Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday condemned violent far-right protests that degenerated into attacks against foreign-looking people, saying "hate in the streets" has no place in Germany.
After the fatal stabbing of a German man, 35, allegedly by a Syrian and an Iraqi, thousands of protesters marched in the eastern city of Chemnitz for two straight days, some chasing down people they believed were immigrants.
Police reported assaults by extremists against at least three foreigners on Sunday, while investigations were opened in 10 cases of the protesters performing the illegal Hitler salute.
At least 20 people were injured on Monday as pyrotechnics and other objects were hurled by both far-right demonstrators as well as anti-fascist counter-protesters in the city.
"What we have seen is something which has no place in a constitutional democracy," Merkel told journalists.
"We have video recordings of (people) hunting down others, of unruly assemblies, and hate in the streets, and that has nothing to do with our constitutional state."
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said federal police were ready to provide backup for overwhelmed officers in Saxony state, where Chemnitz is located.
'Pogrom sentiment'
The ugly scenes of mostly white men, many of them extremist football hooligans, hurling abuse at people they deemed to be foreigners, have deeply alarmed Germany.
"Of course history is not repeating itself, but that a far-right mob is on a rampage in the middle of Germany and the authorities are overwhelmed, is reminiscent of the situation during the Weimar Republic," said Spiegel Online.
The Weimar years were marked by the formation of paramilitary groups, such as the Sturmabteilung or SA, which eventually helped the Nazis to power.
Josef Schuster, who chairs the Central Council of Jews in Germany, also voiced his alarm, saying it is "now the duty of citizens to counter the far-right mob".
Anetta Kahane of the anti-racism Amadeu Antonio Foundation told news channel NTV that, while people have the right to demonstrate, "what happened in Chemnitz went beyond that -- it was incitement to hatred and the propagation of pogrom sentiment."
The circumstances that led to the death of the German man remain unclear, but the far-right quickly mobilised Sunday as word spread online that the key suspects were foreigners.
Saxony's interior minister Roland Woeller said hooligans from across Germany, including as far as the western states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony, had travelled to Chemnitz for the marches.
State premier Michael Kretschmer warned that a false claim that the man was stabbed while defending a woman was circulating online, as he urged the population to seek credible news sources.
He also stressed that the nationalities of the suspects were "absolutely no reason to cast general suspicion on all foreign-born citizens".
'Nothing more dangerous'
Saxony state, where Chemnitz is located and which is the birthplace of the Islamophobic PEGIDA street movement, has repeatedly come under intense scrutiny as a hotbed for hate crimes.
The state is at the heart of misgivings over Germany's decision to welcome more than a million asylum seekers since 2015, many from war-torn Syria and Iraq.
Railing against the newcomers, the far-right AfD party has made significant gains in Saxony and is poised, according to the latest polls, to become the second biggest party in its regional elections next year.
Critics warned that the authorities have for years failed to take the far-right threat seriously.
"The state can never allow our streets to be overrun by far-right mobs," said Bild daily, adding that at the same time, Berlin needs to promptly deport criminal foreigners.
"For too long, nothing has been done. That's why confidence in the state is crumbling. That's why racists like in Chemnitz think they can do what they want. Nothing could be more dangerous for our country."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that "where such hunting down of foreigners is possible, the rule of law has abdicated," while Die Welt daily warned that "the rule of law and police now face a test".
"There cannot be a zone of violence, there is no such thing as partial security," said Welt.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
JAKARTA - Christmas church services and other celebrations are being held this weekend under the gaze of armed guards and security cameras in many countries after Islamic State gunmen attacked a Methodist church in Pakistan as a Sunday service began.
Majority-Muslim countries in Asia and the Middle East were particularly nervous after United States President Donald Trump's recent announcement that he intends to relocate the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a decision that has outraged many Muslims.
In Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim-majority country, police said they had stepped up security around churches and tourist sites, mindful of near-simultaneous attacks on churches there at Christmas in 2000 that killed about 20 people.
Muslim volunteers in Indonesia are also on standby to provide additional security if requested.
"If our brothers and sisters who celebrate Christmas need to maintain their security to worship, we will help," said Yaqut Chiolil Qoumas, chairman of the youth wing of the Nahdlatul Ulema, one of the country's biggest Muslim organisations.
