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Author: Zaman Australia

  • NSW bushfires burning out of control on outskirts of Sydney prompting evacuation of homes

    NSW is again in the grip of a bushfire crisis with homes under threat in several areas including Sydney, where the air quality is at “hazardous” levels.

    During the worst of the conditions seven bushfires were burning at emergency level across the state.

    The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) currently has five fires at emergency warning level: Gospers Mountain, Little L Complex, Currowan, Three Mile and Green Wattle Creek.

    Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said it was not yet known how many properties had been lost and whether they were homes or sheds.

    He said three firefighters were also injured at a fire burning near Nattai in Sydney’s south-west and were treated for minor injuries.

    The NSW Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has also issued a road safety alert for Sydney because of smoke affecting visibility.

    The BOM warned of dangerous road conditions into Thursday evening and Friday morning, particularly for southern and south-west suburbs.

    The RFS also warned a heavy smoke haze would remain tonight in areas including Sydney and the Central Coast.

    Thick smoke will continue tomorrow morning, due to a temperature inversion which will keep smoke trapped in some areas.

    As of 9:30pm there were 112 bush and grass fires across the state, with scores yet to be contained.

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    The RFS warned anyone in the Colo Heights area that it was too late to leave and that residents should seek shelter as the fire approached.

    Fire crews were trying to slow the spread of the Green Wattle Creek blaze, 30 kilometres west of Campbelltown.

    Overnight winds fanned embers across Burragorang Lake and created a spot fire that was burning east towards the towns of Nattai and Oakdale where more than 2,000 residents live.

    Oakdale resident Glenys Dowling said she would stay and defend her home

    “I’m not leaving, this is my family home and I’ve lived here too long to go,” Ms Dowling said.

    “I know what to do and how to defend myself and that’s the way it is.

    “I’ve cleared the roof, mowed the lawn and I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

    A fire burning at Little L Complex in the Yengo National Park near Singleton may impact areas around Wollombi, Congewai with up to 100 properties in the area under threat.

    Residents in Laguna or Yengo areas were urged to leave towards Cessnock as 11 tankers attempted to tackle the blaze.

    Those in Boree were advised it was too late to leave.

    The RFS’ Leanne Bell said triple zero calls for help from people in isolated areas affected by the Little L Complex bushfire would go unanswered.

    “If you are in an isolated area we just do not have the resources to get to you, and the safest thing for you to do is leave and leave now,” she said.

    Ms Bell said there were not enough RFS crews to go around.

    “We estimate there are 100 properties directly under threat from this fire and we have 11 appliances in the area,” she said.

    “We are asking Yengo Creek Road and Upper Yengo Creek Road to leave now to head towards Cessnock and do so now while the path is clear.”

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    “I kind of wish I had gone a few days ago. I’m scared,” she said.

    “My partner wanted to stay and he kept reassuring me — I didn’t think it would come to this.”

    Another local said: “I’m a bit shaky at the moment. Being from Norway we pretty much have snow storms but nothing like this.”

    A fire at Bangala Creek near Tenterfield was spreading quickly in a north-easterly direction.

    The RFS said a bushfire at Three Mile on the Central Coast was impacting Mangrove Mountain and firefighters were working to protect properties in the area.

    The heavy smoke was impacting the first day of the Australian Open at the Australian Golf Club, in the southern Sydney suburb of Rosebery, which got underway today.

    New Zealand golfer Ryan Chisnall, who suffers from asthma, was spotted wearing a protective face mask during the opening round on Thursday afternoon.

  • Ankara lawyers subjected to intimidation, threats in prison meeting with purge victim

    Lawyers from the Ankara Bar Association say they were intimidated by management and threatened by guards at Sincan Prison, where they went to meet with four inmates who were found in police custody after they were missing for six months, the Artı Gerçek news website reported.

    The prison administration only allowed Salim Zeybek, among the four, to meet with the lawyers, the report said.

    The meeting was conducted in the presence of a guard and was recorded.

    Zeybek, a former public servant dismissed by a government decree after a 2016 coup attempt, told the lawyers that he was not abducted by any state official.

    Dozens of people were reportedly abducted by intelligence officers after the coup attempt, but only two people so far have revealed that they were kept unlawfully in a detention center and subjected to torture.

    Zeybek claimed that he was with the three others and hiding from the police for six months before turning themselves in and that they did not feel the need to contact their families.

    The families of the then-missing men had run an effective social media campaign to find their loved ones.

    The four suspects are charged with membership in the Gülen movement, which is accused of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt despite its strong denial of any involvement.

    After the meeting with Zeybek, the guard seized the notes taken by the lawyers, and used threatening language, according to the report.

    Yusuf Bilge Tunç, another public servant dismissed over Gülen ties, has been missing since August.

  • Turkey seizes passport of journalist Hasan Cemal, places travel ban

    Turkish authorities on Sunday have seized the passport of veteran journalist Hasan Cemal, who faces terror charges, and banned him from leaving the country, T24 reported.

