Boris Johnson has announced an easing of England’s Plan B coronavirus restrictions amid a battle to save his premiership.

Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon, the prime minister said that the restrictions brought in to tackle the Omicron wave – including vaccine passes, face masks and working from home – will be allowed to expire on 26 January.

Johnson added that face masks for school pupils will be scrapped from tomorrow.

Johnson told MPs more than 90% of over-60s across the UK had now had booster vaccines to protect them, and scientists believed the Omicron wave had peaked.

He said the government had taken a “different path” to much of Europe and the “data are showing that, time and again, this government got the toughest decisions right”.

The news comes as Covid infection levels are falling in most parts of the UK for the first time since early December.

The prime minister and his Cabinet met on Wednesday morning to examine the latest COVID data before making a statement in the Commons in the afternoon.

England’s Plan B measures – which include guidance to work from home, the use of the COVID pass and mandatory mask wearing in shops and on public transport – are set to expire on 26 January.

Health secretary Sajid Javid signalled an end to the restrictions on Tuesday when he told MPs that he was “cautiously optimistic that we will be able to substantially reduce restrictions next week”.

The move avoids yet another confrontation with Tory MPs who want the restrictions brought to an end – something Johnson would wish to avoid as his position has already been weakened due to the row over Downing Street parties.

A group of Tories who won their seats in Johnson’s 2019 election landslide appear to have lost faith in the prime minister, after he admitted attending a “bring your own booze” event in the Downing Street garden during England’s first coronavirus lockdown.

Johnson has insisted that “nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules” and he believed he was attending a work event.

A series of gatherings in No 10 and Whitehall are being investigated by senior civil servant Sue Gray, and Tory MPs were urged by ministers to wait for her report before deciding whether to move against the PM.

Watch: Labour: PM 'in a scandal of his own making'

 

 

 

 

 

 

Labour: PM ‘in a scandal of his own making’

Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds says that Boris Johnson cannot focus on the “real issues facing this country right now” because the prime minister is “in a scandal of his own making”.

But reports have suggested the threshold of 54 letters from MPs that would launch a no-confidence vote in the PM could be reached this week.

Johnson made a public return on Tuesday after limiting his public activities when a close contact tested positive for COVID.

When asked whether restrictions would be lifted during a visit to a hospital, Johnson said: “We’ve got to be careful about COVID. We’ve got to continue to remember that it’s a threat.”

The Plan B measures were introduced to combat the wave of cases driven by the Omicron variant, with the aim of buying time to offer more booster jabs.

Johnson’s announcement follows Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s plans to ease them in Scotland from Monday.

It means nightclub closures and the requirement for table service in hospitality will come to an end, while attendance limits on indoor events and the guidance asking people to stick to a three-household limit on indoor gatherings will be lifted.

However, some baseline coronavirus measures which were in place before the Omicron wave will remain, including wearing face coverings in public indoor settings and on public transport, as well as working from home whenever it is possible.

A total of 19,450 people were in hospital in the UK with COVID as of 17 January, government figures show – down 2% week-on-week, though the total has risen slightly in the most recent two days.

A further 94,432 lab-confirmed COVID cases have been recorded in the UK as of 9am on Tuesday, while a further 438 people were reported to have died within 28 days of testing positive for COVID – though the figure is inflated by a lag in weekend reporting.  By Andy Wells, Yahoo News

Photo Dawn.com

The founder of Genocide Watch, Dr Gregory Stanton, who had predicted a genocide in Rwanda years before it took place in 1994 has warned of an impending genocide of Muslims in India, comparing the situation of the country under the Narendra Modi government to events in Myanmar and Rwanda.

Formed in 1999, Genocide Watch is a global organisation dedicated to the prevention of genocide. Dr Stanton is a former research professor in genocide studies and prevention at the George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.

Dr Stanton made these remarks during a congressional briefing titled 'Call For Genocide of Indian Muslims', organised by the Indian American Muslim Council. He was part of a five-member panel invited to speak at the session.

