FRIDAY QATAR’S DISMAL
JANUARY 16, 2015
RABI AL-AWAAL 25, 1436
VOL.9 NO. 3056 QR 2
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EMIR OPENS QATAR 2015
Q
Glittering opening ceremony at Losail enthralls dignitaries, fans alike Q Qatar kicks off campaign in style by beating Brazil
The Emir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani takes a look at the Men’s Handball World Championship trophy at Losail Multipurpose Hall on Thursday; HE Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad al Thani, Chairman of the Qatar 2015 Organising
Committee, delivering a speech at the opening ceremony; (below) a scene from the spectacular opening ceremony.
QNA
DOHA
THE Emir HH Sheikh Tamim
bin Hamad al Thani ofﬁcially
declared the 24th IHF Men’s
Handball World Championship (Qatar 2015) open at the
Losail Multipurpose Hall on
Thursday evening, wishing
the event all success.
The glittering opening
ceremony was attended by
the Deputy Emir HH Sheikh
Abdullah bin Hamad al
Thani, HH Sheikh Jassim
bin Hamad al Thani, the
Personal Representative of
the Emir, and HH Sheikh
Abdullah bin Khalifa al
Thani.
HE Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, Chairman of
this tournament’s ticket sales
will be donated to Education Above All’s Global Programme - Educate A Child,
in line with Qatar’s support
for charitable projects, particularly in children and education domains.
“We all endeavour to host
this prominent sports event
and make it an unforgettable
event in the history of handball,” he said.
Later in the inaugural
match, Qatar’s campaign
took off to a ﬂying start
with its victory over higherranked Brazil 28-23.
The vital win for the home
players, which has almost
cleared the path for them to
match their best performance
of 16th spot or go better, came
the Qatar 2015 Organising
Committee, requested the
Emir to ofﬁcially open the
tournament.
In his speech, Sheikh
Joaan expressed his gratitude
and thanks to the Emir for his
unstinted support for sports
in the country, which is in
line with Qatar’s Vision 2030,
which is to mobilise all potential to create sports infrastructure, and to direct local
institutions and companies to
support sports and athletes.
As a result Qatar has become a sports destination
that is characterised by security, safety and competitive spirit by bringing people from across the world,
Sheikh Joaan said.
He said the proceeds from
Qatar sees rise in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Birdman
passport ranking lead with nine Oscar nominations
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DUBAI
QATAR, the UAE and Oman
saw increase in their passport
rankings from 2013 to 2014,
the Henley & Partners Visa
Restrictions Index 2014 has
found.
Qatar, whose citizens are
allowed visa-free access to 75
countries (as of July 2014), increased to 56th position from
57th position on the index.
The UAE also jumped
from 56th to 55th position
with a score of 77, while
Oman, with a score of 66,
moved from 65th to 64th
position. Overall, the index –
which scores 174 countries in
total – found that the biggest
single mover was Moldova,
which jumped from 68th to
46th place, achieving a score
of 89 countries.
Although the passport
rankings
remained
unchanged from 2013 to 2014,
the overall index scores of
Saudi Arabia (65) and Kuwait
(78) have increased.
Henley & Partners have
produced the global ranking of countries based on the
freedom of travel for their citizens in collaboration with the
International Air Transport
Association (IATA), which
maintains the world’s largest
database of travel information.
Since 2013, Germany
and the US have joined Finland, Sweden and the UK on
the top rank, each achieving a score of 174 countries
that their citizens can travel
to visa-free, and Canada has
jumped from fourth place to
second with 173 countries,
along with Denmark. These
are the best passports to have
in the world.
AFP
LOS ANGELES
DARK comedy Birdman and stylish
crime caper The Grand Budapest Hotel topped the Oscars nominations list
on Thursday with nine each, ﬁring the
starting gun on the home stretch of
Hollywood’s awards race.
In second place was World War II
code-breaking thriller The Imitation
Game, with eight nominations. Clint
Eastwood's American Sniper and
coming-of-age drama Boyhood each
earned six nods.
The ﬁve ﬁlms were all shortlisted
for best picture, along with US civil
rights drama Selma, Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything
and jazz drumming indie hit Whiplash.
The golden statuettes will be
handed out on February 22 at
the Dolby Theatre in downtown
Hollywood.
Michael Keaton portrays Riggan in a
scene from Birdman. (AP/PTI)
For best actor, Birdman star
Michael Keaton and Britain’s Eddie
Redmayne, who portrayed Hawking in The Theory of Everything, are
up against Steve Carell (Foxcatcher),
Bradley Cooper (American Sniper)
and Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game).
The best actress race includes
two former Oscar winners — Marion
Cotillard for Two Days, One Night
and Reese Witherspoon (Wild).
They will compete against Globes
winner Julianne Moore (Still Alice),
along with two British actresses and
ﬁrst-time nominees -- Felicity Jones
(The Theory of Everything) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl).
The Oscar nominees — chosen by
the 6,000-plus members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — were revealed in a pre-dawn
ceremony in Beverly Hills.
Voting for the 87th Oscars starts on
February 6 and closes on February 17.
SEE ALSO PAGE 15 ❯
after a spirited display by
Man of the Match goalkeeper
Danijel Saric, who effected 20
saves in 43 attempts.
In their ﬁrst-ever appearance in the Portugal worlds
in 2003, Qatar had secured
the 16th place. Since then,
they could not repeat it in
their next three participations.
The win also avenged
Qatar’s only loss to Brazil
10 years ago. Qatar had suffered a 25-30 defeat against
the South American rivals in
a group stage match in Tunisia in 2005. With this result,
Qatar also continued the
trend of the hosts winning
the opening match.
PAGES 25, 26, 27, 30, 31 & 32 ❯
Qatar condemns
republishing of
Charlie cartoons
QNA
DOHA
QATAR has strongly condemned
the France’s Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly and some European newspapers for republishing offensive cartoons of
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
The Foreign Ministry said
on Thursday that freedom of expression does not mean offending others and provoking feelings
and cynicism about beliefs and
religious symbols. It stressed that
such actions were shameful and
would not serve the interests of
anyone but fuel hatred and anger. It also constitutes a violation
of human values and the principles of peaceful coexistence and
tolerance.
The ministry called on Western media to respect others’ beliefs, avoid extremism and be
committed to the values and
principles upon which Western
civilisation was established.
02
Friday, January 16, 2015
EMIR MEETS SLOVENIAN, MACEDONIAN PRESIDENTS
The Emir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani with President of Slovenia Borut Pahor at the Emiri Diwan in Doha on Thursday. The meeting was attended by the Deputy Emir His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al Thani.
HH the Emir also met the President of Macedonia Georgi Ivanov. The two presidents are on a visit to Qatar to attend the opening of the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship.
QUICK READ
EMIR WITH OCA PRESIDENT, IOC EXECUTIVE OFFICE MEMBERS
Minister of Justice meets
Pakistani, Georgian envoys
MINISTER of Justice HE Dr Hassan bin Lahdan al Mohannadi
met separately with Ambassador of Pakistan to Qatar HE Shahzad Ahmed and Ambassador of Georgia to Qatar HE Ekaterine
Meiering-Mikadze. Talks during the meetings dealt with legal and
judicial cooperation between Qatar and Pakistan and Georgia.
(QNA)
Pakistani official receives
Qatari envoy’s credentials
PAKISTAN’S Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Aizaz Ahmad
Chaudhry on Thursday met HE Saqr bin Mubarak al Mansouri,
who handed him a copy of his credentials as Qatar’s ambassador to Pakistan. During the meeting, the two sides reviewed
bilateral relations between the two countries. (QNA)
Indian embassy open house on Jan 29
THE Embassy of India will hold an Open House on January 29
to address any urgent consular and labour problems of Indian
nationals in Qatar. The Open House will be held from 5.30pm to
6.30pm. Written information on issues/cases proposed to be
discussed with the Embassy may be given from 5.30pm to 6pm.
This will be followed by meeting with the embassy officials from
6pm to 6.30pm. (TNN)
MoI to curb passengers overload in cars
AUTHORITIES at Abu Samra border will prevent entry and exit
of cars that carry passengers above the limit specified in the
permit, according to a tweet from the Ministry of Interior. Overloading vehicles with more than the permitted number of passengers affect its durability and readiness, leading to a loss of
control, the MoI has tweeted. For a safe travel via Abu Samra
border, don’t overload vehicle with more passengers than specified in the vehicle permit, MoI has tweeted. (TNN)
Prabhu Deva show on February 27
THE Prabhu Deva - Ileana D’Cruz show postponed from its January 15 date for unforeseen reasons, will now be held on February
27, at the West End Mall Amphitheatre. Kling Films’ (organisers of the show) Partner Arif Ahmed said that tickets, priced at
QR50, 150, 250, 500 and 700 (depending upon the proximity
to the stage), will be available from Wednesday at LuLu Hypermarket, LuLu Gharrafa, LuLu Barwa, Safari Hypermarket, Qatar
Shopping Complex (Markhiya) and Q-Tickets. (TNN)
The Emir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani with President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) Sheikh Ahmad al Fahad al Sabah and members of the Executive
Office of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the sidelines of the opening of the 24th IHF Men’s Handball World Championship at the Lusail Multipurpose Hall.
Sheikha Mayassa visits book fair
QNA
DOHA
CHAIRPERSON of the
Board of Trustees of Qatar
Museums (QM) Her Excellency Sheikha al Mayassa
bint Hamad al Thani on
Thursday visited the 25th
Doha International Book
Fair at Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC).
Thr chairperson of the
QM’s Board of Trustees
toured the Qatar Museums
pavilion which features
various publications and
also visited a number of
other government pavilions
as well as Arab and foreign
publishers where she was
briefed about the most important new publications.
HE Sheikha Mayassa
was accompanied during the
tour by Vice Chairman of the
Board of Trustees of Qatar
Museums HE Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali
al Thani.
The Doha international
Book Fair celebrates its Sil-
ver Jubilee anniversary this
year with the participation
of 432 publishing houses
from 29 Arab and foreign
countries, and 72 Arab and
foreign publishing agencies. The Book Fair, which
kicked off recently will
conclude on Saturday (January 17).
The Fair is accompanied
by cultural and intellectual programmes including
theatre and music performances from Qatar, Palestine
and Lebanon.
No accomplishments without leadership: Sheikh Abdul Aziz
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
AFTER three days of leadership and motivational discussions and workshops, the GO
II Conference 2015 organised
by Al Qilaa for Training &
Consulting concluded at Qatar
National Convention Center
successfully recently.
During the closure, Sheikh
Dr Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman al Thani, Board Chairman of Al Qilaa and chairman
of the organising committee of
GO II Conference, honoured
Ooredoo represented by Fatima al Kuwari, director of Public & Community Relations at
Ooredoo. The chairman was
also honoured by Mubarak
bin Abdul Aziz al Khalifa, di-
Board Chairman of Al Qilaa Sheikh Dr Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman
al Thani presents an award to Director of Public & Community Relations at Ooredoo Fatima al Kuwari at an event in Doha recently.
rector-general of Ihsan.
“Today, I am more than
happy to see the participants
of the conference and spon-
sors Ooredoo and Ihsan, who
ensured a successful conference. I believe that leadership
can be taught and developed
and I have tried it in over
33 organisations that I have
worked for,” said Sheikh Abdul Aziz al Thani.
He added, “Without
leadership there are no accomplishments. Leaders are
founded in the family and at
work and everywhere they
go. Having more leaders will
have a great impact on Qatar
as we have a good role model in our Father Emir, His
Highness Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa al Thani.”
Ooredoo representative
Fatima al Kuwari said, “We
are so happy to be part of this
event by strategically partnering with the conference's organisers, Al Qilaa for Training
and Consulting. GO II Conference has had a positive feed-
back from the attendees.”
Kuwari added, “One of the
main strengths of the conference has been the participation of international speakers
and experts in this conference. Ooredoo is honoured
to be part of such events that
leave a great developmental
impact on the society and
people of Qatar.”
The last day of the conference featured a workshop
titled ‘What got you here
won't get you there’ held
by one of the top ten mostinﬂuential business thinkers
in the World Dr Marshall
Goldsmith, in which the inspirational leader discussed a
range of ideas to help people
become more effective organisational leaders.
Vodafone undergoes enhancements
VODAFONE Qatar on
Thursday announced it
would be undergoing signiﬁcant network enhancements which will result in
an improved experience and
faster internet speeds.
The network enhancements will be rolled out
across Doha. Customers in
impacted areas may experi-
ence a service interruption
for a number of hours.
Vodafone said it will
notify the customers in impacted areas via SMS ahead
of the enhancements.
Customers may visit
www.vodafone.qa/weareupgrading for more details
about the network enhancements. (TNN)
Expect foggy morning
today, tomorrow: Met
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
THE surface weather chart
indicates that there will be
formation of fog patches on
the early morning of Friday
(January 16) and Saturday
(January 17) causing poor
horizontal visibility at many
places in Qatar, a Department of Meteorology report
said on Thursday.
The State is expected to be
affected by a passage of cold
air mass that will move gradually from the Mediterranean
area to the Arabian Gulf. This
will be associated with the formation of medium and low
clouds on Saturday, which will
increase on Sunday and Monday with a possibility of scattered rain.
The country will also be af-
fected by extension of a high
pressure from North Saudi
Arabia by the evening of Sunday, which will be accompanied by moderate northwesterly wind.
The wind speed will be
fresh to strong inshore on
Monday afternoon and strong
offshore by Sunday evening
with speed ranging between
15-25 knots that will reach 35
knots at times.
Met has also urged sea
goers to be cautious as the
height of the wave will increase to 6-10 fts, reaching 14
fts at places by Monday.
Meanwhile, there will
be signiﬁcant drop in temperature on Tuesday and
Wednesday, with the maximum temperature to range
between 18 and 20 degree
Celsius in Doha.
Nation
Friday, January 16, 2015
03
Jazeera flays
threat
Filipino volleyball tourney to see more Aldeath
against scribe
actions as elimination stage ends
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
AILYN AGONIA
DOHA
TEAMS Ice Tigers and Red
Lions are tied for the top
spot with four wins and one
loss record in the Men’s Rated Category of the ongoing
Filipino volleyball tournament Super Liga.
The league, being held
at the Al Sadd Stadium,
wrapped up its ﬁrst elimination round with impressive
records from participating
teams.
The teams taking part
in the sports event running
until next month are gearing up for tighter competition ahead as the tournament prepares for its second
round of eliminations.
In the Men’s Rated Category, team Purple Knights
is trailing behind the two
teams in the lead with a
decent 3 wins and 3 losses
record. Further down the
list are the Gold Spartans (2
-3), Orange Challengers (1 4) and Green Vipers (1 - 4 l).
For the Women’s Rated
Division, the Amazing Wafﬂes team ended the round
with an impressive spotless
record, 4 straight wins. Next
in the rank in the category is
Nakheel Qatar Knights team
Men and women’s participating teams in the Filipino volleyball tournament Super Liga at the Al Sadd Stadium.
(3-1) followed by QPM (22). Qatar Aces (1-3) and Ball
Busters (0-4) maybe at the
bottom of the pack but they
are expected to step up their
game in the second round.
On to the second bracket
with ﬁve teams comprising
Men’s Non-rated Division,
Bracket A has the PLU Demigods at the helm boasting
an undefeated record, 4-0.
Purple Dads and the Yellow
Grifﬁns both garnered 10
points but the Dads managed to have the edge scoring 3-1 while the Grifﬁns is
holding on to 2-2 record.
Completing Bracket A is
Valkyrie (1-3) and Power
Bankz (0-4).
Bracket B, on the other
hand has the Red Phoenix
and Hard Balls on top, both
with 12 points and 3-1 cards.
Rounding off Bracket B are
the Black Dragons (2-2),
Blue Centaurs, (2-2), and
Legions (0-4).
The Super Liga is sponsored by AAB Toyota, Jollibee, Amazing Wafﬂes Café,
Filipino Hot Pack, Kabayan
Express, Doha Events Factory and Fiesta Events.
AL JAZEERA has condemned
the death threat received by
Saeed Thabit, Al Jazeera Arabic Bureau Chief in Sanaa,
Yemen, in an anonymous
phone call that threatened him
with ‘physical elimination’.
“This threat is not the
ﬁrst,” Thabit commented;
“The caller was somebody
who referred to himself as a
member of Ansar Allah, also
known as the Houthi movement and told him “enough is
enough, and soon we will execute our threat to physically
eliminate you”.
Deputy Managing Director
of Al Jazeera Arabic Ahmad
bin Salem al Yafei commented; “We all stand in solidarity with our colleague Saeed
Thabit, and all his colleagues
in Sanaa bureau. These continuous threats are the price
of our professionalism that
our coverage is known for in
Yemen. We are sure that this
will not stop us from performing our duties despite the risks
that follow. We hold the Yemen Government, and Houthis
who control Sanaa, responsible for the safety of our colleague Saeed.”
Al Jazeera appreciates the
support of media and rights
organisations in Yemen,
and those who condemn the
threats.
malomatia offers dedicated call
centre for handball tournament
VISIT TO LUSAIL CITY
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
The Ministry of Environment conducts a field visit to Lusail city on Thursday. The visit includes a field tour in the city and presentations on the application of green building requirements and sustainability on urban planning and infrastructure level in the city.
The participants in the visit got information about the level of development works in the city as well as various social amenities
that will be available for the residents upon completion. (JALAL PATHIYOOR)
AS a 'Business Partner’ for
the 24th Men’s Handball
World Championship, malomatia will provide the championship with a dedicated
call centre offering 24/7
support through a help-line
that will assist the public
with information about the
event, answer questions
pertaining to ticketing, venues, transport and competition schedules.
malomatia will also help
people to connect with the
volunteers or other departments of the Organising
Committee if speciﬁc assistance is required.
