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Israeli forces overwhelmed by violent settlers in ‘terrorist attack’ on Palestinian family

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said Israeli settler violence in the West Bank has made everyday life for Palestinians “untenable”, as a mob attack on Palestinians trying to return home prompted one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rivals to warn of a campaign of settler terror. More than 100 militant settlers overwhelmed Israeli security forces early on Tuesday to attack a Palestinian family as they attempted to reclaim their homes which had been seized by settlers in the West Bank village of Jalud. Three Israeli security officials were injured and houses were set on fire. The impotence of the Israeli military, the scale of the assault and the injuries inflicted on Israeli security officers by settlers prompted unusually harsh condemnation from Israeli politicians and commenters. Israel is facing unprecedented international pressure over surging violence in the occupied West Bank, where settler militants backed by cabinet ministers have accelerated a campaign of ethnic cleansing ahead of Israel’s elections next month. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the attacks in Jalud as a “moral stain”. Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and Netanyahu’s leading challenger in the upcoming elections, called for action to halt a “campaign of terror and violence”. Deadlier attacks by Israeli settlers, including ones targeting Palestinian children, have drawn less attention inside Israel. “Palestinian rights or safety are not the concern, even for people who are in the opposition,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine with International Crisis Group. “The settler violence is an issue [for them] because it’s making Israel look bad, and also the idea that the military is losing control.” The ICRC said attacks, settlement expansion and severe restrictions on movement were making everyday life untenable for Palestinian civilians, who Israel has a responsibility to protect under international law. . “The frequent and severe violence must be brought to an end,” said Julien Lerisson, the head of the ICRC’s delegation for Israel and Palestine. “What international humanitarian law says on the protection of private and public property, and on the population’s access to essential services, must be respected.” A bar on imports of settlement goods came into force in the Netherlands last week, the UK has announced plans for even broader controls on trade and financing of settlements, and a similar bill will be introduced in the US legislature on Thursday. On Tuesday, a Senate bill demanding a human rights report on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was narrowly defeated after winning backing from all but one Democrat. “Tonight a disaster was averted, but the barrier has been broken,” the Israeli analyst Roy Sharon wrote on social media after the vote, warning that “anarchy in the West Bank” may cost Israel military aid from the US and its international legitimacy. A cartoon in Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, on Wednesday showed two soldiers watching an arson attack on a Palestinian home. “They’re going to ruin my trip to Amsterdam,” one says to the other. More than 60 Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank have been wiped off the map since October 2023 and 18 others have been partly displaced, according to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Nearly 5,000 people have been forced from their homes, almost half of them children. The Tubasi family, whose homes were burned in Jalud, had been forced out this summer after a weeks-long siege by settler militants. Last week they secured a high court ruling ordering the Israeli state to evict settlers and secure their return. Late on Monday the Israeli military told the family that about 15 military police officers would escort them home immediately, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported. That was a small number given that Israel is celebrating the Sukkot holiday. The number of violent extremists in illegal settlements usually rises during festivals, and the force was outnumbered by a violent crowd within minutes of arriving. “To carry out an operation such as this, and during the holiday of Sukkot when the [settler] outposts are packed, is madness,” a security source said. The military had not informed national police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service of their plans, so they had no security backup. Settlers attacked a house when the Tubasi family arrived, forcing them to the roof, before the military decided to evacuate them in armoured military vehicles. The crowd then set the homes on fire, blocked roads and threw stones at Israeli security forces, injuring three personnel. The two houses “were damaged beyond description”, said Wael Tubasi. “They damaged everything – the doors, the tiles were removed, the stairs were removed. They smashed the bathrooms, doors and windows. They left nothing, everything was broken,” he told Reuters. Earlier this year the former prime minister Ehud Olmert called for the international criminal court to intervene to stop settler violence because the state had failed. Netanyahu condemned the “violent riots” and called for prosecution of the attackers, but defended the illegal settler movement. “The handful of rioters are not representative of the law-abiding settler public in Judea and Samaria,” the prime minister said, using an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank. A landmark 2024 ruling from the UN’s international court of justice found that the occupation violated international law, a position the British government has endorsed. An Israeli military spokesperson said two suspects had been detained, and called for action to tackle settler militants who targeted Israeli security forces. “The violence directed at soldiers while they were carrying out their duties crosses a clear red line and is unacceptable,” the spokesperson said. “There is no place for such incidents in the state of Israel, and they must not be allowed to become the norm. Such phenomena must be addressed at their root.” On Wednesday, some in Israel questioned whether the army and the state had the capacity to do that. “We have to look reality squarely in the eye: this was a terrorist attack and a failure by the Israeli defence establishment in its entirety,” Avi Ashkenazi wrote in the Maariv newspaper. “It is clear at this point that the real sovereign in Judea and Samaria are the extreme rightwing terrorist activists.”

