Nearly 50 people have died in renewed anti-government protests across Iraq, officials said Saturday, with clashes breaking out as demonstrators turned their fury against government and paramilitary offices.

The death toll from protests this month has climbed to 205, including dozens who were killed as they torched government buildings or offices belonging to factions of Hashed al-Shaabi force over the past two days.

The demonstrations first erupted on Oct. 1, with protesters railing against government corruption and unemployment, while a second wave broke out late Thursday.

This latest round of demonstrations has been notably violent, with 48 people killed in as many hours.

Three protesters were killed in the capital Baghdad on Saturday, with medics and officials reporting trauma wounds sustained by tear gas canisters lobbed at demonstrators.  

But the majority of victims have been in the Shi’ite-majority south, where protesters torched dozens of provincial government buildings, party offices and Hashed centers.

On Saturday, three people were shot dead while setting fire to a local official’s home, a police source told AFP.

The previous night, 12 protesters died in Diwaniyah while setting fire to the headquarters of the powerful Badr organization.

Top Hashed commanders have threatened “revenge” after their offices were attacked, and denounced those they said aimed at sowing “discord and chaos” in the country.

In a bid to contain the violence security forces have announced curfews across most of Iraq’s southern provinces — but brief protests nevertheless took place in Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, Babylon and Najaf.

In the southern port city of Basra, protesters failed to come out in large numbers after security forces strictly enforced a curfew.

Fears of ‘armed spoilers’

The Hashed was founded in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group but its factions have since been ordered to incorporate into the state security services.

“Public anger is directed at them in addition to governorate councils, for they were the obvious face of ‘the regime’,” wrote Harith Hasan, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center.

But the attacks could also hint at political rivalries between the Hashed and populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has thrown his weight behind the demonstrations.

“The Sadrists, especially in their traditional strongholds such as Missan, saw this an opportunity to act against competing militias,” such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Badr, and Kataeb Hezbollah, Hasan said on Twitter.

The United Nations on Saturday said it was “tragic” to see renewed violence but also warned against “armed spoilers”.

“Armed entities sabotaging the peaceful demonstrations, eroding the government’s credibility and ability to act, cannot be tolerated,” said the UN top official in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

Protesters gathered in Baghdad’s emblematic Tahrir (Liberation) Square on Saturday morning despite efforts by riot police to clear them with tear gas.

“It’s enough — theft, looting, gangs, mafias, deep state, whatever. Get out! Let us see a (functioning) state,” said one protester, referring to perceived cronyism and corruption in the country.

“We don’t want anything, just let us live,” he added as puffs of smoke from tear gas rose behind him.

‘It’s enough!’

Oil-rich Iraq is OPEC’s second-highest producer — but one in five people live below the poverty line and youth unemployment sits at 25 percent, according to the World Bank.

About 60 percent of Iraq’s 40-million-strong population is under the age of 25.

The staggering rates of joblessness and allegations of corruption sparked the widespread protests on October 1 and the government has struggled to quell public anger by proposing reforms.

Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi has suggested a laundry list of measures, including hiring drives, increased pensions and a cabinet reshuffle.

New education and health ministers were approved by parliament in a session earlier this month, the only time it was able to meet since protests began.

But a scheduled meeting of parliament on Saturday to discuss the renewed protests failed to take due to a lack of quorum.

Protesters so far have seemed unimpressed by the government’s efforts.

“They told young people: ‘go home, we’ll give you pensions and come up with a solution’. They tricked us,” said one of the rare woman protesters on Saturday, her young son at her side.

They have even directed some of their anger at Sadr and country’s top Shi’ite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is deeply revered among most Iraqis,

“Sadr, Sistani — this is a shame,” a protester in Tahrir said on Saturday.

“We were hit! It’s enough,” he said, waving a tear gas canister fired earlier by security forces.

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California officials warned on Saturday that “historic and extreme” wind conditions were set to fan raging wildfires in the north of the state as millions of residents face power cuts.

Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency as the so-called Kincade Fire spread to 23,700 acres (9,591 hectares) after breaking out on Wednesday in the Sonoma wine region.

The blaze, which is burning in remote steep terrain, has destroyed about 50 structures and forced the evacuation of the small community of Geyserville and of nearby vineyard operations.

“This is definitely an event that we’re calling historic and extreme,” David King, meteorologist for the U.S. National Weather Service, told Saturday’s Los Angeles Times.

“What’s making this event really substantial… is the amount of time that these winds are going to remain.”

Hot, intense winds are expected to pick up on Saturday and last into Monday.

The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., said it expected to cut off power to 850,000 customers — a precautionary shutdown that local media say would affect about two million people.

“The weather event could be the most powerful in California in decades,” PG&E said, with dry northeast winds forecast to gust up to 70 miles per hour (112 kilometers per hour).

“PG&E will need to turn off power for safety several hours before the potentially damaging winds arrive,” it added.

“Winds of this magnitude pose a higher risk of damage and sparks on the electric system and rapid wildfire spread.”

About 1,300 firefighters battled the Kincade Fire, which is only five percent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Protection.

‘Don’t know what to do’

“I can’t explain it,” 70-year-old Tina Tavares, who was evacuated from her Geyserville home, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“It’s like you’re in a bad earthquake, the ground is opening up… and you’re seeing it and don’t know what to do.”

PG&E has come under fierce scrutiny after it reported that even though power had already been shut down to nearly 28,000 customers in Sonoma County this week, some high-voltage transmission lines were still operating when the fire broke out.

The same type of lines was responsible for California’s deadliest wildfire ever — last year’s Camp Fire, which killed 86 people.

PG&E, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, has been blamed for several other fires in the state in recent years.

Governor Newsom hit out at the company on Friday, saying it had put “profits over the people of California for too long.”

He said it was “infuriating beyond words” that a state such as California had to endure blackouts.

“It’s about dog-eat-dog capitalism meeting climate change,” he said, referring to PG&E. “It’s a story about greed, and they need to be held accountable.”

Further south in California, tens of thousands of residents near Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles, evacuated their homes this week as the so-called Tick Fire scorched over 4,000 acres.

The blaze forced the shutdown of all schools in the area as well as a major freeway, creating traffic chaos for commuters.

Some 1,325 firefighters backed by air tankers and helicopters battled the flames close to densely packed communities, with 10,000 structures at threat, officials said.

Six homes were destroyed, though the number was expected to rise.

Wildfires also erupted over the border in Mexico’s Baja California state, where local civil protection authorities said on Friday that three people had been killed and over 150 homes destroyed.

The state’s director of civil protection, Antonio Rosquillas, said that the municipality of Tecate, bordering the United States, was worst hit.

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The family of Ali Wezir is in agony in Syria’s Kurdish town of Hasakah after hearing that Wezir has set himself on fire outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland to protest a Turkish incursion in northeast Syria. VOA’s Zana Omar reports.
 

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A Kurdish family in Syria’s northeastern city of Hasakah is anguished by news that 31-year-old Ali Wezir set himself on fire Wednesday outside a United Nations building in Geneva, Switzerland.

Wezir, a Syrian Kurdish refugee residing in Germany, suffered burns on 80% of his body after setting himself on fire at the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

His family says it was an act of self-immolation to draw global attention to Turkish attacks on the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria.

“I spoke to him two days before his action, and he kept saying he wanted to come back [home],” his sister, Mehbuba, told VOA.

“Since the day Turkey attacked, he was not eating nor sleeping. He became very thin because he was worried. He was saying he would come back. He could not bear sitting there and watch Turkey attack his country,” Mehbuba said, adding that her family learned of Wezir’s act through a Facebook post.

Silvain Guillaume-Gentil, a Geneva police spokesperson, told reporters that Wezir was airlifted to a hospital in Lausanne once the flames were extinguished.

“Given his state, it was impossible to ask him about his motive, but we imagine that it was the political situation,” Reuters quoted Guillaume-Gentil as saying.