This is an opportunity
for malomatia to support
the State of Qatar on an international stage in line with
the company's commitment
to helping Qatar achieve
all-round socio-economic
A customer care representative at malomatia call centre in Doha.
sustainability as outlined in
Qatar Vision 2030.
The call centre team
will consist of English and
Arabic speakers exclusively
handling the helpline to provide all the necessary support, while working closely
with the Organising Committee. malomatia is also
supporting the event with
promotional activities in addition to the contact centre
operations.
malomatia, a Business
Partner to the 24th Men’s
Handball World Championship (Qatar 2015), is
increasing its activities in
conjunction with the Championship, including awarding free tickets to its followers on social media. The
company has announced the
winners of tickets to the preliminary round.
ASPIRE ZONE UNVEILS ARRAY OF EVENTS IN JANUARY
Fun-filled 2nd GCC Charity Bike Show 2015 opens today
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
HIGHLIGHTS
DOHA
TO kick off 2015, Aspire Zone
has organised a number of
exciting events and activities
throughout January for children of all ages, their families
and the wider community, as
part of its ongoing mission to
engage the whole local community.
Aspire Zone remains dedicated to organising events
that inspire people to get ﬁt,
spend time with their family
and for them to also participate in activities that foster
sharing, learning and fun.
After the resounding success of the inaugural GCC
Charity Bike Show, Aspire
Zone is set to organise the
2nd Annual GCC Charity
Bike Show at the Aspire Zone
grounds behind the Torch
Hotel on Friday (January
16). Aspire Zone has conﬁrmed that over 1,000 bikers
from the six GCC countries
will be participating in one of
the biggest motorbike shows
❯ Kids Run in The Park.
❯ Third Race of the Aquathon
Series.
❯ Learn2Ride initiative.
❯ Kids Art in The Park.
Participants in a Kids Run in The Park event at Aspire Zone in Doha recently.
that the region has ever seen.
Hundreds of spectators
are expected to ﬂock to this
unique charity parade to see
a wide range of motorbikes
ranging from vintage ones to
the latest models out on display. The event to be hosted
by the Soul Riders MC for the
second time in a row will also
showcase custom bikes along
with different bikes from dif-
ferent classes from all over
the GCC.
Further, to engage school
students Aspire Zone has
organised Kids Run in The
Park, a monthly activity
where school students run
a specially designed 2.5 km
course throughout the Aspire
Zone grounds.
The next session will take
place this Saturday (January
17), and is an ideal opportunity for students to bond
with their peers while still
being active. There are two
race categories including one
for students aged from 10-15
that starts at 8am, and the
other for stronger kids over
13 years starting at 8:45am.
Also taking place this
Saturday is the Third Race
of the Aquathon Series from
6am to noon. The Aquathon
series takes place every year
at Aspire Zone and consists
of four races spread across
several months, with each
race including a swim at the
Dome Pool and a run around
the Aspire Zone grounds.
This event is open to people of all ages and abilities,
aged eight and over, and features adult categories where
participants run for 5 km and
swim for 500m, as well as a
kids category where youngsters run between 1.5-3 km
and swim between 100m300m according to their age
group.
And in an effort to continue inspiring today’s youth
in Qatar to lead happy,
healthy and active lifestyles,
Aspire Zone has once again
launched its Learn2Ride
initiative. The initiative is
aimed at teaching youngsters
to learn how to ride a bicy-
cle or to help them improve
their cycling ability. The locally based programme is
aimed at children who are
eight and above, and with a
keen interest in cycling.
In addition to sporting activities, Aspire Zone has once
again rolled out its new season for Kids Art in The Park
2014/15 which kicked off on
December 20, 2014 and will
run every Saturday through
to March 21, 2015 from 11am
to 1pm. Kids Art In The Park
consists of a number of fun,
educational and creative artistic activities that children
can try under the art tent, at
the Aspire Park behind the
main playground.
04
Nation | Islam
Friday, January 16, 2015
(http://www.islamweb.net) Under the guidance and supervision of Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) and Islamic Affairs
THE IMPORTANCE OF
GOOD COMPANIONSHIP
C
HOOSING and having
good companions is
extremely important
for many reasons and
from many aspects.
(1) Mankind cannot live
alone; every individual must
live and interact with others,
and when interacting with
others, one either inﬂuences
or is himself inﬂuenced.
(2) Those people whom
you sit with and take as
friends are inevitably from
one of the two following categories. They will either be
good individuals - who guide
and encourage you towards
what is good and help you in
accomplishing that which Allah has ordered, or they are
going to be bad - encouraging
you to do what is pleasing to
Satan and that which misleads you and leads you to the
Hell-Fire.
(3) When the Prophet,
sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam,
was sent with the mission to
establish Islam, he did not do
it on his own. Rather, Allah
chose for him companions
who accompanied him and
who carried the Message until it was complete.
These three aspects show
the importance of having
good companions; companions who are righteous. Such
companions will help you and
enjoin you to do what is good,
remind you of Allah, and forbid you from doing what is
evil. These aspects also show
the importance of avoiding
befriending bad companions
who will have a bad effect
upon you, who will help you
in doing deeds which are displeasing to Allah and which
lead to Hell-Fire.
The Prophet, sallallaahu
‘alayhiwasallam, gave a good
similitude regarding this, as
he said: “The example of a
good companion (who sits
with you) in comparison with
a bad one is like that of the
musk seller and the blacksmith’s bellows; from the
ﬁrst you would either buy
musk or enjoy its good smell
while the bellows would either burn your body or your
clothes or you get a bad nasty
smell thereof.” [Al-Bukhaari
and Muslim]
T
The Prophet, sallallaahu
‘alayhiwasallam, explained
the matter of good companionship, so that no room is
left for doubt or confusion,
when he said: “A person is
upon the religion of his close
friend, so beware whom you
befriend.” [Abu Daawood
and At-Tirmithi]
This means that a person will be upon the same
methodology as his friend,
the same path as his friend,
the same nature, manner
and behaviour as his friend.
So, we must be careful about
whom we befriend. There is
an Arabic saying: ‘Your companion is what pulls you to
something.’ So, if your companion is good, he will pull
you towards that which is
good. He will order you to
do what is good and forbid
you from doing what is evil.
If he observes you committing sins, he would warn you,
if he becomes aware of your
shortcomings, he would advise you, and if he ﬁnds a
fault in you, he would conceal
it and not disclose it to others. About this, the Prophet,
sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam,
said: “…Whoever conceals
(the fault of) a Muslim, Allah will conceal his fault on
the day of Judgment.” [Abu
Daawood]
So, should you see a fault
in your brother, you should
wish to remove that fault
from him and not expose it
to the people. This is what
is required by brotherhood.
This stresses the importance
of choosing friends who are
upon the correct way, who
are loyal, and who conceal
your faults whilst ordering
you to do good and forbid
you from doing evil; they will
stand beside you, support
you and cooperate with you
upon all that is good.
This principle is important from the standpoint of
how the religion is to be established, and from the standpoint of what brotherhood
is and what it does. Indeed,
the reason for taking a companion is so that he helps you
establish Islam, and so that
you help him worship Allah.
We ﬁnd a good example in
the Prophet Moosaa, may Allah exalt his mention, the one
whom Allah chose and spoke
to. When Allah sent him to
Pharaoh, he (Moosaa), may
Allah exalt his mention, said
as Allah informs us saying
(what means): “And appoint
for me a helper from my family, Haaroon - my brother; increase my strength with him,
and let him share my task
(of conveying Allah’s Message and Prophethood), that
we may glorify You much
and remember You much.”
[Quran; 20: 29-34]
Moosaa, may Allah exalt his mention, wanted his
brother to support and help
him, protect him and accompany him. This is exactly what the believers do
for one another. What binds
the believers together and
makes them brothers is the
bond of faith. The Prophet,
sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam,
said: “There are three characteristics, whoever attains
them will taste the sweetness
of faith: That Allah and His
Messenger are more beloved
to him than anyone else, that
he loves a person and does
not love him except for the
sake of Allah, and that he
would hate to revert to unbelief just as he would hate to
be thrown into the Fire.” [AlBukhaari and Muslim]
Thus, the connection between the believers is based
upon faith and sincere brotherhood. Beware against taking any companion if such
companionship is based
upon other than this; for
if you were to do that, you
would then bite your hands
in grief just as the unjust ones
will bite their hands in grief.
Allah Says (what means):
“And (remember) the Day
when the wrong-doer (oppressor, polytheist etc.) will
bite at his hand, he will say:
‘Oh! Would that I had taken
a path with the Messenger.
Ah! Woe to me! Would that
I had never taken so-and-so
as a friend! He indeed led me
astray from the Reminder
(the Quran) after it had come
to me….’” [Quran; 25:27]
Allah also Says (what
means): “And whosoever
turns away from the remembrance of the Most Beneﬁcent (Allah), We appoint for
him Satan to be a Qareen (intimate companion) to him.”
[Quran; 43:36]
So, all of the physical
togetherness that you see
around you, which is based
upon other than faith, will be
wiped away on that Day, and
it will be a source of misery
and torture. Allah Says (what
means): “Close friends, that
Day, will be enemies to each
other, except for the righteous.” [Quran; 43:67]
Be in this World as if You
Were a Stranger or a Traveller
QUESTION: Assalamu ‘alaykum Narrated Mujahid:
‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said, “Allah’s Apostle took hold of
my shoulder and said, ‘Be in this world as if you were
a stranger or a traveller.” ... Sahih Bukhari Chapter 76.
“To make the Heart Tender (Ar-Riqaq)” Hadeeth 425.
Could you please explain in detail the above Hadeeth
on the basis of Qur’an, Sunnah and the rightly guided
Salaf of this Ummah.
ANSWER: All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the
Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship
except Allah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, is His Messenger.
Explaining this Hadeeth entails lengthy details; however, we will quote some of what Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali,
may Allah have mercy upon him, stated in his book
Jaami ‘Al ‘Uloomwal Hikam. If you seek more details,
kindly refer to the stated book.
Ibn Rajab, may Allah have mercy upon him, said:
“This Hadeeth is a basic principle in not hoping for a
long life and that the believer should not take the worldly
life as an eternal abode or feel reassured about it.
Rather, one should be like a traveller who is preparing
his luggage for departure.”
All Prophets and their followers advised us to be likewise. Allah, The Almighty, Says on behalf of the believing
man from the family of Pharaoh (what means): {O my
people, this worldly life is only [temporary] enjoyment,
and indeed, the Hereafter - that is the home of [permanent] settlement.} [Quran 40:39]
The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, used to
say: “What do I have to do with this world. My relationship with this world is like that of a traveller who sought
shade under a tree, then went away and left it.”
Once a man visited Abu Tharr, may Allah be pleased
with him, and looked around at the contents of his
house (but found it quite bare). He asked Abu Tharr:
“Where are your belongings?”
“We have a house yonder (meaning the Hereafter)
to which we send (the best of our possessions).” said
Abu Tharr.
The man again said: “But you must have some
belongings so long as you are in this abode.” Abu Tharr
replied, “The owner of this abode would not leave us
in it.”
‘Ali ibn Abi Taalib, may Allah be pleased with him,
used to say: “Verily, this worldly life is departing and
the Hereafter is approaching and each of them has its
children. So, be children of the Hereafter, not children
of this world, for today there are (opportunities to do)
deeds and there is no reckoning, but tomorrow there will
be reckoning and no deeds.”
Allah Knows best.
‘... A Muslim is
the brother of a
Muslim. He neither oppresses
him nor forsakes
him...’ [Muslim]
[Sufyanath-Thawri]
Smile to Make Your Children Happy
HE following are some lines
from the diary of a child speaking about his happy childhood:
“My father was always cheerful
and his smile never left his face, even
in the most difﬁcult situations. This
smile meant a great deal to us as it
revealed how much our father loves
us. This smile used to force us to behave properly and avoid mistakes so
as not to anger our father and miss
his smile even for a second.
“My father’s smile was the
source of our psychological balance.
It provided us with warmth, conﬁdence, frankness and courage in the
face of hardships. May Allah reward
him with the best.”
Protagonists of the frowning approach: Some parents and educators adopt the frowning method in
dealing with their children. Hence,
they avoid speaking with them
cordially or smiling at them. They
believe that there should be strict
limits between parents and their
children so that they can succeed
in their upbringing. They think that
smiling and cheerfulness with children will spoil them, while frowning
and sullenness represent the discipline and resolve that are necessary
for any successful upbringing. Unfortunately, we are sorry to tell such
people that this is the approach of
the weak, who have not mastered
the art of entering into the hearts,
even the hearts of the closest people
to them: their children!
People with great souls are the
only ones who can always be cheerful with their children, while they
control the process of upbringing in
such a way that ensures their children are close enough to learn from
them and obey their orders within a
warm family environment.
The wise educator can direct his
child through his smile and look,
embrace him compassionately, and
treat his mistakes with patience.
This little smile may be of great importance and inﬂuence on the child,
especially that he receives it from his
source of protection and role model.
Cheerfulness is from the guidance of the Prophet, sallallaahu
‘alayhiwasallam: The guidance of
the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, regarding cheerfulness,
is amazing. He was always cheerful
and used to smile at his Companions. Jareer ibn ‘Abdullaah al-Bajali,
may Allah be pleased with him, said,
“Whenever the Prophet, sallallaahu
‘alayhiwasallam, saw me after I had
embraced Islam, he would receive
me with a smile.” [Al-Bukhaari]
This was not conﬁned to Jareer,
may Allah be pleased with him, as
‘Abdullaah ibn al-Haarith, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “I have
never seen anyone who smiles more
than the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam.” [Al-Albaani: Saheeh]
Besides, Umm Ad-Dardaa’, may
Allah be pleased with her, said, “Abu
Ad-Dardaa’ used to smile whenever
he spoke. So I told him to stop doing this for fear that people may
think that he was simple minded.
However, Abu Ad-Dardaa’ may Allah be pleased with him, said, ‘I have
never seen or heard the Prophet,
sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, speaking without smiling.’” Hence, he
used to smile whenever he spoke in
imitation of the Prophet, sallallaahu
‘alayhiwasallam.
The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, was very caring, thoughtful
and compassionate towards children.
It was never reported that he frowned
at any child throughout his life; rather, whenever he met them, he would
smile at them even if he was accompanied by his Companions.
Moreover, Jaabir, may Allah be
pleased with him, narrated: “We
were with the Prophet, sallallaahu
‘alayhiwasallam, when we were invited to have food. On our way, we
saw Al-Husayn playing with the
boys in the street. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, hurried
and opened his arms. Al-Husayn
started running here and there
while the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alay-
hiwasallam, was laughing with him.
The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, took him and put one of
his hands on his chin and the other
between his head and ears, then he
embraced and kissed him and said:
‘Husayn belongs to me and I belong
to him, may Allah, The Almighty,
love whoever loves him. Al-Hassan
and Al-Husayn are two of the noblest of men.’” [At-Tabaraani] [AlAlbaani: Hasan]
The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, also taught us that a smile
may sustain others, especially those
who are under our care. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, said:
“You cannot please all people with
your money, but you could do this
through your cheerfulness and good
morals.” [Muslim]
Is there any of us who does not
need to please his children through
his cheerfulness and good morals?
Is there anyone who does not need
to do so today, when he sees that the
educator’s mission has become one
of the most difﬁcult on earth? The
protection of children against immorality and other social problems
have become issues that require a
great deal of supplication and great
balance in the personality of the
educator, to be able to sustain his
children and establish a successful relationship with them. This
relationship serves as gravity that
always attracts them to their good
origins, and strengthens them in the
face of the wild storms of immorality that blow from all directions.
The default principle in dealing
with one’s children: Smiling at our
children is the default principle as
we learned from the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, while frowning should be an educational punishment that should be used wisely
and only when necessary. Certainly,
cheerfulness strengthens the relationship between the educator and
the child, while frowning causes the
child to dislike his parent and weakens their mutual love.
‘Umar ibn al-Khattaab, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “One
should be like a young boy among
his family, but when he is needed as
a man, he should be so [i.e. act as a
man].” The meaning is that cheerfulness and good morals as well as
joking with one’s family and children is the best way to lead them,
provided that this does not affect
the parent’s respect.
You may even use what is called
(the angry smile) when you punish
or blame your child as a form of silent, yet effective, punishment. The
Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, taught us how to use the smile
even when we are angry. Ka‘b ibn
‘One should undertake the task
of enjoining good
and forbidding evil
unless one has the
following qualities:
Kindness, fairness
and knowledge’
Maalik, may Allah be pleased with
him, narrated his story when he did
not participate in the Battle of Tabook without a valid excuse. He said,
“When news reached me that the
Messenger of Allah was on his way
back from Tabook, I was greatly distressed… I greeted him, he smiled,
and there was a tinge of anger in that.
He, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, then
said to me: ‘Come forward’. I went
forward and I sat in front of him.
He, sallallaahu ‘alayhiwasallam, said
to me: ‘What kept you back?’” [AlBukhaari and Muslim]
Therefore, smile, dear educator!
Cheerfulness and smiling is
important to have a calm child: A
sense of humour helps children to
get rid of the feelings of anger and
embarrassment. It also spreads
happiness in the house and warmth
in the heart, in addition to providing
children with a feeling of safety that
they would miss if their educator
was one of those who adhere to the
frowning method.
