The family of Osama Hassan faced a wrenching choice as his tiny body wasted away. Should they use the little money they had, in a time of war, to take the 2-year-old to a hospital? Or should they buy food to feed their other children?

His family chose food.

Outside their hut, Ahmed Sadek grimly observed his frail grandson, who was lying on a wooden cot and staring blankly at the gray sky. His hair was sparse, his teeth decayed, his arms sticklike. He could no longer walk on his spindly legs.

With every raspy breath, Osama’s ribs protruded through his dry skin.

“There’s nothing we can do for him,” Sadek said. “I know he’s going to die.”

Every day children are perishing in rural Yemen, where two-thirds of the nation’s population lives. Parents are forced to decide between saving their sick children and preventing healthier ones from following the same perilous route. Cemeteries in this desperately poor and rugged stretch of villages in the northwest contain the bodies of children who have recently died of hunger and preventable diseases. Most are buried in unmarked graves, their deaths unreported to authorities.

The watered grave of Udai Faisal, who died of severe acute malnutrition, is marked only by stones, at a graveyard in Hazyaz village on the southern outskirts of Sanaa, in March. (Hani Mohammed/AP)

The more fortunate are taken to a hospital, often hours away on broken roads. Survival, though, is bittersweet. Families are often bankrupt after paying for medical care, and the children return home to the same cycle of war-induced poverty and malnutrition.

Hunger has long gripped the Middle East’s poorest country, its hold tightening as the nation ­collapsed after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled President Ali Abdullah Saleh. But Yemen’s ­20-month-old civil war has brought the country closer to famine.

The health system and other safety nets that caught many children before their bodies withered away are frayed or have disappeared. International aid agencies are facing a multitude of barriers, including airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition helped by the United States and obstruction by the rebels who rule the capital, Sanaa, as well as the main northern sea port of Hodeidah.

The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates that 370,000 Yemeni children are severely malnourished and facing death, and 2 million are in urgent need of help.

“This is an entire generation that’s at risk here,” said Erin Hutchinson, Yemen director for the aid agency Action Against Hunger. “We’re seeing a worsening situation as the conflict continues, and it’s not stabilizing. The needs are only deepening at the moment.”

A malnourished boy sits on a bed at a malnutrition treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen on Oct. 30, 2016. (Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

Osama was born prematurely six months before the war started. Underweight, his first view of the world was from inside an incubator. His father worked in Saudi Arabia as a laborer, like tens of thousands of others in Hajjah province, which borders the kingdom. His grandfather sold grain from the family’s small farm at the base of a craggy mountain.

There was money, but not much, to take Osama to a hospital.

By March 2015, northern rebels known as Houthis had seized the capital and forced President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile, fracturing the nation. Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries entered the conflict to restore him to power with the Pentagon providing weapons, intelligence and other forms of support.

The rebels, aligned with Saleh’s loyalists, control the northwest, while portions of the south and east are held by forces backing Hadi’s government. Radical Islamists, including al-Qaeda’s local branch and an emerging Islamic State affiliate, rule areas that aren’t under government or rebel control.

Few aid agencies operate in Bani Saifan and other remote areas. Hospitals have been destroyed by airstrikes or depleted of medicine partly because of a Saudi air and naval blockade. Jobs have disappeared as the violence and siege have torn up Yemen’s economy and displaced more than 3 million people, nearly half of whom are children.

With the border closed, Osama’s father never returned from Saudi Arabia. Soon, his remittances stopped. The child’s grandfather and uncle care for him, his mother and three siblings, as well as 20 other relatives.

“This year is more difficult than last year,” said Sadek, a thin man with a white beard. “Many people can no longer afford to buy my grain. They are suffering like us.”

Osama’s body began to break down this year. Unable to afford fruit, vegetables and other nutritious foods, his family fed him a diet of goat’s milk and biscuits. Unclean water and poor sanitation abetted his decline.

Three children have died of hunger in their village this year, Sadek said.

Other families in Bani Saifan face a similar situation. Four months ago, Faris al-Shamiri ­buried his 9-month-old daughter, Samah, in a cemetery near their home.

