DUBAI: Al-Arabiya news channel has shut down its offices in Lebanon, it said on Friday, in a new sign of tensions with the Iran-backed sectarian movement, Hezbollah.
The Beirut offices of Al-Arabiya and its sister channel Al-Hadath, which offers extensive coverage of political news, have been closed and they no longer have any correspondents in Lebanon, a spokesman told AFP. In a statement, the Dubai-based channel said it has “restructured” its operations in Lebanon “due to the difficult circumstances and challenges on ground, and out of Al-Arabiya’s concern for the safety of its own employees and those employed by its providers.” It said it would nonetheless “continue to closely cover Lebanese affairs.”
The channel said it would help employees affected by the decision to find jobs elsewhere with Al-Arabiya or its providers.
Those dismissed would be given “their full legitimate rights” and “other exceptional grants.”
Lebanon’s National News Agency said the decision would affect 27 employees.
In the lobby of the Al-Arabiya offices in downtown Beirut, half a dozen security guards stood watching as employees left the building for the last time.
One security guard was changing the lock on the office door, an AFP photographer said.
Al-Arabiya shuts down Lebanon offices due to ‘difficult circumstances’
Al-Arabiya shuts down Lebanon offices due to ‘difficult circumstances’
Algeria parliament to vote on law declaring French colonization ‘state crime’
- The vote comes as the two countries are embroiled in a major diplomatic crisis
ALGERIA: Algeria’s parliament is set to vote on Wednesday on a law declaring France’s colonization of the country a “state crime,” and demanding an apology and reparations.
The vote comes as the two countries are embroiled in a major diplomatic crisis, and analysts say that while Algeria’s move is largely symbolic, it could still be politically significant.
The bill states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused,” according to a draft seen by AFP.
The proposed law “is a sovereign act,” parliament speaker Brahim Boughali was quoted by the APS state news agency as saying.
It represents “a clear message, both internally and externally, that Algeria’s national memory is neither erasable nor negotiable,” he added.
France’s colonization of Algeria from 1830 until 1962 remains a sore spot in relations between the two countries.
French rule over Algeria was marked by mass killings and large-scale deportations, all the way to the bloody war of independence from 1954-1962.
Algeria says the war killed 1.5 million people, while French historians put the death toll lower at 500,000 in total, 400,000 of them Algerian.
French President Emmanuel Macron has previously acknowledged the colonization of Algeria as a “crime against humanity,” but has stopped short of offering an apology.
Asked last week about the vote, French foreign ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux said he would not comment on “political debates taking place in foreign countries.”
Hosni Kitouni, a researcher in colonial history at the University of Exeter in the UK, said that “legally, this law has no international scope and therefore is not binding for France.”
But “its political and symbolic significance is important: it marks a rupture in the relationship with France in terms of memory,” he said.
