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JAKARTA: Indonesia is hoping to expand its cultural reach in Saudi Arabia through the first university-level Indonesian language program in the Kingdom.
Officials have told Arab News that the new initiative will begin next month at Majmaah University in the Riyadh region.
The Indonesian language program for foreign speakers starts in July and is part of Jakarta’s efforts to globalize the language to serve citizens who visit Saudi Arabia for pilgrimages.
Badrus Sholeh, the education and cultural attache at the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh, told Arab News: “The program is supported by the strength of friendly relations between the governments and people of the two countries.
“As many more Umrah pilgrims visit Saudi Arabia, including from Indonesia, the need for the Indonesian language becomes more important. It will not only mean more people getting to know (Indonesian) culture, but also strengthen potential economic and trade cooperation.”
The world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, Indonesia is sending the largest Hajj contingent to Saudi Arabia — around 229,000 pilgrims — while another 3 million are expected to travel for Umrah this year.
Indonesian officials are hoping the program can support tourism in the Kingdom, a sector booming under its Vision 2030 diversification plan.
Sholeh added: “Hopefully the Indonesian language can be one of the global languages supporting the tourism push by the Saudi government.”
The language program was funded and developed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, which also trained tutors to instruct the course.
Iyus Yusuf, an official from the ministry’s language department, told Arab News: “At the higher education level, this is the first time we have opened an Indonesian language program for foreign speakers at a university in Saudi Arabia.
“This program is an effort to expand the reach of the Indonesian language abroad. We are doing this to make Indonesian an international language.”
Yusuf added that the government was also hoping to facilitate Indonesian pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia, in the hope that the program “will make it easier for Saudi citizens to learn Indonesian.”
Yusuf said: “Immigration and airport officers will be able to serve Indonesian pilgrims by using the Indonesian language. This is because the average pilgrims from Indonesia are seniors and unable to speak Arabic.”
Indonesia is hoping to expand the programs across Saudi Arabia — including at the Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah — and develop a bigger language study program at Saudi universities, the Indonesian Embassy said in a statement.
Yusuf added: “We continue to coordinate with the Indonesian mission in Saudi Arabia… Hopefully other universities will soon open the Indonesian language program.”
SEOUL: South Korean opposition lawmakers sharply criticized the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog for its approval of Japanese plans to release treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant during a tense meeting in Seoul on Sunday, with protesters screaming outside the door.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, arrived in South Korea over the weekend to engage with government officials and critics and help reduce public concerns about food safety. The planned release of the Fukushima plant’s treated wastewater emerged as a major political issue in South Korea after the IAEA last week approved the Japanese discharge plans, saying the process would meet international safety standards and pose negligible environmental and health impacts.
South Korea’s government has also endorsed the safety of the Japanese plans, saying that the contamination levels of water pumped out from the plant would be within acceptable standards and wouldn’t meaningfully affect South Korean seas as long as the plant’s treatment systems work as designed.
In his meeting with visiting members of the liberal Democratic Party, which controls a majority in South Korea’s parliament, Grossi said the IAEA’s review of the Japanese plans was based on “transparent” and “scientific” research. He acknowledged concerns over how the Japanese plans would play out in actuality and said the IAEA would establish a permanent office in Fukushima to closely monitor how the discharge process is implemented over the next three decades.
The lawmakers responded by harshly criticizing IAEA’s review, which they say neglected long-term environmental and health impacts of the wastewater release and threatens to set a bad precedent that may encourage other countries to dispose nuclear waste into sea. They called for Japan to scrap the discharge plans and work with neighboring countries to find safer ways to handle the wastewater, including a possible pursuit of long-term storage on land.
The party has also criticized the government of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for putting people’s health at risk while trying to improve relations with Japan.
“If you think (the treated wastewater) is safe, I wonder whether you would be willing to suggest the Japanese government use that water for drinking or for industrial and agricultural purposes, rather than dumping it in the sea,” Woo Won-shik, a Democratic Party lawmaker who attended the meeting, told Grossi. The party said Woo has been on a hunger strike for the past 14 days to protest the Japanese discharge plans.
Further details from the meeting weren’t immediately available after reporters were asked to leave following opening statements. Dozens of protesters shouted in a nearby hall while holding signs denouncing the IAEA and Japan, and they were closely watched by parliamentary security staff.
Hundreds of demonstrators had also marched in downtown Seoul on Saturday demanding that Japan scrap its discharge plans. Those protests provided a tense backdrop to a meeting between Grossi and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, who called for IAEA’s “active cooperation” in reassuring the South Korean public.