In his video address, Dr Stanton began with highlighting that Genocide Watch had been warning of a genocide in India since 2002, "when riots and massacres in Gujarat occurred that killed over a thousand Muslims".

"At that time, the chief minister of Gujarat was Narendra Modi, and he did nothing. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that he actually encouraged those massacres," he said, adding that Modi, now the prime minister of India, had used "anti-Muslim, Islamophobic rhetoric" to build his political base.

Dr Stanton said the two ways Modi went about this was by revoking the special autonomous status of Indian- occupied Kashmir in 2019 and passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act the same year.

He explained that the revocation of the of occupied Kashmir's special autonomy was "largely aimed at restoring Hindu domination" in the valley, which had Muslim majority. Moreover, he added, the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act was especially "aimed at Muslims".

"It gave [a] specific favourable status to refugees who had come from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who were of certain religious groups. But the one group that was excluded was Muslims," he said. "This act was specifically ... aimed at the Muslims who had fled Bangladesh during the Bangladesh genocide and civil war in 1971 and had settled in Assam," he continued.

Dr Stanton said there were around three million such people, mostly Muslims, who had fled to India and "has settled down" as "regular citizens of India".

But the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, he said, required people to prove through documentation that they had been the citizens of India before 1971 as part of a census that was to be overseen by the Indian supreme court.

"Now a lot of people don't have that kind of documentation, of course," he pointed out, adding that "the idea [behind the Act] is to essentially declare them (people who had fled to India from Bangladesh in 1971) foreigners, and therefore, to allow their deportation."

He said this was "exactly was the Myanmar government did to the Rohingya Muslims" in 2017. The Myanmar government, he said, first declared Rohingya non-citizens through a legislation and and then expelled them through violence and genocide.

In this regard, he also highlighted that the UN Genocide Convention — an international treaty that criminalises genocide — not just "covers genocides in whole. It also covers genocides in part".

"It is specifically aimed at the destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, and that is exactly what the Myanmar government did in Myanmar against Rohingya," he said. "What we are now facing is a very similar kind of a plot, if you will," he added, referring to India.

Dr Stanton said the Indian government's aim was to extend the census under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act across the country and the "victims will be 200 milion Muslims in India".

He further said that the "idea of India as a Hindu nation, which is the Hindutva movement, is contrary to the history of India and the Indian constitution".

The Indian constitution, he said, was devised "to make India a secular country", and that the secularity it promised was secured in the first years of India's existence under the Congress party.

"What we have now though, an actual member of the RSS ( Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) — this extremist, Hindutva-oriented group — Mr Modi as [the] prime minister of India. So what we have here is an extremist who has taken over the government," he continued.

Dr Stanton then went on to explain that genocide was not an event but a process, and that there were early "signs and processes" of genocide in the Indian state of Assam and occupied Kashmir.

He referred to a conclave held by Hindutva leader Yati Narsinghanand from December 17 to 19 in Uttarakhand's pilgrimage city of Haridwar, where multiple calls to kill minorities and attack their religious spaces were made, saying that the event was aimed at inciting genocide.

He said there were laws in India that could be enforced against such practices, "but Mr Modi has not spoken out against that violence".

Dr Stanton said Modi, as the prime minister of India, had a moral obligation to denounce this kind of hatred and hate-speech, that specifically calls for the killing of Muslims.

He said the language used against Muslim in the Haridwar meeting, which was also used by the Indian government, was actually "polarisation", which led to genocide.

"So we are warning that genocide could very well happening in India."

He also likened the circumstances in India to the events in Rwanda, where a genocide had taken place in 1994.

Dr Stanton said he had predicted the genocide in Rwanda, keeping in view the situation in the country at the time.

He said he had warned the then-Rwandan president that "if you don't do something to prevent genocide in your country, there is going to be a genocide here within five years. That was in 1989. The genocide developed, the hate-speech developed, all the early warning signs developed. And as we know, 800,000 Tutsis and other Rwandans were murdered in 1994".