This shows us that the more a
parent is cheerful, the stronger his
relationship with his children will
be, and vice versa. Allah, The Almighty, Says (what means): {And
if you had been rude [in speech]
and harsh in heart, they would
have disbanded from around you.}
[Quran 3:159]
Pakistan / South Asia
NATIONWIDE STRIKE
One killed in firebombing as
Bangladesh violence surges
way to a hospital.
The violence has now
claimed 19 lives since Zia
called for the indeﬁnite transport blockade last Tuesday.
Authorities conﬁned Zia,
leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), to her
ofﬁce at the turn of the year
after she called for her arch
AFP
DHAKA
A ﬁrebomb attack on a bus
killed one person on Thursday in a renewed surge of
political unrest as Bangladesh was hit by a nationwide
strike.
Anti-government protesters attacked the bus outside
the capital Dhaka, the second
deadly ﬁrebombing in two
days, as part of ongoing violent efforts to force the downfall of Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina.
Police said the protesters
set the stationary bus ablaze
overnight while a worker was
on board at Kaliakoir, some
50 kilometres (30 miles)
north of Dhaka.
“He was sleeping in the
bus at around 3.30am in
the morning when it was
torched,” Kaliakoir police
chief Raﬁqul Islam said, adding that no one was arrested.
Activists have taken to the
streets across the country for
the last 10 days to try to enforce a transport blockade
called by main opposition
leader Khaleda Zia.
The opposition also called
a 12-hour strike to protest
The violence has
now claimed 19 lives
since Zia called for
the indeﬁnite transport blockade last
Tuesday.
Rapid Action Batalion soldiers stand on a street leading to the home of opposition leader Khaleda
Zia in Dhaka recently. (AFP)
an assassination attempt on
Tuesday of one of Zia’s longtime aides.
Riaz Rahman survived
after being shot four times
in his car which was also set
alight in an attack the oppo-
News
in brief
rival Hasina to stand down.
Zia remains stuck in the compound.
Zia wants Hasina to call
fresh elections following last
year’s controversial poll boycotted by opposition parties
and marred by deadly violence. The United States, Britain and the European Union
have expressed concern over
the latest unrest with the EU,
the nation’s biggest export
destination, urging Hasina’s
government and the opposition to hold talks to resolve
the crisis.
Friday, January 16, 2015
05
Pakistan executes
militant convicted
of murder
AFP
KARACHI
PAKISTAN on Thursday
hanged a militant convicted
of murder, the seventeenth
execution it has carried out
since it lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty
in terror cases following a
school massacre last month.
Muhammad Saeed Awan,
a member of the banned
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant
group which is linked to Al
Qaeda, was hanged at Karachi’s Central Jail, an ofﬁcial
said on condition of anonymity. Awan was convicted of
shooting to death police ofﬁcer Sadiq Hussain Shah and
his son, Abid Hussain Shah,
in 2001.
The United Nations,
European Union, Amnesty
International and Human
Rights Watch have called
on Pakistan to re-impose its
moratorium on the death
penalty, which ran from
2008 until December 2014.
Rights campaigners say
Pakistan overuses its antiterror laws and courts to
prosecute ordinary crimes.
There are also concerns
that death row convicts from
non-terror related cases
could be executed.
A court in the northern city of Rawalpindi on
The United Nations,
European Union, Amnesty International
and Human Rights
Watch have called on
Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium
on the death penalty
Wednesday overturned a stay
order preventing the execution of convicted murderer
Shoaib Sarwar, a spokesman
for the ﬁrm representing him
said.
Sarwar was convicted of
murder in 1998 while he was
still a juvenile, Shahab Siddiqui of the Justice Project
Pakistan said, adding he had
acted in his own defence and
that of his sister.
The court’s decision to
overturn his stay order now
means a “black warrant” for
his execution can be issued
at any time and carried out
within 24 hours.
Taliban gunmen stormed
an army-run school in the
northwestern city of Peshawar last month, killing 150
people, mostly children, in
the country’s deadliest ever
militant attack.
In addition to ending its
death penalty moratorium,
Pakistan has since moved to
set up military courts to try
terror cases.
sition blamed on the government. Shops, schools and
businesses were closed for
the strike, while roads were
largely deserted as thousands
of police and the elite Rapid
Action Battalion patrolled
the capital. Thursday’s attack
came after four people were
burnt to death in a similar
ﬁrebombing on Wednesday
of a packed bus in the northern town of Mithapukur. Another passenger died on the
Afghan Taliban
condemn
cartoons, hail
Paris gunmen
Rajapaksa agrees to handover
party reins to new president
AFP
KABUL
PTI
COLOMBO
Civil society activists shout slogans against Taliban during a
peace rally in Lahore recently. (AFP)
Pakistan court declares Taliban chief
Mullah Fazlullah ‘proclaimed offender’
KARACHI Pakistani Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah and the
outfit’s former spokesman Shahidullah Shahid were on
Thursday declared “proclaimed offenders” by a court here
in connection with last year’s deadly assault on Karachi
airport.
The Karachi Anti-Terrorism Court declared Fazlullah,
40, and Shahid “proclaimed offenders” for the brazen attack on the airport on June 8 in which 29 persons and 10
foreign attackers were killed. (PTI)
US drone strike
kills 5 militants
in Pakistan
Afghan forces kill
shadow Taliban
deputy governor
WANA, Pakistan A US
drone strike in northwest
Pakistan killed at least five
suspected militants on
Thursday, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The strike, the second so far this year,
targeted a compound of
suspected militants in
the Tehsil Ladha area of
South Waziristan, a remote
region bordering Afghanistan, the officials said.
Pakistan often protests
that US drone strikes
infringe its national sovereignty. But many Pakistanis suspect their government and military give at
least tacit approval for the
attacks, which have killed
many senior Pakistani
Taliban commanders.
The drone strikes
stopped for the first half
of last year while the
Pakistani government
explored peace talks with
the Taliban.
They resumed a few
days before the Pakistani
military launched an antiTaliban offensive in June.
KABUL A senior Taliban
figure in north-eastern Afghanistan was killed along
with four other militants by
Afghan security forces, an
official said on Thursday.
“Five Taliban fighters including Mavlawi
Shafaq, shadow Taliban
deputy governor for Kapisa
province, were killed in a
military operation in Tagab
district on Wednesday
night,” Sediq Sediqqi, a
spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said on his
Twitter feed. The Taliban
appoints its own members
as supposed governors
for provinces and districts,
referred to as “shadow
Taliban” by government
officials. These shadow
governors have no official
status. In separate operations, four militants were
killed and three others arrested in the capital Kabul
and the provinces of Kandahar and Badakhshan,
the Defence Ministry said.
Three soldiers were killed
during the operations
when their vehicle struck a
roadside bomb. (DPA)
(REUTERS)
THE Afghan Taliban on
Thursday condemned the
publication in France of further cartoons of the Prophet
Mohammed (PBUH), and
lauded last week’s deadly Islamist attack on the Charlie
Hebdo magazine ofﬁce in
Paris. An English statement
from the group said they
“strongly condemn this repugnant and inhumane action and consider its perpetrators, those who allowed it
and its supporters (to be) the
enemies of humanity”.
It added the gunmen who
killed the magazine staff on
January 7 were “bringing the
perpetrators of the obscene
act to justice”. On Wednesday, French President Francois Hollande declared Charlie Hebdo was “alive and will
live on” after its new edition
sold out in record time, as Al
Qaeda claimed responsibility
for the attack.
The Taliban, which ran a
hardline Islamic government
in Afghanistan from 19962001, said world leaders
should prevent such cartoons
from being released. A few
hundred people demonstrated last week in the central
Afghan province of Uruzgan,
praising the gunmen.
BELEAGUERED
former
president Mahinda Rajapaksa has agreed to hand over Sri
Lanka Freedom Party’s reins
to the country’s new leader
Maithripala Sirisena, bowing
to the demand of party members after his shock election
defeat.
Sirisena was the general
secretary of the Sri Lanka
Freedom Party (SLFP) but
was expelled from the party
by Rajapaksa ahead of polls
as he broke away from the
then ruling alliance in November to become the challenger in the polls.
Sirisena went on to topple Rajapaksa and end his
decade-long rule in the January 8 polls. After winning the
election, Sirisena claimed
the party leadership even as
Rajapaksa’s loyalists initially
refused to back him, threatening to split the party.
SLFP sources said bowing to the demand from some
of his party members, Mahinda Rajapaksa has agreed to
handover the SLFP leadership to President Sirisena.
In another related development, Basil Rajapaksa, the
brother of Mahinda, resigned
from his post of National Or-
Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa (right) leaving the President Secretariat in Colombo
recently. (EPA)
ganiser of SLFP.
Basil accepted full responsibility for his brother’s defeat
in the presidential elections, a
statement said.
He led the then ruling
coalition UPFA’s election
campaign in the run-up to
the polls. Basil left Colombo
immediately after his brother
lost the election. He is currently believed to be in the US
on a private visit.
During Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency between 2005
until last week, Basil was his
powerful political advisor in
addition to being the Minister
of Economic Development.
Since the election defeat,
Mahinda Rajapaksa has faced
a tough time with many of his
party members joining hands
with Sirisena.
A complaint has also been
lodged against Rajapaksa and
his family members over graft
claims by the Marxist Janatha
Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a
key partner of the new ruling coalition. In the run up to
the polls, Rajapaksa accused
Sirisena of betrayal for siding with the main opposition
to be their unity candidate.
Sirisena left the Health Ministry, which he held under
Rajapaksa, and also the post
of SLFP’s general secretary, to
become the challenger in the
polls. Citing a party constitution clause that a member of
the party if elected President
of the country must be made
the party leader, a section of
the party members extended
support to Sirisena as their
leader.
Myanmar govt seizes pirated copies of The Interview
REUTERS
YANGON
MYANMAR police have begun seizing pirated copies
of the ﬁlm The Interview, a
comedy about a ﬁctional plot
to assassinate North Korean
leader Kim Jong un, with media saying the move followed
pressure from the North Korean embassy in Yangon.
The provocative comedy
that triggered a devastating
cyberattack on Sony Pictures
made an unprecedented
online debut after hacker
threats prevented its wide release on Christmas Day.
The
English-language
website of The Irrawaddy
newspaper said the embassy
had urged “proper action” by
the government to immediately halt the copying, distribution and sale of the ﬁlm in
Yangon.
The move followed a
meeting on Sunday between
North Korean Ambassador
Kim Sok chol and Myint Swe,
the chief minister of the Rangoon division, the paper said,
adding that the Rangoon division government refused to
comment on the document.
Government ofﬁcials and
police contacted by Reuters
denied receiving any order to
seize the ﬁlm.
“We seized them simply
because they were unapproved and pirated,” said an
The move followed a
meeting on Sunday
between North Korean Ambassador Kim
Sok chol and Myint
Swe, the chief minister of the Rangoon
division, the paper
said.
ofﬁcer from a police station in
Latha Township in Yangon,
who declined to be named,
referring to some copies of
the ﬁlm seized in a recent
raid. Visits to a half-dozen
stalls and shops selling illegal
DVDs in downtown Yangon
failed to turn up a single copy
of the ﬁlm, although dozens
of other pirated DVDs were
on sale.
Asked why the ﬁlm was
not available, sellers just
shook their heads. “We don’t
have The Interview,” said one
salesman in an area thronged
by tourists, crossing his index ﬁngers across his chest to
signify a ban on the ﬁlm. He
refused to elaborate.
The owner of one of Yangon’s largest video shops,
who also declined to be
named, said only that selling
the ﬁlm was against government policy.
North Korean embassy
ofﬁcials had visited his shop
a few days ago asking for copies, he said, adding that he
had been told the staff report
to the Myanmar police if any
shops found to have the DVD
on sale.
The parody has earned
more than $31 million from
online, cable and telecoms
sales since its December release, Sony Pictures Entertainment said on January 6.
It took $5 million at the box
ofﬁce, with 580 independent
theatres showing it in North
America.
06
World
Firday, January 16, 2015
China enlists
citizens to
patrol border
with N Korea
REUTERS
BEIJING
CHINA is sending civilian
militias to help secure the
border it shares with North
Korea, state media said, in
the wake of two reported
killings of Chinese citizens
by North Koreans that
could strain ties between
Pyongyang and its sole major ally.
The China Defence
News said on Wednesday the government had
established a civilianmilitary defence system
in the Yanbian prefecture
of Jilin province. Yanbian
China is North Korea’s most important
diplomatic and economic ally, although
three nuclear tests,
and violence on the
border have tested
Beijing’s support.
shares a border of about
500 km (310 miles) with
North Korea.
“China and North Korea
are both keeping guard on
the border ...,” the newspaper said. “The situation
is more complicated and
relying on just one party
would make it difficult to
achieve effective control.”
The government has
also “guided the establishment of militia patrols” to
guard border villages. Every 10 neighbouring households would have their
own border security group
and there would be 24hour video surveillance,
the newspaper said.
Last week, China said it
had lodged a protest with
North Korea after media
reported that a North Ko-
rean army deserter had
killed four people during
a robbery in the Chinese
border city of Helong late
last month.
State media has raised
questions about the ChinaNorth Korea relationship,
saying that the Chinese
government “should not be
too accommodating”.
The issue of border security has become “very
serious”, said Zhang Liangui, a North Korea expert
at China’s Central Party
School.
“The fact that North
Koreans
are
running
over the border to China
shows that North Korea’s
regulation of the border
is seriously problematic,”
he said. “They have neglected it.”
While it is too early to
determine if there will be
a longterm impact on diplomatic ties, the situation
raised tension near the
border, he added.
“For those Chinese citizens living near the border, there is widespread
anxiety right now, the impact of the situation is very
serious,” he said.
“To say that this will
have no impact on relations with North Korea
just doesn’t match with
reality.” China is North
Korea’s most important
diplomatic and economic
ally, although three nuclear tests, several rounds of
sabre-rattling and violence
on the China-North Korea
border have tested Beijing’s support.
The 520 km-long Tumen River that divides
China and North Korea is
a popular route used by
defectors fleeing the secretive North.
OCCUPY MOVEMENT INVESTIGATIONS
League of Social Democrats lawmaker “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung (centre) shouts slogans outside the police headquarters as he arrives to assist investigations
into the Occupy Movement in Hong Kong on Thursday. (REUTERS)
China probes graft charges
on senior military officials
Sixteen officials accused of 'violating discipline' include ex-commander Shanxi Fang Wenping
REUTERS
BEIJING
CHINA kicked off investigations into several senior
military officials on serious
graft charges last year, the
Ministry of Defence said on
Thursday, as the country
works to stamp out corruption in its armed forces.
Many of those implicated have ties to the corruption scandal of a former top
military officer, Xu Caihou,
who retired as vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission
last year. China announced
last summer it was investigating Xu for graft.
The 16 officials accused
of “seriously violating
party discipline”, a common euphemism for graft,
include the former commander of the military
region of the central province of Shanxi, Fang Wenping, the ministry said.
It was the first announcement of action
faced by the officials, but
did not detail all the charges against them.
Liu Zheng and Fu Lin-
TOKYO EXPERIENCES RAINS
People carry umbrellas as they walk across a zebra crossing during heavy rain in Tokyo on Thursday. (REUTERS)
guo, former deputy directors of the powerful Gen-
Many of those implicated have ties to
the corruption scandal of a former top
military ofﬁcer, Xu
Caihou, who retired
as vice chairman of
the powerful Central
Military Commission
last year.
eral Logistics Department,
were both placed under investigation.
Yu Daqing, former dep-
Rwandan leader
slams inaction
on DR Congo
rebels
AFP
KIGALI
uty political commissar of
the Second Artillery Corps,
the military’s nuclear and
conventional missile division, was also put under
investigation, the Defence
Ministry said in a statement on its website.
But it gave no details of
the status of the investigations.
Serving and retired Chinese military officers have
said graft in the armed
forces is so pervasive it
could undermine China’s
ability to wage war.
Xu had confessed to
Govt declares Sydney
siege terrorist act
for insurance claims
AFP
SYDNEY
Malawi floods raise fears of cholera outbreak
REUTERS
LILONGWE
SEVERE ﬂoods in Malawi
are raising fears of a largescale cholera outbreak, a
health ofﬁcial said on Thursday, as the country grapples
with a disaster that has killed
at least 48 people and made
70,000 homeless over the
past few days.
The Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services has forecast
further heavy rain and ﬂash
ﬂoods for the next two to
three weeks, especially in
the south where the rains
have already caused most
damage.
President Peter Mutharika declared half the southern
African country a disaster
zone on Tuesday.
“Obviously with the scale
of the ﬂoods, the likelihood
of outbreaks of cholera and
other waterborne disease
is very high and we are
worried,” Health Ministry
spokesman Henry Chimbali
told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation in an interview.
“We have stationed response supplies in all affected districts but if the outbreak is on a larger scale, we
would need immediate help.”
The worst recorded outbreak of cholera in Malawi
was during a drought in
2001/2 when nearly 1,000
people, mostly children, died
out of 33,000 cases.
No outbreak has been reported yet this year.
Cholera
is
always
present in Malawi at a low
level, mainly in the rainy
season when sanitation is
poor and drinkable water
scarce, and health ofﬁcials
rate the ‘normal’ cholera
infection rate at 0.2 percent
of the population.
The current heavy rains
have also damaged crops,
raising fears of a poor harvest. Last year, Malawi’s
farmers harvested 3.9 million tonnes of the staple crop,
maize, providing a surplus of
almost one million tonnes.
RWANDA’S president on
Thursday voiced renewed
frustration over what he
complained was long-term
inaction over Rwandan
Hutu rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Paul Kagame said even
though the Democratic
Forces for the Liberation
of Rwanda (FDLR) had
missed a deadline to disarm and were now facing
an offensive by the United
Nations mission in the DR
Congo, MONUSCO, he
was far from optimistic
about the prospect of decisive action.