“A lot of children are buried there,” Shamiri said. “Two months old, 6 months old, they are of different ages. Most of them have died of hunger.”

Samah had stopped eating. But Shamiri delayed taking her to the hospital because he didn’t have money, and prayed that she would improve. Samah died in the intensive care unit.

Help for the region is hardly on the way.

The Houthi administration is struggling financially as the war strangles the economy. And the United Nations has raised less than half of its appeal to international donors this year as Yemen remains in the shadow of Iraq, Syria and other crises.

“Yemen ultimately is a media blackout,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the top U.N. humanitarian official in the country. “It’s not getting the attention it deserves. It’s not Aleppo. We don’t have drones flying over it showing the destruction. We don’t have a ­Mosul, which has BBC cameras 24-7 on it.”

Osama’s uncle took him to the nearest government clinic, a bumpy journey on a motorcycle taxi that lasted an hour.

There was no doctor to serve the district’s population of 70,000. The staff hasn’t been paid in three months. Medicine and supply cabinets were empty.

A nutritional supplement provided by UNICEF to treat severe malnutrition, a peanut-base paste known as Plumpy’Nut, had run out. The Houthi authorities have not cleared deliveries for weeks, said Bismarck Swangin, a UNICEF spokesman. He added that 240 health facilities in the north and coastal areas were facing the same predicament.

Vaccines and other essential supplies have also sat for months in neighboring countries, awaiting approval from the Houthis. The rebels, long suspicious of the West and running out of resources, seek to control and direct the flow of aid, Western aid officials say.

“You’ve got two levels of a blockade, really,” said a senior U.N. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing relations with the rebel government. “The blockade which is the result of the [Saudi-led] coalition, an economic blockade of the country. Inside that blockade, you have some elements of the [Houthi] authorities who are making life so incredibly complicated. The medical response is not as effective as it could be.

“There’s a malnutrition crisis in the country,” the official added, “and yet the overall government approach seems to show no sense of urgency.”

Mohammed Albukhaiti, a Houthi political official, denied the allegation. He blamed the crisis on the Saudi-led coalition, saying that it “has stopped many medicines from coming into the country and [is] selective in what they allow to enter.” The coalition has publicly blamed the Houthis for Yemen’s ­humanitarian woes.

Saida Ahmad Baghili, an 18-year-old from an impoverished coastal village on the outskirts of the rebel-held Yemeni port city of Hodeida. (AFP/Getty Images)

Legs of a malnourished boy are pictured at a malnutrition treatment center in Sanaa. (Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

At the government clinic, the need for urgency is unmistakable. Last month alone, 116 children under the age of 5 arrived with severe malnutrition, 17 of them from Bani Saifan.

“Can you help my child?” pleaded Zahra Meksha, who
was carrying her malnourished ­4-year-old daughter, Widad. She explained that her husband was unemployed and that they were surviving on milk and yogurt.

“We can’t do anything for her,” said Hassan Chailan, the clinic’s malaria coordinator. “She needs to be admitted to a hospital for at least a week.”

The clinic advised Osama’s uncle to take the child to a therapeutic feeding center at the main government hospital in Hajjah city, the provincial capital. But the trip there, a three-hour drive from their village, costs $50, a princely sum in Bani Saifan.

Two weeks after his clinic visit, Osama was still at home, his face gaunt and taut like an old man.

By then, his grandfather had made a decision. There were too many mouths to feed in the family, including Osama’s 4-year-old brother, who had also suffered from malnutrition but was ­improving.

“This is God’s judgment,” Sadek said, looking first at Osama, then at his other grandson. “What can I do?”

Osama Hassan suffers from severe hunger in Bani Saifan, Yemen. (Sudarsan Raghavan/The Washington Post)

Even when a child is taken to the hospital, there are no guarantees.

Ali Humeit and his wife, who live less than a mile from Bani Saifan, took their 5-year-old son, Rayaan, to the malnutrition ward of Hajjah hospital.

It was a return visit.

In October, Rayaan was hooked up to an IV drip and given nutritional supplements and medicine. He recovered his appetite in 10 days. But when he returned home, he began to lose weight fast. His parents could only afford to feed him water, milk, tea and bread.

