today is just a starting point, we have to do more.&rdquo; She promised an action-oriented follow-up.

Asia

Rohingya leaders at the UN urged global action to end decades of persecution in Myanmar, calling for protection, citizenship, and justice. Ongoing violence and discrimination continue to displace thousands and deny them basic rights.

Rohingya Muslims plead for help at the UN to stop killings in Myanmar

<span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MANILA: &nbsp;Thousands of protesters took to the streets in the Philippine capital on Sunday to express their outrage over a corruption scandal involving lawmakers, officials and businesspeople who allegedly pocketed huge kickbacks from flood-control projects in the poverty-stricken and storm-prone Southeast Asian country. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Police forces and troops were put on alert to prevent any outbreak of violence. Thousands of police officers were deployed to secure separate protests in a historic Manila park and near a democracy monument along the main EDSA highway, also in the capital region, where organizers hoped to draw one of the largest turnouts of anti-corruption protesters in the country in recent years. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The United States and Australian embassies issued travel advisories asking their citizens to stay away from the protests as a safety precaution. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A group of protesters waved Philippine flags and displayed a banner that read: &ldquo;No more, too much, jail them,&rdquo; as they marched in the Manila protest and demanded the immediate prosecution of all those involved in the scandal. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">&ldquo;I feel bad that we wallow in poverty and we lose our homes, our lives and our future while they rake in a big fortune from our taxes that pay for their luxury cars, foreign trips and bigger corporate transactions,&rdquo; student activist Althea Trinidad told The Associated Press in Manila, where she joined a noisy crowd that police estimated at around 8,000 people by midday. &ldquo;We want to shift to a system where people will no longer be abused.&rdquo; <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trinidad lives in Bulacan, a flood-prone province north of Manila where officials said the most flood-control projects were being investigated either as substandard or nonexistent. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">&ldquo;Our purpose is not to destabilize but to strengthen our democracy,&rdquo; Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, the head of the Catholic Bishops&rsquo; Conference of the Philippines, said in a statement. He called on the public to demonstrate peacefully and demand accountability. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organizers said protesters would focus on denouncing corrupt public works officials, legislators and owners of construction companies, along with a system that allows large-scale corruption, but they would not call on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to step down. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marcos first highlighted the flood-control corruption scandal in July in his annual state of the nation speech.<span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He later established an independent commission to investigate what he said were anomalies in many of the 9,855 flood-control projects worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9.5 billion) that were supposed to have been undertaken since he took office in mid-2022. He called the scale of corruption &ldquo;horrible&rdquo; and has accepted his public works secretary&#39;s resignation. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Public outrage erupted when a wealthy couple who ran several construction companies that won lucrative flood-control project contracts showed dozens of European and American luxury cars and SUVs they owned during media interviews. The fleet included a British luxury car costing 42 million pesos ($737,000) that they said they bought because it came with a free umbrella. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Under intense public criticism, the couple, Sarah and Pacifico Discaya, later identified during a televised Senate inquiry at least 17 House of Representatives legislators and public works officials who allegedly forced them to pay huge kickbacks so they could secure flood-control projects in an explosive testimony. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two prominent senators were later implicated in the scandal by a former government engineer in a separate House inquiry. All those named denied wrongdoing but they face multiple investigations. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Senate President Francis Escudero and House Speaker Martin Romualdez separately stepped down in a widening fallout from the scandal, as both chambers of Congress face intensifying criticism after several legislators were implicated in the corruption allegations. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At least three government engineers were dismissed and 15 others were being investigated prior to dismissal. All face criminal complaints and their bank accounts, houses, cars and other assets will be frozen, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon said.

Central Asia

Scandal tied to $9.5 billion in flood-control projects.

Articles tagged with "protest"

Hundreds of thousands turn out at pro-Palestinian marches in Europe

Rohingya Muslims plead for help at the UN to stop killings in Myanmar

Protest erupts in Manila over Philippines flood control corruption scandal