Iran silent as dissident director wins Cannes' top prize
TEHRAN : Iranian authorities offered no reaction today after dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize for his political drama.
Panahi, 64, was awarded the Palme d'Or last night for 'It Was Just an Accident' – a film in which five Iranians confront a man they believe tortured them in prison.
A story inspired by his own time in detention, it had led critics' polls throughout the week at Cannes.
The win has so far been met with silence from Iran's government and ignored by the state broadcaster, which instead focused on a state-aligned 'Resistance' film festival.
The conservative Fars news agency suggested the jury's choice was politically motivated, saying it was 'not uninfluenced by the political issues surrounding Jafar Panahi inside Iran'.
Reformist newspapers Etemad, Shargh and Ham Mihan reported the win on their websites but did not feature it on their front pages, possibly due to the timing of the announcement.
Panahi, who has been banned from filmmaking since 2010 and jailed multiple times, addressed the Cannes audience with a call for national unity.
He confirmed plans to return to Iran immediately.
Asked last night if he feared arrest, he said: 'Not at all. Tomorrow we are leaving.'
This marks only the second time an Iranian director has won the Palme d'Or, after the late Abbas Kiarostami received the honour for 'Taste of Cherry' in 1997.
Both directors faced bans throughout their careers.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Free Malaysia Today
4 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Executions in Saudi Arabia hit 17 in 3 days
Saudi Arabia is one of the world's most prolific users of the death penalty. (EPA Images pic) DUBAI : Saudi authorities put two people to death today to reach 17 in three days, state media said, as the conservative kingdom accelerated towards a record number of executions this year. Two Saudis were executed for 'terrorist crimes', the official Saudi Press Agency said, after 15 people, mostly foreigners, were put to death for drug offences on Saturday and yesterday. It is the quickest pace of capital punishment since March 2022, when 81 people were executed in a single day for terrorism-related offences, sparking widespread condemnation. Thirteen of those put to death on Saturday and yesterday were convicted of smuggling hashish, and another for smuggling cocaine. Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most prolific users of the death penalty, has carried out 239 executions so far this year. The conservative country is on course to outstrip last year's 338 – the highest since public records first documented the cases in the early 1990s. This year's executions include 161 for drug offences and 136 foreigners, according to an AFP tally of official data. Jeed Basyouni of the Reprieve rights group last week signalled a 'significant rise in executions for hashish-related drug offences, with foreign nationals making up most of these executions'. 'This is particularly concerning given the global trend toward decriminalising the possession and use of hashish,' she told AFP. Analysts link the spike to the kingdom's 'war on drugs' launched in 2023, with many of those first arrested now being executed following legal proceedings. Saudi Arabia resumed executions for drug offences at the end of 2022, after suspending the practice for around three years. It says it only carries out death sentences after defendants have exhausted all avenues of appeal, and that executions are aimed at ensuring security and deterring drugs. Activists say the continued embrace of capital punishment undermines the image of a more welcoming society that is central to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Vision's 2030 reform agenda.
Malay Mail
6 hours ago
- Malay Mail
Chaos, gangs, gunfire: Gaza aid fails to reach most needy
PARIS, Aug 4 — The trickle of food aid Israel allows to enter Gaza after nearly 22 months of war is seized by Palestinians risking their lives under fire, looted by gangs or diverted in chaotic circumstances rather than reaching those most in need, UN agencies, aid groups and analysts say. After images of malnourished children stoked an international outcry, aid has started to be delivered to the territory once more but on a scale deemed woefully insufficient by international organisations. Every day, AFP correspondents on the ground see desperate crowds rushing towards food convoys or the sites of aid drops by Arab and European air forces. On Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, emaciated Palestinians rushed to pallets parachuted from a plane, jostling and tearing packages from each other in a cloud of dust. 'Hunger has driven people to turn on each other. People are fighting each other with knives,' Amir Zaqot, who came seeking aid, told AFP. To avoid disturbances, World Food Programme (WFP) drivers have been instructed to stop before their intended destination and let people help themselves. But to no avail. 'A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and I was injured retrieving the bag,' sighed a man, carrying a bag of flour on his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern Gaza Strip. 'Truly tragic' Mohammad Abu Taha went at dawn to a distribution site near Rafah in the south to join the queue and reserve his spot. He said there were already 'thousands waiting, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils.' 'Suddenly, we heard gunshots..... There was no way to escape. People started running, pushing and shoving each other, children, women, the elderly,' said the 42-year-old. 'The scene was truly tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead.' Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while waiting for aid since May 27, the majority by the Israeli army, the United Nations said on Friday. The Israeli army denies any targeting, insisting it only fires 'warning shots' when people approach too close to its positions. International organisations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, and imposing dangerous routes. On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army 'changed loading plans for WFP, mixing cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without proper security,' said a senior UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the south of Gaza, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, 'there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses (in central Gaza),' said an NGO official, who also preferred to remain anonymous. 