BEIRUT: Cypriot authorities on Tuesday repatriated 90 Lebanese, including women and children, to Tripoli after they tried to enter the country illegally.
“Those repatriated were tested for COVID-19 and quarantined in preparation for their return home,” said North Governorate District Commissioner Iman Al-Rafi.
Emigration from Lebanon is growing rapidly amid the dire economic situation and spiraling unemployment.
According to Lebanon’s National News Agency, Cypriot authorities will send a delegation to Beirut this week to discuss ways to “prevent boats loaded with illegal migrants from Lebanon sailing towards Cyprus.”
Cypriot authorities said an “unprecedented number of boats” had been intercepted. “At least five boats carrying more than 150 migrants were stopped by authorities,” Cypriot Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said, adding that his country “is on alert.”

ANKARA: Turkey has been urged to release human rights defender Osman Kavala following a European court ruling that said his detention was unlawful.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project are among those campaigning for Kavala’s freedom. He has been behind bars for more than 1,000 days. 

Rights groups are trying to keep his case on the agenda and prevent the targeting and persecution of activists, dissident politicians and critical journalists from becoming the norm in Turkey.

Kavala has been imprisoned since Nov. 2017 on various allegations and charges. The lawfulness of his detention has been brought to the attention of Turkey’s Constitutional Court.

The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers recently ordered Turkey, which has been a founding member of the council since 1950, to ensure Kavala’s immediate release.

The European Court ruled last December that Turkey was persisting in its violations of provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights, especially the rights to liberty, security and a speedy decision on the lawfulness of detention.

The court said that, by detaining Kavala since 2017 and prosecuting him, Turkish authorities had “pursued an ulterior purpose, namely to silence him as a human rights defender.”

In an official visit to Turkey earlier this month, the head of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Robert Spano spoke of the importance of implementing ECHR rulings by local courts in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, but without making any open reference to Kavala’s case.

“Turkish authorities should have complied with the binding ruling of the European Court to free Osman Kavala some time ago,” Amnesty International’s Turkey researcher Andrew Gardner told Arab News. “Obviously, keeping an innocent person in prison on absurd charges for almost 3 years is in itself a very damaging stain on the reputation of Turkish judiciary and with respect to the human rights record in Turkey in general.”

Gardner said the call from the Committee of Ministers to free Kavala had significantly increased the pressure on Turkish authorities. He added that Kavala’s case was far from the only example of authorities imprisoning people in an “attempt to silence them and people they represent.”

“He (Kavala) should never have been detained in first place. Ultimately, all members of the Council of Europe have to abide by the rulings of ECHR. If they don’t, they face serious sanctions.”

Spano has been criticized for not being tougher on Turkey’s human rights record and the rule of law during his meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and top judiciary members in Ankara.

The leader of Turkey’s main opposition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, said on Tuesday that Kavala was behind bars because Erdogan wanted it that way and that his detention period would continue.

“Turkey as a party to the European Convention on Human Rights undertook the obligation to implement all judgments of the European Court of Human Rights,” Massimo Frigo, senior international lawyer at the ICJ, told Arab News. “Not doing so would put the country in breach of its duty of collaboration with the court.” 

Turkey must implement several measures to execute the judgment but it must first of all release Kavala and not maintain his detention under charges issued just to delay his freedom, Frigo said.

“The case of Osman Kavala is crucial for the rule of law in Turkey,” he added. “Both a national court and an international court have ordered his release and he is still in jail. Genuine execution of courts’ decisions is an essential tenet of the rule of law.”

CAIRO: The run-off round for the 2020 Senate elections in Egypt began on Tuesday to determine 26 individual system seats in the country.

Fifty-two candidates for the runoff round come from 14 governorates: Giza, Qalyubia, Port Said, Ismailia, Menofia, Kafr El Sheikh, Damietta, Beni Suef, Assiut, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan and Matrouh.

The Senate, which was created in accordance with constitutional amendments approved last year, will act as an advisory chamber to the House of Representatives. It will sit in place of the Shoura Council, the upper house of parliament that was dissolved in 2014.

Voting by mail for Egyptians living overseas ended on Sept. 7.

The National Election Commission, headed by Lashin Ibrahim, said that 74 seats were decided by the single system in 13 governorates.

The National Unified List won after gaining more than 5 percent of the vote in each district during the first round last August.

Two-thirds of the Senate members are elected via the individual candidacy and closed party list systems, with the rest to be appointed by Egypt’s president. The first session of the Senate is set to be held in October, with its first 5-year term due to end in 2025.

Senate proposals focus on supporting democracy, social values as well as public freedoms and duties.

The Senate’s opinion is taken on proposals to amend one or more articles of the constitution, the draft general plan for social and economic development, peace and alliance treaties and all treaties related to the rights of sovereignty.

The Senate must inform the president and House of Representatives of its opinion on these matters, as organized by the house bylaws.

AMMAN: Jordan resumed regular international flights on Tuesday after being suspended for nearly six months because of the novel coronavirus epidemic, officials said.
They said Queen Alia international airport would initially handle six flights a day before expanding to ensure that airport authorities can enforce strict social distancing and other health rules.
The government had repeatedly postponed reopening Jordan’s main airport, a regional hub which normally handles around nine million passengers annually, over fears that travelers could bring about an increase in infections.

The airport, however, was open for repatriation flights arranged for citizens in the Gulf and Europe and also for foreigners resident in Jordan who want to leave.
Passengers entering Jordan would need proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of travel, alongside a compulsory test on arrival, officials said.
The rules would include a minimum of one week of self-isolation to a maximum two weeks of quarantine for foreign travelers depending on the severity of the pandemic in countries they came from.

