South Africa Asks UN Court to Urgently Examine Israel’s Targeting of Rafah in Genocide Case

 A Palestinian boy sits near a tent for displaced people in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 13, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
A Palestinian boy sits near a tent for displaced people in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 13, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
TT

South Africa Asks UN Court to Urgently Examine Israel’s Targeting of Rafah in Genocide Case

 A Palestinian boy sits near a tent for displaced people in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 13, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
A Palestinian boy sits near a tent for displaced people in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 13, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)

South Africa’s government said Tuesday it had lodged an "urgent request" with the UN’s International Court of Justice to consider whether Israel’s military operations targeting the southern Gaza city of Rafah are a breach of provisional orders the court handed down last month in a case alleging genocide.

South Africa said it asked the court to weigh whether Israel’s strikes on Rafah, and its intention to launch a ground offensive on the city where 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter, breaches both the UN Genocide Convention and preliminary orders handed down by the court last month in a case accusing Israel of genocide.

Rafah is on the border with Egypt, which has warned that an offensive on the city now holding more than half of Gaza's population would bring disaster.

South Africa's government said in a statement that Rafah was "the last refuge for surviving people in Gaza." It asked the top UN court to consider using its powers to issue additional preliminary orders telling Israel to halt the deaths and destruction there.

South Africa already alleged Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in its war against the Hamas militant group in Gaza and filed a case with the world court in December. A ruling on the genocide allegation could take years.

South Africa also asked the court to order a ceasefire by Israel, but the justices stopped short of that.

In its new filing, South Africa's government said it was "gravely concerned that the unprecedented military offensive against Rafah, as announced by the State of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large scale killing, harm and destruction."

South Africa said it was asking that the matter be dealt with urgently "in light of the daily death toll in Gaza."

The court didn’t immediately confirm receipt of the new request. If it decides to hold another hearing on the request for further provisional measures, it would likely then rule within weeks.

Israel strongly denies committing genocide in Gaza and says it does all it can to spare civilians and is only targeting Hamas militants. It says Hamas' tactic of embedding in civilian areas makes it difficult to avoid civilian casualties.

Israel's assault has wrought destruction in Gaza, with more than 28,000 people killed, over 70% of them women and children, according to local health officials in the Hamas-controlled enclave. Around 80% of the population has been displaced and the UN says a humanitarian catastrophe has pushed more than a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza toward starvation.

Israel says it has killed thousands of militants in its aim of crushing Hamas in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 were taken hostage.

South Africa has accused Israel of ignoring the court's preliminary ruling in the days after it was issued by continuing to kill civilians.

"Israel believes it has license to do as it wishes," Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said.

South Africa's legal efforts are rooted in issues central to its identity: Its governing party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to "homelands." Apartheid ended in 1994.

Israel's military assault in Gaza was described last week as "over the top" by US President Joe Biden, a strong criticism from a close ally.  

The White House said Biden has also warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel should not conduct a military operation against Hamas in Rafah without a "credible and executable" plan to protect civilians.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
TT

Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."