Pilot who stabbed co-pilot on Israel-bound plane may have tried to crash it, says Netanyahu

One of the pilots of a plane flying from the United Arab Emirates to Israel stabbed his co-pilot and appeared to try to crash the aircraft, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said, as Israeli officials said they were investigating whether the incident was an attempted terror attack on Israelis. Eyewitnesses reported chaos onboard as the attacker tried to barricade himself and the wounded co-pilot in the cockpit, and then attempted to disable the controls, forcing the plane to descend 17,000 feet in just two minutes. Passenger Yaniv Hayoun later recounted how he and other passengers heard screaming and felt pressure as the plane dived before forcing their way into the cockpit and finding the attacker at the instrument panel. “I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and dragged him out first,” Hayoun said during a meeting with Netanyahu after the plane had landed safely and the passengers were flown to Israel. “He was trying to destroy the instruments to disable the plane.” Another passenger, Miryam Shira Ohayon, told reporters via her mother’s phone at Tel Aviv airport that a pilot had attempted to “basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane”, saying: “It was really on the way to crashing.” She added that a doctor onboard had treated the wounded pilot. The stabbed pilot was identified as Indian national Captain Smit Machchhar, who was said to have made the emergency call and opened the door to the cockpit, allowing others to rush in and subdue the attacker. “Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker – preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster,” Netanyahu said, crediting him with saving 174 people onboard. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, with the two pilots wounded but other passengers safe, according to a statement from Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz international airport, more commonly known as Tabuk airport. The pilot accused of carrying out the stabbing was being questioned by Saudi authorities, Netanyahu said. Israel’s transport ministry said it would carry out a joint investigation with the defence establishment. It was not immediately clear what motivated the apparent attack. The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, described the incident as an “attempted jihadist attack”. “The terrorist had a single objective: to crash the plane, killing everyone onboard,” Katz said, adding that the attack was stopped due to the “heroism of several passengers”. The passengers of the diverted flight landed in Israel on Wednesday evening on a replacement aircraft, eight hours after their emergency landing. Netanyahu praised the bravery of the crew members and passengers who subdued the attacker and landed the plane safely. “They saved many lives. They prevented a heavy disaster,” he said. Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to reporters, said the attacker was an Omani national and that Israel’s current assessment of the incident was that it was a terror attack. There was no comment from Oman or the UAE. Two and a half hours after taking off from Dubai, the plane sent out an emergency signal – squawk code 7700, indicating a general emergency – before sending out another – code 7500, indicating a potential hijacking attempt. Passengers heard screams from the front of the plane, and the wounded pilot managed to open the latch on the cockpit door, leaving it ajar. The plane also began to abruptly descend, falling about 17,000ft in two minutes. As the plane began to dive, passengers and a crew member pushed their way into the cockpit, subduing the attacker. Other crew members then stabilised the descent of the plane and began to land it safely in north-western Saudi Arabia. Among those who intervened was an off-duty British pilot, according to a passenger, Almog Itali, who said the plane was carrying a pair of relief pilots who were meant to fly the next flight. “The relief pilots are European, one of them British, who entered [the cockpit] and pulled the aircraft up, pulled the yoke, stabilised the plane and landed us in Saudi Arabia,” Itali said in a clip posted by the BBC. Also among those who stopped the apparent attack were Israeli security forces and air marshals, the Associated Press reported, citing sources close to the Saudi investigation into the incident. Videos of the incident showed passengers screaming as the plane descended, as well as a blood-covered man who appeared to be the pilot injured and on the floor. Yasmin Abu Kaiss, whose daughter was on the flight, told Reuters her daughter said she had heard screaming and a man with a knife had put a pilot on the floor, and that there was blood everywhere. Israeli officials initially scrambled fighter jets after the emergency signals were sent out, fearing an attack on Israel or that the plane would be diverted to a third country. A spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office then said the incident was not a hijacking, as media reports circulated of a fight between the two pilots. As more information emerged about the violent nature of the attack, Israeli and international media began to report officials anonymously saying an investigation had been