The FDLR is estimated
to include between 1,500
and 2,000 ethnic Hutu
ﬁghters, some of whom are
accused of having participated in the 1994 Rwandan
genocide which left close
to a million people dead,
mainly ethnic Tutsis.
Opposed to President
Kagame’s Tutsi-dominated
government, they have been
based across the border in
eastern DR Congo since the
genocide, and are accused
of staging brutal attacks on
civilians, including rapes
and murders, and smuggling gold and charcoal.
Kagame told a news
conference he was not conﬁdent “that things are going
to work out the way they
should.”
taking “massive” bribes in
exchange for favours, such
as granting promotions.
President Xi Jinping,
who also serves as chairman of the Central Military
Commission, has vowed
to eradicate corruption
in China’s armed forces,
which are 2.3 millionstrong.
China said last month it
was investigating Gao Xiaoyan, Communist Party
boss of the discipline committee at the People’s Liberation Army Information
Engineering University.
A fatal Sydney cafe siege last
month was on Thursday ofﬁcially declared a terrorist incident by the government so
businesses can make insurance claims.
Iranian-born
gunman
Man Haron Monis, who had
a history of extremism and
violence, took 17 hostages in
the city’s ﬁnancial heartland
in December, unveiling an
Islamic ﬂag. He was killed as
armed police stormed the eatery after 16 hours.
Two hostages also died
-- mother-of-three Katrina
Dawson, 38, and 34-yearold Lindt cafe manager Tori
Johnson -- while several were
injured, sparking an outpouring of national grief.
“I have today declared the
siege a terrorist incident for
the purposes of the Terrorism
Insurance Act,” Treasurer Joe
Hockey said.
“The government has taken this action to ensure businesses that suffered damages
from the incident will not be
denied claims due to terrorism exclusions in their insurance policies.”
The siege saw many shops
and ofﬁces shut their doors,
sending workers home.
Hockey’s move means insurers will be prevented from
refusing claims from affected
businesses on the basis that
their policies exclude losses
from acts of terrorism -- a
provision of the Terrorism
Insurance Act.
In the aftermath of the
siege, Prime Minister Tony
Abbott warned of heightened
“terrorist chatter” although
until now the government
had not ofﬁcially branded the
hostage-taking a terrorist attack. A coronial inquest into
the deaths, which will examine every detail of the siege, is
due to open on January 29 in
a bid to ﬁnd out exactly what
happened.
A review into the incident
is currently being conducted
by the Australian and New
South Wales state governments, which Hockey said
“will tell us what lessons can
be learned from the events
leading up to and surrounding the siege”.
“At the same time, our
law enforcement and security agencies continue their
work to prevent and disrupt any individuals who
may seek to do us harm,” he
added. Monis, a self-styled
Islamic cleric, was on bail at
the time on charges, including sexual offences and abetting murder of his ex-wife.
Australia raised its threat
level to high in September
when it carried out a series
of counter-terrorism raids
across Sydney and Brisbane
following a ﬂow of its nationals to Iraq and Syria to ﬁght
with Islamic State and other
jihadist groups.
UK / Europe
French president
reassures Muslims,
demands respect
for French values
Charlie cartoonists buried
REUTERS
PARIS
PRESIDENT Francois Hollande assured Muslims
in France and abroad on
Thursday that his country
respected them and their
religion but would not compromise its commitment to
freedom and democracy.
Speaking a week after
three days of Islamist militant violence that killed
17 people in Paris, he told
a meeting at the Institute
of the Arab World in Paris that Muslims were “the
ﬁrst victims of fanaticism,
fundamentalism
and intolerance”.
His speech struck a
careful balance between
France’s commitment to
protect its five-millionstrong Muslim minority, Europe’s largest, and
to uphold the principle
of free speech even for
caricatures that Muslims
ﬁnd offensive.
French Muslims have
reported dozens of attacks
on mosques since Islamist
gunmen targeted satirical
journal Charlie Hebdo last
week. Authorities in several
Middle East countries have
denounced the newspaper’s decision to print more
cartoons of the Prophet
Mohammad (PBUH) in
its ﬁrst post-attack edition
on Wednesday.
“Islam is compatible
with democracy and we
should refuse any confusion (about this),” Hollande said at the Institute,
where the slogan ‘We are
all Charlie’ was written in
French and Arabic on the
building’s facade.
“French of the Muslim faith have the same
rights and duties as all
citizens,” he said, and
should be “protected and
respected, as they should
respect the republic.”
Also on Thursday, the
French military’s cyberdefence specialist reported
a surge of hacking against
19,000 different French
websites in the past four
days, mostly denial of service attacks. Websites of all
kinds were affected, he said.
“This is the response
to last Sunday’s march by
people who do not share
our values, ranging from
shocked believers to hardened terrorists,” Vice Admiral Arnaud Coustilliere
told journalists, referring to
a mass protest march led by
Hollande and more than 40
world leaders.
Hollande also addressed
the Arab world, saying:
“France is a friend, but it
is a country that has rules,
“French of the Muslim faith have the
same rights and duties as all citizens,”
he said, and should
be “protected and
respected, as they
should respect the
republic.”
principles and values. One
of them is not negotiable freedom and democracy.”
He said Paris would propose new measures to reinforce cooperation between
Europe and Arab states
around the Mediterranean,
including letting more Arab
students study in France.
Freshly printed copies
of Hebdo’s ‘survivors’ edition’, which ran a cartoon
of Prophet Mohammad
(PBUH) on the cover holding a ‘Je suis Charlie’ sign,
quickly sold out on Thursday morning, as they did on
Wednesday when the weekly ﬁrst hit the newsstands.
Five victims of last
week’s violence were
buried in ceremonies
on Thursday covered on
national television.
In Belgium, prosecutors said they were investigating whether an arms
dealer there had provided
an Islamist gunman the
bullets he used to kill four
Jewish hostages at a kosher
grocery store.
French President Francois Hollande (right) and the President
of the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab institute), Jack Lang at
the Arab Institute building in Paris on Thursday. (REUTERS)
Friday, January 16, 2015
Turkish PM equates Israel’s
Netanyahu to Paris attackers
OSays
both Premier, gunmen committed crimes against humanity
REUTERS
ISTANBUL
TURKISH Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on
Thursday compared Israeli counterpart Benjamin
Netanyahu to the Islamist militants who killed 17
people in Paris last week,
saying both had committed
crimes against humanity.
Davutoglu said Israel’s
bombardments of Gaza and
its storming in 2010 of a
Turkish-led aid convoy headed there, in which 10 Turks
were killed, were on a par
with the Paris attacks, whose
dead included shoppers at a
Jewish supermarket.
The comments at a news
conference escalated a war
of words between the former
allies: Israel’s far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called President
Tayyip Erdogan an “anti-Semitic bully” on Wednesday
for criticising Netanyahu’s
attendance, with other world
leaders, at a Paris solidarity
march for the attack victims
on Sunday.
Separately on Thursday,
Turkish President Tayyip
Erdogan’s spokesman issued
a statement saying it was Islamophobic and unacceptable for Netanyahu to link the
Paris bloodshed to Islam.
“The Israeli government
must halt its aggressive and
racist policies instead of attacking others and sheltering behind anti-Semitism,”
spokesman Ibrahim Kalin
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (right) with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Ankara on Tuesday.
said on the presidential
website.
Turkey condemned the
January 7 attack on the
French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in which Islamist
gunmen killed 12 people, but
has also warned that rising
Islamophobia in Europe risks
inﬂaming unrest by Muslims.
Davutoglu also attended
the Paris memorial rally,
which he said was a march
against terrorism.
“Just as the massacre in
Paris committed by terrorists is a crime against humanity, Netanyahu, as the
head of the government that
kills children playing on the
beach with the bombardment of Gaza, destroys thousands of homes ... and that
massacred our citizens on an
aid ship in international waters, has committed crimes
against humanity,” the Turkish premier said.
The assault on the aid
convoy ruptured relations
between Turkey and Israel,
which previously enjoyed
close diplomatic and military ties. Trade links remain close.
Israel fought a 50-day
war with the Islamist Hamasruled Gaza Strip last year,
with Israeli shelling and air
strikes causing widespread
devastation in the tiny territory and Hamas ﬁring thousands of rockets into Israel.
More than 2,100 Palestinians
died, mostly civilians, Gaza
medical ofﬁcials said, while
the Israeli death toll was 73,
mostly soldiers.
“If Israel is looking for
a bully, it needs to look in
the mirror,” said Davutoglu,
whose Islamist-rooted AK
Party has held power in Turkey for over a decade.
Last October, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon
pointed to what he said was
a Hamas base of operations
in Turkey, accusing Ankara
of sponsoring terrorism and
Cameron to lobby Obama on last
UK resident held in Guantanamo
REUTERS
LONDON
PRIME Minister David
Cameron plans to lobby US
President Barack Obama for
the release of the last British
resident held at Guantanamo Bay on his two-day visit
to Washington this week, a
government source and the
detainee’s lawyer said.
The trip, starting on
Thursday and focused on the
economy and security, is his
last planned visit to Washington before what is expected to be a closely fought British election in May.
The government source
said more than a billion
pounds ($1.5 billion) of
deals will be signed in sectors including energy and
services, creating about
1,300 jobs in Britain.
Also on Cameron’s agenda is Shaker Aamer, a Saudi
married to a Briton, who has
not been charged with any
crime and was cleared for
release from Guantanamo in
2007. All British nationals
and citizens have been released from the camp.
“This is an important
case for the prime minister and he would like to see
progress on it as quickly as
possible,” the source said on
condition of anonymity.
According to rights group
Amnesty International, Aamer moved to Britain in 1996
and was in Afghanistan doing
voluntary work for an Islamic
charity when he was captured
by Afghan Northern Alliance
On Cameron’s agenda
is Shaker Aamer, a
Saudi married to a
Briton, who has not
been charged with
any crime and was
cleared for release
from Guantanamo in
2007.
forces in 2001 and handed to
the US military.
Aamer’s lawyer, Clive
Stafford Smith, welcomed a
letter from Cameron promising to raise the case but said
this was not enough.
“He has said this before and little has come of
it. Rather than just raising
Shaker’s case, Mr Cameron must come back from
Washington with a concrete
date for Shaker’s return
home to London,” said Stafford Smith, director of the
charity Reprieve.
On Thursday Cameron
will also host, along with International Monetary Fund
chief Christine Lagarde, a
roundtable discussion with
policy makers including
Federal Reserve Chair Janet
Yellen on the outlook for the
global economy.
He will have a working
dinner with Obama, and a
meeting in the Oval Ofﬁce
the following day. As well as
trade and energy security,
the pair are due to discuss
a range of issues including
cyber security, Ebola, the
terror threat, nuclear talks
with Iran and the situation
in Ukraine.
EU’s Mogherini for better Russia ties to push Ukraine peace
REUTERS
BRUSSELS
EUROPEAN Union foreign
policy chief Federica Mogherini has suggested EU states
could re-engage with Russia
on global diplomacy, trade
and other issues in return for
gradual steps to defuse the
crisis over Ukraine.
A discussion paper seen
by Reuters that was distributed to governments ahead
of a meeting of the 28 EU
foreign ministers in Brussels
next Monday said the bloc
might consider reviving joint
efforts with Moscow in tackling problems with Syria and
Iraq, Libya, Iran, North Korea as well as Ebola and the
Palestinian issue.
Lamenting “negative spillover” from Ukraine into
many areas of cooperation
with Russia, and noting recent EU threats to step up
penalties on Moscow, the
paper suggested complementing that sanctions strategy with “a more proactive
approach” to get Russia to
change tack on Ukraine - a
carrot as well as a stick.
European leaders want
to break an impasse over
Ukraine and halt a downward spiral of hostility with
a huge neighbour that is both
powerful and facing economic instability. Violence
in eastern Ukraine this week
thwarted attempts to arrange
a peace summit. EU states
are divided on how far to ease
sanctions on Russia before it
concedes to all Western demands on Ukraine.
One diplomat from an
eastern European country,
which counsels against the
EU showing weakness toward
Moscow, said the paper appeared to reﬂect an eagerness
on the part of countries such
07
Newly elected European High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini during an EU summit in Brussels recently. (REUTERS)
as France and Mogherini’s
native Italy to set aside the
dispute over Ukraine in order
to revive proﬁtable business
with Russia.
The four-page document
takes pains to stress that it
does not mean “business as
usual” with Moscow, against
which the EU levied economic
sanctions last year for its annexation of Crimea and over
the actions of pro-Russian
rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Calling the ideas “food for
thought”, it said any process
“would need to be selective
and gradual and commensurate with the degree to which
Russia responds positively”.
The paper noted a common, long-term aim of
free trade from “Lisbon to
Vladivostok” and said the
EU might study expanding
trade with Russia and its
Eurasian Economic Union
of ex-Soviet states. It was
Ukraine’s preference of free
trade with the EU rather
than with the EEU that
sparked the confrontation.
An EU ofﬁcial conﬁrmed
that a discussion paper was
sent to member states this
week but declined comment
on its content.
The paper said any steps
by the EU would be “closely
linked to full implementation
of the Minsk agreements”, a
truce accord in September
involving Moscow, Kiev and
the pro-Russian rebels, as
well as “good faith” from Russia in agreements reached on
the EU-Ukraine trade accord
and on Russian gas supplies
to Ukraine.
It also suggested making
a distinction between sanctions, mostly on individuals
and companies, imposed in
March after the annexation
of Crimea - “where no change
is expected in the short term”
- and those on Russian industries, imposed in June over
the unrest in eastern Ukraine.
These, it said, the EU “should
be ready to scale down as
soon as Russia implements
the Minsk agreements”.
Mogherini said last week
that she had found Moscow
ofﬁcials being more cooperative on issues of global diplomacy recently and saw that
as a sign that tensions could
be lowered.
(EPA)
arguing that this was incompatible with its membership
in NATO.
Tensions are running
high in Turkey over the Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons mocking
Islam, the reason cited for the
shooting attack on the weekly
in a claim of responsibility by
al Qaeda in Yemen.
Davutoglu also criticised the Turkish secular
newspaper
Cumhuriyet
for publishing excerpts of
Charlie Hebdo’s latest edition, saying freedom of the
press did not extend to insulting religious values, a
crime punishable by jail
in Turkey.
UK opposition
Labour pledges
ban on unhealthy
children’s food
REUTERS
LONDON
BRITAIN’S opposition Labour party said on Thursday
it would ban unhealthy children’s food if they win a national election in May, setting
out a hands-on approach to
improving public health and
reducing the burden on the
stretched healthcare system.
Ahead of what is set to
be a close election, Labour
promised to introduce a
range of measures such as
introducing plain cigarette
packaging, tackling alcohol
abuse and regulating what
goes into children’s food.
“We are setting our clear
intention to take robust action to protect children from
harm where voluntary measures have failed,” Labour’s
public health spokeswoman
Luciana Berger said. The party said it would set maximum
limits on levels of fat, salt and
sugar in food marketed substantially to children.
An ofﬁcial survey published in December showed
that one in three 10 to
11-year-olds in England were
overweight or obese, and the
percentage of those classiﬁed
as obese was rising.
The
announcement
chimes with Labour’s central
election strategy to campaign
against Prime Minister David
Cameron on the future of the
country’s state-funded and
much-cherished health system. Polls show Labour is
more trusted on the healthcare system than Cameron’s
Conservatives.
A Conservative spokesman said the Labour plan
was ‘naive’ and defended the
government’s track record on
public health.
Labour have already
pushed for the government
to introduce a minimum
price for alcohol and to
ban branding on cigarette
packaging.
08
Opinion
Friday, January 16, 2015
HAMAD BIN SUHAIM AL THANI
CHAIRMAN
ADEL ALI BIN ALI
MANAGING DIRECTOR
DR HASSAN MOHAMMED AL ANSARI
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ESTABLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2006
Lanka’s Election Miracle
Sri Lanka has voted Sirisena in the President’s office
in anger against the misdeeds of Rajapaksa
PRINTED AT ALI BIN ALI PRINTING PRESS
A Promise To Afghans
The US must keep its promise to let the Afghan interpreters
settle in the country as a reward for their service
T
HE legacy of America’s war in Afghanistan, which nominally ended on New
Year’s Eve, will come into sharper focus in the coming decade. Historians will
spend years ﬁguring out what went right
or wrong and which of Washington’s programmes will prove to be of lasting value.
There is one crucial piece of unﬁnished business that will speak volumes
at the end of the day: whether the United
States kept its promise to Afghan military
interpreters who were offered the opportunity to resettle in the US in recognition
of the monumental risks they took.
Congress created special visa programmes for Afghan and Iraqi military
linguists starting in 2006. Early on, it was
managed with callous disregard for its intended Afghan beneﬁciaries; only a fraction of the petitions submitted were approved. US Secretary of State John Kerry
has taken commendable steps over the
past two years to streamline the review
process and approve a higher percentage
of cases. But the State Department remains hamstrung by a problem of its own
making that only Congress can ﬁx.
About 12,000 Afghan linguists have
pending applications for the special visa.
Under current law, the State Department
has the authority to issue only 4,000 visas over the next two years. This logjam
was entirely avoidable if only Washington
bureaucrats had operated with greater
dispatch. During some of the toughest
years of the war, US ofﬁcials in Kabul and
Washington sat on, or rejected, the bulk
of applications in the pipeline. In 2010
and 2011, for instance, only a few dozen
Afghan linguists – an astonishingly small
number – were allowed to immigrate.