The safety of Fukushima’s wastewater has been a sensitive issue for years between the US allies. South Korea and Japan have been working in recent months to repair relations long strained over wartime historical grievances to address shared concerns such as the North Korean nuclear threat and China’s assertive foreign policy.
South Korea’s assessment about the safety of the discharge plan was partially based on observations by a team of government scientists who were allowed to tour the Fukushima plant in May. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had agreed to that visit during a May 7 summit with Yoon in Seoul, in a show of his desire for improved ties.
In a statement released by state media on Sunday, North Korea also criticized the Japanese discharge plans, warning against “fatal adverse impact on the human lives and security and ecological environment” resulting from the discharge of “nuclear-polluted water.” The statement, which was attributed to an unidentified official in North Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environment Protection, also criticized Washington and Seoul for backing the Japanese plans.
“What matters is the unreasonable behavior of IAEA actively patronizing and facilitating Japan’s projected discharge of nuclear-polluted water, which is unimaginable,” it said. “Worse still, the US and (South) Korea openly express unseemly ‘welcome’ to Japan’s discharge plan that deserves condemnation and rejection, provoking strong anger of the public.”
A massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed the Fukushima plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt and release large amounts of radiation.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which operates the facility, has been storing the treated water in hundreds of tanks that now cover most of the plant and are nearly full. Japanese officials say the tanks must be removed to make room to build facilities for the plant’s decommissioning and to minimize the risk of leaks in case of another major disaster. The tanks are expected to reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons in early 2024.
Japan first announced plans to discharge the treated water into the sea in 2018, saying the water will be further diluted by seawater before being released in a carefully controlled process that will take decades to complete.
PARIS: Around 2,000 people defied a ban to join a memorial rally in central Paris Saturday for a young black man who died in police custody, while marches took place throughout France to denounce police brutality, as tensions run high after days of rioting engulfed the country.
Nationwide, around 5,900 people took to the streets, according to the interior ministry.
Seven years after the death of Adama Traore, his sister had planned to lead an annual commemorative march north of Paris in Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise.
But fearful of reigniting recent unrest sparked by the police killing of 17-year-old Nahel M. at a traffic stop near Paris, a court ruled the chance of public disturbance was too high to allow the march to proceed.
In a video posted on Twitter, Assa Traore, Adama’s older sister, denounced the decision.
“The government has decided to add fuel to the fire” and “not to respect the death of my little brother,” she said.
She instead attended a rally in central Paris’s Place de la Republique.
“We are marching for the youth to denounce police violence. They want to hide our deaths,” she said at the rally, also attended by several lawmakers.
“They authorize marches by neo-Nazis but they don’t allow us to march. France cannot give us moral lessons. Its police is racist and violent,” she said.
Worried about a resurgence of rioting as France celebrates Bastille Day on July 14, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told the daily Le Parisien that the government would deploy “massive means to protect the French” during the national holiday.
While she said Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin would give specifics, Borne announced a ban on the sale of fireworks, which had been used by rioters to target police.
The Paris rally for Traore had also been banned on the grounds that it could disrupt public order and a legal case has been opened against Assa Traore for organizing the event, police said.
Youssouf Traore, another of Assa Tarore’s brothers, was arrested and taken into custody on suspicion of violence against a person holding public authority, public prosecutors told AFP.
“The march went off peacefully, it was a success, we don’t understand his arrest,” Assa Traore said.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed party, castigated the government.
“From prohibition to repression… the leader is taking France to a regime we have already seen. Danger. Danger,” he tweeted, referring to the World War II regime of Vichy leader Philippe Petain who collaborated with the Nazis.
Many at the rally shouted “Justice for Nahel” before calmly dispersing later in the afternoon.
Around 30 demonstrations against police violence also took place across France, including in the southern port city of Marseille and Strasbourg in the east. Authorities in Lille banned a gathering.
Several trade unions, political parties and associations had called on supporters to join the march for Traore as France reels from allegations of institutionalized racism in its police ranks following Nahel M.’s shooting on June 27.
Traore, who was 24 years old, died shortly after his arrest in 2016, sparking several nights of unrest that played out similarly to the week-long rioting that erupted across the country in the wake of the point-blank shooting of Nahel.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) — 18 independent experts — on Friday asked France to pass legislation defining and banning racial profiling and questioned “excessive use of force by law enforcement.”
The foreign ministry on Saturday disputed what it called “excessive” and “unfounded” remarks by the panel.
