Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for September 26, 2022
Newsline: Protests Hit Iranian Embassies Around the World
Protesters across the world have taken to demonstrating outside Iranian embassies following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. There have been protests in Athens, Paris and New York, with the Metropolitan Police in London saying multiple officers had been injured in demonstrations. According to a VOA news report, around 4,000 protesters had gathered for demonstrations in Paris. (https://www.newsweek.com/iran-protest-embassy-embassies-officers-london-demonstrations-mahsa-amini-1746167) The protest began peacefully at Trocadero Square in the center of the French capital. However, as demonstrators neared the Iranian embassy, police in full anti-riot armor, backed by a line of vans, blocked their path. Tear gas was also used by police to disperse protesters. A Times of Israel report also said some protests descended into violence and that a firebomb was hurled at Iran’s embassy in Athens, Greece. According to the police, at around 1 a.m. local time, two people with their faces covered riding a motorcycle hurled a Molotov cocktail bomb at the wall of the embassy. No damage was caused, however.Amini was arrested by morality police on September 13, who accused her of breaking Iran’s strict law requiring women to cover their hair fully with a headscarf.
Newsline: Iran summons Norway, UK ambassadors amid unrest
Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of the U.K. and Norway over issues it argued constitute meddling in the country’s ongoing protests, according to state media. The director-general of Western Europe within Iran’s foreign ministry called out Norway’s Parliament Speaker for allegedly “prejudicing and unrealistic comments” about recent protests in Iran, according to Iran’s official news agency, IRNA. The U.K. ambassador, meanwhile, was chastised for a London-based, Persian-language “hosting of the media” that Iran believes has produced “provocation and invitation to turbulence and expansion of riots in Iran on top of their agenda,” according to a second report from IRNA. (https://news.yahoo.com/iran-summons-ambassadors-uk-norway-123312218.html) The two issues could be considered by Iran as meddling in Iran’s internal affairs, state media notes. Iran has experiencing unrest in the week since a 22-year-old woman died in the custody of Iran’s morality police as protesters demonstrate against the country’s strict dress code and clash with security forces.
Newsline: Philippines Eyes Diplomatic Compromise with China on South China Sea
The Philippines is interested in renewing talks with China on joint oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea to expand and diversify its sources of energy, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. The Southeast Asian country seeks a compromise with China, which is claiming parts of the South China Sea that are within Philippine territory, Marcos said, stressing that any agreement must not violate his nation’s laws. While the Philippines and China couldn’t agree on which nation’s law would apply, “we continue to explore, perhaps there can be other ways that we can do it,” Marcos said. “There have been examples around the region where there have been similar differing views on exclusive economic zones and baselines, where they have managed to find a way to have joint explorations with the Chinese, with the Americans.” (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/philippines-marcos-seeks-china-compromise-051025015.html) In June, Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, ended talks with Beijing on oil and exploration in the South China Sea, with then-foreign affairs chief Teodoro Locsin saying discussions had gone as far as “it is constitutionally possible to go.”
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