opened into whether this was an attack on Israelis. The head of the Israeli military, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, has postponed a visit to the US over the incident, where he was meant to have a meeting with US joint chiefs of staff and the head of US Central Command. The incident came just days after Netanyahu had warned there were indications an attack would be carried out during Israel’s October elections. Israel’s military, quoted by Israeli media, said it had no intelligence that an attack was being planned. Yair Lapid, the opposition figure and former prime minister, cast doubt on the connection between the alleged attack and Netanyahu’s warning, saying a security briefing on Tuesday night gave no information about any potential incident similar to what happened on Wednesday. Israel experienced a series of hijackings and attacks on planes by Palestinian militants in the 1960s and 1970s, but has not experienced anything similar in decades. The country maintains some of the strictest airport security procedures in the world, including security checks before passengers board Israel-bound flights. Flights between Dubai and Israel started after the countries normalised ties in 2020. Israel does not have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, but in 2025 landed a plane in Riyadh because of a medical emergency. Flydubai confirmed that flight FZ 1073 en route to Ben Gurion airport experienced an incident and landed safely in Tabuk on Wednesday. “Our teams are working closely with the relevant authorities,” the carrier said. “Further updates will be issued as additional confirmed details become available.” Israeli media reported that a later flydubai flight heading to Tel Aviv turned around in mid-air and headed back towards Dubai after the incident.

‘Whoever is hearing me, we need help’: how flight 1073 survived its 17,000ft plunge

As flight FZ 1073 soared west over the waters of the Gulf towards Israel, its passengers may have bemoaned a 20-minute delay at takeoff. For a low-cost airline route, flydubai’s daily service to Tel Aviv is usually convenient and reliable. The nonstop flight takes about three and a half hours and departs early enough from Dubai that it usually lands at Ben Gurion airport at about 9am local time. That was not the case for Wednesday’s catastrophic flight. The passenger jet never made it to its scheduled destination. Instead, it dropped thousands of feet in seconds before limping down to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia – perhaps miraculously, since photos suggested a large part of the tail of the aircraft was missing. Passengers evacuated, some covered in blood, with stories to share of a pilot-on-pilot stabbing, and footage posted online from inside the fuselage showed the aftermath of violence. In one video, two men lie on the floor with breathing masks on their faces as passengers stand over them in the cramped gangway. One wears a white shirt soaked red with blood, and the distinctive pilot stripes on his shoulders. He appears almost unresponsive. The other man blinks slowly, with blood smeared on the wall next to him. A person off camera appears to encourage the injured man to remain conscious: “No sleep,” he says. More footage, apparently from a seat further back, shows passengers screaming and weeping in distress as the Boeing 737 Max shakes. Israeli media reported that the plane was carrying about 150 Israeli passengers. Accounts from the airline, passenger testimony, flight trackers and Israeli officials describe a series of horrific events starting about two and a half hours after takeoff. The flight tracking website Flightradar24 recorded the aircraft abruptly descending from its cruising altitude of about 34,000ft to 17,000ft in less than two minutes. Investigators will look at whether such a sudden and ferocious movement was the reason for damage to the aircraft’s rudder. Minutes later, the plane sent out a series of emergency transponder signals in the form of “squawk codes”. These four-digit codes are normally used by pilots to broadcast their position but can be used in an emergency situation, even if pilots are in radio contact with air traffic control. Aircraft trackers at Flightradar24 said the flydubai plane transmitted emergency and hijack signals. The aircraft made an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border before turning around and heading south. In one video, a passenger with blood dripping from an open wound on his head pleads for assistance and says the jet is descending into Saudi Arabia. “Whoever is hearing me, we need help,” the man says in Hebrew. “We are in the Tabuk area of Saudi Arabia, which we don’t know. All the passengers are OK except for the pilot. We need help.” What was happening during these critical minutes is still being investigated, but early unconfirmed reports pointed to a cockpit fight, followed by passengers storming up the aisle, and then either one or more pilots who were travelling as passengers wresting control of the plane to avert a disaster. