Authorities in Saudi Arabia said anyone caught contravening coronavirus restrictions on this year’s Hajj will be hit with a 10,000-riyal (Dh9,780) fine.
The penalty applies to those who attend Hajj, which is expected to begin on July 28, without a state-allocated permit.
An interior ministry official told Saudi Arabia’s official news agency that anyone apprehended without a permit at Mina, Muzdalifah or Arafat, the main Hajj stations, would be fined, and the amount would double for repeat offenders.
Security forces will seal off the areas and patrol the grounds to prevent “violations, monitor entry and mete punishment to all the violators”.
Last week, the government announced that only 1,000 people would be allowed to perform Hajj this year, as coronavirus cases in the kingdom continue to surge.
Attendance has been restricted to people already living in the kingdom and those present at Hajj will comprise 70 per cent residents and 30 per cent citizens, with healthcare employees given priority.
Under new Hajj measures unveiled this week, everyone from workers to worshippers will be required to wear masks.
Mass prayers will take place in compliance with social-distancing rules, and those suspected of being infected with the virus will be isolated but allowed to finish the ritual.
The latest official data on Sunday showed that 42 more people died of Covid-19 in Saudi Arabia, bringing tally of deaths to 2,223.
The official number of people who have been infected in Saudi Arabia stood at 232,259. Among them were 2,779 cases confirmed on Sunday.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Persuasion
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