Although Jordan has seen a spike in infections in the last few weeks, the country remains one of the least affected in the Middle East, with 2,581 infections and 17 deaths.
The closure of the airport since mid March has worsened the economic damage wrought by the pandemic on Jordan’s aid-dependent economy.
Tourism is a major source of foreign currency and had been enjoying an unprecedented boom before the pandemic.

DUBAI: The race to buy one of the hottest social media apps in the market is intensifying as its current owner girds for a court battle with the US government.
Some of the world’s biggest firms are huddled in talks to acquire the Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok after President Donald Trump’s executive order last month that would ban the app in the US over national security concerns unless another company purchases it by mid-September.
On Aug. 24, TikTok and a company employee filed separate lawsuits in California against the Aug. 6 executive order.
Users in the Middle East are concerned about the regional ramifications of a potential US ban.

With over 800 million active global users, according to DataReportal, and more than 2 billion downloads as of April 2020, the app ranks among the world’s 10 most popular social media platforms.
In the Middle East, social media influencers and content creators welcomed the app with open arms.
As of 2019, Saudi Arabia ranked as the eighth-largest country in terms of users, according to Route Note.
With the UAE taking second spot among Gulf Cooperation Council member states, TikTok set up its regional office in Dubai in 2018, servicing the Middle East and North Africa.

The UAE ranks 11th globally in number of TikTok influencers, with an average of 380 videos uploaded each onto their feeds.
“TikTok has grown rapidly this year, and across the Middle East in particular it has been really well received,” Rami Zeidan, head of video and creative at TikTok’s Dubai office, told Arab News.
“We’ve seen content emerge across multiple segments in the region, especially through the participation of our content creators in some hyper-local challenges, and we’ve recently seen an uptick in fitness, tech and gaming content.”

Zeidan said one of the app’s main commitments in the region is to cultivate the TikTok community through different on-platform challenges and other initiatives tailored to Arabic audiences.
“We work closely with our TikTok community and encourage them to express their creativity across a variety of verticals from music to food, education, travel, fitness, fashion and comedy, as there isn’t one area that we prioritize over the other,” he added.
Growing with this popularity is uncertainty over the app’s future following Trump’s executive order and the legal challenges.
The executive order bars any US transactions with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance.

The order states that the data TikTok collects “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information,” and could allow China to track the location of federal employees and contractors.
Under the order, TikTok would be indefinitely blocked from millions of users in the US unless another company acquires the app by Sept. 20.
In its suit, TikTok argues that it was deprived the opportunity to respond, and said the national security concerns surrounding the app are without merit.
“The executive order is not rooted in bona fide national security concerns,” reads the complaint posted on the company’s website. “Independent national security and information security experts have criticized the political nature of this executive order, and expressed doubt as to whether its stated national security objective is genuine.”

A separate lawsuit filed by a TikTok employee calls the order “sweepingly broad,” and questions whether employee wages and salaries will be covered by a section of the executive order that bans transactions with the company.
Many social media experts believe that the controversy has more to do with US-China tensions.
“Data is definitely something that’s part of a big conversation when it comes to apps, but every single app we use has so much data, which a lot of governments already have access to” Alexandra Maia, social media creative strategist and CEO of House of Social, a Dubai-based consultancy business, told Arab News.
“Since TikTok is a Chinese-owned app — and we know there are tensions between China and the US — it’s a recipe for disaster, and we just have to sit and see what unfolds.”
Maia said a potential ban in the US may create a temporary sense of uncertainty among regular users in the Arab world, but will not impact “pure content creators” who are building a brand.

“The majority of people might be a little hesitant to continue creating content frequently, but a small group of hardcore creators will continue doing so because they understand the game,” she added.
“We see that (with TikTok) in the Middle East, just like (we saw) with Snapchat in Saudi Arabia. The younger generations go in first because they’re the savviest, the ones who have more of the early taste and thirst for it. The older generation then starts to catch up.”
In practical terms, TikTok initially attracted predominantly teenagers due to its unique and easy-to-use editing tools, but it quickly became popular among those in their 30s, with the hashtag #over30’sclub going viral in recent times. Despite the controversy, Maia, like many other analysts, believes TikTok is “here to stay.”
The buzz over potential buyers, including Twitter, Microsoft and most recently Oracle, is creating anticipation over the future of TikTok, now worth an estimated $75 billion, according to Pitchbook.
The man behind the app, which has millions posting short-form mobile videos, is Chinese billionaire Zhang Yiming, whose net worth stands at $16.2 billion.

Known to be extremely private about his personal life, Zhang called Trump’s demand to sell the app “unreasonable.”
A TikTok spokesperson told Arab News: “Since publicly announcing two weeks ago that we are evaluating changes to the corporate structure of the TikTok business, there have been numerous suggestions made by external people not involved in the company’s internal discussions. We do not comment on rumors or speculation. We are very confident in the long-term success of TikTok and will make our plans public when we have something to announce.”
TikTok has launched a news portal called “The Last Sunny Corner of the Internet” to address comments around the Trump administration’s executive order, its approach to combating misinformation, and the app’s security roadmap.
For concerned content creators in the Arab world, Maia has a few words of advice: “As marketers and businesspeople, we just have to focus on creating content, building our brand, being transparent with our followers, and just start preparing a little bit on that exit strategy in case it does happen. But until then, create your content, and your community will follow you where you want them to follow.”

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Twitter: @jumana_khamis