World
Syrian army ‘suspends Aleppo fighting’
Syrian army
Damascus: Syrian army has suspended combat operations in eastern Aleppo to allow the civilians to evacuate the battle zone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. Lavrov on Thursday said about 8,000 people would be moved to safer places as Syrian forces have retaken 75 per cent of east Aleppo — areas rebels had controlled for four years — in recent weeks.
According to BBC, while fighting in Aleppo has eased, there is no sign it has completely stopped. The US welcomed the “indication that something positive could happen but we’re going to have to wait and see whether those statements are reflected on the ground.
“Our approach to the situation has been to listen carefully to what the Russians say, but scrutinise their actions,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Lavrov said: “Combat operations by the Syrian army have been halted in eastern Aleppo because there is a large operation under way to evacuate the civilians.”
He said Russian and US military experts would meet in Geneva on Saturday to discuss ways of bringing an end to the violence in Aleppo. A US state department spokeswoman said Lavrov and John Kerry had agreed to discuss a ceasefire that allows for the delivery of aid and the departure of civilians, but the “specific nature” of Saturday’s technical talks “are still to be worked out”.
Russia’s announcement comes at a time when tens of thousands of civilians have already been fleeing the fighting on their own, using whatever route they can. News that the Syrian military has suspended operations to allow for a more orderly evacuation would be a good one for tens of thousands of people still trapped inside rebel-held districts.
This week rebel fighters called for a truce to allow civilians to leave the battlefield. But both sides suspect the other will use any pause to regroup for another round of fighting. Earlier, a local council leader in Aleppo warned that “150,000 people are condemned to death” in the city. “We demand a safe passage for civilians to leave and an end to the killing, bombing and bloodbath,” he said.
Late on Wednesday, 148 mostly disabled and elderly civilians were evacuated from a former old people’s home, hours after the area fell to government forces. The UN’s envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told the media on Thursday that he was planning to meet members of US President-elect Donald Trump’s team, though he did not say when.
Aleppo was once Syria’s largest city and its commercial and industrial hub before the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011. But in the past year, Syrian troops have broken the deadlock with the help of Iranian-backed militias and Russian air strikes, reinstating a siege in early September.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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