The YPG, Syrian offshoot of the PKK terror group, on Friday relocated a total of 500 detainees affiliated with the Syrian opposition and Bashar al-Assad regime to different regions.

According to sources in Syria's northern Manbij city, hundreds of detainees from three separate prisons that were once used by Syrian regime elements were taken to prisons in the Raqqa and Hasakah regions.

The relocated people were picked from among up to 4,000 detainees kept in the Manbij city prisons.

The YPG/PKK occasionally uses the detained individuals, especially those it deems important, as bargaining chip during negotiations.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US, and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants./aa

More than 800 mosques in Germany have been the targets of threats and attacks since 2014, but in most of the cases, crimes were not properly investigated, according to Brandeilig, an initiative of rights group FAIR International.

The group, which has founded Germany’s first reporting center for attacks on mosques, recorded nearly 840 incidents of attacks, vandalism and threats between 2014 and 2022.

A detailed analysis of the crimes in 2018 revealed that perpetrators remained unidentified in most of the attacks, fueling further attacks against Muslim worship sites by neo-Nazis or left-wing extremists.

“In general, the clearance rate for mosque attacks can be considered very low,” the group said in a recent report.

Among the 120 attacks recorded against mosques in 2018, only in nine cases perpetrators could be identified.

“This rate is a cause for concern,” Brandeilig’s experts stressed, pointing out that in at least 20 cases, which included arson attacks, suspects intended to cause death or great bodily harm.

“In general, the police officers arrived on the scene very quickly and immediately started the investigation. Nevertheless, almost none of the incidents could be solved until today,” the experts said.

Left-wing extremists and followers of the YPG/PKK terror group were behind several attacks targeting mosques, while majority of them were committed by right-wing extremists or neo-Nazi groups, according to the report.

Germany, a country of over 83 million people, has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. Among the country’s nearly 5.3 million Muslims, 3 million are of Turkish origin./aa

The decision of the Myanmar junta to enforce death sentences against four individuals, including two prominent activists, marks the start of what could be a spate of death pronouncements, two UN experts warned on Friday.

Thomas Andrews and Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteurs in Myanmar on human rights and on extrajudicial arbitrary executions, respectively, also called for increased “international pressure on the brutal military regime.”

“The illegitimate military junta is providing the international community with further evidence of its disregard for human rights as it prepares to hang pro-democracy activists,” the experts said.

“These death sentences, handed down by an illegitimate court of an illegitimate junta, are a vile attempt at instilling fear amongst the people of Myanmar.”

The experts stressed that one of the condemned individuals is a former member of parliament from the National League for Democracy, while another is a leader of the 88 Generation activist group that stood up to former dictator Ne Win’s regime.

The four individuals were tried and convicted in military tribunals and reportedly without access to legal counsel during their rejected appeals, violating international human rights law.

They were sentenced to death by a military tribunal in January on charges of treason and terrorism. If the executions proceed, they will be the first judicial executions in Myanmar since 1988.

‘Greater pressure on junta’

In the face of increasing human rights violations, the experts urged the international community to exert greater pressure on Myanmar’s military.

“Without imposing serious costs on the military for its attacks on fundamental rights, we should expect increasing numbers of these death penalty pronouncements from the junta,” they said.

The experts said the international community – chiefly UN member states and the Security Council – needs to demonstrate that the junta’s actions will not go unpunished and that more be done to target the military’s needs for money, weapons, and legitimacy.

“The junta’s announced decision to execute the activists illustrates how the military seeks to use all apparatuses of the state to persecute those that oppose its attempt to return Myanmar to military authoritarian rule,” they said.

The UN experts stressed that the imposition of the death penalty was taking place alongside the military’s extrajudicial killings of civilians, estimated now to stand at nearly 2,000.

They said the Martial Law Order 3/2021, illegitimately decreed by the Myanmar junta in March 2021, provides for the application of the death penalty for 23 vague and broadly defined offenses./aa

Tombstones in northern Syria, close to the Turkish border, provide grim evidence of the fate of underage boys and girls forcibly recruited by the YPG, the Syrian offshoot of the terror group PKK.

According to footage obtained by Anadolu Agency, the tombstones of several YPG/PKK members at a cemetery in the city of Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) show that they died at age 14 to 17. The slain YPG/PKK members were born in the late 1990s and died in the mid-2010s.

The use of children as armed combatants, by terrorist groups or otherwise, is expressly forbidden under international humanitarian law and is defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court.

The YPG/PKK's use of child soldiers was highlighted by the US State Department’s 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report.

The report underlined that the YPG/PKK continued to forcibly recruit boys and girls as young as 12 from refugee camps located in northwestern Syria.

This week, locals in Aleppo, Syria – near northern areas controlled by YPG/PKK terrorists – said two brothers, just 9 and 10 years old, had just been kidnapped by the terrorist group.

Moreover, a January 2020 UN human rights office (OHCHR) report said its findings suggest the YPG/PKK is using children as fighters in Syria.

In July 2019, Virginia Gamba, the UN secretary-general’s special representative for children and armed conflict, signed an action plan with the SDF – the label the YPG/PKK terror group uses in Syria – to end and prevent the recruitment and use of minors under 18, but the terror group has violated the plan.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US, and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children and infants. The YPG is the PKK's Syrian offshoot./aa

The Ministry of Interior systems network suffered a disruption of about two hours which caused confusion specifically at Kuwait International Airport and land ports of Salmi and Nuwaiseeb, rest of the administration were not affected.

The MOI is looking into the cause of disruption of its network as only 7 days back the systems were down. Meeting will be held to solve frequent malfunctions in the information system and to find other alternative solutions to avoid disruption in workflow.

India is under increasing pressure to take action after comments by top officials from the country’s ruling party sparked fury in the Muslim world, riots at home and threats from Al Qaeda.

Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal, both spokespeople for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, made speculative remarks that were seen as insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and his wife, Aisha.

A complaint was filed against Sharma, who commented on the prophet’s private life in a recent TV debate, for “inciting people on divisive lines,” Delhi Police said Thursday on Twitter. Filing a complaint, the first step in any police investigation in India, is typically followed by an interrogation of the accused.

Following her TV appearance, Sharma said on Twitter that her comment about the prophet had been in response to “continuous insult and disrespect” toward a Hindu god and that she had withdrawn her statement. But the BJP suspended her that day, anyway.

Jindal, whom the party also expelled Sunday over comments he made about Islam on social media, said on Twitter that he was not against any religion.

But their comments had already drawn accusations of blasphemy in some Middle Eastern countries, leaving New Delhi struggling to contain the fallout.

As calls for a boycott of Indian goods surfaced on social media, several countries — including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar — lodged official protests against India.

And after a letter attributed to Al Qaeda was circulated among Indian media groups this week warning of Islamist attacks to avenge the remarks, the government tightened public security.

Protests were also held this week in Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and other major cities./CBC