Bangladesh prime minister resigns, flees country amid deadly protests
Bangladesh army personnel stand guard during a curfew following clashes between police and Anti-Discrimination Student Movement activists amid anti-government protests in Dhaka on August 5, 2024. (Munir Uz Zaman/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country on Monday, as anti-government protesters marched on the capital to demand she step down after a weekend of violence that left dozens of people dead.
The Bangladeshi military facilitated Hasina’s “safe passage” out of the country and the army chief is expected to make a speech on Monday.
Broadband internet and mobile data services were cut off and then restored across Bangladesh earlier on Monday.
The demonstrations began with students seeking to end a quota system for government jobs, but clashes with police and pro-government activists escalated into violence that left more than 200 dead last month.
The deadly demonstrations triggered more protests from citizens demanding accountability from their government, which grew into calls for Hasina to step down.
At least 95 people, including at least 14 police officers, died in clashes in the capital on Sunday, according to the country’s leading Bengali-language daily newspaper, Prothom Alo.
(NEW YORK) — The Biden administration has announced plans to expand the influential United Nations Security Council by adding two permanent seats for African nations — an initiative that will likely face an uphill battle in the body and could spark pushback from other countries that have long sought permanent membership.
“It’s what our African partners seek, and we believe, this is what it’s what is just,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in announcing the plan during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday.
But the administration’s plan comes with an important caveat: Unlike the other permanent members of the Council — China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the U.S. — the African representatives would not have the power to veto any resolution that comes before the body.
The African Union has already rejected the prospect of denying veto power to the new permanent members from the continent, but a senior administration official argued that even without it, the seats would still have great benefits for Africa.
“Representation is a part of it. Permanent representation does offer perspective and the durability of that perspective on the Council that is otherwise not afforded necessarily by a rotating seat,” the official said. “I can tell you that when we have been briefing these ideas to some of those partners in recent days, we have had an enthusiastic reception.”
The official acknowledged there are still “questions that will need to be worked out,” including determining which countries would fill the new spots. Thomas-Greenfield did not explicitly say which U.N. members the administration would endorse but spoke positively about recent contributions from Kenya and Gabon during her remarks.
This is not the first time the administration has sought to expand the Security Council. In 2022, President Biden announced he supported “increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives,” with representatives from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He has also endorsed Germany, India, and Japan for permanent spots.
However, Biden’s push to expand the Council — and a host of other U.S. initiatives — have faced consistent gridlock from Russia and China.
A senior official denied that the administration’s new, narrower focus on adding African representatives was an admission that broader expansion and the inclusion of ardent U.S. allies like Germany and Japan was currently unachievable.
“The proposals that we’re putting forward today are additive to what we’ve said over the years,” they said. “But our view on this is that we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and we can and should still try to achieve a reformed Council that is more representative, is more credible, and ultimately more effective in addressing the challenges and opportunities that the world faces today. “
Thomas-Greenfield also announced that the administration would move to add a new, elected position on the Security Council to serve as an envoy for small developing island nations. If successful, it would be the first cross-regional seat.
The ambassador concluded by declaring that the U.S. was prepared to move forward with “text-based negotiations” aimed at making the vision a reality.
“This may seem weedy, inside-baseball news. But it’s actually a big deal,” she said. “It means we’re ready to work with other countries to negotiate language, prepare amendments, and ready this resolution for a vote in the General Assembly, and ultimately amend the U.N. Charter.”
(NEW YORK) — The plight of Palestinians trapped in war-torn Gaza has captivated the world since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, but people who fled the region for medical treatment face a different kind of challenge.
At the Al Sawana hostel in Israel-occupied East Jerusalem, Gazan cancer patients in remission are trapped in a state of limbo. Their medical permits limit their movements to the confines of their hotel or hospital.
In March, a new layer of stress was added when the Israeli government ordered a group of 22 Palestinians who’ve completed treatment for life-threatening illnesses to be sent back to Gaza.