In Cairo, where a bombing at the Egyptian capital's largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people last December, the interior ministry said police would conduct regular searches of streets around churches ahead of the Coptic celebration of Christmas on Jan. 7.
Egypt's Christian minority has been targeted in several attacks in recent years, including the bombing of two churches in the north of the country on Palm Sunday in April.
At the Heliopolis Basilica, a Catholic cathedral in northeastern Cairo, security forces had set up metal detectors at the main doors and police vehicles were stationed outside ahead of masses on Dec. 25, which marks Christmas Day for Catholic and Protestant Christians.
German police brought in experts and an explosives robot to investigate a suspicious package at a Christmas market in the city of Bonn late on Friday.
Germany is on high alert a year after a failed Tunisian asylum seeker killed 12 people when he hijacked a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market.
BOMBED-OUT CHURCH
In the Pakistani city of Quetta, members of a Bethel Memorial Methodist Church were repairing the damage done by a pair of suicide bombers who attacked during a service last Sunday, killing 10 people and wounding more than 50.
Broken pews and damaged musical instruments were still strewn around church grounds on Thursday, with about a dozen police standing guard.
"We're making efforts to complete repairs and renovation before Christmas, but it seems difficult in view of the lot of damage," said Pastor Simon Bashir, who was leading the service when the attackers struck. He was not hurt.
The government of Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is capital, plans to deploy 3,000 security personnel in and around 39 Christian churches this Sunday and Monday.
Provincial police chief Moazzam Jah Ansari told Reuters volunteers from churches were also being trained to conduct body searches and identify worshippers entering churches.
Pakistan's Christian minority, which makes up about 1 percent of the population of 208 million, has been a frequent target, along with Shi'ite and Sufi Muslims, of Sunni Muslim militants.
In the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, where an Easter Day bombing in a park last year killed more than 70 people, police Detective Inspector General Haider Ashraf said every church would be monitored with CCTV cameras as part of security measures.
Christian Kaleem Masih lost his aunt in the Easter attack, which was claimed by Islamic State, and his wife was wounded, but he said they would be attending Christmas services.
"Christmas is our holy day," Kaleem said. "We will fulfil our religious duty by celebrating it with smiles on our faces."
JERUSALEM ISSUE
In Malaysia, a police official said Trump's decision on Jerusalem increased worry about attacks.
"We are concerned not only with safety at churches and places of worship but also any threats by Islamic State or any other security threat following the Jerusalem issue," said Malaysia's Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun.
Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam's third holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognised internationally.
Protests across the Muslim world in Asia and the Middle East have largely been peaceful.
In Jerusalem itself, an Israeli police spokesman said there were no new security measures but police would deploy forces as usual around Christian holy sites including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and also secure convoys of worshipers from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, traditionally known as the birthplace of Jesus Christ and run by the Palestinian Authority.
Many Palestinian Christians oppose Trump's announcement and say they have no fear of attacks.
"Trump's decision offended all Palestinians, be they Christians or Muslims. Why would we feel threatened by Muslims?" said George Antone, a Catholic who lives in Gaza, which is run by the Palestinian Hamas group.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LONDON - Social media companies should face prosecution for failing to remove racist and extremist material from their websites, according to a report by an influential committee.
Prime Minister Theresa May's ethics watchdog recommends introducing laws to shift the liability for illegal content onto social media firms and calls for them to do more to take down intimidatory content.
Social media companies currently do not have liability for the content on their sites, even when it is illegal, the report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life said.
The recommendations form part of the conclusions of an inquiry into intimidation experienced by parliamentary candidates in an election campaign this year.
"The widespread use of social media has been the most significant factor accelerating and enabling intimidatory behaviour in recent years," the report said.
"The committee is deeply concerned about the limited engagement of the social media companies in tackling these issues."
While the report said intimidation in public life is an old problem, the scale and intensity of intimidation is now posing a threat to Britain's democracy.
The report found that women, ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political candidates are disproportionately likely to be the targets of intimidation.
The committee heard how racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic abuse is putting off some candidates from standing for public office.
Platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are criticized for failing to remove abusive material posted online even after they were notified.
The committee said it was "surprised and concerned" Google, Facebook and Twitter do not collect data on the material they take down.
"The companies' failure to collect this data seems extraordinary given that they thrive on data collection," the report said. "It would appear to demonstrate that they do not prioritize addressing this issue of online intimidation."