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited a passenger as saying that the plane lost control and began to dive. Dalia Shpigel was quoted as saying that “suddenly there were terrible screams throughout the plane” before “three to five guys burst into the cockpit” and subdued the alleged assailant and began treating an injured pilot. “We realised that the situation was stabilising and continued the flight. Gradually, information began to emerge about what had happened in the cockpit,” Shpigel told Haaretz. Her fellow passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the “co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane”. Speaking to reporters via speakerphone held up by her mother, who was waiting at Ben Gurion airport, she said the plane “was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralised him”. “There was also a doctor who gave first aid, and people who treated both of them … but the bigger fear was really a crash, which is exactly what he was trying to do,” she said. The Emirati carrier, in a statement later on Wednesday, said the aircraft was “successfully secured by on-duty flydubai crew travelling on the flight”, who diverted and landed the aircraft safely at Tabuk airport. Airlines often move pilots around different airports as passengers, and it is possible it was these pilots who sent the emergency codes. One passenger, Almog Itali, was quoted by the BBC as saying that one of the pilots onboard who stabilised the plane was British. “There were two spare pilots who were supposed to operate the next flight,” he said. “The relief pilots are European, one of them British, who entered [the cockpit] and pulled the aircraft up, pulled the yoke, stabilised the plane and landed us in Saudi Arabia.” Stanislav Bukhman, the head of risk at Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security firm based in the UK, said investigators were likely to focus on a few key areas, including how pilots were vetted, and crew screening at the departure airport. On how the flight deck might have been accessed, he said cabin crew could request entry to the cockpit using an emergency access code. “This exists for situations where the pilots are incapacitated. There is a safeguard built in, though. If the pilots are conscious and operating normally, they can deny that request and keep the door locked. This is designed to protect the flight deck in a hijacking or hostage situation,” he said. “At this stage there isn’t enough information to say how the flight deck on FZ 1073 was accessed. The door may have been opened by the captain, who reportedly resisted the co-pilot’s attempt to take control, or by cabin crew using the emergency procedure.” The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced that one of the pilots had planned to crash and kill its mostly Israeli passengers, who stopped a “major disaster” with their actions. The alleged assailant was arrested after the plane landed, Netanyahu ‌said. “During the flight, as they approached the country, one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot and apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone onboard,” Netanyahu said in a video message, calling the passengers “heroes”. All the passengers were accounted for and safe. Flydubai, however, said an “altercation” occurred in the flight deck of flight FZ 1073, and it warned against drawing conclusions about the motive. “At this early stage, the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation,” a flydubai spokesperson said in a statement. “We urge all parties to refrain from premature speculation while authorities gather the facts.” Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Netanyahu says pilot arrested after stabbing fellow pilot and apparently trying to crash Israel-bound plane – as it happened

A commercial plane travelling from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to Israel has been forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, after an apparent brawl between its pilots prompted distress signals that briefly raised fears of an attempted hijacking. The flydubai flight was over Jordan when it diverted to Saudi Arabia, transmitting three emergency signals, one of which indicated a possible unlawful interference. The plane dipped dramatically during the reported fight, descending about 16,000ft in just two minutes. Israeli officials scrambled fighter jets, fearful of a possible hijacking attempt on a plane containing dozens of Israelis, and the plane landed at Tabuk airport in north-western Saudi Arabia. A plane carrying passengers from an earlier diverted flydubai flight has landed at Tel Aviv airport on Wednesday, AFP TV images show. The second aircraft, also operated by flydubai, landed on the tarmac of Ben Gurion airport at 3.34pm GMT, after the passengers’ earlier flight was diverted to Saudi Arabia due to an altercation between the pilots. