The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said Tuesday that in 2022 more than 20 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya will need urgent food assistance because of severe drought and conflict.

"This is an increase of over 70% compared to food crises in 2016 and 2017," the agency said on Twitter.

The sharp increase in food assistance needs is primarily driven by the effects of severe drought across the eastern portion of the region and by consequences of conflict, especially in northern Ethiopia, according to UNOCHA.

Most areas of the Horn of Africa are experiencing water shortages and record-low vegetation conditions, reflecting the degradation of pasture for livestock and wilting or absent crop growth, said the UN.

"Given the potential for a historic fourth consecutive poor rainfall season in early 2022 and given the likelihood that conflict in northern Ethiopia will persist, there is high concern that household food consumption gaps will widen and drive rising levels of acute malnutrition and mortality through mid-to-late 2022," the UN said in a report last week.

During the October to December 2021 season, rainfall failed in most of Somalia, southern and southeastern Ethiopia and northern and eastern Kenya, resulting in a third consecutive below-average season, according to the report.

Somalia's South West State Humanitarian Affairs Minister Abdinasir Arush told Anadolu Agency that the current drought is severe, especially in the Bay and Bakol regions.

"Districts towns in the Bakol region, which has been under al-Shabaab blockade for over eight years, are witnessing severe heat and worst drought," said Arush.

He said residents are crying for help. "We are doing whatever we can to help but our resources are very limited."

Somalia has declared the crisis a "Humanitarian State of emergency" and urged urgent humanitarian intervention./aa

Islamophobia is on the rise in the Western world. Anti-Muslim hate has become a fuel for right-wing organizations, particularly as a strategy to garner electoral support in the US as well as Europe. In the guise of protecting national interests and safeguarding the native “superior culture” from “others,” the right-wing political parties have slowly mainstreamed anti-Muslim hate and prejudice across the Western world -this explanation of the rise of Islamophobia is accurate though incomplete.

For an average person, Islamophobia as a phenomenon emerged post 9/11 and became politically acceptable during the 2010’s decade. An examination of Western discourse on the Islamic world, however, suggests that stereotyping of Muslims is an old phenomenon, which at some levels began to take shape when Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula clashed militarily with the Byzantine and Persian Empire. Throughout the centuries, various Christian empires and entities continued to perpetuate stereotyping of Muslims to rally domestic political support, particularly through literature and art./ globalvillagespace

With France having taken over the rotating European Union presidency for the next six months, the country's Muslim population is concerned. They fear that French President Emmanuel Macron and several right-wing candidates' use of Islamophobic rhetoric will intervene in EU policymaking by further promoting anti-Muslim sentiment across the 27-nation bloc, putting the lives of the ethnic minority at risk.

France will go to the polls in April to elect a new president. While Macron is expected to run for a second term, his right-wing rivals have already adopted an anti-Muslim electoral strategy that is causing outrage among Muslims and human rights advocates. The strategy is a result of Macron's yearslong campaign that stoked tensions with Muslim countries and created disputes with EU leaders.

Poisonous discussions about Islam and Muslims, mixed with scathing crosscutting attacks on race and migration, are becoming increasingly venomous in France.

The harassment of Muslims is no longer the domain of the far-right anti-immigration candidate Marine Le Pen, but the lever for manipulations for another candidate for the presidency, firebrand Eric Zemmour, whose rhetoric on Muslims and immigrants – despite being an immigrant himself – has given him a dramatic entrance into French politics since September last year. Another candidate for the Gaullist Les Republicains party, Valerie Pecresse is also strongly anti-immigrant.

France launched a major crackdown on its Muslim minority more than a year ago. Macron and his current government are shutting down mosques and Islamic centers on the pretext of "radical propaganda," in a move that promotes hate speech and Islamophobia within the nation and abroad.

The country's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced last year that France would step up checks against places of worship and associations "suspected" of spreading "radical propaganda." However, critics say the French authorities use the vague and ill-defined concept of "radicalization" or "radical Islam" to justify the imposition of measures without valid grounds, which risks leading to discrimination against Muslims and other minority groups.

The crackdown came after the October 2020 murder of teacher Samuel Paty, who was targeted following an online campaign against him for having shown insulting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a class. Macron defended the publication of caricatures that offended Muslims and said he will not prevent the publishing of the cartoons under the pretext of freedom of speech, sparking outcry among the Muslim world.

