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Jakarta (TIP): Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, an ex-General linked to past human rights atrocities, claimed victory in Indonesia’s presidential election on February 14 based on unofficial tallies.
The 72-year-old candidate, who was once banned by the US from entering for two decades due to his human rights record, told thousands of supporters in a sports stadium in the capital, Jakarta, that the victory, according to an early, unofficial “quick count,” was “the victory of all Indonesians.”
There was no declaration by electoral officials and the two former provincial governors who also contested the election in the world’s third-largest democracy have not conceded defeat.
Subianto was an army general during the brutal period of the Suharto dictatorship that ended just over 25 years ago. He served as a special forces commander in a unit linked to torture and disappearances, allegations that he vehemently denies.
According to the unofficial tallies conducted by Indonesian polling agencies, Subianto had between 57% and 59% of votes, with more than 80 per cent of the vote counted in polling places sampled. The quick counts are based on the actual vote count at a sample of polling stations across Indonesia. The laborious official count may not be finished for up to a month, but quick counts have provided an accurate picture of the results of all four presidential elections held in Indonesia since it began direct voting in 2004.
“We are grateful for the quick count results,” he said in the speech. “We should not be arrogant, we should not be proud, we should not be euphoric, we still have to be humble, this victory must be a victory for all Indonesian people.”
To avoid a runoff against his rivals, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, Subianto needs more than 50% of all votes cast and at least 20% in each of the country’s provinces. — AP

Jerusalem/Doha (TIP): Israeli forces said on February 15 they had raided the biggest functioning hospital in Gaza as footage showed chaos, shouting and gunfire in dark corridors filled with dust and smoke. Israel’s military called the raid on Nasser Hospital “precise and limited” and said it was based on information that Hamas militants were hiding and had kept hostages in the facility, with some bodies of captives possibly there. Hamas called that lies. Health authorities in the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave said Israel had forced out displaced people and families of medical staff sheltering in Nasser Hospital.
Some 2,000 Palestinians arrived in the southern border city of Rafah overnight while others pushed north to Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, they said.
Israel’s air and ground offensive since October 7 has since devastated tiny, crowded Gaza, killing 28,663 people and forcing nearly all its more than 2 million inhabitants from their homes.
Fighting at the hospital comes as Israel faces growing international pressure to show restraint, after vowing to press its offensive into Rafah, the last relatively safe place in Gaza.
Israel has also claimed that its air strike in the Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Wednesday night had killed a senior commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, his deputy and a third fighter.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said Israel would “pay the price” for killing 10 civilians, including five children, in southern Lebanon, the deadliest day for Lebanese civilians in four months of hostilities across the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Hezbollah said three of its fighters had been killed but did not identify any as commanders, which it has done in the past. Seven of the civilians were killed in Nabatieh late on Wednesday when a rare Israeli strike on the southern city hit a multi-storey building, sources in Lebanon said. The dead were from the same extended family, and included three children. — Reuters
No hostage in hospital: Hamas
Israel says raid on Nasser Hospital was ‘precise and limited’ as it was based on information that Hamas militants were hiding and had kept hostages in the facility. Hamas has rubbished Israel’s claim.
Israel to pay price, warns Hezbollah
Hezbollah says Israel will “pay the price” for killing 10 civilians in southern Lebanon on Wednesday night. Israel claimed a senior commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force was among those dead. (Reuters)

Brampton (TIP): A gunfire was directed at a half-completed house of Inderjit Singh Gosal, said to be aide of slain Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Brampton. The banned Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) said separatists would hold a rally outside the Indian consulate in Toronto on February 17.
The SFJ said a construction crew found a bullet hole in a window of an unfinished house of Gosal. The Peel Regional police said they were not ruling out more shots having been fired at the house. The police also said it was “too early” to link the shooting to Gosal’s role in Khalistani activities.
“No threat and violence can stop me from advocating for the liberation of Punjab from Indian occupation,” Gosal stated. A similar incident took place on February 1 when the local police briefly arrested two minors for allegedly firing shots at the Surrey residence of Simranjeet Singh, said to be Nijjar’s aide. (TNS)

Moscow (TIP): Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most famous Opposition leader, died on February 16 after collapsing and losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long jail term, the Russian prison service said.
Navalny, 47, rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning President Vladimir Putin and the Russian elite whom he accused of vast corruption, avarice and opulence.
The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said in a statement that Navalny “felt unwell” after a walk at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) north east of Moscow.
He lost consciousness almost immediately, it said.
“All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not yield positive results. Doctors of the ambulance stated the death of the convict,” the prison service said, adding that causes of death were being established.
Putin has been told about Navalny’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Putin, who is running for re-election in a month, was shown on a television clip visiting a factory in the Urals.
Supporters of Navalny said they could not confirm he was dead, but that if he was then they believed he had been killed.
“Russian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexei Navalny in prison,” Navalny aide Leonid Volkov wrote on social media. “We do not have any way to confirm it or to prove this isn’t true.”
Condemnation quickly poured in from Western governments.
“Dreadful news about Alexei Navalny… If the report about his death in Russian prison is true it represents another terrible crime by Putin’s regime,” Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said on X.
“The ruthlessness against Navalny shows again why it is necessary to continue to fight against authoritarianism.” DEATH IN JAIL
Navalny’s lawyer was on his way to the “Polar Wolf” prison in Kharp where Navalny died. Russian state television showed a press conference by the central bank.
Russian newspaper editor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov told Reuters on Friday the death of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny was “murder”, and said that he believed harsh treatment had led to his demise.
“My sincere belief is that it was the conditions of detention that led to Navalny’s death … His sentence was supplemented by murder,” Muratov said, offering condolences to his family.
Navalny earned admiration from Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
Navalny said at the time that he was poisoned in Siberia in August 2020. The Kremlin denied trying to kill him and said there was no evidence he was poisoned with a nerve agent.
In an interview in Moscow in 2011, Navalny was asked by Reuters if he was afraid of challenging Putin’s system.
“That’s the difference between me and you: you are afraid and I am not afraid,” he said. “I realize there is danger, but why should I be afraid?” Reuters