Expected to survive

Wezir’s family said he is expected to survive the severe burns but will remain in critical condition for 72 hours.

Wezir’s brother Dilawer told VOA that Wezir was particularly disturbed by the graphic images on social media showing children who had suffered burns, allegedly resulting from Turkey’s bombing campaign in northeast Syria.

The U.N.’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) earlier this week said it was investigating allegations Turkey has used phosphorus bombs, which Ankara denies.

“My brother showed everyone how Kurdish kids in Ras al-Ayn are being burned by phosphorus chemical weapons. He set himself on fire to break the silence on the Kurds being killed,” Dilawer Wezir told VOA. 

Referring to thousands of fighters from the Kurdish-led SDF group who lost their lives in the war against Islamic State (IS), Dilawer Wezir said many Kurds feel betrayed.

“When we say 11,000 martyrs and 25,000 wounded who sacrificed against IS, it was not just for Kurdistan. It was for the entire world, because if it wasn’t for this force, IS would have gone into Europe and destroyed there, too,” he said.

Turkey’s military incursion

Turkey’s military and its allied Syrian militia on October 9 started a military incursion into northeast Syria, targeting the SDF after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw most U.S. troops from the country.

The U.N. estimates hundreds were killed and nearly 180,000 people were displaced before the U.S. and Turkey negotiated a cease-fire agreement was negotiated last week.

Turkish officials said their goal is to pursue a Kurdish armed group known as the Peoples’ Protection Units, or the YPG, which Ankara views as a terrorist organization.

The United States, however, has considered the YPG an ally in the fight to remove IS from a wide area of Syrian territory, including the IS self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa.
 

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Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement warned on Friday that a power vacuum could tip the country into civil war, suggesting that adversaries including the United States and Israel were seeking to exploit an unprecedented wave of demonstrations to provoke conflict.

Lebanon has been swept by more than a week of nationwide protests against a political elite accused of corruption, mismanagement of the state finances and leading the country towards an economic collapse unseen since the 1975-90 civil war.

A report from credit rating agency S&P was the latest to sound the alarm over the financial situation. Banks remain closed and have said they will only reopen when life returns to normal.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose movement is part of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri’s coalition government, urged his followers to stay away from the protests after they clashed with demonstrators in Beirut.

The heavily armed Shi’ite group is widely seen as the most powerful player in Lebanon and is part of an Iranian-led regional alliance that is in conflict with U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states that have political allies in the country.

Nasrallah praised the protest movement for forcing the government to agree a state budget without new taxes and “unprecedented” reforms including draft laws to lift banking secrecy, recover looted wealth and fight corruption.

But he also said the demonstrations that began spontaneously had been exploited by regional and international foes.

He reiterated Hezbollah’s rejection of the resignation of the Hariri government and any move to topple Hezbollah’s Christian ally, President Michel Aoun, saying this would leave a void.

“In view of the difficult financial, economic and living situation in the country, in view of security and political tensions that are prevailing in the region … a vacuum will lead to chaos, to collapse,” Nasrallah said.

He said if Lebanon remained shut down by the protests, people including the army would not get their wages and the country would be plunged into complete chaos.

“I am afraid that there are those who want to take our country and generate social, security and political tensions and to take it to civil war,” Nasrallah said.

“God willing nothing like this will happen … but I tell you there is information and doubts about this matter.”

The protests took a more violent turn on Friday when groups supporting Hezbollah pushed into a peaceful demonstration in Beirut, scuffling with protesters and forcing riot police to intervene.

Dressed in black T-shirts common to Hezbollah supporters, the men shouted “We heed your call, Nasrallah.”

Several protesters were injured in the scuffles, witnesses said.

After Nasrallah spoke, Hezbollah supporters waving the group’s yellow flag took to the streets of the southern suburbs of Beirut, the group’s stronghold.

“They’re trying to scare us with war. But they are the generation of war, we are an educated generation and know how to get along with one another,” said physiotherapist Bilal al Baba, 28, demonstrating in central Beirut.