Twitter said in a statement it has announced several updates to its platform aimed at cutting down on abusive content and it is taking action on 10 times the number of abusive accounts every day compared to the same time last year.
YouTube declined to comment, while Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Many politicians have become more vocal about the abuse they face after Labour's Jo Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, was shot and repeatedly stabbed a week before Britain's Brexit referendum last year.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BAGHDAD - An Iraqi military parade in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone celebrated final victory over Islamic State on Sunday, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi looking on as troops marched in formation, their bodies spelling "victory day" in Arabic.
Abadi, who is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces, listened solemnly to Quranic verses from a chapter titled al-Nasr, meaning victory.
Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under Islamic State control along the border with Syria on Saturday and secured the western desert, marking the end of the war against the militants three years after they had captured about a third of Iraq's territory.
The forces fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria now expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare.
Watching the parade on Sunday, state television showed Abadi sat on a throne-like chair placed between two Iraqi flags with the country's official seal behind him, and with all other officials sat at a distance from him.
Abadi declared Dec. 10 would be an annual national holiday. Fighter jets were seen and heard flying over Baghdad's skies.
An announcer introduced various factions who took on Islamic State as troops marched, tanks rolled by and helicopters hovered, all brandishing Iraqi flags as Abadi stood up and waved.
Those who fought were drawn from the army, air force, federal and local police, elite counter-terrorism forces, as well as Shi'ite and Sunni paramilitaries and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. They received key air support from a US-led global coalition.
In his victory speech, delivered on Saturday, Abadi did not mention the Peshmerga, who played a big part in the fight against Islamic State.
The central government in Baghdad is in conflict with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government after the latter unilaterally held an independence referendum in September.
Instead Abadi hailed the Iranian-trained and backed Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a group of Shi'ite militias, many of whom are loyal to Iran.
He also said that the state should have a legitimate monopoly on arms, however. Disarming the PMF is seen as Abadi's greatest challenge after Islamic State's defeat.
The man who many saw as weak and ineffectual when he took over in 2014 from a predecessor who was blamed for the Islamic State takeover now heads towards an election next year as the commander who freed Iraqi lands.
Or as one Western diplomat described him - "the most popular man in Iraq."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MOGADISHU - Two car bombs killed at least 17 people in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Saturday, police said, two weeks after a huge truck bomb killed hundreds of civilians in the city.
Islamist group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attacks on Saturday. A suicide car bomb was rammed into a hotel, Nasahablod Two, about 600 metres from the presidential palace, and then armed militants stormed the building, police said.
A few minutes later, a car bomb exploded near the former parliament house nearby.
Ali Nur, a police officer, told Reuters 17 people, mostly policemen, had died in the blasts.
"Security forces have entered a small portion of the hotel building ... the exchange of gunfire is hellish," he said.
The police personnel who died had been stationed close to hotel's gate. The dead also included a former lawmaker, he said.
Fighting continued to rage inside the hotel after the blast and police said the death toll was likely to rise.
Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Amin ambulances, told Reuters the emergency service had carried 17 people injured from the hotel bombing.
A huge cloud of smoke rose over the scene and a Reuters witness saw over a dozen wrecked cars and bloodstains in front of the hotel. Sporadic gunfire could be heard.
Islamist group al Shabaab, responsible for scores of such attacks in the country's long civil war, said it carried out Saturday's bombings.
"We targeted ministers and security officials who were inside the hotel. We are fighting inside," Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group's military operations spokesman, told Reuters.
He said the hotel belonged to Somalia's internal security minister, Mohamed Abukar Islow.
Al Shabaab is fighting to topple Somalia's internationally-backed government and impose its strict interpretation of Islam's sharia law.
Bombs in Mogadishu two weeks ago killed at least 358 people, the worst such attacks in the country's history, igniting nationwide outrage.
Another 56 people are still missing, believed to have been burnt without a trace. Al Shabaab was widely suspected, but has not claimed responsibility after thousands of Somalis poured onto the streets to protest.
Al Shabaab's attacks are growing in frequency and size, as a 22,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force prepares to begin withdrawing.
In 2016, 723 people died in 395 bomb attacks in Somalia, according to a report produced earlier this year by Nairobi-based think tank Sahan Research.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