While French Muslims have accused him of trying to repress their religion and of legitimizing Islamophobia, several Muslim-majority countries, including Turkey and Pakistan, have condemned Macron's attitude toward Muslims and Islam.

Critics say French laws that target Muslims, their worship places, educational and other centers violate religious freedom and unfairly target France's 5.7 million Muslim minority, the largest in Europe. Although France's controversial "anti-separatism" law does not specifically mention the word "Islam," French Muslims have protested against it for months, claiming the measures are aimed at the country's Muslims.

Adding credence to their claims, however, according to the country's interior ministry, 99 mosques and Muslim prayer halls out of France's total number of 2,623 have been investigated in recent months because they were suspected of spreading "separatist" ideology. Of the total, 21 were currently shut for various reasons and six were being probed with a view to closing them down under the guise of French laws against extremism and separatism./DS

Green party politician and Germany’s new agriculture minister, Cem Özdemir, condemned the recent Islamophobic attack on a Muslim cemetery in the country’s northwest, the German Embassy in Turkey said on Tuesday.

The embassy was referring to the tens of gravestones that were defiled at a Muslim cemetery in the German city of Iserlohn on New Year’s Eve, viewed as the latest indicator of the growing Islamophobic sentiment in Europe.

“The desecration of graves in Iserlohn is deeply repugnant and nothing more than a cowardly anti-Muslim attack. My thoughts are with the relatives of the deceased. I can well imagine what they are feeling. Let's not leave them alone!” Özdemir had voiced on Sunday.

According to local police, about 30 headstones at the Muslim cemetery in Iserlohn were damaged.

Authorities issued an appeal for information from anyone who witnessed the vandalism or has information that could help the investigation.

The attack comes amid a worrying rise in Islamophobic crimes in Germany in recent years.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry earlier expressed its “sadness” in the aftermath of the attack.

The ministry urged officials to find the "perpetrators of this disastrous attack" so they can be "brought to justice and given the punishment they deserve."

It also asked authorities to take the necessary measures to prevent such incidents from happening.

According to a recently published report, titled "European Islamophobia Report 2020," a total of 901 Islamophobic crimes were registered by the Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany in 2020.

Eighteen anti-Islam demonstrations were held and 16 were organized by the racist PEGIDA movement in Germany during the same year.

Furthermore, 2020 saw a rise in online Islamophobia as coronavirus lockdowns were imposed and life shut down across Europe, according to the report.

Islamophobia in Europe has "worsened, if not reached a tipping point," said the report, underlining the fact that even centrist and mainstream political movements on the continent legitimize targeting Muslims with the excuse of fighting extremism.

Germany has experienced a rise in racism and anti-Muslim hatred in recent years. Germany is home to 81 million people and hosts the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. Of the country’s nearly 4.7 million Muslims, at least 3 million are of Turkish descent.

The Turkish community in Europe is concerned with the rising trend of Islamophobia and Turkophobia in Western countries and has called on European states to escalate measures against hate crimes.

Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have frequently urged European decision-makers and politicians to take a stance against racism and other types of discrimination that have threatened the lives of millions of people living within the bloc’s borders./DS

Aysha Renna, Ladeeda Farzana, and Nidha Parveen say they know why they were targeted on the ‘Bulli Bai’ app that appeared to offer them for sale. “Because we are Muslims,” they said.

Speaking to reporters in Kerala’s Kozhikode on Tuesday, Renna, Ladeeda, and Nidha, three Muslim student activists demanded India’s top court’s intervention on targeting Muslim women through the SulliDeals and BulliBai Apps.

Nearly six months after the ‘Sulli Deals‘ where photographs of more than 80 Muslim women put up for sale by right-wing Hindus, asserting anti-Muslim hatred and selective sexism, photos of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded by an unidentified group on an app using GitHub – by the name of ‘Bulli Bai’ – on 1 January 2022.

“We demand that the Supreme Court of India register a Suo motu petition in regard to continuous targeting of Muslim women,” Renna who is now Fraternity Movement national secretary said.

Bulli Bai happened, according to Renna, exactly because of the brutal silence of state and law and order agencies over Sulli Deals.