    Police informed Cemal that his passport was revoked on Nov. 11 as he attempted to travel to Berlin. The journalist faces nine years in prison on charges of terrorist propaganda.

    The prosecutor said Cemal had supported the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in a column he wrote for the T24 news website in 2015.

    Cemal is known for his support for the resolution of the more than three-decade-long Kurdish conflict. He heavily criticised the government after it launched military operations in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast in 2015 following the collapse of a two-year peace process.

    Tens of thousands of Turks had their passports seized with decree laws issued by the Turkish state during the country’s state of an emergency rule which came into effect after the 2016 coup attempt.

    Since July 2016, Turkey has jailed 77,000 people including journalists, academics and human rights activists in a crackdown while more than 150,000 sacked or suspended from their jobs in the military, public and private sectors.

  • Ankara knows location of leading fugitive coup attempt suspect – interior minister

    The Turkish government has knowledge on the location of the leading fugitive suspect in the July 2016 coup attempt,  Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said on Sunday.

    Adil Öksüz is accused by Ankara of being a senior member of the Gülen movement who masterminded the July 15, 2016 coup attempt to topple the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Ankara designates the Gülen movement a terrorist organisation and has pursued a worldwide crackdown on the group.

    “We know where Adil Öksüz is. But let that information remain with us. Just as we follow the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and the DHKP-C (The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front), we do the same with FETÖ (Fethullahist Terror Organisation),’’ Sözcü newspaper reported Soylu as saying.

    Video footage shows Öksüz at the Akıncı military base, the airbase from which the attempt was launched, on the night of the coup. The former theology professor at Sakarya University was captured at the base then released two days later and has been a fugitive since.

    “Let our citizens [hearts] be at rest. We will leave no obstruction at home were FETÖ is concerned. The United States continues to host their ringleader… ’’ Soylu said, in an apparent reference to Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based cleric and leader of the Gülen movement.

    Over 77,000 people have been imprisoned over links to the Gülen movement and some 150,000 public employees have been suspended or sacked as part of the Turkish government’ crackdown on the group.

    Turkey has previously claimed that Öksuz lives in Germany and demanded that he be extradited.ahvalnews

  • Spies called in to oversee taskforce amid heightened foreign interference threat

    Australia’s domestic spy agency will lead a new taskforce aimed at strengthening Australia’s response to the threat of foreign interference.

    The Federal Government plans to spend almost $88 million to establish a new Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce.

    The taskforce will expand the resources of the National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator — which sits within the Home Affair Department — to help “disrupt and deter anyone attempting to undermine our national interests”.

    “This threat has been evolving and we have been staying ahead of it by building that capability now over many years, and most recently this initiative, which improves the collaboration, ensures that the tools they have are world-class and they can work together to identify, disrupt and prosecute,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

    The taskforce will be led by a senior Australian Security Intelligence Organisation officer, and include investigators from the Australian Federal Police and staff from a range of security agencies.

    The Government intends for it to increase intelligence collection, assessment, law enforcement capabilities and collaboration and decision-making between agencies to result in more disruptions of possible interference.

    It comes amid heightened national security concerns raised by allegations of Chinese espionage, influence over political parties and multiple cyber attacks on universities and federal agencies.

    Shortly before retiring earlier this year, outgoing ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis said foreign interference presented a greater threat than terrorism.

    The taskforce comes a week after it was revealed Chinese man Wang Liqiang was seeking political asylum in Australia after going public with allegations about Chinese spying.

    The Government has dismissed suggestions the taskforce was in response to that case, and insisted it had been under development for months.

    It also comes amid suggestions China was grooming Bo “Nick” Zhao to be a Chinese spy inside Australia’s Parliament.

    He was found dead in a Melbourne motel room in March after reportedly approaching ASIO.

    “On the advice that I’ve received, I don’t have any concern in relation to issues domestically… in relation to this particular matter,” Mr Dutton told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

    “I think the [ASIO] director-general, though, will have something further to say in due course, and I’ll let that investigation run its course.”

    The foreign interference taskforce does not require legislation to be established, meaning it won’t have to pass the Parliament.

     

  • Religious community leader released pending trial after 22 months

    Alparslan Kuytul, the head of a religious community critical of the Turkish government, was released pending trial on Thursday after 22 months of incarceration, the Turkish media reported.

    Furkan Foundation Chairman Kuytul, a vocal critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is facing a 20-year prison sentence on terrorism charges.He was released by a court pending trial in January and re-arrested after an objection from a prosecutor. “

    We beg Allah for the freedom of victims who were unlawfully prisoned,” the followers of Kuytul wrote in a statement issued on Thursday.

  • Erdoğan, new EU commission head discuss Syria

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the new president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen discussed Turkey’s EU accession and the country’s Syrian refugee population in a phone call on Sunday.

