‘No one deserves this’: UK Muslims reel after far-right violence

A Muslim family walks in a street, amid rioting across the country in which mosques and Muslims have been targets, in Liverpool on Aug. 6, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 09 August 2024
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‘No one deserves this’: UK Muslims reel after far-right violence

  • Anti-immigrant, Islamophobic riots occurred in the UK’s other northern towns and cities in the last week
  • Violence followed a mass stabbing on July 29 in Southport, which was falsely blamed on social media on a Muslim migrant

LONDON: Noor Miah was a student when riots broke out in northern England in the summer of 2001, with angry young British South Asians clashing with police after a series of racist attacks and incidents.
The northern town of Burnley was engulfed in the riots which began an hour away in Oldham, as the far-right stoked racial tensions and minority communities accused the police of failing to protect them.
More than two decades later, Miah recalled that dark period as he tried to calm Muslim youths in Burnley after several Muslim gravestones in the local cemetery were defaced and far-right riots targeted mosques in nearby cities.
“2001 was a difficult time for Burnley. We have moved onwards since then, picked ourselves up. The next generation has a lot of hope,” Miah, now a secretary for a local mosque, said.
On Monday, Miah received a message from a friend who found a family member’s grave covered in paint.

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“When I rushed to the cemetery there were already a couple of families, who were really concerned, really emotional,” Miah said, with around seven gravestones vandalized with grey paint.
The act is being treated as a hate crime by local police.
“Whoever’s done this is trying to provoke the Muslim community to get emotionally hyped up and give a reaction. But we have been trying to keep everyone calm,” Miah said.
“It’s a very low thing to do. No one deserves this... things like this shouldn’t happen in this day and age.”
The attack has added to the fear among Burnley’s Muslims, after anti-immigrant, Islamophobic riots occurred in other northern towns and cities in the last week.
The violence followed a mass stabbing on July 29 in Southport, near Liverpool, in which three children were killed, which was falsely blamed on social media on a Muslim migrant.
Miah worries about his wife going to the town center wearing a hijab and has told his father to pray at home instead of at the mosque “to limit how much time he spends outside.”
“I helped build that mosque, I physically moved bricks there. I was part of that mosque, but I have to think about my family’s safety,” he said.
But Miah still hoped there would be no violence.
“We haven’t had riots yet here. Hopefully the riots won’t come to Burnley.”
In Sheffield, violence hit close to home for Ameena Blake. Just a few miles away in Rotherham, hundreds of far-right rioters attacked police and set alight a hotel housing asylum seekers on Sunday.
While Blake, a community leader on the board of two local mosques, said Sheffield is a place of “sanctuary,” Rotherham “is literally on our doorstep.”
Since the weekend riot, there has been “a feeling of massive fear,” especially among Muslim women, Blake said. “I’ve had Muslim sisters who wear hijab contacting me saying, ‘I’m worried about going out with hijab.’”
Like Miah’s family in Burnley, here too “people have been staying in their homes.”
“I know of sisters who usually are very independent... who now won’t go out without a male member of the family dropping them off and picking them up because they don’t want to be out in the car alone.”
The government has announced extra security for the places of worship in the wake of the violence, which reportedly left mosque-goers in Southport trapped inside the building during clashes.
While the last two major bouts of rioting to rock England in 2001 and 2011 involved an outpouring of mistrust and anger against the police by minorities, this time police forces have worked alongside Muslim community leaders to urge calm.
“Historically, there has been a lot of mistrust in the police between BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) communities, Muslim communities,” said Blake, who is also a chaplain for the South Yorkshire police in Sheffield.
“Communities have almost parked to one side the mistrust and the historical issues to join together (with the police) to tackle this very, very real problem.”
Support from the police and government has been “really amazing, and to be honest, quite unexpected,” Blake added.
As Friday prayers beckoned this week, Muslims in Sheffield were feeling “quite nervous and vulnerable.”
But people will go to mosques, Blake said. “There is fear, but there’s also very much a feeling of we need to carry on as normal.”


Germany wants trade with Kazakhstan, won’t circumvent Russia sanctions, Scholz says

Updated 4 sec ago
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Germany wants trade with Kazakhstan, won’t circumvent Russia sanctions, Scholz says

“I am grateful for the trusting dialogue between us, through which we want to prevent trade between us from being misused to circumvent sanctions,” Scholz said
Both Scholz and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said their countries were interested in increasing trade in oil, rare earths, lithium and other raw materials

ASTANA: Germany is interested in expanding trade with Kazakhstan while also ensuring such trade is not used to circumvent EU sanctions on Russia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on a visit to the Central Asian nation.
“I am grateful for the trusting dialogue between us, through which we want to prevent trade between us from being misused to circumvent sanctions,” Scholz said.
After Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia, prompting Moscow to seek circuitous routes for importing technology and goods.
Sources have told Reuters that Russian businesses seeking goods banned by the West sometimes procured them from companies based in neighboring Kazakhstan or other former Soviet nations. The Astana government has said it would abide by the sanctions.
Both Scholz and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said their countries were interested in increasing trade in oil, rare earths, lithium and other raw materials.
“Both sides benefit from this exchange because it allows us to diversify our economies and make them more resilient,” Scholz said. “A very concrete example of this is the oil supplies from Kazakhstan, which helped us a lot after Russia failed as a supplier.”
The two met ahead of a broader meeting between Scholz and all five Central Asian leaders, an example of more active Western diplomacy in what has traditionally been Russia’s backyard.
Kazakhstan has already stepped in to replace Russia as the supplier of crude for Berlin’s Schwedt refinery. Scholz’s visit comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to curb sales of metals such as titanium to “unfriendly” nations.