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one of the flydubai pilots stabbed his fellow pilot and intended to crash the plane. He added that one of the passengers on the flight managed to break into the cockpit with one of the crew members, and together they “neutralised” the attacking pilot. Netanyahu described it as “an extremely severe security incident”. Other officials, including defence minister Israel Katz, have called it an attempted terrorist attack. Netanyahu thanked the passengers and crew who helped to stop the attack, saying they “showed exceptional resourcefulness and courage”. An Israeli official has identified the attacker as an Omani national, Reuters is reporting. The co-pilot of a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv is believed to have stabbed the captain in a possible attempted “terror attack”. Saudi Arabia turned down a request ⁠by Israel to allow its planes to bring back ⁠Israeli passengers from a ⁠FlyDubai flight that made an emergency landing in the kingdom, ⁠two security sources told Reuters. The request was made to allow ⁠Israeli military planes to bring back Israelis from Saudi ‌Arabia, which ‌has no diplomatic relations with Israel, the ‌sources said. The Boeing 737 plane, which Israeli officials said had between 160 and 180 passengers on board, transmitted a general emergency signal about two and a half hours after departing from Dubai, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24. Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane was “pretty much out of control” when the alleged stabbing took place over Jordan on the flight’s path from Dubai to Tel Aviv. “The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother who was waiting at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. The plane again transmitted the initial general emergency signal before later landing at Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport. Tabuk airport said the plane landed at 9.45am local time and that both pilots were taken to hospital after sustaining injuries. A second flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv landed safely at its destination after the tracking data website Flightradar24 initially showed the plane diverting back towards the UAE. Flight FZ1081 was later shown to be on its way to Israel, where it landed in Tel Aviv this afternoon. US ⁠attorney-general Todd Blanche ⁠said ⁠that the ‌US ‌was ‌coordinating “very closely” with counterparts overseas, including ‌Israel, regarding the flydubai flight from ⁠Dubai to Tel Aviv that was diverted.

French court jails six men for manslaughter over mass drowning in Channel

A Paris court has jailed six ⁠men for manslaughter over the deaths of at least 27 people in the worst mass drowning on record from a small-boat crossing in the Channel. Seven other men were ⁠found guilty of lesser smuggling charges with varying degrees of seriousness, including facilitating illegal immigration as part of ⁠an organised gang and criminal conspiracy. Five years on, another four people are still missing. The court heard that the sinking of an inflatable dinghy in November 2021 was caused by “individuals driven by greed, with utter disregard for human life”. Prosecutors said the convicted men helped launch a “substandard small boat, uncertified, unfit for navigation on the open sea, overcrowded and lacking appropriate lifejackets”. Emmanuel Daoud, a lawyer for one victim’s family, called the proceedings a “trial of greed, cynicism and inhumanity”. Twenty-seven people were confirmed dead when their inflatable dinghy sank in the early hours of 24 November 2021. Four people remain unaccounted for. The victims were mostly Iraqi Kurds, but also included people who were Afghan, Ethiopian, Iranian, Somali, Vietnamese and Egyptian. The youngest known victim was a seven-year-old girl. The confirmed dead included 15 men, seven women and two teenagers. Sentences for the six men found guilty of manslaughter ranged ‌from six to 10 years in prison. For others, sentences ranged from six months suspended to four years in prison. The court heard that the men were linked to Afghan and Iraqi-Kurdish smuggling networks ⁠that organised the migrants’ passage to Britain from camps near Grande-Synthe and Calais in northern France. One man was found innocent. According to testimony from the two survivors, the flimsy boat, which had attempted to cross one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes between the northern French coast and Kent in southern England began to deflate and take on water after several hours at sea. Passengers fell overboard and drowned one after another, despite making about a dozen desperate calls for help to French and British rescue services. Only two men survived. For the people onboard the sinking boat, despite several distress calls, it was nearly 12 hours after the first pleas for help before the dinghy was finally found by a French fishing vessel. A separate investigation is continuing in France into seven French military personnel – five members at a maritime rescue coordination centre, and two sailors onboard a patrol vessel. They have been under investigation since 2023 for failing to help a person in danger. They deny the allegations. Zana Mahmand Mohammed travelled from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to address the court about his younger brother, Twana, 18, who drowned in the disaster but whose body has never been found. He said: “We’ve been waiting for our brother’s body for five years. I live with the uncertainty of ever finding out what happened. We lost a member of our family. He had a project for another future to live … ” The family had tried to dissuade Twana from leaving home, but he had wanted to find a job and develop his sporting success as a black belt in taekwondo and escape the violence and insecurity of his region. Mohammed said every time he read in the media about other small boats in difficulty, he relived the tragedy. “Destruction is being repeated,” he said.