    The pair talked about the 2016 Ankara- EU agreement on Syrian refugees and  the voluntary return of Syrians to the safe zone being established in northern Syria during Leyen’s first day in office, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

    Turkey and EU in 2016 agreed on a deal aiming to cut the influx of Syrian refugees arriving in Greece. According to the deal, the EU promised the allocation of €3 billion in aid to Turkey to help migrants. The deal also included the end of visa restrictions applied to Turkish citizens when travelling to Europe as of June 2016, but the visa restrictions still remain.

    Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels last month launched an offensive in northeast Syria, aming to rid the region of Kurdish forces and create a safe zone, where million of the country’s Syrian refugees plan to be resettled.Turkey is home to 3.6 million Syrian refugees.

  • Migrants ‘tortured and beaten by Greek soldiers’ before being sent back to Turkey

    A number of migrants claimed to have been tortured and abused by Greek soldiers before being physically pushed back over the border to Turkey, Britain’s Metro news website reported on Tuesday.

    The report featured pictures of a group of migrants displaying the injuries they claimed were caused by Greek soldiers.

    One said he was blindfolded and burnt with a cigarette, while another said his foot ended up broken in several places. A third migrant claimed the Greek authorities confiscated his money and clothes while others said they had been hit on the head with sticks.

    The allegations form part of a growing number of complaints made against Greek security forces at the border with Turkey.

    In the past year hundreds of people have claimed to have been tortured and abused before being forcibly pushed back to Turkey.

    Turkey alleges that this year alone Greece rejected some 25,404 migrants. While the figure has not been independently verified, there are allegations of severe abuse, which includes withholding food and water.

    Greece has been struggling with the number of migrants on both the mainland and the islands. Two days ago its camps on five Aegean islands with an official capacity of 6,178 people was holding 35,590 men, women and children in unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

    The Greek government has pledged tougher restrictions on migration.

  • Germany: SPD wants concessions from Merkel or the coalition ‘cannot continue’

    The future of the Germany’s coalition government has been thrown into doubt by the newly elected leaders of the SPD. They are seeking fresh terms of the alliance that was formed in 2017.

    The newly elected co-leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), Norbert Walter-Borjans, cast further doubt on Sunday over the sustainability of the coalition government in Germany, increasing the prospect of a general election in 2020.

    Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, from the SPD, called for significant policy concessions from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), and said they are prepared to abandon the partnership if they are not adhered to.

    Read more: The secret money in German politics

    Speaking on public broadcaster ARD, Walter-Borjans said raising investments and scrapping temporary job contracts were issues that needed to be addressed if Merkel wanted to prolong the coalition.”If the coalition partner then takes an obstructive approach for these new tasks then you have to make a decision that it cannot continue,” he said.

    New terms dismissed by CDU

    But the notion of renegotiating the current terms drew short shrift from Armin Laschet, the CDU premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. He told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk: “Of course nothing will be renegotiated now. That’s quite clear.”

    Asked whether there was movement on the concessions that the new SPD leadership wants, Laschet said: “There is no such thing.”

    The likelihood of a compromise on the current terms was also dismissed by Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU). Angela Merkel’s successor in waiting said: “For the CDU it is quite clear: We stand by this coalition. We stand by this coalition on the basis that has been negotiated.”

  • UN rights body rules against extradition of Gülen follower from Morocco to Turkey

    The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has ruled against the extradition of a teacher linked to the Gülen movement from Morocco to Turkey on the grounds that he faces the risk of being subjected to torture if he is extradited, the tr724 news website reported.

    The decision of the UN rights body concerns the case of Mustafa Önder, a 34-year-old Turkish teacher who was detained in 2017 by the Moroccan authorities at the request of Turkey while he was working for a private school in Morocco.

    Turkey accuses Önder of membership in a terrorist organization due to his links to the Gülen or Hizmet movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

    In its decision the UN commission said: ”In view of the complainant’s profile as a perceived or actual member of the Hizmet movement, the Committee concludes that, in this case, assurances are insufficient to dispel the argument that a foreseeable, real and personal risk of the complainant being subjected to torture if extradited to Turkey, in violation of article 3 of the Convention, can be said to exist. The Committee, acting under article 22 (7) of the Convention, therefore concludes that the complainant’s extradition to Turkey would constitute a violation of article 3 of the Convention.”

    The commission refers to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which was ratified by Morocco in June 1993.

    In April 2017 Önder and his family applied for asylum with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Rabat. They are still awaiting a response.

    In December 2017 Morocco informed the committee that the complainant’s extradition to Turkey had been suspended until the committee issued its decision on the complaint.

    Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government launched a massive crackdown on followers of the movement under the pretext of an anti-coup fight as a result of which more than 150,000 people were removed from state jobs while in excess of 30,000 others were jailed and some 600,000 people have been investigated on allegations of terrorism.

    The Turkish government also ensured the closing down of many Gülen-linked schools abroad, and the Turkish intelligence service brought Gülen-linked individuals who were abroad to Turkey by force.

    The UN rights commission’s decision concerning the case of Önder is expected to set a precedent in similar cases when the Turkish government demands the extradition of Gülen followers from other countries.