Another protester, Maria, said Nasrallah’s speech encouraged her and her friends to come back out to protest. “The entire country was paralysed waiting for what he had to say,” she said.

Nasrallah urged protesters to accept Aoun’s invitation for dialogue. Aoun has suggested a cabinet reshuffle was on the table.

BANKING FEARS

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said the government’s limited ability to address the demonstrators’ demands could harm confidence in the banks and adversely effect foreign exchange reserves.

Lebanon’s banking association has held crisis meetings with the central bank governor and president in recent days in search of a way to reopen banks amid growing fears that a rush on them could deplete dwindling foreign currency deposits.

“Right now we’re using the pretext of the demonstrations not to open. We are afraid that when we open people will rush to withdraw their money or transfer it abroad,” said one senior banker.

He said banks were seeking a common policy to meet the needs of customers and the central bank governor has so far avoided capital controls that would likely stop expatriates from sending remittances.

As politicians ponder ways out, financial strains are mounting in Lebanon, one of the world’s most heavily indebted states.

Capital inflows needed to finance the state deficit and pay for imports have been slowing down, generating financial pressures not seen in decades, including the emergence of a black market for dollars.

While the central bank’s foreign currency reserves were enough to service government debt in the near term, risks to government creditworthiness have risen, S&P said.

Lebanon’s central bank governor and finance minister could not immediately be reached for comment on the S&P report.

There has so far been no financial support from countries which have in the past aided Lebanon, such as Western and Gulf Arab countries.

The European Union said it supports Hariri’s reforms and is committed to Lebanon and its stability.

“We are confident that the authorities will respond swiftly and wisely to legitimate aspirations of the Lebanese people,” the EU statement said.

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The power of music and art to influence generations is well documented, and that’s sometimes why authoritarian regimes tend to silence artists. The brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia is no different and a huge percentage of Cambodia’s musicians and artists were killed during the Pol Pot Regime. But some remember, and their tales can now be heard. VOA’s Chetra Chap reports.

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Climate change continues leaving its mark on the world’s oceans.  Water levels are rising along with temperatures.  Warmer waters supercharge some marine life’s reproduction rates, putting other species’ very survival at risk. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us under the sea.

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In international diplomacy, sports can sometimes act to bridge bitter divides between longstanding rivals. A similar unifying force could be at work, at least temporarily, in America’s politically polarized capital city. VOA’s Brian Padden reports, Democrats and Republicans are coming together to support the Washington Nationals baseball team playing in Major League Baseball’s World Series.

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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence criticized American companies for selling out U.S. values to protect their access to China’s profitable markets.  In a speech on trade Thursday, Pence singled out Nike and the National Basketball Association (NBA) for ignoring the abuses of the Chinese Communist Party. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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From making so-called side deals with Ukraine to pulling U.S. forces from northeastern Syria, U.S. President Donald Trump has gone his own way when it comes to conducting U.S. foreign policy. But the Syria decision has sparked widespread opposition in Washington and in the case of Ukraine, critics say Trump sidestepped career U.S. diplomats to further his own interests against a potential election rival.  VOA’s Jesusemen Oni reports on how the president’s foreign policy decisions are stirring controversy in Washington.

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The International Red Cross has warned of an imminent “humanitarian catastrophe” at an overcrowded makeshift migrant camp on Bosnia’s border with Croatia and asked for urgent relocation of its occupants to a safer area.

In a statement Thursday, it said the Vucjak camp, which has been named “The Jungle” by migrants living there, has no running water, no electricity, no usable toilets, and has leaking overcrowded tents. Currently there are 700 people living there.

The Red Cross said that there are people in the camp with untreated broken limbs and 70% of the population has scabies. The camp only has 80 tents and just five volunteers from Bosnia’s Red Cross Society, it added.

Local Bosnian authorities last week cut the camp’s water supplies to pressure the Bosnian government to relocate the migrants.

