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Terrorists smuggling weapons through Turkey: UN

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Ankara: Turkey is being used as the main route for smuggling weapons to terrorist groups operating in Iraq and Syria, the UN has said.images

Militant groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front in Iraq and Syria have been receiving weapons and equipment smuggled “primarily by routes that run through Turkey,” as per reported, citing Tuesday’s report by the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Implementation Monitoring Team.

They have also seized some of their weapons “from the armed forces of Iraq or (to a lesser extent) the Syrian Arab Republic,” the report added.

Senior Iraqi and Syrian officials have repeatedly criticized Turkey over links to the militants, including Turkish involvement in buying oil from both the IS and Nusra Front.

The IS militants “control a number of oil fields in Syria and Iraq and they smuggle the oil overland through truck and middlemen to Turkey or towards other countries,” Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a news channel Dec 12.

In September, EU Ambassador to Iraq Jana Hybaskova revealed that some EU member states have purchased oil from the IS despite their rhetoric against the group.

US intelligence officials estimate that the IS militants earn more than USD 3 million a day from illegal oil sales, theft, human trafficking and ransom. They said the militants sell oil and other products via established networks in Turkey, Jordan and Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Turkey has denied reports of involvement in IS’ smuggling operations.

The IS militants control some parts of Syria and . They have engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

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Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online

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Anyip Mobile Proxies

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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