Reem Abu Obaida is one such patient, having left Gaza shortly before the war began to get chemotherapy for Stage 2 breast cancer. Since then, she hasn’t seen the children she left in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that’s been devastated by Israeli bombardment.
“There is no safe area to go back to in Gaza. Our houses are gone, my kids are living in tents. I’m very afraid,” she told ABC News, speaking in Arabic. “I’m a sick person and my immunity is weak, I can’t live in those places.”
Under intense pressure, Israel approved a mediation process for patients that deals with each family on a case-by-case basis. It means there’s less chance of patients being sent directly back to Gaza, but their circumstances remain unclear. This process is overseen by COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), the Israeli Defense Ministry agency that helps to coordinate activities between Israel and Gaza.
Obaida, who says she still requires follow-up hormonal treatment, is among hundreds of Palestinians who traveled to East Jerusalem for specialized care that’s unavailable in Gaza. In the wake of Oct. 7 and the Israeli response, few terminally ill or critically injured Gazans have been treated in the city.
However, Wesam Halabi’s family is among a handful of people who got out of Gaza after Oct. 7 and have been staying at an East Jerusalem hospital, St. John’s. They’re from Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza.
On Nov. 23, they were taking shelter in Halabi’s brother’s house after the destruction of their own home.
“Bullets and bombs hit the house, the bullets and bombs came in,” Halabi said, speaking in Arabic. “Around 100 soldiers came in. They held the guns to the heads of my young children and my husband. They told us to raise our hands, and they find us alive and not dead.”
Halabi had lost consciousness and awoke to find her face was bleeding heavily, with soldiers all around her and her family, she said. Their fate apparently changed when an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) medic arrived and demanded that the soldiers lower their weapons.
“At that moment, she took them out right before they were about to kill us,” Halabi said. “She saved us at the last moment.”
Medical reports detailed the extent of the injuries the family sustained in explosions that day: shrapnel pierced through Halabi’s eye, her husband had multiple puncture wounds and fractures in his spine, while their teenage daughter had abrasions from debris.
In a highly unusual move for the IDF, the medic loaded the family into an armored vehicle and took them out of Gaza for treatment at two East Jerusalem hospitals. While Halabi and her children went to St. John’s, her unconscious husband was taken to the nearby Makassed Hospital.
For a month after being spirited to separate hospitals, the family had no idea they were being treated in such close proximity.
“We thought he was killed. He was feeling the same. He was crying thinking we had died,” Halabi said of her husband. “After a month, a nurse came from the hospital where my husband is a patient. The nurse came with a patient. He brought up our story in front of him. He said we have a patient who says, ‘I don’t know about my family. Are they dead? Are they not? Did they bring them? We don’t know?’”
Despite realizing her husband was alive and a 6-minute drive away, they still couldn’t visit him due to the strict movement restrictions applied to Palestinians on medical permits.
Guy Shalev is the director of physicians for Human Rights Israel, the NGO fighting the government’s push to deport Gazan patients once their treatment is complete. He has been tracking the case of Halabi and her family.
“They are basically illegal if they leave the hospital and they risk being arrested,” Shalev said of their situation. “And this whole system is part of a larger kind of bureaucratic mechanism of the permit regime that really controls every movement of Palestinians.”
ABC News reached out to the Israeli government, the IDF and Defense Ministry unit COGAT about the efforts to deport Palestinian patients, but they said they do not comment about ongoing court cases.
In the Knesset, the Israeli house of representatives, Simcha Rothman of the right-wing Zionism Party serves as the chair of the constitution, law and justice committee. He explained why he’s been advocating for patient deportations, despite the risks that they’ll die due to Gaza’s lack of sanitation or a functional health system.
“It’s not that sending people to Gaza is a death sentence, but in war you must take care of your own people,” he said, before addressing the medic’s decision to help Halabi’s family. “To help them is a good thing. To bring them to East Jerusalem is a very bad idea because they will be the hotbed … for the next attack on Jews in Israel.”