“Since the war began, I have not been working,” said Humeit, who was a construction worker before the conflict.

For the first hospital visit, Humeit borrowed $150 fromothervillagers. This time, he was forced to beg on the street, he said. At night his wife sleeps with their child at the hospital, and he beds down free on the floor of a nearby mosque.

With four other children to feed, Humeit has prepared himself for the most agonizing decision of his life if Rayaan gets ill again.

“If I don’t have money, I can’t bring him back,” he said, looking at his son, who was visibly irritated and crying. “I’ll have to leave him at home, and let God handle it.”

Abdul Fatah Baashami and his wife never got to see their only child, Nabil, walk or talk.

Eight months ago, the signs of hunger emerged: swollen stomach, loss of weight. Nabil refused to breast-feed. So his parents carried him to nearby private hospitals, then to the same clinic where Osama had been taken. But he still teetered between life and death.

Then last month, Baashami’s father died. As the eldest son, he was suddenly responsible for 18 relatives. He earned $1 to $3 a day as a laborer — whenever he found work.

“I owe a lot of people money — $650,” he said.

Abdul Fatah Baashami stands next to grave of his only child, Nabil, who died of hunger. He was 14 months old. (Sudarsan Raghavan/The Washington Post)

When Nabil’s health deteriorated, the couple borrowed more money to take him to the hospital in Hajjah.

“My son was just skin and bones,” recalled Najua Showken, 18, his mother.

In the morning, an hour before their trip, she tried to breast-feed Nabil. Too weak to respond, he began to fade away. Drifting in and out of consciousness until his “eyes were rolling up,” he finally went silent, his mother said.

“He died in my arms,” she said.

Nabil had lived for 14 months.

Three hours later, after Nabil’s body was washed and wrapped in a white cloth in accordance with Muslim ritual, he was placed in a grave at a cemetery a short walk from their home, where eight other children were buried this year.

The cost of his funeral was covered by the money his father had borrowed to save the child’s life.

Ali Al-Mujahed contributed to this report.

(The Washington Post)

Walker was gone when deputies arrived, but investigators initiated a manhunt.

They saw him walking on Blue Bonnet Boulevard near Interstate 10 and approached.

According to CBS affiliate WAFB, the deputies ordered Walker to put his hands up. He pulled out a handgun instead.

They “exchanged gunfire striking the suspect who was later pronounced dead,” according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.

Louisiana State Police are investigating the officer-involved shooting.

Walker, a felon who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1992 and to possession of a firearm by a felon 14 years later, had a tumultuous relationship with Peck, according to the Advocate. Walker was frequently jealous and often violent, family members told the newspaper. But the couple’s separations never lasted.

[A ‘Good Samaritan’ saw a deputy being attacked by a Florida man so he fatally shot the assailant]

Peck had gotten a restraining order against him two weeks ago, the newspaper reported, but they continued to see each other. He used her Chevy Malibu to commute to his job and had picked her up from work a half-hour before shooting her and hurling her into the street.

Wesley found her there a little later. He was headed home after leaving the Mall of Louisiana.

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‘If you help her, I’m going to kill you’: EMT student risks his life to try to save shooting victim

All he wanted to do …

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Wesley’s father is a retired EMS supervisor, and Wesley had his dad’s medic bag in the car. The teen grabbed it and got out to help.

“It’s just second nature to both of our boys to do what needs to be done,” Kathy Wesley told ABC affiliate WBRZ.

A previous version of this story transposed April Peck’s and Terrell Walker’s names in one sentence. The post has been updated.

(The Washington Post)

The handwritten letters, which referred to Muslims as “children of Satan,” were mailed to Islamic centers in San Jose, Long Beach and Pomona in California and, most recently, in Savannah, Ga. The letters called Trump the “new sheriff in town” who will “cleanse America and make it shine again” by eradicating the country’s Muslim population.

“You Muslims are a vile and filthy people. Your mothers are whores and your fathers are dogs,” the letters state. “You are evil. You worship the devil. But, your day of reckoning has arrived.”

The letters went on to say that Muslims “would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.”