At the time, some US ofﬁcials in Kabul
took the view that the programme would
worsen the country’s brain drain and
that enabling young, bilingual, educated
Afghans to leave their homeland would
send the wrong message about the state
of a war that Washington portrayed with
disingenuous optimism over the years.
Many Afghan linguists actually received
rejection letters that described them, indefensibly and without evidence, as suspected threats.
The sad result was more than 6,500
visa slots that Congress set aside for the
early years of the programme expired,
leaving brave Afghans and their families
in limbo. Many are living in hiding today,
unable to return to their native provinces
where the Taliban hold sway.
Fortunately, their plight came to the
attention of US servicemen and servicewomen, who have lobbied their representatives in Congress seeking help. As
the scope of the problem became clear to
lawmakers, a remarkable if unlikely coalition from opposite ends of the political
spectrum came together in an effort to
undo a monumental wrong.
In the House, Representative Earl
Blumenauer of Oregon and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a former
Air Force pilot, led the effort last year to
extend the programme and authorise
the 4,000 visa slots currently available.
In the Senate, John McCain of Arizona
and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire
championed the cause.
In an era of partisan acrimony and
gridlock on Capitol Hill, their leadership
on this issue has been inspirational. But
much remains to be done. The White
House will soon present to Congress a
budget request that will almost certainly
include provisions to create new visa slots
for Afghan linguists. Lawmakers should
ensure those are ﬁnanced and approved
either as part of the defence bill, if they
actually manage to pass one this year, or
through stand-alone legislation.
Failing to give all eligible and deserving applicants a fair shot at a new start
in the United States would represent an
abdication of a promise that helped persuade linguists to put their lives on the
line. That would add a shameful chapter
to the legacy of a war that has been grim
enough for Afghans.
NYT
RANDY BOYAGODA | NYT SYNDICATE
T
HE Sri Lanka that Pope Francis is now visiting to canonise an
18th-century missionary is a radically different country than it was
just one week ago. The difference:
He will be greeted by a new president,
Maithripala Sirisena, a onetime ally and
cabinet minister of Mahinda Rajapaksa,
the former president who failed in his
bid to secure a third term.
When Rajapaksa called the early
election, in November, few thought the
outcome would be anything other than a
greater consolidation of his increasingly
entrenched position in the country. His
nearly 10 years in power undeniably
transformed Sri Lanka: Rajapaksa presided over the end to the island nation’s
long-running and brutal civil war in
2009, when government forces conclusively defeated the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam, a terrorist group that
for decades used guerrilla warfare and
suicide bombings to ﬁght for a separate
homeland for the Tamil-majority areas
in the north and east. Since then, with
signiﬁcant backing from China, Rajapaksa’s government has brought off
ambitious infrastructure projects like
new highways, airports and seaports
in a country devastated by years of war
and by the 2004 tsunami.
During this same period, as his power and popularity have increased, he
has resisted both domestic and international calls for investigations of human
rights abuses related to the civil war and
its aftermath, while passing over important questions about the resettlement of
displaced persons and the delegation of
power in the Tamil-majority regions.
It’s no surprise then that he has often been likened, by both supporters
and critics, to a latter-day incarnation
of an all-powerful ancient Ceylonese
king, complete with family members at
the helm of important ministries; a loyal and shadowy security apparatus; robust backing from the military and the
Buddhist religious establishment; and
– helped along by his skills as a folksy
but regal retail politician – widespread
support in Sri Lanka’s many Buddhistmajority villages.
When, during the Rajapaksa years,
I met with English-speaking Sri Lankan
writers and intellectuals, a tiny minority in this country of my parents’ birth,
I heard many caustic critiques of the regime, over gin and tonics under the banyan tree shade of Colombo courtyard
cafes. Meanwhile, the hired drivers, who
came from a far greater portion of the
population, playing on their cellphones
and reading Sinhala-language newspapers while waiting for us in nearby
lots, were openly and grandly proud of
“their” president, who defeated the awful Tamil Tigers, deﬁed international
critics and rebuilt their shattered island.
So how could he have lost to a virtual
unknown? This was wildly unexpected,
given his accomplishments to date and
seeming popularity and his warning on
the campaign trail that the nation was
liable to suffer social unrest along the
lines of post-dictatorship Libya, Syria
and Egypt if he lost. Even Rajapaksa’s
self-important and self-styled “royal
astrologer,” Sumanadasa Abeygunawardena, was persuaded by his reading of the stars that the president could
not be defeated in the election. As the
astrologer sagely explained, re-election
was certain: “The president, he has such
auspicious time and so much power in
his planetary position that he cannot be
defeated in an election.”
The fact is, citizens in voting booths
– the sacred privacy at the heart of sdemocracy – revealed just how little power
Rajapaksa really had. This is the case,
even as the public perception suggested
Citizens in voting booths –
the sacred privacy at the
heart of democracy – revealed just how little power
Rajapaksa really had.
otherwise. When I visited Sri Lanka last
summer, speaking with various hired
drivers provided, as ever, a reliable barometer of the national mood. I was
struck then by their sudden and uniform
silence whenever the president or members of his family came up in conversation. And they came up often enough,
mostly as my wife and I remarked on
the ubiquitous presence of Rajapaksa in
the country, the president, his brothers
and other family members smiling beatiﬁcally on huge billboards positioned at
important junctions in most every city
and village that we visited.
Why were these drivers, otherwise
congenitally loquacious, whose predecessors plumped up with pride when
“their president” was mentioned, suddenly so silent? In fact, one driver was
willing to say one thing, very quietly,
before he changed the topic: “It’s become too much.”
Indeed, Sri Lanka’s new president,
Sirisena, campaigned directly against
the excesses of the Rajapaksa years.
He also has vowed to change the Constitution during his early time in ofﬁce
to diminish the greater powers Rajapaksa arrogated to the ofﬁce of the
presidency. Beyond that, and equally
welcome, Sirisena has called for an end
to nepotistic corruption, and for a frank
reconsideration of Sri Lanka’s opaque
ﬁnancial arrangements with China. He
has more generally promised an austere approach to daily and national life,
in keeping with the Buddhist emphasis
on self-denial. In this respect, he offers
a continuity with Rajapaksa’s religionationalism, if in a different guise. Likewise, during the campaign he did not
advance any notable new plans for addressing the unresolved post-civil war
situation faced by many in the country’s
Tamil minority.
He is now faced with the necessary
challenge of assembling a workable
government out of the fellow dissidents
and fractious opposition groups he united in his bid against the incumbent, a
new government that inherits a state infrastructure that has been bent around
the needs and interests of one man and
his family. In other words, Sirisena has
so far accomplished exactly half of an
extraordinary feat. He’s deﬁed the very
stars in defeating an authoritarian president, but now what?
On Tuesday, Pope Francis arrived in
a suddenly new Sri Lanka to preside over
the celebration of a Catholic missionary
from centuries past lately credited with
miraculous powers. This was joyful news
for the nation’s small but historic Catholic population. What all of Sri Lanka’s
people now require from their new president and his government is a more mundane but much-needed political miracle:
the right ordering of its national life to
become more sustainable and inclusive,
and less about the outsize powers of any
one man, including himself.
(Randy Boyagoda is the author
of ‘Beggar’s Feast’ and the forthcoming ‘Richard John Neuhaus:
A Life in the Public Square’.)
Why I Won’t Serve Israel
There is a surge of refusal to serve the military in protest against the country’s occupation of Palestine
MORIEL ROTHMAN ZECHER |
NYT SYNDICATE
“W
HAT are you,” he asked, “a
leftist?”
We were both wearing
the surplus US Marines
uniforms given to prisoners at Israeli Military Jail No. 6.
“It depends how you deﬁne ‘left’,” I
said.
“Don’t get clever with me. Why are
you here?”
“I didn’t want to be part of a system
whose main task is the violent occupation of millions of people.”
“In other words: You love Arabs, and
don’t care about Israeli security.”
“I think the occupation undermines
all of our security, Palestinians’ and Israelis’.”
“You’re betraying your people,” he
said.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“Me? Desertion.”
There is a growing chasm between Israeli rhetoric and reality. In the discourse
of Israel’s Knesset and media, the Israel
Defence Forces represent a “people’s
army.” Refusal to serve is portrayed by
politicians and pundits – many of whom
began their careers through service in
elite units – as treacherous and marginal.
This rhetoric becomes the common wisdom: A popular bumper stickers reads,
“A real Israeli doesn’t dodge the draft.”
The outrage is disproportionate.
Rarely do more than a few hundred Jewish Israelis publicly refuse to serve each
year in protest against Israel’s occupation
of the Palestinian territories. The shrill
condemnation of refusers is thus an indication of the establishment’s panic.
Last year brought something of a
surge in refusals. Open letters of refusal
were published by a group of high schoolers, a group of reservists, veterans of the
elite intelligence Unit 8200 and alumni
and former staff members of the prestigious Israel Arts and Sciences Academy.
All were denounced by politicians and in
the media: In September, the Knesset’s
opposition leader, the Labour member
Isaac Herzog, blasted the letter from
Unit 8200 as “insubordination.”
Aggression toward refusers is widespread. When I accompanied a refuser
named Udi Segal to his draft station during the Gaza war this summer, we were
met by a group draped in Israeli ﬂags
and chanting, “Udi, you’re a traitor! Go
live in Gaza!” After signing the scholars’
letter, Raya Rotem, a former literature
teacher whose husband was killed in
the 1973 Yom Kippur War, received a
threatening phone call.
The idea that the “real Israelis” serve
and those who refuse are “traitors” is a
false dichotomy. As Rotem told me, “Israeli patriotism today means resisting
anything which frames the occupation
as normal.” It’s also inaccurate: The reality is that a majority of Israeli citizens
do not serve in the military, including
Palestinian citizens of Israel, or the “ﬁfth
column,” as they are often branded,
and the ultra-Orthodox, or “leeches,” as
they’ve been called.
The largest group is the 1.7 million
Palestinian citizens of Israel. Members
of this community are not required by
law to enlist, and only a tiny fraction
volunteer. The next biggest group of
nonserving Israelis are the Haredim,
ultra-Orthodox Jews. Historically, they
have been exempted from service as
long as they were enrolled full time in
a yeshiva. Recently, though, a coalition
formed in the Knesset over a proposal to
draft the Haredim – which resulted in a
500,000-strong public demonstration.
Most Haredim cite religious reasons
for refusing, but the Haredi refusenik
Uriel Ferera, recently released after six
months in jail, gave the occupation as a
primary factor in his decision.
There are also thousands of “gray
refusers,” who ﬁnd quieter ways to get
out of the army, mostly by seeking mental health exemptions, known as a “Proﬁle 21.” Like most public refusers in recent years, I was released after a month
in military jail with a Proﬁle 21.
In a recent interview, Israeli author
Amos Oz urged politicians to act as “traitors,” and make peace. But the type of
traitors Oz wishes for – visionary ministers, peace-minded military men – are
nonexistent. The most left-wing of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s potential challengers in Israel’s coming election is the same Herzog who attacked
the 8200 refusers. Some hope for a less
violent, more decent future lies with the
real traitors, the disregarded millions of
Israeli citizens who have refused to serve
in the army.
The reasons for not serving may differ between a Palestinian youth from
Acre and a Haredi from Beit Shemesh,
between an 8200 veteran and an Ethiopian immigrant, between me and the
deserter in Military Jail No. 6, but there
is a deeper consensus: We all refuse to
see the government as a moral guide
and military service as sacrosanct. As
the Israeli government leads us further
from peace, and the army faithfully executes its violent orders, this is the kind
of treachery we need most.
(Moriel Rothman-Zecher is
working on a book about his
experience refusing to serve
in the Israel military.)
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ON THE OPINION AND ANALYSIS PAGES ARE THE AUTHORS’ OWN. QATAR TRIBUNE BEARS NO RESPONSIBILITY.
Analysis
Friday, January 16, 2015
For The Love Of Carbon
Republicans insist that Keystone XL will create jobs for America – but it would be only a tiny
fraction, which in turn are only part of the damage done by spending cuts in general
09
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End to a decade of rule
I
Poverty of Economics
PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT NEWS SERVICE
If Republicans
really believe
that the US
needs more
spending to
create jobs, why
not support a
push to upgrade
the country’s
crumbling
infrastructure?
T should come as no surprise that the
very ﬁrst move of the new Republican Senate is an attempt to push US
President Barack Obama into approving the Keystone XL pipeline,
which would carry oil from Canadian
tar sands. After all, debts must be paid,
and the oil and gas industry – which
gave 87 percent of its 2014 campaign
contributions to the GOP – expects to
be rewarded for its support.
But why is this environmentally
troubling project an urgent priority in a
time of plunging world oil prices? Well,
the party line, from people like Mitch
McConnell, the new Senate majority
leader, is that it’s all about jobs. And
it’s true: Building Keystone XL could
slightly increase US employment. In
fact, it might replace almost 5 percent of
the jobs America has lost because of destructive cuts in federal spending, which
were in turn the direct result of Republican blackmail over the debt ceiling.
Oh, and don’t tell me that the cases
are completely different. You can’t consistently claim that pipeline spending
creates jobs while government spending doesn’t.
Let’s back up for a minute and discuss economic principles.
For more than seven years – ever
since the Bush-era housing and debt
bubbles burst – the US economy has
suffered from inadequate demand. Total
spending just hasn’t been enough to fully
employ the nation’s resources. In such
an environment, anything that increases spending creates jobs. And if private
spending is depressed, a temporary rise
in public spending can and should take
its place. That’s why a great majority of
economists believe that the Obama stimulus did, in fact, reduce the unemployment rate compared with what it would
have been without that stimulus.
From the beginning, however, Republican leaders have held the opposite view, insisting that we should slash
public spending in the face of high unemployment. And they’ve gotten their
way: The years after 2010, when Republicans took control of the House,
were marked by an unprecedented decline in real government spending per
capita, which levelled off only in 2014.
The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that this kind of ﬁscal austerity in
a depressed economy is destructive; if
the economic news has been better lately, it’s probably in part because of the
fact that federal, state and local govern-
So what should be done
about Keystone XL? If you
believe that it would be
environmentally damaging – which I do – then
you should be against it,
and you should ignore the
claims about job creation.
ments have ﬁnally stopped cutting. And
spending cuts have, in particular, cost
a lot of jobs. When the Congressional
Budget Ofﬁce was asked how many jobs
would be lost because of the sequester –
the big cuts in federal spending that Republicans extracted in 2011 by threatening to push America into default – its
best estimate was 900,000. And that’s
only part of the total loss.
Needless to say, the guilty parties
here will never admit that they were
wrong. But if you look at their behaviour closely, you see clear signs that
they don’t really believe in their own
doctrine.
Consider, for example, the case of
military spending. When it comes to
possible cuts in defence contracts, politicians who loudly proclaim that every
dollar the government spends comes at
the expense of the private sector suddenly begin talking about all the jobs
that will be destroyed. They even begin
talking about the multiplier effect, as
reduced spending by defence workers
leads to job losses in other industries.
This is the phenomenon former Representative Barney Frank dubbed “weaponised Keynesianism.”
And the argument being made for
Keystone XL is very similar; call it “carbonised Keynesianism.” Yes, approving the pipeline would mobilise some
money that would otherwise have sat
idle, and in so doing create some jobs –
42,000 during the construction phase,
according to the most widely cited estimate. (Once completed, the pipeline
would employ only a few dozen workers.) But government spending on
roads, bridges and schools would do the
same thing.
And the job gains from the pipeline
would, as I said, be only a tiny fraction
– less than 5 percent – of the job losses
from sequestration, which in turn are
only part of the damage done by spending cuts in general. If McConnell and
company really believe that we need
more spending to create jobs, why not
support a push to upgrade America’s
crumbling infrastructure?
So what should be done about Keystone XL? If you believe that it would
be environmentally damaging – which
I do – then you should be against it, and
you should ignore the claims about job
creation. The numbers being thrown
around are tiny compared with the
country’s overall work force. And in any
case, the jobs argument for the pipeline
is basically a sick joke coming from people who have done all they can to destroy American jobs – and are now employing the very arguments they used to
ridicule government job programmes to
justify a big giveaway to their friends in
the fossil fuel industry.
Bloggers’ Borough
Biopsies Are Safe
Winter Storm Brings Misery To Gaza’s Most Vulnerable
C
ANCER biopsies do not cause the disease to spread, says a new study that
dispels a common myth.
“This study shows that physicians
and patients should feel reassured that a
biopsy is very safe,” said study senior investigator Dr Michael Wallace, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at
the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
The study included more than 2,000
people with pancreatic cancer. Those
who received a biopsy using a technique
called ﬁne needle aspiration lived longer and had better outcomes than those
who did not have a biopsy.
“We do millions of biopsies of cancer a year in the US, but one or two case
studies have led to this common myth
that biopsies spread cancer,” Wallace
said in a clinic news release.
The ﬁndings in the January 9 online
issue of the journal Gut are likely to apply to other cancers because ﬁne needle
aspiration is used to biopsy many types
of tumours, Wallace said. In ﬁne needle
aspiration, a thin, hollow needle is used
to extract cells from a tumour.
MAJD AL WAHEIDI AND
JODI RUDOREN | NYT SYNDICATE
A
S a winter storm continued to
pound the Middle East, thousands
of Gaza residents whose homes were
destroyed or damaged in last summer’s war with Israel struggled with
the harsh weather for a third day, and
a 4-month-old girl from the southern
part of the territory died on Friday
from complications caused by the bitter cold, Palestinian health ofﬁcials
and relatives said.