‘We want justice’: series of rapes trigger mass protests at Indian universities

The posters, just like the women holding them, were taking no prisoners. “Girls don’t need curfews, rapists need consequences,” read one. “Lock your dicks rather than your women at home,” read another. As hundreds of women walked from the gates of their university campus into the streets of Delhi – where sexual harassment, assault, catcalling and molestation are a constant, daily threat – they shouted together in a chorus of rage and defiance: “We want justice.” The fury that has erupted on India’s university campuses over the past week has been double-edged. The trigger was a series of brutal rapes that have taken place in Delhi in recent weeks, including the alleged gang-rape of a 17-year-old in a public park close to Delhi University by three men who posed as police officers. Just a week earlier, another 17-year-old was gang-raped and murdered in Delhi’s Swaroop Nagar neighbourhood after she went to meet friends. The accused allegedly raped her, stabbed her to death and dumped her body in a field, where it was discovered days later half eaten by dogs. Rapes of an 11-year-old and a six-year-old were reported in the same month. Last month, a 16-year-old was allegedly raped by a bus driver and conductor after she boarded a sleeper bus in Delhi. Women who have taken part in protests on Delhi university campuses have condemned these alleged violent rapes on minors as disgusting and unforgivable – but they have also been at pains to emphasise that they are not out of the ordinary. Fourteen years have passed since Delhi’s infamous Nirbhaya rape case, when a woman was gang-raped on a bus and died from her injuries. But while it provoked international outrage and a slew of legislation and government promises, women say nothing has changed; for them, India’s streets, particularly in Delhi, remain as unsafe as ever. According to statistics, a women is raped in India every 20 minutes – though the real scale is believed to be far worse due to chronic under-reporting. This week, the supreme court said the five successive rape cases “starkly underlined a systematic failure” and it could not help but “draw painful parallels to the Nirbhaya incident of 2012”. Vaishnavi Dhruw, 21, a history student at Delhi University, was among the female protesters at the “smash the patriarchy” protest march on Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t know a single woman who lives in this city and feels safe,” she said. While some of the key demands of the protest have been better lighting and policing, Dhruw emphasised that for anything to change, the country required a deep societal shift where men no longer felt they had ownership over women’s bodies. “We are not marching for safety, we are here to protest for our freedom, for the most basic right to walk in our own streets,” she said. “Again and again, women are told to stay indoors, to not go out at night, to cover ourselves, to protect ourselves. When will society tell men in our country not to rape?” Much of the anger driving the protests has also been prompted by the response by the authorities to the rapes, which women say once again has only been to police their freedoms. Women in Delhi were told to stay out of parks at night, and classes were temporarily halted at one of Delhi’s most prestigious female colleges. Many hostels where female students stay impose strict curfews preventing them from going out at night. “Instead of going after criminals, you’re going to tell women to sit at home,” said Aranya Rathore, 25, a student at Delhi University. “A demand for more surveillance is not a solution. In fact, it’s going to curtail our freedom more.” Female students say a lot of their time is taken up by safety logistics – from wearing modest clothes to reorganising their days to ensure they do not travel alone or at night and always having a trackable live location on their phones. There is widespread awareness that should anything happen, the onus of blame – both within the family home and more widely in society – tends to fall on women. As one poster at Wednesday’s march pointed out, “no one ever asks what the rapist was wearing”. Yet despite their best efforts, many women said it was almost impossible to avoid harassment. Ananya Wig, a 26-year-old graduate of Delhi University and the founder of Her Huq, a gender equality initiative, said she had experienced harassment both around university campuses and in public spaces. She recounted an incident where a driver rolled down his car window and began masturbating as she and female friends got off a rickshaw and walked through the college gates. “This wasn’t at night, it was in the middle of the day,” she said. “I’ve always lived in Delhi and the city has not changed.” The protests have brought into focus a dilemma faced by many Indian women, who are being educated in greater numbers than any time in the country’s history and have better job opportunities than ever before, but still have to navigate the constant debilitating threats to their safety and the