'One is fairly safe, the other is regularly the scene of fighting and looting, and that's the one we're forced to take.' 'Darwinian experiment' Some of the aid is looted by gangs—who often directly attack warehouses—and diverted to traders who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts. 'It becomes this sort of Darwinian social experiment of the survival of the fittest,' said Muhammad Shehada, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). 'People who are the most starved in the world and do not have the energy must run and chase after a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour,' he said. Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: 'We're in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send kids to risk life and limb at distribution points or during looting. It's become a new profession.' This food is then resold to 'those who can still afford it' in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25-kilogramme bag of flour can exceed US$400 (RM1,694), he added. 'Never found proof' Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering the bulk of aid since the start of the war triggered by the militant group's October 2023 attack. The Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade they imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organisation supported by Israel and the United States which has become the main aid distributor, sidelining UN agencies. However, for more than two million inhabitants of Gaza the GHF has just four distribution points, which the UN describes as a 'death trap'. 'Hamas... has been stealing aid from the Gaza population many times by shooting Palestinians,' said the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. But according to senior Israeli military officials quoted by the New York Times on July 26, Israel 'never found proof' that the group had 'systematically stolen aid' from the UN. Weakened by the war with Israel which has seen most of its senior leadership killed, Hamas today is made up of 'basically decentralised autonomous cells' said Shehada. He said while Hamas militants still hunker down in each Gaza neighbourhood in tunnels or destroyed buildings, they are not visible on the ground 'because Israel has been systematically going after them'. Aid workers told AFP that during the ceasefire that preceded the March blockade, the Gaza police—which includes many Hamas members—helped secure humanitarian convoys, but that the current power vacuum was fostering insecurity and looting. 'UN agencies and humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses across the Gaza Strip,' said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead at Oxfam. 'These calls have largely been ignored,' she added. 'All kinds of criminal activities' The Israeli army is also accused of having equipped Palestinian criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to plunder aid. 'The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza,' Jonathan Whittall, Palestinian territories chief of the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told reporters in May. According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control. The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a 'criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks'. The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab. Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang's members were implicated in 'all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that'. 'None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army,' said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named. — AFP
Free Malaysia Today
7 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Iran says US accountability for attacks on nuclear sites part of future talks
US forces struck key Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22 during Tehran's war with Israel. (Maxar Technologies/AP pic) TEHRAN : Iran said today it would hold the US accountable for attacks on its nuclear sites in any future negotiations, while ruling out direct talks with Washington. The US struck key Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, briefly joining a war launched by Israel that had derailed talks on Tehran's atomic programme. 'In any potential negotiation… the issue of holding the US accountable and demanding compensation for committing military aggression against Iran's peaceful nuclear facilities will be one of the topics on the agenda,' foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told a press briefing today. Asked whether Iran would engage in direct talks with the US, Baqaei said: 'No.' In mid-June, Israel launched an unprecedented attack targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites, but also hitting residential areas over 12 days of war, which US forces joined with attacks on nuclear facilities at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz. The fighting derailed talks that began in April and had been the highest-level contact between Tehran and Washington since the US abandoned in 2018 a landmark agreement on Iran's nuclear activities. Following the war, Tehran has suspended cooperation with the United Nations' nuclear watchdog and demanded guarantees against military action before resuming any negotiations. Washington has dismissed Tehran's call for compensation as 'ridiculous'. Baqaei said today that Iran was committed to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but criticised what he described as the 'politicised and unprofessional approach' of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The foreign ministry spokesman said that the IAEA's deputy chief is expected in Iran 'in less than 10 days'. Last month, Iran said future cooperation with the UN agency would take on a 'new form'. On July 25, Iranian diplomats met with counterparts from Germany, Britain and France, in the first meeting since the war with Israel ended. The three European powers are parties to the 2015 nuclear deal, which unravelled after the US withdrew during Trump's first term. In recent weeks, the trio has threatened to trigger sanctions if Tehran failed to agree a deal on uranium enrichment and cooperation with UN inspectors. Iran has repeatedly called reimposing sanctions 'illegal' and insisted on its right to enrich uranium. Israel and western nations accuse Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran has consistently denied.