The baby, Rahaf Abu Assi, had been
sick all winter, living in a house in Al
Zanna, near Khan Younis, that lacked
doors, windows or toilets, according to
her uncle. He said the house had been
hit by Israeli bombs and shells.
Ashraf al Qedra, a spokesman for
the Gaza Health Ministry, said Rahaf was taken to a hospital on Thursday suffering from clogged bronchial
tubes, and died at dawn on Friday.
“Our life is tragic,” the uncle, Yousri Abu Assi, said in a telephone interview. He said the family covered the
window openings with plastic sheets
and sometimes “burns paper and coal
inside the destroyed house to bring
some warmth.”
“The cold stole Rahaf from her
mother,” he added of the baby, the
youngest of the family’s 10 children.
“Her heart is broken.”
The storm has wrought death and
misery among the most vulnerable,
with high winds, heavy rain and snowfall across a region where snow is rarely seen.
A spokesman for the Jordanian
Interior Ministry said that a Syrian
woman and her 12-year-old grandson,
who had recently left the Zaatari refugee camp, died on Friday after inhaling fumes from a gas heater in their
apartment, and that three other members of their family were hospitalised
in critical condition.
Three Syrians, including an 8-yearold boy, died on Wednesday while trying to cross into Lebanon. Al-Jazeera
broadcast a video of twin babies who
died from the cold in Douma, a besieged area in the Damascus suburbs
held by insurgents. The babies were
being buried in a cardboard box.
C ROBINSON
“In 2014, Denmark generated an
astonishing 39% of its electricity
from wind power! #ClimateHope”
Al Gore
GET HEARD!
Health is Wealth
HEALTHDAY NEWS | NYT SYNDICATE
THIS is with reference to the story on
Sri Lanka’s presidential election. Mahinda Rajapakshe’s craze for power
was revealed when he ran for the third
time… and lost. Further, even the
Singhalese were fed up with his style
of running the government. He troubled those who were straightforward,
thereby seemingly acting against him
in the executive and the judiciary. The
press freedom in Sri Lanka was at its
low during his tenure. Though the
greatest of his achievements was the
annihilation of the LTTE, the Tamils
in Sri Lanka were not properly rehabilitated after the end of the protracted civil war. He appointed his relatives
for all important posts and most of
them were haughty. All these worked
against him in the election. But, he
felt that he would eventually win as
he did away with the LTTE whom the
Singhalese abhorred. Contrary to his
expectations, even the majority community did not want him to continue.
It may be recalled that he called for
the snap polls much before the end of
his second term. Had he remained in
power for two terms and not contested the election for the third time, he
would have earned the respect of the
island people.
Aid workers in Lebanon and Jordan scrambled to distribute thousands
of blankets, warm clothes, heaters and
other supplies to Syrian refugees and
others living in tents and makeshift
shelters.
In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians
had to evacuate ﬂooded homes in the
southern cities of Rafah and Khan
Younis, according to Ma’an, an independent news agency. Seven people
were injured on Thursday by roof collapses in the area, and two more were
hurt when high winds toppled a water
tank into their home.
Scores of families in the destroyed
village of Khuza’a packed sandbags
around the leaky caravans where they
have been living for several months as
they wait for stalled reconstruction efforts to begin.
“We woke up to ﬁnd our blankets
full of water,” one caravan resident,
Abu Bassam Najjar, said in a telephone
interview. “These caravans are useless. Our ofﬁcials launch wars and then
leave us outdoors. While we are dying
slowly, our ofﬁcials are sitting inside
their homes in front of ﬁreplaces.”
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10
Friday, January 16, 2015
Gulf / Middle East
UN tells Israel to
unlock Palestinian
tax payments
AFP
UNITED NATIONS
THE United Nations on
Thursday called on Israel to
unlock millions of dollars in
taxes owed to the Palestinian Authority that were withheld after it decided to join
the International Criminal
Court.
A senior UN ofﬁcial told
the UN Security Council that
the freeze of about $127 million imposed on January 3
was in violation of the Oslo
peace agreement between
Israel and the Palestinians.
“We call on Israel to immediately resume the transfer of tax revenues,” said UN
Assistant
Secretary-General Jens Anders ToybergFrandzen.
The United States and
the European Union have
criticised Israel’s retaliatory
move in response to the Palestinian application to join
the ICC, which could investigate war crimes complaints
against Israel.
The 15-member council
was meeting to discuss the
Middle East after rejecting
in a vote last month a resolution on Palestinian statehood that had been strongly opposed by the United
States.
The UN ofﬁcial told the
council that recent developments had further reduced
prospects for reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The Palestinians and
Israel are “now engaged in
a downward spiral of actions and counter-actions,”
warned Toyberg-Frandzen.
The council was meeting
as Arab foreign ministers
gathered in Cairo decided to
make another attempt to win
approval for a UN resolution
on ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
Several Arab countries
were tasked with what the
Arab league described as
“the necessary communications and consultations to
submit a new Arab proposal
to the Security Council.”
The failed Arab-backed
resolution set the end of 2017
as the deadline for a full Israeli withdrawal that would
pave the way to Palestinian
statehood.
The US and Australia voted against but China, France
and Russia were among
eight countries that backed
the resolution, leaving it just
one vote short of the nine required for adoption.
French FM to visit Morocco
to temper row over militants
REUTERS
PARIS
FRANCE’S foreign minister
will soon travel to Morocco to
temper a row with its former
colony almost a year after it
suspended judicial cooperation between the two states
leaving gaps in security coordination over Islamic militants.
The rare diplomatic spat
between Paris and Rabat ﬁrst
broke out last February af-
ter French police went to the
Moroccan Embassy in Paris
seeking to question the head
of the domestic intelligence
service (DRT) over torture
allegations.
That followed lawsuits
ﬁled against him in France
by French-Moroccan activists. The dispute prompted
Morocco to suspend judicial
cooperation with France, a
move that activities such as
joint investigations, prisoner
transfers and extraditions.
ATTIYAH MEETS ABBAS
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (right) with Qatari Foreign Minister HE Dr Khalid bin Mohammed al Attiyah in Cairo on Thursday. (AFP)
Arab states endorse new
Palestinian move at UN
REUTERS
CAIRO
ARAB foreign ministers on
Thursday endorsed a Palestinian plan to resubmit a
draft resolution to the UN
Security Council calling for
Israel to withdraw from occupied territories by late 2017.
The United States helped
defeat a similar draft resolution in a Security Council
vote on December 30. Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas has said he hoped to
revive the resolution.
The earlier Palestinian
resolution called for negotiations to be based on territo-
rial lines that existed before
Israel captured the West
Bank, East Jerusalem and
the Gaza Strip in the 1967
Middle East war.
It also called for a peace
deal within 12 months.
The Palestinians, frustrated by the protracted
impasse in peace talks with
Israel, have sought to internationalize the issue by
seeking UN membership and
recognition of statehood via
membership in international
organisations.
Israel, which pulled
troops and settlers out of
the Gaza Strip in 2005,
has said its eastern border
divisions, a senior UN ofﬁcial
said on Thursday.
One day after the failed
Security Council bid, Abbas
signed on to 20 international
agreements, including the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The move angered Israel
and the United States, and
prompted warnings from
Western states against escalation.
In response, Israel decided to withhold critical tax
revenue and seek ways to
bring war crimes prosecutions against Palestinians,
a move that drew Western
condemnation also.
would be indefensible if it
withdrew completely from
the West Bank.
Jordan, which controlled
the West Bank and East Jerusalem until 1967, remains
a member of the Security
Council while several other
countries with revolving
membership were replaced
over the New Year.
The Palestinians hope
these states will be more sympathetic to their resolution
demanding an Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian independence by 2017, although
the veto-wielding United
States would be all but certain to vote “No” again.
A committee including
Jordan will be formed to
make consultations to mobilise international support for
the -reintroduction of a new
resolution, Arab foreign ministers said in a statement after their extraordinary meeting in Cairo.
The resolution will call for
an end to the Israeli occupation and the completion of a
ﬁnal settlement, it said
UN
Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon is alarmed that
Israelis and Palestinians are
engaged in a downward spiral of actions and counter-actions and calls on both sides
not to exacerbate existing
Iran N-talks
‘in decisive
phase’, says
Germany FM
Iran reformists in
landmark meeting
ahead of elections
AFP
BERLIN
AFP
(File photo) A Palestinian journalist being given assistance after being injured during clashes following a protest in West Bank city
of Nablus in 2013. (AFP)
2014 ‘bloodiest’ year for media in Palestine
AFP
GAZA CITY
LAST year was the deadliest
ever for journalists working
in the Palestinian territories,
a Gaza-based watchdog said
on Thursday, months after
a bloody war in the besieged
enclave.
“2014 was a black year
for freedom of the press
in Palestine... and it was
the worst and bloodiest,”
the Gaza Centre for Press
Freedom said in its annual
report.
The report accused Israel
of committing 295 separate
“violations of press freedom”
across the occupied Palestinian territories.
These resulted in the
deaths of 17 journalists
during the 50-day Gaza
war in July-August, including that of an Italian photographer working for As-
sociated Press.
Israel also arrested or
detained an unspeciﬁed
number of journalists, denied freedom of movement
to local media workers wanting to leave the blockaded
Gaza Strip, and partially
or completely destroyed 19
buildings housing editorial
operations during its bombardment of the territory
during the conﬂict.
The Palestinian au-
thorities also committed
82 violations of press freedom, including arresting or
summoning 28 journalists,
and injuring or assaulting
26 more.
The conﬂict between Israel and Hamas militants
in densely-populated Gaza,
home to 1.8 million people,
killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 73
on the Israeli side, mostly
soldiers.
GERMANY’S foreign minister said on Thursday no more
deadlines must be missed in
the Iran nuclear negotiations which had entered “a
decisive phase”, speaking at
a meeting with his Iranian
counterpart.
“We must now use the
newly opened time window,
we must leave nothing undone to reach the solution
that has eluded us in recent years,” Frank-Walter
Steinmeier said before the
talks with Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif.
In a brief joint press appearance with Zarif, Steinmeier said “we probably
share the understanding that
this is now the decisive phase
of the negotiations”.
Iran and major world
powers have given themselves until late June to reach
a comprehensive agreement
that would prevent Tehran
from developing a nuclear
bomb, a goal it denies, in return for an easing of global
sanctions.
Sunday will see talks in
Geneva between Iran and
the so-called P5+1 group -the United States, Britain,
China, France, Germany and
Russia -- seeking to break a
stalemate that has seen two
earlier deadlines pass without an accord.
TEHRAN
IRANIAN reformists held
their ﬁrst public meeting
since June 2009 on Thursday to press their political
comeback and wrest back
control of the conservativedominated parliament in
next year’s polls.
The conservative establishment had cracked down
hard on reformists following
the disputed June 2009 reelection of hardline former
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Reformists contested the
vote and many of their leaders were arrested and jailed,
including two presidential
candidates and opposition
leaders Hossein Mousavi
and Mehdi Karoubi who
have been under house arrest since 2011.
The following year most
of the reformists boycotted
the polls in protest against
the arrests.
The 2013 election victory
of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who pledged
greater political and cultural
openness, marked the return
of reformists to mainstream
politics.
Former moderate president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his successor
Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, helped Rouhani to
secure victory by obtaining
the withdrawal of reformist
candidate Mohammad Reza
Aref.
Thursday’s meeting was
organised by the council for
coordinating the reformist
front, a coalition of some 20
parties, and brought together about 200 delegates to
chart the movement’s future
course of action.
“Our objective must be
to wrest the majority in parliament. We have no other
choice. We must set aside
differences that threaten to
weaken us,” Aref told the
gathering.
Rafsanjani and Khatami
did not attend the meeting,
instead sending messages
of support calling on moderate parties and reformist
groups to close ranks ahead
of the March 2016 legislative polls. “I salute the meeting of reformist and moderate parties... who are the true
heirs of the thought of imam
(Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini,” Rafsanjani said in his
message, in reference to the
late founder of the Islamic
republic.
He urged delegates to
defend “the rights of the nation, including those of the
various ethnic and religious
(groups) and of women” and
stressed the “will and choice
of the people must be respected”.
Gulf / Middle East
Friday, January 16, 2015
Hezbollah chief warns Israel of
retaliation over Syria strikes
AFP
BEIRUT
HEZBOLLAH chief Hassan
Nasrallah has threatened to
retaliate against Israel for
repeated strikes on Syria,
in an television interview to
be broadcast on Thursday
night.
Nasrallah told Beirutbased Al-Mayadeen that his
Iran-backed Shiite movement was well armed and
always ready to fight Israel,
according to excerpts of the
interview issued ahead of
its broadcast.
A key ally of Syrian
President Bashar al Assad,
Nasrallah said that Israeli
strikes on Syria “target
the whole of the resistance axis”, which includes
Hezbollah, Damascus and
Tehran.
“The repeated bombings
that struck several targets
in Syria are a major violation, and we consider that
any strike against Syria is a
strike against the whole of
the resistance axis, not just
against Syria,” he said.
“The axis is capable of
responding. This can happen any time.”
The Israeli air force has
carried out several raids
against targets in Syria,
including depots storing
weapons meant for Hezbollah, since the conflict there
Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, delivers a televised address at an undisclosed location in Lebanon recently. (AFP)
started nearly four years
ago.
The most recent strike
was in December, when
Israeli warplanes struck
weapons warehouses near
Damascus, according to
the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights monitoring
group.
Israel has never confirmed it carried out the
strikes, but it says it has a
policy of preventing arms
transfers to militant groups
including Hezbollah.
Israeli media said, however, after the December
strikes that the air force
had targeted arms convoys
or depots of Iranian-made
rockets.
Hezbollah has sent
thousands of fighters into
Syria to defend Assad’s regime.
In 2006, Hezbollah and
Israel fought a devastating
war that killed some 1,200
Lebanese -- most of them
civilians -- and 160 Israelis
-- most of them soldiers.
In Thursday’s interview,
Nasrallah said his movement was ready to fight a
new war against Israel in
Lebanon and renewed a
threat to invade the Galilee
region of northern Israel.
Hezbollah
fighters
“must be prepared”, he
said.
“When the resistance
(Hezbollah) leadership...
asks you (fighters)... to enter into Galilee, that means
the resistance must be
ready to enter into Galilee
and to go even beyond the
Galilee.”
Asked about Hezbollah’s arsenal, Nasrallah
said the group had “all
(the weapons) you can
imagine... and in great
quantities”.
He added: “We are now
stronger than we ever were
as a resistance movement.”
Canadian minister 2 Italian aid workers held
hopes for Jazeera
scribe’s release soon hostage in Syria freed
REUTERS
CAIRO
CANADIAN Foreign Minister John Baird said after
“constructive” talks in Cairo
on Thursday he hoped that
a Canadian journalist working for Al Jazeera television
could be released before long
from an Egyptian prison.
Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy, Egyptian Baher Mohamed and Australian
Peter Greste were sentenced
last June to between seven
and 10 years for spreading
lies to help a “terrorist organisation”, a reference to
Egypt’s outlawed Muslim
Brotherhood.
Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah al Sisi said in November the issue of a presidential
pardon was under discussion. Egypt’s High Court ordered a retrial of the men on
January 1.
Baird sounded cautiously
optimistic after talks with his
Egyptian counterpart Sameh
Shukri. “I would characterize
the meeting as constructive
and worthwhile, and we look
forward to resolving that issue. It’s still not resolved today, but that’s why I came,”
he told a news conference.
“This is a complex case ... The
minister understands how
important this is to me, to all
Canadians. I thought today’s
meeting was a very constructive step on the road to a successful resolution.”
Rights groups and Western governments have criticized the detentions. Al
Jazeera says the trial was
ﬂawed and has demanded
their release.
Baird seemed hopeful
that Fahmy could be released
soon. “We’re working toward
a constructive resolution on
that sooner rather than later,” he said. Fahmy’s ﬁancee,
Marwa Omara, said he had
signed documents required
for his deportation to Canada and that she was told the
process was in its ﬁnal stages.
“I had high expectations
that Mohamed might be released during Mr Baird’s
visit, but I understand it’s a
big case and it’s going to take
some time,” she said.
Libya plane attacks trawler
carrying gasoline to Benghazi
REUTERS
BENGHAZI
A Libyan warplane attacked a ﬁshing trawler carrying gasoline to the port of
Benghazi this week after the
internationally recognised
government suspected it of
supplying Islamist militants,
a military ofﬁcial said on
Thursday.
Libya’s recognised government, which has been
driven out of the capital, is
locked in escalating conﬂit
with a self-declared government of a faction known
as Libya Dawn that seized
Tripoli last summer.
There were no details
about the ownership or origin
of the vessel which military
ofﬁcial Mohamed Hejazi said
was attacked on Tuesday off
the coast of the eastern city
of Benghazi, which has seen
heavy ﬁghting for months
between
pro-government
forces and Islamist militants.
Forces from the recognised government carried out
an air strike on a Greek-operated oil tanker on January
4, killing two crewmen. after
claiming it was acting suspiciously. The United Nations
on Thursday held a second
day of talks aimed at ending
Libya’s crisis.
REUTERS
ROME
TWO Italian aid workers
taken hostage in Syria ﬁve
months ago have been released and will soon return
home, Italy’s government
said on Thursday.
“Vanessa Marzullo and
Greta Ramelli are free and
will soon return to Italy,”
read a tweet from Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi’s ofﬁce. Renzi’s spokesman also
conﬁrmed the news.
No details about their release were provided. Some
Italian media reported that
the two young women would
be ﬂown out of Turkey on
Friday.
