Dozens held as teachers protest suspensions in Turkey’s southeast, union says

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Protest
Turkey, Sept. 9, 2016 (Reuters/NAN) Turkish police detained dozens of people and used water cannon on Friday to disperse several hundred teachers demonstrating against their suspension from classrooms in the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, union sources said Friday.

Brawls erupted and police pushed back crowds chanting “shoulder to shoulder against fascism” after Turkish authorities suspended more than 11,000 teachers on Thursday over alleged links with the Kurdish militants.

A further 418 teachers were also suspended from duty in the predominantly Kurdish eastern province of Tunceli on Friday. Several hundred teachers gathered in front of the education ministry’s provincial building to protest.

“This is an attack on our unionised struggle,” Suleyman Guler, the provincial head of the education union, Egitim-Sen, told journalists. Guler was also suspended from work.

“It is not possible to accept this decision. There is neither a crime here nor a criminal. We call for the immediate halt of this move,” he said.

The suspensions were part of the government’s campaign against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the mainly Kurdish southeast.

It comes as Ankara also pushes ahead with a purge of tens of thousands of supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey accuses of orchestrating an attempted coup in July.

Gulen denies any involvement.

The scope of that crackdown has raised concern among rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies, who fear President Tayyip Erdogan is using the failed coup as pretext to curtail dissent.

The anti-PKK campaign is Turkey’s largest ever against the group, and the removal of civil servants linked to the PKK is a key part of the fight, Erdogan said on Thursday.

Demonstrations have been banned across Diyarbakir province since mid-August during the state of emergency declared after the failed coup.

On Friday, the Diyarbakir governor’s office also imposed a curfew in more than a dozen neighbourhoods across three districts, as security operations were planned against Kurdish militants in the region. (Reuters/ NAN)

Edited by Julius Enehikhuere
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France says Gabon’s constitutional court must be transparent, impartial over election results

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Election
Paris, Sept. 9, 2016, (Reuters/ NAN) Gabon’s constitutional court must examine the opposition’s challenge to the presidential election with transparency and impartiality, France’s foreign minister said on Friday.

“France continues to follow carefully developments in Gabon,” Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement.

“The constitutional court has been asked to examine the provisional presidential results.

“It must examine these with transparency and impartiality and all means must be put in place to ensure the respect of its principles and establishment of the sincerity of the vote,” he added. (Reuters/ NAN)
Edited by Julius Enehikhuere
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North Korea conducts fifth and largest nuclear test, drawing broad condemnation

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Test
Seoul, Sept. 9, 2016 (Reuters/ NAN) North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.

The blast, on the 68th anniversary of North Korea’s founding, was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to some estimates, and drew condemnation from the United States as well as China, Pyongyang’s main ally.

Diplomats said the United Nations Security Council would discuss the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday, at the request of the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Kim Jong Un, North Korea leader, has accelerated the development of its nuclear and missile programmes, despite U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March and have further isolated the impoverished country.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders, said Kim was showing “maniacal recklessness” in completely ignoring the world’s call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way home from Laos, said the test would be met with “serious consequences”, and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said.

China said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation. It said it would lodge a protest with the North Korean embassy in Beijing.

There were further robust condemnations from Russia, the European Union, NATO, Germany and Britain.

North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as its main enemies, said its “scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead,” according to its official KCNA news agency.

It said the test proved North Korea was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit.

Pyongyang’s claims of being able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead have never been independently verified.

Its continued testing in defiance of sanctions presents a challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the U.S. presidential election in November, and a headache to be inherited by whoever wins.

“Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse,” said Tadashi Kimiya, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in Korean issues.

“In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits,” he said. (Reuters/ NAN)

Edited by  Julius Enehikhuere
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