The Evergreen Islamic Center in San Jose was the first to receive the letter, according to CAIR, a civil liberties and advocacy organization for Muslims in the United States. Authorities were alerted Thursday night after the center’s imam found it in the mail, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Sgt. Enrique Garcia, a spokesman for the San Jose Police Department, told the Chronicle that investigators are treating it as a “hate-motivated incident.”

[‘Trump is president … they’ll deport you soon’: Man filmed unloading on Muslim Uber driver]

On Saturday, CAIR said the Islamic centers in Long Beach and Pomona received a similar letter. The same letter was later sent to a mosque in Savannah, CAIR said late Sunday.

“The hate campaign targeting California houses of worship must be investigated as an act of religious intimidation, and our state’s leaders should speak out against the growing anti-Muslim bigotry that leads to such incidents,” Hussam Ayloush, executive director for CAIR’s office in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

The letter, which was signed “Americans for a Better Way,” ended with “long live President Trump and God bless the USA.”

Faisal Yazadi, chairman of the board of the Islamic center in San Jose, said he hopes the sender would try to engage in a conversation with the Muslim community.

“Our doors are never locked,” Yazadi told the Chronicle. “I hope that person knows that we’re more than happy to have a dialogue. Hopefully, we learn a thing or two from him or her, and he or she learns something from us.”

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, executive director for CAIR’s office in Georgia, said the Muslim community “fears God, not anonymous hate mail.”

“Whoever sent these letters should know that they have only strengthened our resolve to keep practicing our faith, defending our rights and building bridges with our neighbors.”

[After outcry, Georgia lawmaker abandons bill that would have banned Muslims from wearing veils]

The letter sent to the Islamic center in Georgia had a return address from “Reza Khan” in Savannah. But a public records search revealed that the address isn’t valid, and there’s no one by that name who lives in Savannah. The letter was postmarked Santa Clarita, Calif.

The FBI said this month that hate crimes against U.S. Muslims spiked last year to its highest level since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Law enforcement agencies across the country reported 257 anti-Muslim incidents last year, an increase of nearly 67 percent from 2014, according to recent FBI data.

Overall, hate crimes increased by 6.7 percent from 2014 to 2015. Anti-black and anti-Jewish incidents rose by about 7.6 and 9 percent, respectively, according to the FBI.

[Hate crimes against Muslims hit highest mark since 2001]

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR, told The Washington Post’s Matt Zapotosky that the anti-Muslim rhetoric that came out of the presidential campaign was to blame.

On the campaign trail in December, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The ban is one of his most controversial and popular proposals, alongside building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting people who are in the United State illegally. Trump’s campaign later repackaged the proposal, saying immigration should be suspended from countries “compromised by terrorism.”

More than 100 anti-Muslim incidents have occurred since the presidential election, according to CAIR’s national office. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate-watch group, has tallied more than 700 incidents of harassment from Nov. 9 to Nov. 16. Many appear to have been made in Trump’s name and were directed at immigrants, African Americans and Muslims. The center cautions that not all incidents have direct references to the president-elect and that not every report could be immediately verified.

[University of Michigan student wearing a hijab was threatened with being set on fire, police say]

CAIR also said this month that the FBI questioned Muslims in at least eight states to seek information about a possible threat from al-Qaeda to carry out pre-election attacks.

Hassan Shibly, a lawyer and executive director of the CAIR office in Florida, told The Post’s Katie Mettler that his clients were asked whether they knew the al-Qaeda leaders killed in U.S. military strikes last month and whether they knew of anyone who wished to harm Americans at home or abroad. Among those questioned, Shibly said, were a youth group leader and wealthy doctors.

“The FBI actions . . . to conduct a sweep of American Muslim leaders the weekend before the election is completely outrageous and . . . borderline unconstitutional,” Shibly told The Post. “That’s the equivalent of the FBI visiting churchgoing Christians because someone overseas was threatening to blow up an abortion clinic. It’s that preposterous and outrageous.”

[FBI questioned American Muslims in 8 states over weekend about possible pre-election terrorism, says civil rights group]

Matt Zapotosky and Katie Mettler contributed to this report.