In August, Italy’s Foreign
Ministry said the pair were
taken hostage while seeking
to provide healthcare assistance in the embattled northern city of Aleppo.
Two weeks ago, their captors released a threatening
video online demanding that
the government intervene
to bring them home. The
video said they were being
Italian nationals Vanessa Marzullo and Greta Ramelli at an undisclosed location. (AFP)
detained by al Qaeda’s Syria
wing, the Nusra Front.
“We are in big danger and
we could be killed. The government and its militaries
are responsible (for) our
lives,” one of the women said
in English, appearing to read
from a statement.
Nusra Front and the militant Islamic State group have
held groups of Westerners
hostage in Syria, which has
descended into a splintered
and prolonged civil war.
Islamic State beheaded
several male hostages including aid workers and
journalists in 2014. Nusra
Front released other hostages last year, including a
group of Greek Orthodox
nuns in March and a US
writer in August.
11
UNHCR
urges Saudi
to stop
flogging of
blogger
REUTERS
GENEVA
THE United Nations
High Commissioner for
Human Rights (UNHCR)
called on Saudi Arabia
on Thursday to stop the
serial ﬂogging of an atheist and civil rights blogger sentenced to receive
1,000 lashes over an extended period.
Raif Badawi, who set
up a website called “Free
Saudi Liberals”, received
50 lashes after Friday
prayers last week and
global rights groups say
he is expected to be submitted to a second round
on Friday.
“Flogging is in my
view at very least a form
of cruel and inhuman
punishment,” High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al
Hussein said in a statement from his Geneva
ofﬁce. As such, it was
banned under international rights law, he
added.
“I appeal to the King
of Saudi Arabia to exercise his power to halt
the public ﬂogging by
pardoning Mr Badawi,
and to urgently review
this type of extraordinary harsh penalty,”
said Zeid, a former Jordanian diplomat.
Badawi was arrested
in June 2012 and prosecutors originally asked
that he be tried for apostasy. But a judge dismissed that charge and
he was given 10 years
jail and a ﬁne of 1 million
Saudi rials ($267,666),
as well as the lashes, on
charges including cybercrime after an earlier
sentence of seven years
and 600 lashes was
found too lenient.
The UN statement
said Badawi was “convicted for peacefully
exercising his right to
freedom of opinion and
expression” in a series of
prosecutions of civil society activists, including
his lawyer and brotherin-law, Waleed Abu al
Khair. On Monday, the
statement added, an
original sentence of 10
years against al-Khair on charges of offending
the judiciary and founding an unauthorised organisation - was extended on prosecution appeal
from 10 to 15 years in jail.
In the past year Saudi
authorities have been
criticised by international rights groups for
jailing several prominent
activists on charges ranging from setting up an
illegal organisation to
damaging the reputation
of the country.
Algeria finds body of beheaded Frenchman
AFP
ALGIERS
(File photo) French tourist Pierre Herve Gourdel (right) at an unknown location in Algeria. (EPA)
ALGERIAN troops found the
body of French tourist Herve
Gourdel, security sources
said on Thursday, months after he was beheaded by jihadists demanding that France
halt air strikes against the
Islamic State group.
The body was found buried without its head in Akbil,
where Gourdel was abducted
by the Jund al Khilafa (Soldiers of the Caliphate) group,
the sources said.
The army had mobilised 3,000 troops to ﬁnd
the 55-year-old mountain
guide’s body and launched
a new search operation on
Wednesday.
Excavations were carried
out in Akbil and in the neighbouring town of Abu Youssef
following a tip-off by an Islamist detainee, a security
source said.
The search was headed by
an elite army unit and aided
by sniffer dogs.
Police experts arrived at
the burial site to conduct genetic tests to formally identify the body and Algeria’s
senior terrorism prosecutor,
as well as the judge presiding over Gourdel’s case, were
also at the scene.
The military had been
forced to bring in munitions
experts as the area around
the grave had been rigged
with explosives, the source
said.
Gourdel was abducted
by Jund al-Khilafa on September 21, while hiking in a
national park that was once a
draw for tourists but became
a sanctuary for Islamists.
He was beheaded days
later in a video posted online after France rejected the
jihadists’ demand to halt air
strikes against the Islamic
State group in Iraq and Syria.
Jund al Khilafa had earlier pledged allegiance to IS.
12
India
Friday, January 16, 2015
Pakistan continues
to support proxy
war in J&K, says
Army chief
PTI
NEW DELHI
THE “fragile peace” in
Jammu and Kashmir was
achieved at a great cost and
now has to be maintained
by building on the gains,
Army Chief General Dalbir Singh said on Thursday
even as he accused Pakistan
of continuing to support
proxy war in the state.
The handsome voter
turnout in the justconcluded election in
the state -- the highest ever for Assembly
elections -- reﬂects
the trust of the people in the security
system, Dalbir Singh
said.
On the occasion of 67th
Army Day, Singh said that
the past year was full of
challenges for the army as
it was engaged in effectively
countering the “external
threats” over vast land borders.
It also efﬁciently handled internal security challenges and met its international commitments under
United Nations,” he said.
“The spectrum of operations has signiﬁcantly increased over time,” he said,
noting that security challenges have grown and become more complex.
Referring to J&K, the
Army Chief said that the
security situation there,
though stable, requires consolidation.
The handsome voter
turnout in the just-concluded election in the state
-- the highest ever for Assembly elections -- reﬂects
the trust of the people in the
security system, he said.
On the challenge posed
by terrorism, Singh warned
that “the desperate strikes
by the terrorists recently in
our country as well as in Pakistan... are a grim reminder that the terrorist infrastructure across the border
remains intact and Pakistan’s support to the proxy
war continues unabated”.
The Army Chief added,
“This fragile peace in J&K
has been achieved at great
cost, together we need to
build on our gains.”
On the situation along
the border with China,
Singh said that due to an
improvement in ties, “mutual trust has increased”.
He said there has been
increased interaction between the two forces, including border-post and
ﬂag meetings.
The Army Chief also
said that the situation in
the North-East was “peaceful and under control”.
However, the inﬂux of
illegal migrants, inter-tribal
rivalry, slow pace of development and presence of
external support structures
remain a potent challenge,
he said.
“We need to keep our
ears to the ground to foresee any untoward development,” the Army Chief said.
Singh said that achieving greater synergy in operations with the navy and
the air force remains a fundamental objective for ensuring success on the battleﬁeld.
“We are working towards greater integration.
There is joint review underway to enhance the operational capability of our
island territories in keeping
with the evolving geo- strategic environment,” he said.
He said that the army
needs to focus on war preparation, which is its “primary task”.
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
National BJP President Amit Shah presents a bouquet to former IPS officer Kiran Bedi to welcome her into the party as Union Minister Arun Jaitley and Delhi BJP President
Satish Upadhyay look on during a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday. (PTI)
Ex-IPS officer Kiran Bedi joins
BJP, to contest Delhi poll
IANS
NEW DELHI
CELEBRATED former IPS
ofﬁcer Kiran Bedi, who
parted ways with AAP leader
Arvind Kejriwal around two
years ago, joined the BJP, on
Thursday saying Delhi needs
a stable and honest government.
At an event attended by
Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and Finance
Minister Arun Jaitley, she
also lavished praise on Prime
Minister Narendra Modi for
his “inspirational leadership”.
Bedi, India’s ﬁrst woman
police ofﬁcer, and Kejriwal
were partners in social activist Anna Hazare’s anticorruption campaign which
shook India in 2011, eventually leading to the birth of the
Aam Aadmi Party. Bedi and
Kejriwal later fell out.
Even as Kejriwal took a
more and more stridently
anti-Congress, anti-BJP line,
Bedi began to bat for the BJP
and Prime Minister Modi.
Addressing the media
after joining the party formally by dialling a toll-free
number, started for the
party’s mass membership
drive, the 65-year-old Bedi
expressed her gratitude for
Modi.
“I’m grateful to the prime
minister. I am here because
of his (Modi) inspirational
leadership,” she said, speaking in Hindi and in a style
that indicated she was set to
spearhead the BJP’s battle in
the capital.
She credited the prime
minister for pushing her to
embrace political work from
just being a social activist.
“If people like me have
MAGH BIHU FESTIVAL
Villagers with their fishing traps take part in a community fishing on the eve of the annual Magh Bihu festival in Morigaon
district of Assam recently. The festival marks the end of the winter harvesting and is celebrated on the first day of ‘Magh’
month of Assamese calendar. (EPA)
changed, I think crores
would have changed. A new
faith has taken place after
May (2014)... I have been
inspired. I devoted myself to
the country since 1970 when
I began teaching and joined
the Indian Police Service
Shah said Bedi would
very much contest
the February 7 election but said the
chief ministerial
candidate would be
decided only after
the results become
known.
in 1972. I have 40 years of
administrative experience.
That’s what I will give to
Delhi.”
“Delhi needs a strong,
clear-headed, stable, experienced government.”
A former tennis player
whose innings in Delhi Police
is still widely remembered,
Bedi said no evil would be
tolerated in the city. She insisted that she knew how to
get work done. “I’m in a mission mode.”
Bedi took voluntary retirement in 2007 - 13 years
after she won the Ramon
Magsaysay Award for government work - when a junior ofﬁcer was made the Delhi Police chief bypassing her.
She promised to make
New Delhi - a teeming city
of over 17 million - the No1
capital in the world. “It’s a
dream and we will realise it
together. I’m so happy the
BJP has given me an opportunity to give to Delhi whatever I have.”
Shah and Jaitley said
Bedi’s entry was bound to
strength the BJP, which in
December 2013 failed to get
a majority in the 70-member assembly because of the
AAP’s stunning debut performance when it took 28
seats.
Shah said Bedi would
very much contest the February 7 election but said the
chief ministerial candidate
would be decided only after
the results become known.
“She will certainly contest the election. Who will
be the chief minister will be
decided by the parliamentary
board,” he said.
In an obvious reference to
Kejriwal, Shah quickly added
that Bedi had not joined the
BJP to contest against “any
particular person”.
Earlier in the day, there
was intense speculation that
former AAP leader Shazia
Ilmi and actor-turned-politician Jaya Prada were also set
to join the BJP.
Three Bodo militants held
over Assam killings
IANS
GUWAHATI
Media censorship is impossible: Jaitley
PTI
NEW DELHI
CENSORSHIP of information
in the present age is “an impossibility”, Information and
Broadcasting Minister Arun
Jaitley said on Thursday but
observed that aberrations like
‘paid news’ are likely to creep
in when news organisations
do not have “realistic” ﬁnancial models.
He said the deﬁnition of
news and the behaviour of
consumer have changed with
technological advancement
and “something that camera
cannot capture is hardly news
these days”.
Articulating his views on
the media scene at a function
here, Jaitley said, “One of the
worries is that the ﬁnancial
model for all (news) organisations must be a realistic model. Because if the ﬁnancial
model is not a realistic model,
then imperfections will enter. And these imperfections
will lead to aberrations. Paid
news is one such aberration.”
Paid news has been a concern
about which even the Election Commission has been
looking at ways to deal with.
At the same time, he made it
clear that media censorship
in the current age was not
possible. “Fortunately, there
are very few dictatorships in
the world. But even if there
were, censorship, because of
technology itself would be an
impossibility,” he said. Jait-
ley, who also holds Finance
Ministry portfolio, said that
in this age of competition and
to gain more eyeballs, it may
seem that quality is being
compromised.
However, he added that
he had faith that in the long
run, the best will succeed.
He said the rapid advances
of technology in broadcasting sector have brought along
their own challenges and it is
difﬁcult to predict the future
horizons of this evolution.
THE NIA on Thursday said
that it had arrested three
Bodo militants from Nagaland for their alleged involvement in the massacre
of adivasis in Assam.
A statement from the
National
Investigation
Agency said the operation
against the anti-talk faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland
(NDFB) was carried out
along with Nagaland Police
on Wednesday.
The three NDFB leaders
- Ajoi Basumatary alias B
Buhum (32), Dilip Basumatary alias Baisa alias Lambu
(40) and Khamrei Basumatary alias Udla (35) - were
arrested from Kohima in
Nagaland.
The killings in Sonitpur
district on December 23
were carried out under the
direction and leadership of
Ajoi Basumatary, the NIA
said. Dilip Basumatary “is
also a dreaded terrorist responsible for coordination
activities of the NDFB in
the reserved forest areas of
Assam along the India-Bhutan and Assam-Arunachal
Pradesh border”, it said.
The statement said he
was also “actively involved
in the conspiracy” behind
the recent killings in Assam. The NIA said Khamrei
Basumatary was involved
in the killings in Kokrajhar
on December 23, and also
National Investigation Agency Chief Sharad Kumar visits the
affected areas of Assam where Bodo militants killed many innocent people at Dhekiajuli near Tezpur recently. (PTI)
in Baksa district in May last
year. Seven mobile phones
and documents related
to the NDFB were seized
from them. The army’s
Red Horns division had on
Wednesday arrested a senior NDFB leader from Goalpara district.
The security forces had
recently launched a series
of operations against the
NDFB, and the NIA had registered four cases over the
recent violence. NIA Director General Sharad Kumar
also visited the violence affected areas. Over 30 Bodo
militants have so far been
arrested in the last 10 days
during the intensiﬁed operation along the Bhutan
border in Kokrajhar and
Chirang districts.
The NDFB killed over
75 people in three districts
- Kokrajhar, Sonitpur and
Chirang - on December 23.
The violence also displaced
over two lakh people across
the three districts and
Udalguri.
India
News
in brief
Pushkar’s murder
probe to end soon:
Police
Bengal minister
quits cabinet,
joins BJP
NEW Delhi The probe into
the murder of Congress
MP Shashi Tharoor’s wife
Sunanda Pushkar will soon
reach its conclusion, Delhi
Police chief B S Bassi said
on Thursday.
Bassi said many people have been questioned
and the remaining will be
questioned in the next
couple of days.
“Our SIT (Special
Investigation Team) is
investigating the case and
will reach its conclusion
soon. They are looking into
each and every aspect.
They have already
questioned several people
and the remaining will be
questioned in the next
couple of days,” Bassi
said.
Asked whether Tharoor
will be questioned, Bassi
said: “I will not take any
specific name. All those
relevant will be called for
questioning.” Bassi said
the process of sending
Pushkar’s viscera abroad
for ascertaining the poisonous substance was on.
KOLKATA Delivering a
fresh blow to the already
beleaguered Trinamaool
Congress ahead of the
Bangaon Lok Sabha bypolls, the BJP fuelled its big
ambitions in West Bengal
on Thursday by roping in
influential minister Manjul
Krishna Thakur from Chief
Minister Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet. Thakur, who
held the refugee, relief and
rehabilitation portfolio, quit
the ministry and joined
the Bharatiya Janata Party
alongside his son panchayat functionary Subrata
Thakur, dubbing Banerjee
“unprincipled” and the Trinamool unfit for any “good
and educated person”.
The Trinamool, already
reeling under the impact of
the Saradha scandal probe
that has sent four of its
party leaders to jail with
several others facing grilling from central agencies,
reacted by expelling both
the deserters and naming the duo’s bitter rival
Mamata Thakur as party
candidate for Bangaon.
(IANS)
(IANS)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Andhra Pradesh Chief
Minister N Chandrababu Naidu in New Delhi on Thursday. (PTI)
Chandrababu meets Modi, seeks special
category status for Andhra Pradesh
NEW Delhi Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu
Naidu on Thursday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
sought special category status for the state, which was
bifurcated last year. Naidu told reporters that he made a
strong plea to Modi to extend a special package for his
State and special category status for five years. Andhra
Pradesh required greater attention from the Centre as a
“great injustice” was done in the process of bifurcation, the
Chief Minister said. He further demanded special financial
support to create essential facilities in the new capital of
successor state of Andhra Pradesh. Earlier, he urged Union
Water Resources Minister Uma Bharati to complete the Polavaram multi-purpose irrigation project within four years. (PTI)
Kerala to hold Global NRK meet today
to scout for investments
KOCHI The two-day Global NRK Meet that begins here on
Friday will scout for investments from the cash-rich Kerala
diaspora, an official said on Thursday. The meet is being
organised by the department of Non-Resident Keralites’
Affairs (NORKA) and its field agency Norka-Roots.
Norka secretary Rani George said the meet would
promote the state as a perfect destination for investment.
“Currently, the NRKs do not have any negative perception
on the investment climate in Kerala. We want to further
boost their confidence and the meet will be a platform for
them to explore investment opportunities in Kerala and the
government to facilitate it,” said George. A recent report
said foreign remittances to Kerala crossed Rs 72,000
crore in the 2013-14 fiscal. (IANS)
Friday, January 16, 2015
13
US court dismisses lawsuit
against Modi over 2002 riots
REUTERS
NEW YORK
INDIAN Prime Minister
Narendra Modi will not have
to face a US lawsuit claiming
he failed to stop anti-Muslim rioting in 2002, a federal
judge in New York ruled on
Wednesday.
US District Judge Analisa Torres upheld the US
Department of State’s determination that Modi, as a
sitting head of government,
is entitled to immunity
from civil lawsuits ﬁled in
US courts.
The lawsuit, ﬁled in September by an obscure human rights group on the eve
of Modi’s maiden visit to
the United States, made international headlines at the
time, though ofﬁcials from
both countries brushed it off
as a distraction.
Joseph
Whittington,
the president of the human
rights group American Justice Center and a city council
member in Harvey, Illinois,
acknowledged in September that the case had little
chance of succeeding but
said there was victory in
“symbolism.”