Since the start of the year, about 23,000 migrants have arrived in Bosnia and thousands are stuck on its northwestern border with European Union member Croatia which they try to enter illegally on their way to more prosperous EU states further north and west.

Existing migrant reception centers in Bosnia are full and thousands are sleeping on the streets or squatting in empty houses, the Red Cross said.

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The European Parliament on Thursday awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights to Uighur intellectual Ilham Tohti, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in China for “separatism”.

The outspoken former professor of economics at a Beijing university was sentenced in 2014 by Chinese courts in a trial that provoked an outcry from foreign governments and human rights organisations.

VOA Q&A With Uighur Scholar Ilham Tohti

VOA interviewed ethnic Uighur scholar and economist Ilham Tohti on Oct. 30, 2013, Tohti’s trial on separatism charges began this week in China

European Parliament head David Sassoli urged China to immediately release Ilham Tohti as he announced the award, which was certain to sow diplomatic tensions with Beijing.

“Despite being a voice of moderation and reconciliation, he was sentenced to life in prison following a show trial in 2014,” Sassoli told a plenary session of parliament.

“By awarding this prize, we strongly urge the Chinese government to release Tohti and we call for the respect of minority rights in China”, added the top MEP from Italy.

22 UN Ambassadors Condemn Chinese Treatment of Uighurs

Concerns were expressed in letter to UN Human Rights Council 

Tohti, who turns 50 on Friday, in September won another of Europe’s top human rights awards, the Vaclav Havel prize, for “giving the entire Uighur people a voice”.

He “has worked for over 20 years on the situation of the Uighur minority and on fostering inter-ethnic dialogue and understanding in China,” the Council of Europe, Europe’s leading rights body, said after nominating Tohti for the Vaclav Havel prize.

Before his arrest in January 2014, Tohti founded and ran the UighurOnline website, which wrote in Uighur and Chinese about social issues.

He gained prominence as a moderate voice drawing attention to ethnic tensions in the region.

Rights groups and experts say more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities have been rounded up in internment camps in Xinjiang.

Uighur Woman Recalls Journey from Chinese Camp to US

Authorities in the northwestern region have also rolled out an extensive surveillance system combining methods including high-tech facial recognition cameras, wifi sniffers and home visits, according to Human Rights Watch.

Tohti’s website was shut down when he was arrested, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog.

Tohti had previously been detained in 2009 amid ethnic violence in Xinjiang, after he wrote about Uighurs detained and killed during the unrest, according to Amnesty International.

Pompeo Calls on China to Stop ‘Abhorrent’ Practice of Interning Uighur Muslims

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is describing as “tragic” and “abhorrent” China’s mass detention of Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups in internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang.“We’ve been very vocal about that publicly, and had long conversations with them privately, as well,” Pompeo said in response to a question Tuesday from VOA. “The numbers are in the, certainly, hundreds of thousands.

China initially denied the existence of the camps, but now says they are “vocational training schools” necessary to combat terrorism.

‘Extreme terrorism’

An AFP investigation of over 1,500 government documents last year found that the camps were run more like jails than schools, with tasers and tear gas among the equipment supplied to the camps.

China had slammed the Council of Europe after it nominated Tohti in August for the Vaclav Havel prize, which was also awarded to a rights group from the Balkans.

US Denounces China’s Justification of Uighur Re-Education Camps

More than a million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are forcibly incarcerated in so-called re-education centers in China’s Xinjiang province

China’s foreign ministry called Tohti a “separatist who supports extreme terrorism”.

He has also been nominated by US lawmakers for the Nobel Peace Prize, amid growing scrutiny of China’s treatment of the Uighurs.

The United States announced this month that it was blacklisting 28 Chinese entities connected to repressive policies in Xinjiang, and that it would curb visas for Chinese officials involved in the “detention or abuse” of Uighurs, Kazakhs or members of other minorities in the region.

Prominent Uighur Writer Dies at Chinese Internment Camp

Tohti, a well-known writer in Xinjiang’s Uighur community, was picked up by state authorities last year and taken to the controversial internment camps for ‘re-education’

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