conservative pressures from their families. “I know so many girls, not just 10 years ago but even today, who end up choosing educational institutions and jobs and other employment opportunities depending on how close they are from their home,” said Wig. “Not on the basis of their marks, not on the basis of their aspirations, but simply, ‘OK, the shorter the distance is, the more likely it is that I will be safe’.” Many of the Delhi University students who took part in the marches said that sexual harassment had become prevalent on campus, and have demanded better accountability mechanisms for reporting assault. The university has not responded. Devyani Sarkar, 24, who is studying for a master’s in English, said: “Delhi University is one of the most prestigious universities in India right now but there are various cases of women being assaulted by professors, sometimes unfortunately also for grades. It’s despicable, but it’s also a living truth.” Many on the marches said it was no coincidence that they were taking place in the aftermath of India’s “cockroach” movement, in which hundreds of thousands of young Gen Z Indians took to the streets over education reform. “My generation is not afraid to stand up and protest. We know that society has to change,” said 17-year-old Subhani. “The days of women being silent is over.”

Sweden must apologise for harm done to Sami people, says state-backed report

An independent commission set up by the Swedish state has called on the country’s government to apologise for the “harm and injustice inflicted upon the Sami people” and to start a national process for “redress and reconciliation”. The Truth Commission for the Sami People also called for a special apology to be issued urgently to elderly Sami people who were forced as children to attend segregated so-called “nomad school” and other boarding schools where they were “subjected to violations or abuse”. The commission’s report, published on Wednesday, is the outcome of a four-year investigation and hundreds of interviews with Sami people across Sweden. It was due to be presented to a government representative at a ceremony featuring readings from the text, but with no government yet in place after the election earlier this month, it went instead to Parisa Liljestrand, the last government’s culture minister. The commission’s chair, Lena Nyberg, told her: “We hand over a big responsibility.” Liljestrand thanked the members of the commission and those who were interviewed for the report, saying it had been a “historic process”. There have been similar truth commissions into the treatment of Sami people – Europe’s only recognised Indigenous people – in Norway and Finland. Norway has issued an official apology and discussions in Finland are ongoing. The new report accuses Sweden of failing to meet its domestic and international human rights obligations and says that as a “direct consequence” of mistreatment, the Sami people today face “major challenges” in preserving and developing their culture. It coincides with rising anti-Sami rhetoric in Sweden, including from political leaders, amid clashes over land used for grazing by Sami reindeer herders for hundreds of years, which the state wants to mine for rare-earth minerals. The report says issues with the handling of Sami land rights in Sweden have been “reinforced and aggravated” by an ideology that Sami people are “an inferior people and therefore neither deserving of nor capable of exercising the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens”. It adds that the Swedish state has failed to implement the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. The commission’s 71-point call to action recommends an official apology for the harm and injustice inflicted upon the Sami people, as well as financial compensation and completing the process of ratifying the International Labour Organization’s convention on Indigenous and tribal peoples. It calls for the establishment of a national centre for redress and reconciliation, and for authorities to recognise that the Swedish nation was founded on lands belonging to two peoples – the Sámi and the Swedes – and that parts of the land have Sami names and are part of Sami cultural heritage. It also urges recognition that Sápmi, the region traditionally inhabited by the Sami people, extends across present national borders; an end to racial discrimination against Sami people; and better provision for children to learn Sami languages. It adds that the Swedish government must uphold the Sami people’s right to practise reindeer husbandry and other cultural practices on their traditional lands. The report concludes that the state, including the Swedish parliament, government and public authorities, and in some cases the Church of Sweden, must “bear responsibility” for policies and decisions that led to the violation of Sami rights. It says: “Accepting responsibility also requires the state to work towards providing redress for the harm inflicted on the Sami people and individual Sami, while pursuing policies that do not repeat these historical injustices.”