Russia evacuates border villages in Kursk region

Updated 53 min 12 sec ago
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Russia evacuates border villages in Kursk region

  • Moscow appears to be mounting a counter-offensive in the region
  • More than 150,000 people in the region have had to flee their homes since Kyiv’s offensive began on August 6

MOSCOW: Russia is evacuating a number of villages in the Kursk region close to the Ukrainian border, the local governor said on Monday, almost six weeks after Ukraine launched its surprise incursion.
Moscow appears to be mounting a counter-offensive in the region, claiming to have retaken at least a dozen villages from Ukraine’s control since last week.
Authorities have decided to order the “obligatory evacuation of settlements in the Rylsky and Khomutovsky districts that are within a 15-kilometer (nine-mile) zone adjacent to the border with Ukraine,” Governor Alexei Smirnov said on Telegram.
He did not say which villages would be evacuated or the number of evacuees. There are dozens of villages and towns within this 15-kilometer radius.
More than 150,000 people in the region have had to flee their homes since Kyiv’s offensive began on August 6, state media reported Smirnov as saying last week.
Ukraine says its forces have advanced across tens of kilometers of Russian territory and seized dozens of settlements, including the border town of Sudzha.
Ukraine’s incursion — which began more than two years after Russia launched a full-scale military assault on its neighbor — caught Moscow off-guard.
It is the biggest incursion by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War II.


Secret Service ‘needs more help’ after apparent Trump assassination bid: Biden

Updated 46 min 58 sec ago
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Secret Service ‘needs more help’ after apparent Trump assassination bid: Biden

  • “The (secret) service needs more help, and I think the Congress should respond to their needs,” Biden told reporters at the White House

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Monday that the US Secret Service needs more personnel to perform its duties after a second apparent assassination attempt against Republican election candidate Donald Trump.
“One thing I want to make clear, the (secret) service needs more help, and I think the Congress should respond to their needs,” Biden told reporters at the White House.
“I think we may need more personnel.”
Biden added that “thank God the president’s OK” following Sunday’s incident in which the Secret Service opened fire on a gunman, who was later arrested, at Trump’s golf course in Florida.


The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN says

Updated 16 September 2024
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The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN says

  • It comes as a setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious 
  • Any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress

DUBAI: The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN said Monday. It’s a devastating setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress.

Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan. It’s likely that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions for other countries in the region and beyond.

News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.

A top official from the World Health Organization said it was aware of discussions to move away from house-to-house vaccinations and instead have immunizations in places like mosques.

The WHO has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.

“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of the recent policy discussions on shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari from the WHO. “Partners are in the process of discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any change in current policy.”

Polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants target vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.

As recently as August, the WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focusing on improved vaccination coverage in endemic zones and an effective and timely response to detections elsewhere.

During a June 2024 nationwide campaign, Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, the WHO said.

But southern Kandahar province, the base of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, used site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.

Kandahar continues to have a large pool of susceptible children because it is not carrying out house-to-house vaccinations, the WHO said. “The overall women’s inclusion in vaccination campaigns remains around 20 percent in Afghanistan, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.

Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement, the WHO warned last month.

Pakistani health official Anwarul Haq said the polio virus would eventually spread and continue affecting children in both countries if vaccination campaigns aren’t run regularly and in a synchronized manner.

“Afghanistan is the only neighbor from where Afghan people in large numbers come to Pakistan and then go back,” said Haq, the coordinator at the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “People from other neighboring countries, like India and Iran, don’t come to Pakistan in large numbers.”

There needs to be a united effort to eliminate the disease, he told The Associated Press.

The campaign suspension is the latest obstacle in what has become a problematic global effort to stop polio. The initiative, which costs about $1 billion every year, has missed multiple deadlines to wipe out the disease and technical mistakes in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and partners have been costly.

The oral vaccine has also inadvertently seeded outbreaks in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.

This was seen most recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the territory’s first case in more than 25 years.


The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN says

Updated 16 September 2024
Follow

The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN says

  • News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start
  • No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.

DUBAI: The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN said Monday. It’s a devastating setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress.
Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan. It’s likely that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions for other countries in the region and beyond.
News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.
A top official from the World Health Organization said it was aware of discussions to move away from house-to-house vaccinations and instead have immunizations in places like mosques.
The WHO has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.
“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of the recent policy discussions on shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari from the WHO. “Partners are in the process of discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any change in current policy.”
Polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants target vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
As recently as August, the WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focusing on improved vaccination coverage in endemic zones and an effective and timely response to detections elsewhere.
During a June 2024 nationwide campaign, Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, the WHO said.
But southern Kandahar province, the base of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, used site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.
Kandahar continues to have a large pool of susceptible children because it is not carrying out house-to-house vaccinations, the WHO said. “The overall women’s inclusion in vaccination campaigns remains around 20 percent in Afghanistan, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.
Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement, the WHO warned last month.
Pakistani health official Anwarul Haq said the polio virus would eventually spread and continue affecting children in both countries if vaccination campaigns aren’t run regularly and in a synchronized manner.
“Afghanistan is the only neighbor from where Afghan people in large numbers come to Pakistan and then go back,” said Haq, the coordinator at the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “People from other neighboring countries, like India and Iran, don’t come to Pakistan in large numbers.”
There needs to be a united effort to eliminate the disease, he told The Associated Press.
The campaign suspension is the latest obstacle in what has become a problematic global effort to stop polio. The initiative, which costs about $1 billion every year, has missed multiple deadlines to wipe out the disease and technical mistakes in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and partners have been costly.
The oral vaccine has also inadvertently seeded outbreaks in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.
This was seen most recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the territory’s first case in more than 25 years.