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ADEN: In 1954, large crowds turned out for a historic visit by Queen Elizabeth II to Aden. At the time, this city on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula was a colony of the British Empire and was one of the busiest and most important ports in the world.
Now the queen’s death after a 70-year reign has prompted some Yemenis to remember a part of history not often evoked.
Her death has brought waves of grief and sympathy from around the globe.
But it has also raised calls for a re-examination of the death and deprivation inflicted by Britain’s colonial rule in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
In Aden, now the second largest city in Yemen, many remember colonial rule as a time of oppression that entrenched some of the problems still plaguing the city and the country.
Hassan Al-Awaidi, a university student, knows his grandfather was among those waving from the street in Aden when the queen and her husband, Prince Phillip, passed by.
Some today still remember Elizabeth’s visit with admiration and credit British rule with advances in the country. Hassan Al-Awaidi, a university student, knows his grandfather was among those waving from the street when the queen and her husband, Prince Phillip, passed by.
But Al-Awadi says his generation now knows better.
“In the context of the 21st century, such practices are seen as a reflection of contemporary global issues like racism, inequality and white supremacy,” he said.
“They cracked down on people who wanted to end the colonial occupation of this land. Thousands of people were killed in the struggle to root out colonialism. They should be prosecuted and pay for their crimes.”
Aden was the only Arab territory to have been a British colony. Other British outposts in the Middle East like Egypt, Palestine and in the Arabian Gulf were mandates or protectorates, not outright colonies.
Aden was first occupied by the British in 1839. Britain went on to seize surrounding parts of southern Yemen as protectorates, clashing with the other colonizers of the peninsula, the Ottomans.
Finally, the two established a border splitting north and south Yemen — a division that has endured throughout the country’s modern history and has flared again in the current civil war.
Aden was officially declared a Crown Colony in 1937. Positioned just outside the Red Sea, the city was a vital refueling and commercial port between Europe and Asia, particularly Britain’s colony of India.
Elizabeth stopped by on the way back from Australia, part of her first tour of the Commonwealth two years after ascending to the throne.
Photos of the visit on the website of the British-Yemeni Society, a UK charity, show British officers, dignitaries and Yemeni leaders greeting the young queen and her husband.
Large numbers of Yemenis met them wherever they went. A ceremony was held for the queen to award a knighthood to local leader Sayyid Abubakr bin Shaikh al-Kaff. To receive it, al-Kaff knelt on a chair in what was explained as a refusal to bow before the queen because of his Muslim faith.
The royals also watched a military parade featuring British and local Yemeni forces.
But not long after the visit, an uprising emerged, fueled by pan-Arab nationalism. After years of fighting, the British were finally forced to withdraw.
When the last batch of British troops left Aden in late November 1967, the People’s Republic of South Yemen was born, with Aden its capital. It would be the only Marxist country to ever exist in the Arab world, lasting until unification with the north in 1990.
Some in Aden recall British rule as bringing order and development.
Bilal Gulamhussein, a writer and researcher of the modern history of Aden, said many “long for the past they lived during the days of British rule, because everything was going in order, as if you were living in Britain exactly.”
He said that much of the beginnings of infrastructure and basic services, including health and education, date to the colonial time.
“Britain laid the foundations of the civil administration in Aden from the first beginnings of the occupation,” he said.
A few small reminders remain.
A statue of Queen Victoria stands in a main square, nicked by bullets that grazed it during crossfires in the current civil war. A clocktower resembling London’s Big Ben overlooks the city from a hilltop. A plaque commemorates Queen Elizabeth’s laying of the founding stone of a main hospital.
Salem al Yamani, a schoolteacher in the southern province of Abyan, said that even amid the current chaos, nostalgia for colonial times sparked by Elizabeth’s death is misplaced.
“The idea of having good roads and services does not mean they (the colonizers) were good. They were occupiers who served their own interest at the first place,” he said.
“That the situation now is dire doesn’t mean we want them back again,” he said.
“This is our own problem, and it will be resolved if foreign powers stopped meddling in our affairs.”