Last time, no police action has been taken against the perpetrators in the case, despite two FIRs filed – one in Delhi and another in Uttar Pradesh and more than a dozen complaints were written to several police stations in the country.

“This is not merely a matter of sexual harassment. Rather it is to establish the position of Muslim women in Indian society and to reinstate a consciousness that Muslim women are to be raped at any time,” student activist Ladeeda said.

“What security do we have in the public as women at a time when we are being sold and bought as slaves,” asks Ladeeda.

Ladeeda and Renna were students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, a university that had been subjected to brutal state violence as they tried to control protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019. They were targeted by Delhi police and severely manhandled by cops. Soon after the video of police brutality went viral, the duo became the symbolic icons of the anti-CAA protest that erupted in India in 2019 winter after Modi’s government introduced the anti-Muslim amendment. They travelled across the country to speak at rallies to protest the law.

For Nidha Parveen, a student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai, “it is actually very difficult” to get ahead of this “fear and trauma.”

“Whatever happened at Haridwar and now happening in the name of Sulli deals and Bulli Bai have the same goal, the extermination of Muslims,” Nidha said.

Nidha was also an active participant in 2019’s anti-CAA movement in the national capital. She was a student at Delhi University during that time.

Fraternity Movement Kerala secretary Nujaim PK and Kannur district president Lubaib Basheer were also present at the press meet.

‘Bulli Bai’ case: Mumbai police now detain Uttarakhand woman, say she handled app

Apart from the 21-year old Bengaluru man Vishal Kumar Jha detained on Monday, the Mumbai police have also detained a woman from Uttarakhand on Tuesday in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai‘ case – a GitHub app targeting hundreds of Muslim women.

“The 21-year-old man arrested by Mumbai Police Cyber Cell has been identified as Vishal Kumar. Main accused in the case is a woman detained from Uttarakhand. Both of the accused know each other,” read Mumbai Police statement.

According to Mumbai Police, the main accused woman was handling three accounts related to ‘Bulli Bai’ app.

“Co-accused Vishal Kumar opened an account by the name Khalsa supremacist. On Dec 31, he changed the names of other accounts to resemble Sikh names. Fake Khalsa account holders were shown,” claimed police.

Police also informed media that the Mumbai Police Cyber Cell today arrested the 21-year-old engineering student, who was detained from Bengaluru yesterday, following questioning in the case./ maktoobmedia

Pakistan has condemned online 'auction' of hundreds of Muslim women on an app' in India, which came to the fore after a journalist registered a complaint of the same with the Delhi police.

They were listed to Bulli Bai app on the open software development site GitHub using photos from their social media accounts without their permission.

"Pakistan strongly condemns the despicable and totally unacceptable harassment and insult of Muslim women on the internet and purpose-built online application in India," the Foreign Office said on Tuesday.

It noted that the doctored images were placed on the internet application with outrageous captions in a completely obnoxious and repugnant act, aimed at humiliating, harassing and insulting them.

"Hate-mongering followers of such applications attacked the dignity of nearly 100 influential Muslim women by bidding on them with deeply offensive remarks," it further observed.

The FO termed the development the 'newest low' in the violent streak of hate attacks against minorities in India whereby cyberspace – with purpose-built online platforms and social media – has been used yet again, to demean and harass women, particularly Muslim women

It said that the move was aimed to create a feeling of fear and shame amongst the Muslim community., adding, "These horrifying occurrences have left Muslim women traumatised and in deep fear."

The communique expressed the apprehension that "under the Hindutva-inspired BJP-RSS combine dispensation in New Delhi, space for minorities particularly Muslims is continuously shrinking in India."

"It is reprehensible that no action has been taken against the perpetrators of similar abhorrent act six months ago auctioning dozens of influential Muslim women in India on a social media platform," it noted with regret.

According to the FO, the deafening silence of the BJP leadership and absence of discernible action against ‘Hindutva’ proponents openly calling for the genocide of Muslims should send alarm bells across the international community about the gross and systematic human rights violations of minorities particularly Muslims in India.

"Pakistan reiterates its calls on the international community, particularly the United Nations and relevant international human rights and humanitarian organisations to fulfil their responsibilities to stop the rising xenophobia, Islamophobia and violent attacks against minorities in India and ensure their safety, security and well-being," the statement concluded./ tribune