Three killed in fresh violence in Indonesia’s Papua
AFP, Jakarta
Three people have been killed in Indonesia’s restive Papua region with police saying the victims were civilians, while a rebel group that took responsibility said they were undercover intelligence officers.
The clash comes as Indonesian president Joko Widodo on Sunday was to visit the restive region – wracked by a decades-old independence insurgency -after months of mass demonstrations and deadly unrest.
Copter fire on IS-linked fighters kills 9 in
NW Syria
AFP, Beirut
Helicopter gunfire early Sunday killed nine people near a northwestern Syrian village where “groups linked to the Islamic State group” were present, a Britain-based war monitor with sources inside Syria said.
The helicopters targeted a home and car on the outskirts of the village of Barisha in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, after US media said IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was believed to be dead after a US military raid in the same province.
China arrests feminist activist Huang Xueqin after HK visit
AP, Beijing
Police in southern China detained feminist activist and journalist Huang Xueqin after she returned to the mainland from Hong Kong and Taiwan, her friends said Friday. Authorities in Guangdong province’s Guangzhou city arrested Huang last Thursday on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” her friends said. The vague charge is commonly used against activists viewed as threatening by the ruling Communist Party.
Iran releases 2 labor activists on bail
AP, Tehran
Iran’s semi-official news agency says that its judiciary has released two labor activists on bail. Saturday’s ISNA report said that Sepideh Gholian was released on some $130,000 bail, along with Atefeh Rangriz, whose bail terms it didn’t provide.
Gholian was arrested in October 2018 during a demonstration supporting a workers’ strike over several months’ unpaid salaries at the Haft Tapeh sugar mill in Shush, a city in the country’s southwest.