ADEN: Houthi militia has killed and injured 14,000 children in Yemen since the civil war broke out in 2014, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council heard.
In a speech on the sidelines of the 51st round of the general discussion of Article 2, the Human Rights Association said it documented the murder of 7,500 children, including 1,100 in Taiz.
About 8,310 children were injured in sporadic shelling on populated neighborhoods where schools, hospitals, markets, and play areas have been targeted.
The association called on the UN Human Rights Council to exert pressure on the Iran-backed militia to stop its violations against the Yemeni people and end the siege on Taiz, which has been affecting thousands of children since 2014.
The High Commission of Human Rights had presented a briefing on the situation in Yemen where human rights indicators have been deteriorating amid Houthi atrocities.
DUBAI: The UAE’s Emirates Red Crescent (ERC) has distributed food baskets to families across Sudan, as part of its ongoing efforts to help those affected by recent torrential rains and floods, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported on Saturday.
The aid was delivered to more than 7,000 villagers in the Dongla District of the Northern State.
An air bridge is being operated to help those affected by torrential rains in dozens of states and villages across Sudan , according to WAM.
The Sudanese people expressed their gratitude to the UAE leadership, government, and its people for the aid, WAM reported.
The UAE’s humanitarian and relief efforts have helped ease the crisis that flood-affected families are currently facing, Acting Governor of the Northern State Al Baghir Ahmed Ali told WAM.
“The delivery of food and shelter assistance at these difficult circumstances facing the Sudanese people demonstrates the generosity of the UAE and its kind people. We thank the UAE wise leadership for this supportive stance which reflect the deep-rooted bilateral ties,” he said.
At least 125 people have died, and 42,387 homes were destroyed when heavy rain and flooding struck the country, according to Sudan’s National Council for Civil Defense.
Another 64,286 homes were partially damaged, the council added.
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s generals have agreed to leave the choice of future heads of state and prime ministers to civilian political factions, the deputy head of the military government has announced.
The announcement was made by paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo following a meeting with army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan who led a military coup last year.
But he gave no indication of when power might be returned to civilians amid the persistent failure of talks with the main civilian factions since the coup.
“We renewed our previous commitment for the military institution to exit power and leave the governance to civilian (factions),” said Daglo, also commonly known as Hemeti, on Twitter.
He said the generals “agreed unequivocally that civilian (factions) should choose the civilian head of the Sovereignty Council and prime minister.”
He said that the military institution would then “devote itself completely to its duties as stipulated in the constitution and the law.”
Sudan has been rocked by turmoil since Burhan led a military coup in October last year that ousted the mainstream civilian bloc from power and triggered widespread international condemnation.
Near-weekly anti-coup protests, a spiraling economic crisis and a rise in ethnic clashes in Sudan’s remote regions have since fed into the deepening unrest.
In July, Al-Burhan pledged in a televised address to step aside and make way for Sudanese factions to agree on a civilian government.
Civilian leaders dismissed the move as a “ruse,” and pro-democracy protesters have maintained their rallying cry of “no negotiation, no partnership” with the military.
Several initiatives have emerged in recent months in attempts to resolve Sudan’s political crisis but none has made any significant headway.
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s security services seized over 1 million Captagon pills hidden in a shipment of grapes at Beirut port, it was announced on Saturday.
Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said that the illicit haul was heading to Kuwait via Sudan, and that investigations are underway to “pursue the dealers.”
Lebanese authorities insist they have stepped up efforts to combat the illegal trade in Captagon after Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, issued warnings about a rise in the number of attempts to smuggle the stimulant.
In 2021, the Kingdom suspended fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon after seizing more than 5 million Captagon pills hidden in a shipment of pomegranate bound for the country. Authorities said that in the past six years, there have been attempts to smuggle up to 600 million narcotic pills from Lebanon to Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, calm returned to Lebanese streets after at least five customers using pellet guns or toy weapons stormed banks across the cash-strapped country on Friday demanding access to withheld savings.