Human Rights Israel’s Guy Shalev suggested that viewing vulnerable patients as potential terrorists leads to every Palestinian being labeled the same way.
In East Jerusalem, Halabi had a message for the medic who saved them.
“She was like an angel coming from the sky. I genuinely thank her for saving my children’s lives and for saving us,” she said. “She did such good for us. I support charitable work, I encourage everyone who is good. I love all those who do good things, and not violence, killing and war.”
During ABC News’ reporting on Halabi and her family, word came that they were being allowed to visit her husband after four months of separation. Despite the trauma of the recent past and unknowns ahead of them, the family found a moment of joy in their surprise reunion.
On July 30, at least 85 sick and severely injured Palestinians from Gaza, including 35 children, were evacuated to Abu Dhabi for specialized care, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X. It was the largest medical evacuation since October 2023, he noted.
(LONDON) — Gazing into a mirror framed by a vase of bright flowers, Taiba Sulaimani begins to sing. The lyrics, in Farsi, offer a message of hope — I will fly one day, I will be free one day.
Sulaimani is one of hundreds of Afghan women and allies around the world uploading videos of themselves singing on social media platforms. The videos are meant to protest a law passed by the Taliban last week banning women’s voices in public and mandating that they cover their entire bodies.
Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to show any skin, including their eyes. Before this law was passed, however, it was put forth as a recommendation — not enforced — and many women would show the upper half of their faces in public.
The new law “effectively [attempts] to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows,” a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner said on Tuesday.
In response, women like Sulaimani are demonstrating that they refuse to be silenced.
“I recorded the video because I wanted to tell the Taliban, you can’t tell me what to do,” she told ABC News.
Sulaimani, who fled from Afghanistan to Canada three years ago after the Taliban regained power in 2021, didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to her family. But, even though she currently lives more than 10,000 miles away, the Taliban still tried to intimidate her, warning her by phone that they can’t do anything to her, but that she also shouldn’t forget her family is still in Afghanistan.
But, in defiance, this only motivated Sulaimani further.
“It makes me sure that I have to go ahead with power, even more than ever,” she told ABC News.
Elsewhere, an Afghan woman now living in Norway, Hoda Khamosh, echoed the sentiment.
“We came to the conclusion that every voice can become thousands, showing that we women are not just a few individuals who can be erased,” she said.
Khamosh, who founded the Afghan Women’s Justice Movement, posted a video of herself singing a revolutionary poem saying that if you close your doors on us, we will use the windows to make her voices heard.
“We do not go to the field with a gun, but our voice, our image,” she said. “Protest is a war and a struggle.”
Even women inside Afghanistan are now recording videos of themselves singing, sometimes solo and sometimes in pairs or small groups, yet always wearing burqas that conceal their identities.
Zahra, a journalist in Afghanistan who asked only to be identified by her first name for her safety, said the situation on the ground is rapidly changing. Last week, there were many women outside, but since the passage of the law mandating women to veil their bodies, as well as their voices, she said the streets have emptied of women.
The new law now considers a woman’s voice intimate and they are forbidden to sing, recite or read anything in public. This comes in addition to other regulations forbidding women to leave their houses alone or allowing them to look or speak to men who they’re not related to by blood or marriage.
The combination of these restrictions makes leaving the home impractical at best, and even impossible in some cases. If a person violates the rules, they can be punished with a warning or be arrested, with a Taliban spokesperson saying the new law would “be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice.”
Now, many male family members often instruct their female relatives to stay at home since they don’t want trouble, Zahra said.
“Sometimes we have nightmares that [the Taliban] will come and arrest us,” she said, citing common anecdotes of rape and torture in prisons.
Although hope alone may not seem meaningful to many Afghan women, some now feel empowered by the outpouring of global support in response to the videos of women singing. Now — they hope — the international community will step in and tangibly do something to help protect Afghan women.
“Please don’t leave us alone with the Taliban,” Sulaimani said. “We all need your support.”