"We cannot let that happen in India," he concluded. - Dawn.com

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and President of the Republic of Rwanda Paul Kagame at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in the Western Cape, South Africa, ahead of the Young Presidents' Organisation dinner on 6 March 2019. Photo GCIS

The failure of southern African and Rwanda to coordinate their military interventions against Islamist insurgents in northern Mozambique could jeopardise the overall mission.

This week, Mozambique’s President, Filipe Nyusi, met separately with Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Kigali and with the leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Lilongwe, Malawi, to discuss the war against the Al-Sunnah-wa-Jama’ah insurgents, who are affiliated to the Islamic State.

In Kigali, Kagame and Nyusi signed a formal cooperation agreement which included terms for the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) providing training to Mozambique forces. 

In Lilongwe, the SADC leaders agreed to extend the deployment of the SADC Mission in Mozambique (Samim). Both the RDF and Samim have been in Mozambique since July last year. 

The communiqué from the SADC summit did not say how long Samim’s mission had been extended for, but officials present said Samim would stay for another three months in its current form. This consists of mainly special forces from South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania and Lesotho conducting search-and-destroy missions against the insurgents. After that, the mission would be expanded to include infantry to consolidate territory seized from the insurgents and to reestablish civil infrastructure. Then the mission would be reassessed in July.

But, surprisingly to many observers, Rwanda and the SADC were not represented at each other’s meetings. This has raised concerns not only about dangers to the military mission but also to human rights and transparency of governance of the efforts to restore peace to the war zone, which is mainly in Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado.

Adriano Nuvunga, executive director of the Centre for Democracy and Development in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, asked on Thursday why Kagame had not been invited to the SADC summit in Lilongwe “so they could have one meeting instead of two”.

Speaking at a webinar organised by the Southern African Liaison Office and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, Nuvunga noted that Rwanda had neither been mentioned at this week’s SADC summit, nor at the last one, held in October last year, when SADC leaders decided to extend Samim’s deployment for three months, until January 15.

“Rwanda seems the… elephant in the room,” he said. “They don’t talk about it.”

Nuvunga said the failure of the SADC to engage Kagame and of Mozambique to reveal the terms of its agreement with Rwanda was raising concerns by Mozambicans about what Rwanda’s responsibilities were. It was also raising concerns about human rights accountability. 

An official confirmed that Rwanda’s deployment had not been discussed at the Lilongwe summit. “It’s very unlikely that will ever come up,” he added, saying that the Samim and Rwandan militaries were coordinating in the field, so it was not necessary for the political leaders to cooperate. 

However, Liesl Louw-Vaudran, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, said it still did not make sense that Kagame and Rwanda were not being included in the SADC discussions about overall strategy. 

“I think if [South African President Cyril] Ramaphosa invites Kagame to the next event, he can better control the narrative and make clear this is an SADC issue,” she said.

Louw-Vaudran added that she thought the lack of communication between the SADC and Rwanda was related to bad blood between Rwanda and South Africa over Pretoria’s belief that Kagame has targeted Rwandan dissidents in South Africa. This includes the murder in a Sandton hotel in 2013 of former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya.

The then defence minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, made it very clear in July last year that SA was unhappy about Rwanda deploying its military in Cabo Delgado before the SADC did. 

Louw-Vaudran said, though, that regardless of such tension, Kagame should have been at the SADC summit, as coordination of the troops was vitally important and Rwandan forces were playing a very important role in the fight against the insurgents. 

The SADC summit communiqué also failed to provide details about the financing of Samim. However, some sources have said it was agreed that an extra $29.5-million would be budgeted for. This appears inadequate to most observers, particularly as the special forces that have been fighting for six months complain that they are wholly underequipped. For example, two South African Oryx utility helicopters are transporting the special forces of four different countries. - Peter Fabricius, Daily Maverick