The Association of Banks in Lebanon said it was closing all branches for three days to protest against the attacks and protect banking staff.
However, there are fears of widening chaos if protesters take to the streets following the banks’ closure next week.
One political observer, who declined to be named, said: “Depositors are storming banks, people are carrying weapons, individual fights are turning into armed clashes, while families and clans are firing at each other in rural areas, even in villages affiliated with Hezbollah.”
Security services are all but powerless to act because their members are “suffering under the economic collapse just like everyone else,” the observer said.
In an already febrile atmosphere, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah condemned a recent amendment in the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force deployed along the border with Israel.
The UN Security Council on Aug. 31 extended the mandate of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force for a period of a year, but with a minor modification in the wording.
Speaking at a religious ceremony in the Bekaa, Nasrallah warned Israel against extracting gas from the offshore Karish field amid maritime border talks between Lebanon and Israel. Israel has announced it will start work at the site next month.
“We cannot allow the extraction of oil and gas from the disputed Karish field before Lebanon gets its rightful demands. We draw a line here. If any extraction is carried out, trouble will ensue. Our goal is for Lebanon to be able to extract oil and gas,” he said.
“This issue is not related to any other issues with Israel. No threat from the enemy affects us. The Lebanese state is concerned with the negotiations; we only observe. We are keeping an eye on Karish and our missiles are guided in its direction.”
In a televised speech, Nasrallah took issue with a part of the UN Security Council resolution to extend the UNIFIL mandate that states the peacekeeping force “is allowed to conduct its operations independently,” calling the resolution “a violation of Lebanese sovereignty” and lambasting the Lebanese government for allowing it through.
The Hezbollah leader described Lebanese officials involved in the mandate discussions as “either ignorant or complicit because this resolution could give rise to great dangers in the area south of the Litani River.”
Domestically, Nasrallah hoped that a government would soon be formed, adding: “If we only have a caretaker government and end up with a presidential vacuum, chaos will prevail.”
He supported calls for a consensus, but said: “It is necessary to have a president with the largest possible political, parliamentary and popular base to be able to fulfil his legal and constitutional role.”
TEHARN: Iranian police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse a protest rally in the country’s west following the funeral ceremony for a young woman who died while in police custody in Tehran earlier this week, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The police have said that 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was detained on Tuesday after Iran’s so-called “morality police” found fault with her headscarf, or hijab, had died of a heart attack. The police have also released closed circuit footage from the police station, which they say shows the moment Amini collapsed. A relative has said she had no history of heart disease.
According to the Fars report, after Amini’s funeral in the city of Saqez, about 460 kilometers (280 miles) west of the capital, Tehran, some protesters gathered in front of the governor’s building, chanting slogans. The report did not elaborate.
After police showed up and fired tear gas, the protesters dispersed. There was no immediate information about any injuries.
Videos posted on social media Saturday purported to show protesters in Saqez chanting anti-government slogans but the Associated Press could not authenticate the videos or confirm the location in the footage.
Amini’s death triggered an outcry against the morality police from celebrities and prominent figures on social media. Iran’s judiciary launched an investigation into her death.
The headscarf has been compulsory for women in Iran since after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and members of the morality police enforce the strict dress code. The force has been criticized in recent years over its treatment of people, especially young women, and videos uploaded on social media have shown officers forcing women into police vehicles.
Since 2017, after dozens of women publicly took off their headscarves in a wave of protests, authorities have adopted tougher measures.
However, the reformist Etemad Melli political party urged Iran’s parliament to cancel the law on the mandatory hijab and suggested President Ebrahim Raisi do away with the morality police.
The Kasra hospital in Tehran, where police took Amini after she collapsed and slipped into a coma, said she was brought in without vital signs.
Oscar-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, who rarely reacts publicly to events in Iran, expressed sorrow and called Amini’s death in custody a “crime.”
Iranian hard-liners have called for harsh punishment and even lashes of women who disobey the hijab law, arguing that allowing women to show their hair leads to moral decay and the disintegration of families. The judiciary has in recent years urged people to inform on women who do not wear the hijab.