BEIRUT: Dozens of Lebanese men and their children protested outside the Canadian embassy on Friday morning after fraudulent websites convinced them that the country is offering free immigration.
Most of the men were unemployed and from Tripoli.
Ziad Bouz said: “I went along with my children — Najeeb, 6, and my young one who is 10-months-old — I pray they accept my application for my kids to have a future.”
Some young men climbed the external fence after the embassy square flooded with dozens of people. Internal Security Forces (ISF) officers were caught off guard by the protesters.
A representative from the embassy said: “Canada respects freedom of expression and assembly.” She told the protesters that the embassy “does not accept direct immigration applications. They can log into the website for information on immigration and protecting people from fraud and falsification.”
She added that “the embassy did not ask anyone to transfer money via private funds.” She also thanked the “ISF and protesters for maintaining a peaceful protest.”
Former Lebanese Minister Ashraf Rifi told Arab News that “what drove young men to protest in front of the embassy was the lack of job opportunities and the unbearable situation.”
He hoped that “the economic meeting chaired by President Michel Aoun at the presidential palace next Monday leads to the advancement of the country, not its decline.”
Former MP Mustafa Alloush told Arab News that “the protest is about the deteriorating economic situation in Lebanon.”
A large proportion of those gathered at the embassy hold university degrees.
Rani Mawwas from Tripoli said: “Is this the future of my countrymen and of young men holding university degrees? In less than 24 hours of publishing that the Canadian Embassy is accepting immigration applications, hundreds have gathered. They did not care about the weather or the time they will spend waiting for their turn, and they came from all over the country.”
The World Bank warned earlier this year of “increasing unemployment rates in Lebanon, which, according to some studies, have reached 40 percent, especially among young people.”
A Labor Ministry adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the poverty rate in Tripoli had made it the poorest city on the Mediterranean coast.
The adviser added that “since the Labor Ministry started combating foreign labor a month and a half ago, 3,000 job opportunities have been created for Lebanese. Companies which relied on Syrian workers and other nationalities turned to Lebanese labor and even university students. The ministry does not give work permits to a foreigner if the work can be done by a Lebanese.”
There were many tweets about the scene in front of the embassy.
Iman Tatari wrote: “I am for immigration because there are no jobs in Lebanon. Lebanese are seeking to immigrate and the state is watching.”
Zouhair tweeted: “The immigration doors should be open in Lebanon because more than half of the people are oppressed.”

KHARTOUM: A Sudanese judge formally indicted former president Omar Al-Bashir on charges of possessing illicit foreign currency and corruption on Saturday.

A lawyer for Bashir said that his client denied the charges against him and that witnesses for the defense would be presented at the next hearing.
Questioned in court, Bashir claimed he received millions of dollars from various sources, including Saudi Arabia, but that he never used it for his own benefit
The judge denied a request for bail and said a decision on the duration of Bashir’s detention would be taken at a hearing on Sept. 7.
Sudan’s military ousted and arrested Bashir in April after months of protests across the country. His prosecution is seen as a test of how far military and civilian authorities now sharing power will go to counter the legacy of his 30-year rule.
Bashir was also charged in May with incitement and involvement in the killing of protesters. He has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of masterminding genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.

(With Reuters)

VIENNA: Iran has gone further in breaching its nuclear deal with world powers, increasing its stock of enriched uranium while still refining to a greater purity than allowed, a UN atomic watchdog agency report showed on Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is policing the 2015 deal, said in July that Iran had exceeded both its 202.8-kg limit on enriched uranium stock and its 3.67% cap on the fissile purity to which Tehran is allowed to refine uranium.
Almost two months after it overshot those limits, Iran has accumulated 241.6 kg of enriched uranium and is enriching up to 4.5%, still far short of the 20% it reached before the deal and the roughly 90% that is considered weapons-grade material, the quarterly IAEA report to member states seen by Reuters showed.

ADEN: A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed six southern separatist fighters on Friday on the outskirts of the Yemeni city of Aden, the site of a surge of violence that had complicated the near five-year-old war and undermined peace efforts.
Daesh claimed responsibility for the assault on the patrol from the Security Belt group, part of a separatist front fighting Yemeni government forces for control of the city, the extremist group’s Amaq news agency said.
The separatists and the government are both part of an Arab coalition battling the Iran-aligned Houthis, which took over most of Yemen’s cities in 2014.

BEIRUT: The United Nations said Friday it will help evacuate civilians from an “abysmal” Syrian desert camp near the border with Jordan, after a mission last week determined who wanted to leave.
“We are ready to facilitate” evacuations from the Rukban camp, said Panos Moumtzis, the UN’s Syria humanitarian chief.
“We want to make sure it happens in a voluntary way,” he told AFP during an interview in Beirut, describing the situation in the settlement as “abysmal.”
According to the UN official, around 12,700 people remain in the isolated Rukban camp near a base used by the US-led coalition fighting the Daesh group.
The Syrian government and key backer Russia said in February they had opened corridors out of the camp, calling on residents to leave.
More than half of the original population has left in the past months, the United Nations says.
The UN and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent sent a mission to the camp last week to determine how many people remained inside and who wanted to leave, the UN official said.
“A little bit more than a third of them want to leave,” Moumtzis said.
“The vast majority want to go into government-held areas and some others want to go to the north,” held by the opposition, he added.
But the UN is not able to provide protection guarantees after civilians quit the camp, he said.
Some 47 percent of surveyed camp residents said they wanted to stay, citing reasons including “security concerns” and “fear of detention.”
Rights groups have warned that civilians returning to government-held territory have faced detention and conscription.
Those fleeing to the rebel-held north might face violence in the Idlib region, where Russian and regime bombardment have killed more than 950 people since April.
Although Rukban has not received aid since February, the latest UN mission did not deliver any relief items beyond “a minimal number of health supplies,” Moumtzis said.
But last week’s visit is only the first part of a “two-step” plan — the second of which will involve aid delivery, according to the UN official.
“The next mission — I hope very quickly — will go back and deliver the desperately needed assistance,” he said, without providing a specific date.
Conditions inside Rukban are dire, with many surviving on just one simple meal a day, often bread and olive oil or yoghurt, according to one resident.