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Musings From Abroad

Saudi Arabia beheads 81: Social media not happy with Boris Johnson, Joe Biden… here’s why

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Reactions from across the world have been trailing news that Saudi Arabia in what is the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in modern history executed 81 men over the past 24 hours.

News of the execution broke on Saturday with victims reported to be seven Yemenis, one Syrian national and the rest Saudi Arabians.

According to news agency Saudi Press Agency, the victims were executed on charges that include “allegiance to foreign terrorist organisations” and holding “deviant beliefs”.

Some observers on social media have viewed the development in contrast with the recent announcement by the United Kingdom to seize all assets of Chelsea Football Club owner – Roman Abramovich on the account of being one of seven oligarchs seen as allies of Vladimir Putin and in connection with the recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Accusations of double standards are also levelled against the United Kingdom government on the ground of its past and recent relations with the Saudis despite age long report of human right violations but swift to ground Putin’s allies’ assets.

 

 

Another Twitter user argued that if Putin disqualifies Roman Abramovich from owning assets in the UK, the same standard should mean Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is also not qualified to own Newcastle Football Club.

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, 36-year-old Mohammed bin Salman is believed to be behind the Saudi Public Investment Fund who recently bought Newcastle Football Club.

Reports from the United Kingdom on Sunday says Prime Minister Boris Johnson is poised to travel to Saudi Arabia next week for talks on oil as he attempts to move the UK away from dependence on energy supplies from Russia.

The United States has also been called out amidst the development.

 

 

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Musings From Abroad

French army begins Chad pullout

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Just two weeks after local authorities said they were terminating their defence collaboration, the French army announced that jets deployed in the capital N’Djamena had returned home on Tuesday, marking the beginning of France’s military departure from Chad.

The government of Chad, a crucial Western partner in the war against Islamic jihadists in the area, unexpectedly terminated its defence cooperation treaty with France on November 28, a decision that caught French authorities off guard.

It is still unclear how the evacuation will be executed and if any French forces will remain in the central African country at all, even after the first Mirage aircraft returned to their base in eastern France on Tuesday.

“It marks the beginning of the return of French equipment stationed in N’Djamena,” Army spokesperson Colonel Guillaume Vernet said.

Due to anti-French sentiment and military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, France has already withdrawn its troops from those West African nations.

Decades of French military participation in the Sahel area came to an end with the departure from Chad, and more recently, French military operations against Islamist extremists in the region were discontinued.

There are still around 1,000 French soldiers in Chad. Vernet stated that it would still take several weeks for the two nations to establish a schedule for reducing its activities.

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Musings From Abroad

Court documents show Meta contractor overlooked Ethiopia rebel threats to moderators

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New evidence cited by Reuters suggests that a contractor employed by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, overlooked threats against content moderators by Ethiopian rebels during a case contesting the removal of dozens of moderators in Kenya.

Last year, 185 content moderators sued Meta and two contractors for losing their positions with Sama, a Kenyan business that moderated Facebook material, for seeking to form a union.

After Facebook switched contractors, they were barred from applying for the same jobs at Majorel.

Foxglove, a British non-profit helping Ethiopian moderators, submitted court filings on Dec. 4 alleging that Sama ignored their accusations that OLA rebels had targeted them for deleting their videos.

In the petition obtained by Reuters, the moderators said Sama accused them “of creating a false account and manufacturing” the threatening messages before agreeing to a probe and transferring one of the rebels’ officially named moderators to a safe house.

In his statement, Moderator Abdikadir Alio Guyo said that OLA had threatened “content moderators who were constantly pulling down their graphic Facebook Posts.”

“They told us to stop removing their content from Facebook or else we would face dire consequences,” he said, adding that his supervisor dismissed his concerns.
In his declaration, another moderator, Hamza Diba Tubi, stated that OLA sent him a message with the names and addresses of both himself and his coworkers.

“Since I received that threatening message, I have lived in so much fear of even visiting my family members in Ethiopia,” he said.

After peace negotiations in Tanzania in 2023 failed to end a decades-old conflict, the government of Oromiya, Ethiopia’s biggest province, accused OLA rebels of killing “many civilians” in assaults.

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