“Any ethnic profiling by law enforcement is banned in France,” the ministry responded, adding that “the struggle against excesses in racial profiling has intensified.”
Far-right parties have linked the most intense and widespread riots France has seen since 2005 to mass migration and have demanded curbs on new arrivals.
More than 3,700 people have been taken into police custody in connection with the protests since Nahel’s death, including at least 1,160 minors, according to official figures.
TORONTO, Canada: A few hundred members of Canada’s Sikh community demonstrated outside the Indian consulate in Toronto on Saturday to protest the unsolved murder of one of their leaders last month in the Vancouver area.
They accused the Indian government of being responsible for the gunning down of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of a Sikh temple and campaigner for the creation of an independent Sikh state that supporters hope to call Khalistan.
“When an Indian agency and system commit a crime, they have to be held accountable,” Kuljeet Singh, spokesperson for Sikhs for Justice, a US-based organization behind the rally, told AFP.
Nijjar, whom India had declared a wanted terrorist, was gunned down on June 18 in Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver that is home to one of the largest Sikh populations in Canada.
Another protester, Hakirt Singh, a lawyer, told AFP that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) “should investigate this murder” as a political assassination.
“When there is vandalism against a member of Parliament you see tweets and reactions from politicians. Here it is an assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. That is foreign interference.”
Nijjar advocated for the creation of an independent Sikh state to be carved out of parts of northern India and perhaps part of Pakistan. India accused Nijjar of carrying out terrorist attacks in India, a charge he denied.
The demonstrators, almost exclusively men, carried yellow flags with blue logos representing their separatist movement, and shouted “Khalistan! Khalistan!“
Setting off from the Toronto suburbs, they arrived in front of the Indian consulate, where they were greeted by around 50 members of the diaspora in support of the Indian government.
“They have a poster here calling to kill Indian diplomats. We are concerned because these groups have committed terrorist acts in the past and politicians are not taking actions,” one of the counterdemonstrators, Vijay Jain, an IT consultant, told AFP.
A line of 20 policemen intervened to separate the two groups, and one Sikh protester was taken away after forcing down a barrier and running to the other side.
Since the murder of the Sikh leader, tensions have risen between Canada and India.
New Delhi regularly accuses Ottawa of laxity in its handling of Sikh protesters in Canada.
“We have asked the Canadian government to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of our diplomats,” Arindam Bagchi, spokesman for India’s foreign minister, said on Thursday.
Canada is home to the largest number of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab, India.
MOSCOW: Uzbekistan is holding a snap presidential election Sunday, a vote that follows a constitutional referendum that extended the incumbent’s term from five to seven years.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was elected in 2021 to a second five-year term, the limit allowed by the constitution. But the amendments approved in April’s plebiscite allowed him to begin the count of terms anew and run for two more, raising the possibility that he could stay in office until 2037.
The 65-year-old Mirziyoyev is set to win the vote by landslide against three token rivals.
“The political landscape has remained unchanged, and none of the parliamentary political parties stand in open opposition to the president’s policies and agenda,” the elections observer arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a pre-voting report.
Since coming to power in 2016 after the death of longtime dictatorial leader Islam Karimov, Mirziyoyev has introduced a slew of political and economic reforms that eased some of the draconian policies of his predecessor, who made Uzbekistan into one of the region’s most repressive countries.
Under Mirziyoyev, freedom of speech has been expanded compared with the total suppression of dissent during the Karimov era, and some independent news media and bloggers have appeared. He also relaxed the tight controls on Islam in the predominantly Muslim country that Karimov imposed to counter dissident views.
At the same time, Uzbekistan has remained strongly authoritarian with no significant opposition. All registered political parties are loyal to Mirziyoyev.
In April’s referendum, more than 90 percent of those who cast ballots voted to approve the amendments extending the presidential term.
As part of his reforms, Mirziyoyev has abolished state regulation of cotton production and sales, ending decades of forced labor in the country’s cotton industries, a major source of export revenues. Under Karimov, more than 2 million Uzbeks were forced to work in the annual cotton harvest.
Mirziyoyev has also lifted controls on hard currency, encouraging investment from abroad, and he moved to improve relations with the West that soured under Karimov. He has maintained close ties with Russia and signed a number of key agreements with China, which became Uzbekistan’s largest trading partner as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.
Like the leaders of other ex-Soviet Central Asian nations that have close economic ties with Moscow, Mirziyoyev has engaged in a delicate balancing act after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine, steering clear of backing the Russian action but not condemning it either.