(The Washington Post)

Does What Happened To This Journalist At The US-Canada Border Herald A Darker Trend?

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

By Hugh Handeyside

The recent abusive border search of a Canadian photojournalist should serve as a warning to everyone concerned about press freedom these days.

Ed Ou is a renowned photographer and TED senior fellow who has traveled to the United States many times to do work for The New York Times, Time magazine, and other media outlets. Last month, Ed was traveling from Canada to the U.S. to report on the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in Standing Rock, North Dakota, when he was taken aside for additional inspection.

What came next left him questioning what he thought he knew about the U.S. government and the values it stands for, and we’re officially protesting to the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Although Ed clearly identified himself as a journalist on his way to Standing Rock, the CBP officers detained him for more than six hours and subjected him to multiple rounds of intrusive interrogation.

They questioned him at length about his work as a journalist, his prior professional travel in the Middle East, and dissidents or “extremists” he had encountered or interviewed as a journalist. They photocopied his personal papers, including pages from his handwritten personal diary.

Ed Ou uses a camera to shield himself during clashes between anti-government protesters and pro-Mubarak supporters near Tahrir Square in Cairo during the Egyptian Revolution in January 2011. (Photo by Guy Martin)

They also asked Ed to unlock the three mobile phones he uses to communicate in different locations worldwide. Ed told them he couldn’t agree to do that because of his ethical obligation as a journalist to protect his confidential sources. The officers took the phones, and when they returned them several hours later, the tamper tape covering the phones’ SIM cards was altered or missing, suggesting that the officers had removed and possibly copied the cards.

After all that, the officers denied Ed admission to the country without giving him a valid reason. One of the officers said he couldn’t provide any details. Another officer said that Ed’s refusal to grant access to his mobile phones “did not help.”

Ed’s treatment was unjustified and unlawful. Although CBP has the authority to stop and search travelers at the border for the purpose of identifying people who are inadmissible or engaged in criminal activity, the officers exceeded that authority. They had no legitimate cause to detain Ed for six hours, interrogate him about his professional activities, copy his diary, or search his phones. That abusive and harassing conduct is all the more troubling given that the officers apparently conditioned Ed’s admission to the U.S. on his willingness to assist them in searching his phones.

Ed’s ordeal is yet another indication that the government is treating the border as an all-purpose dragnet for intelligence gathering — an approach that is at odds with the Constitution, federal law, and CBP policies on border searches.

When CBP takes that approach to journalists, the dangers are particularly acute. Forcing journalists to turn over their newsgathering materials breaches confidences they are ethically required to honor, discourages reporting on current events, and turns journalists into unwilling agents of the national security state.

And conditioning foreign journalists’ admission to the United States on their willingness to agree to intrusive searches encourages similarly abusive treatment of American journalists in other countries.

Ed Ou photographs a burned home after ethnic Kyrgyz mobs rampaged through minority Uzbek enclaves, burning homes and businesses in Shark, Kyrgyzstan. (Photo by Marina Gorobevskaya)

Treating journalists this way at the border diminishes knowledge of important issues and narrows vital public discourse. It risks eroding press freedom, which is a necessary pillar of democracy.

Ed is fighting back though.

We’ve sent a letter on his behalf to DHS and CBP seeking assurance that Ed will not be subjected to intrusive and inappropriate searches in the future because of his work as a journalist. We’re also asking the government to purge any confidential information it obtained inappropriately during the search.

That the Obama administration would subject a journalist like Ed to harassment and abusive inspection at the border is wrong and alarming. And what this administration claims the authority to do today, the next administration could claim the authority to do in January.

Check out Ed’s photos and reporting here.

Hugh Handeyside is a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project.

This article originally appeared at ACLU.org, and was sourced from CommonDreams.org

Top Image: Photojournalist Ed Ou, who was recently detained and interrogated about his work while crossing the U.S./Canada border. (Photo by Kitra Cahana)

Top Image: Photojournalist Ed Ou, who was recently detained and interrogated about his work while crossing the U.S./Canada border. (Photo by Kitra Cahana)

(activistpost.com)