Babak Pourtavoosi, a
lawyer who represented the
centre, and Whittington did
not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
The lawsuit was a frivolous attempt to discredit
Prime Minister Narendra Modi honouring young innovators of the Indian Army at a reception on the occasion of Army Day at Army
House in Delhi on Thursday. (PTI)
Modi during his visit to the
United States, said GVL
Narasimha Rao, a spokesman for Modi’s Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP).
“It deserved to be treated
with contempt,” he added.
The judge’s decision
comes ahead of a planned
visit by President Barack
Obama to attend India’s
January 26 Republic Day
celebrations at Modi’s invitation.
The lawsuit claimed
Modi, a Hindu nationalist,
did nothing to halt riots in
his home state of Gujarat
in which more than 1,000
people died in reprisals after
a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on ﬁre.
As a result of the allegations, Modi was denied a US
visa in 2005, but Obama was
quick to invite him to the
United States after Modi’s
election as prime minister.
The September visit was
intended to revitalise the
two countries’ relationship,
which was severely strained
in 2013 when US authorities in New York arrested an
Indian diplomat, Devyani
Khobragade, for underpaying a domestic worker and
subjected her to a strip
search.
The State Department
later granted her immunity
and essentially had her ex-
pelled in a series of diplomatic manoeuvres.
Whittington said last fall
that some of his constituents in Illinois were refugees
from the Gujarat violence,
prompting him to take action against Modi.
The State Department
did not immediately comment on the ruling and an
ofﬁcial of India’s foreign
ministry declined to comment.
BSP kicks off Delhi election Ishrat Jahan case: SC
campaign; to contest all seats dismisses IPS officer
Amin’s bail plea
PTI
LUCKNOW
IANS
KICKING off election campaign for the upcoming
Delhi Vidhan Sabha polls,
BSP president and former
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Thursday
announced that her party
would ﬁeld candidates on all
the 70 seats.
“I am starting the election campaign for the Delhi
Vidhan Sabha elections today... our party would contest all the 70 seats on our
own”, Mayawati said.
The BSP supremo, who
was celebrating her 59th
birthday on Thursday as
‘People’s Welfare Day’, said
after making promises of
“achchey din” in the Lok
Sabha elections, the BJP
and its central government
would now offer allurements
and dreams to mislead the
people of Delhi.
“But Dalits, backward
castes and others should
know that central government, without making arrangement of quotas in the
private sector, have started
giving important works to
the private sector belonging
to capitalists, resulting in
NEW DELHI
BSP supremo Mayawati addresses a press conference on the occasion of her 59th birthday in Lucknow on Thursday. (PTI)
these sections getting very
little beneﬁt of reservation”,
she said.
Training her guns at Aam
Aadmi Party chief Arvind
Kejriwal, Mayawati said, referring to the issue of reservation, “he has gone a step
ahead of BJP and is the votary of ending reservation and
has also given statements in
this direction.”
With BJP and AAP at the
helm, the minorities, including poor Muslims as well as
poor among the upper castes,
would not get their rightful
place in education and jobs,
Mayawati said.
The former Uttar Pradesh
chief minister also lashed
out the Congress for its “inconsistency” on addressing
issues and appealed to the
people of Delhi to elect new
government “intelligently”.
“Congress too has had
an inconsistent attitude on
these issues. I appeal to the
harassed and unhappy people of Delhi on my birthday
to decide on their votes intelligently”, she said and asked
Dalits and backwards not to
fall prey to the drama of BJP,
AAP and Congress.
THE Supreme Court on
Thursday dismissed the
plea by Gujarat cadre IPS
ofﬁcer Narendra Kumar
Amin who is in jail for his
alleged involvement in the
2004 staged shoot-out case
in which Mumbai teenager
Ishrat Jahan and three others were killed.
A bench of Justice V
Gopala Gowda and Justice
C Nagappan in their judgment dismissed the bail plea
by Amin who had contended that he was entitled to
“default bail” as the charge
sheet in his case was not ﬁled
within 90 days as mandated
under the Code of Criminal
Procedure.
Amin had contended that
he was arrested on April 4,
2013 but was produced before the court on April 5 and
the charge sheet was ﬁled on
July 3 - which was one day
beyond the 90 days limit
for ﬁling charge sheet which
entitled him for the grant of
“default bail”.
He had contended that
the failure of the prosecut-
ing agency to ﬁle the charge
sheet in murder cases within
90 days entitles an accused
for a default bail - which he
held as an indivisible right of
the accused.
However, the prosecuting agency Central Bureau
of Investigation (CBI), without disputing the delay in
the ﬁling of the charge sheet
with all accompanying documents, had argued whether
technicality of charge sheet
not being accompanied with
the documents would be sufﬁcient for the grant of bail to
the accused.
Amin’s bail plea was rejected by an additional chief
judicial magistrate on July 9,
2013 and the appeal against
the order dismissed by the
Gujarat High Court on August 16. Ishrat Jahan and
her three alleged associates
Pranesh Gopinath Pillai,
Amjad Ali and Jishan Johar
were killed by Gujarat Police
in a staged-shoot out June
15, 2004. Gujarat Police had
described them as Pakistani
ﬁdayeen who came from
Jammu and Kashmir to assassinate the then chief minister Narendra Modi.
SC to hear Kanimozhi plea Army well prepared to tackle militants: Parrikar
on 2G charges on Feb 26
IANS
NEW DELHI
IANS
NEW DELHI
THE Supreme Court on
Thursday said it would hear
a plea on February 26 by
DMK leader Kanimozhi and
others seeking the quashing of the charges framed
against them by the 2G
court.
An apex court bench
headed by Chief Justice HL
Dattu said the matter would
be taken up for hearing after
senior counsel Harish Salve
mentioned that it was pend-
ing for quite some time.
The apex court has divided into seven categories
The apex court has divided into seven categories the hearing
of the pleas against
the various orders of
the 2G special court.
the hearing of the pleas
against the various orders
of the 2G special court.
The apex court on January 9, 2015 decided one
category of cases when it
quashed the order by the
special court summoning
Sunil Bharti Mittal of Airtel
and Ravikant Ruia of Essar
Group to appear before it to
face trial in alleged irregularities in the allocation of
excess spectrum in 2002.
The court is likely to
hear on February 26 the
plea by Kanimozhi, Shahid
Balwa, Reliance Telecom
Ltd and its senior executives
Surendra Pipara, Gautam
Dosi and Hari Nair seeking quashing of the charges
against them.
INDIA’S security forces are
“well prepared” to tackle any
possible terror strike, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Thursday, in the
wake of intelligence inputs
that attacks may be carried
out on soft targets including
schools in Jammu and Kashmir ahead of US President
Barack Obama’s visit.
Answering queries from
media persons at the Army
Day reception, Parrikar said
militants may do something
to create news. “We are fully
prepared,” he said. He also
spoke about the gunning
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar addresses the 7th International Conference on Aerospace, Defence & Homeland Security in
New Delhi recently. (PTI)
down of ﬁve militants by security forces on Thursday in
Shopian district of Jammu
and Kashmir and said the
gunﬁght was based on good
intelligence inputs.
Lt Gen K H Singh, commander of the army’s 16
Corps, told the media in Nagrota town in Jammu district
on Thursday that militants
will try to sneak into India
and attack schools in Jammu
and Kashmir on the eve of
Obama’s visit for the Republic Day parade.
“Around 200 militants
are waiting in 36 launch
pads across the Pir Panjal
mountain range to inﬁltrate
into the Indian side,” Lt Gen
Singh said. “We have intelligence inputs that militants
might try to attack soft targets, including schools and
civilian areas, ahead of US
President Barack Obama’s
visit,” he said. “There is every possibility that Pakistan
will try to divert some of the
fringe elements of the home
grown terrorist outﬁts to the
Indian side,” he added.
14
Friday, January 16, 2015
Philippines / Southeast Asia
Pope arrives in Philippines amid
massive security operation
Taiwan’s Chu
to take over
ruling party,
seen balancing
China policy
REUTERS
REUTERS
MANILA
TENS of thousands of people
lined the streets of Manila
on Thursday, cheering Pope
Francis as he began his ﬁrst
visit to Asia’s largest Catholic
nation amid one of the biggest security operations in
Philippine history.
The other pontiffs to visit
the Philippines were both
targets of assassination attempts, prompting the deployment of nearly 50,000
soldiers and police in the
capital and in the central
Philippine province of Leyte
for his weekend trip there.
Earlier this week, the
Vatican denied Italian newspaper reports that US and Israeli intelligence ofﬁcials had
informed the Vatican that
there could be an imminent
attack by Islamist militants.
On Wednesday, President Benigno Aquino personally inspected motorcade
routes and public venues,
which were lined with blackand-white concrete barriers
topped by thick wire mesh to
control eager crowds.
Interior
Secretary
Manuel Roxas said Aquino
was willing to serve as Francis’ “personal bodyguard” to
ensure his safety. In a televised address on Monday,
Aquino appealed to Filipinos
to follow security rules after
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Pope Francis waves to the crowd beside Philippine President Benigno Aquino (right) upon his arrival at Villamor Air Base for a state and
pastoral visit in Manila on Thursday. (REUTERS)
two people were killed in a
stampede during a religious
procession on Friday.
Asked if he was nervous
ahead of the Pope’s arrival,
Philippine National Police
(PNP) spokesman Senior Superintendent Wilben Mayor
said: “For a long time now,
Nine Myanmar
nationals charged
in gruesome
Malaysia killings
AFP
KUALA LUMPUR
NINE Myanmar nationals have been charged with
murder in Malaysia over the
gruesome killings of six of
their countrymen that are
suspected to be revenge attacks related to ethnic strife
back home, a media report
said on Thursday.
The men, ranging in age
from 20 to 44, were charged
in the northern state of Penang on Wednesday, but did
not enter pleas, The Star reported. They face the death
penalty if convicted.
Over the past year,
around two dozen murder
cases involving Myanmar nationals have been reported in
Malaysia, mostly in Penang,
where public anxiety has risen as severed body parts and
decapitated corpses repeatedly turned up.
Investigators say several
victims were killed in a single
Penang house designated for
the slaughter.
Police have said they believe the attacks are related
to violent clashes in Myanmar between members of
the Buddhist majority and
its population of Rohingya, a
Muslim minority.
But authorities in Mus-
lim-majority Malaysia have
not yet stated clearly whether the killers were Myanmar
Muslims exacting vengeance
on Buddhists, as is widely
believed.
The violence erupted in
2012 in western Myanmar’s
Rakhine state, leaving about
200 people dead and up to
140,000, mostly Rohingya,
displaced.
With its more developed economy, Malaysia is
a sought-after destination
for Myanmar refugees and
illegal migrants -- both Buddhists and Rohingya -- many
of whom bring along their
sectarian grudges.
Police were earlier reported to have detained several more people in the killings, but their fates were not
clear.
AFP was not immediately
able to reach Penang police
for comment.
Police also are reportedly
still looking for four more
murder suspects.
The United Nations has
called the Rohingya one of
the world’s most persecuted
minorities.
For years, tens of thousands have ﬂed discrimination and repression in Myanmar, where they are viewed
as foreigners.
A view of flowers in front of Malaysia’s Federal Court in Putrajaya.
(REUTERS)
yes. This is very challenging
for the PNP.”
In 1970, a Bolivian artist dressed as a priest tried
to stab Pope Paul VI when
he arrived at Manila airport.
The Pope sustained minor
chest wounds from the attack.
In 1995, a group of Islamist militants, including
the mastermind of the 1993
World Trade Center bombing, conspired to assassinate
Pope John Paul II in Manila.
But an accidental ﬁre in an
apartment in Manila led to
the discovery of the bomb
plot days before the Pope’s
visit.
Aquino said there was no
known threat in the country
to Francis’ life, but security
ofﬁcials were not taking any
chances. Snipers will be positioned at key points around
Manila and Tacloban during
the trip, with sniffer dogs deployed at sites he will visit.
Asked
by
reporters
aboard the papal plane to
Manila if he felt vulnerable
to an assassination attempt
or an attack, Francis said
he was more worried about
others rather than himself,
and that he was conﬁdent
about security measures in
the Vatican and during his
trips.
“I am in God’s hands,”
he said, joking about having asked God to spare him
a painful death. “If anything
should happen to me, I have
told the Lord, I ask you only
to give me the grace that it
doesn’t hurt because I am
not courageous when confronted with pain. I am very
timid.”
Church bells tolled across
the Philippines when the papal plane touched down in
Manila, and crowds inside
the airport and those lining
the streets into the capital
jumped, clapped and cheered
when Francis stepped out of
the plane.
The atmosphere was festive as about 1,500 schoolchildren welcomed the Pope
with lively dances, waving
white cloth, and red, white
and blue umbrellas to form
the Philippine ﬂag. Their
shirts were printed with the
message “Mabuhay (Welcome) Pope Francis!”
Divers hunt for victims in
AirAsia jet’s main body
AFP
PANGKALAN BUN, INDONESIA
INDONESIAN divers on
Thursday descended to the
main body of an AirAsia jet
that crashed last month,
hoping to recover the bulk of
the disaster’s victims, a day
after it was ﬁnally located by
a navy ship.
Flight QZ8501 went down
on December 28 in stormy
weather during a short trip
from the Indonesian city of
Surabaya to Singapore, with
162 people on board.
After a lengthy search often hampered by bad weather, a Singapore military vessel spotted the fuselage -- the
plane’s main body, believed
to be the resting place of
most of the victims -- at the
bottom of the Java Sea on
Wednesday.
Underwater photos taken
by high-tech search equipment showed the fuselage
and part of Malaysia-based
AirAsia’s motto, “Now Everyone Can Fly”, painted on
the plane’s exterior.
Two Indonesian investigators work on the tail of the AirAsia
QZ8501 aircraft during the recovery mission at Panglima Utar
Kumai Harbour in Kumai, Indonesia, recently. (EPA)
An advance team of 15
divers plunged into the water
early on Thursday to examine the main portion of the
jet, SB Supriyadi, a rescue
agency ofﬁcial coordinating
the search, told AFP.
“They will ﬁrst assess how
many bodies are still trapped
inside the fuselage,” he said.
“Hopefully we can retrieve
all the victims as soon as possible.”
Just 50 bodies have so far
been recovered.
National search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo
previously said that if divers
had problems retrieving
bodies from the wreckage
while it is still on the seabed,
ofﬁcials would try to lift it.
The fuselage is attached
to part of a wing, and the
wreckage is 26 metres (85
feet) long.
Rescuers have already
used giant balloons to lift the
plane’s tail out of the water,
after it was found about two
kilometres (1.2 miles) from
the main body.
MV Swift Rescue, the
Singaporean ship that located the fuselage, was part of a
huge international hunt that
also included ships from the
US and China.
Soelistyo told reporters in Pangkalan Bun on
Borneo island, the search
headquarters, that the hunt
was being scaled back now
that the jet’s main body had
been located.
All foreign vessels were
beginning to leave the area
from Thursday except for
those from China, he said.
Ten ships are currently in the
search area.
TAIPEI
ERIC Chu will take over
as leader of Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT)
on Saturday, inheriting
an unpopular party seen
as favouring big business
and the mainland at a
time of growing scepticism about ties with Beijing.
Chu, 53, faces a balancing act - being seen
to distance himself from
the mainland to win back
domestic support but not
so much as to alarm Beijing’s leaders and damage burgeoning commercial ties.
Mainland China and
Taiwan have been at odds
since the end of China’s
civil war when the KMT
ﬂed to the island leaving
the Communists running
the mainland.
New Taipei City mayor
Eric Chu
But the old enemies
have always agreed upon
“one China” and Beijing
would rather see the
KMT ruling the USallied
island than the pro-independence opposition.
Chu, a former KMT
lawmaker, appears to be
trusted by China.
But if he cannot improve the KMT’s image
and convince young and
middle-class voters that
cross-strait ties do not
just beneﬁt the wealthy,
the party’s candidate
for the presidency, who
could well be Chu, faces
defeat in an election next
year when President Ma
Ying-jeou steps down.
“China is comfortable
with Chu taking charge
of the KMT ... It has been
trying to build mutual
trust,” said Tung Chenyuan, a professor at the
National Chengchi University and former vice
chairman of Taiwan’s
China
policy-making
body.
Chu was the only top
politician who two highlevel visiting Chinese ofﬁcials met in 2014, a sign
China is betting he will
be the island’s leader.
“Xi Jinping is very
happy to meet Chu and
he is waiting,” said a KMT
source with knowledge of
the situation, referring to
China’s president.
Thailand urged to end project that sends prisoners to sea
REUTERS
BANGKOK
MORE than a dozen rights
groups urged Thailand on
Thursday to end a project to
recruit prisoners to work on
ﬁshing boats, saying it would
not address problems in the
ﬁshing industry and posed a
serious threat to prisoners’
rights.
Thailand is the world’s
third-largest seafood exporter. Its ﬁshing industry
employs more than 300,000
people, many of them illegal
migrant workers from neighbouring countries who are
often subject to ill-treatment.
A labour shortage in
the industry has also partly
fuelled human trafﬁcking to
meet demand for man power
in the ﬁshing sector. Rights
groups say the pilot project
would fail to stop the illicit
trade.
“This project poses a serious threat to the human
rights of prisoners,” said a
letter to Thai Prime Minister
Prayuth Chan-ocha signed
by 45 non-governmental organisations.
“The project will also likely fail to address the fundamental causes of the labour
shortage that fuels trafﬁcking
in Thailand’s ﬁshing industry.”
Abuses recorded in the
Thailand’s Prime Minister
Prayuth Chan-ocha
ﬁshing industry include human trafﬁcking, forced labour and violence. That has
threatened business and put
Thailand under international
pressure to respond.
The warning comes as
Thailand scrambles to boost
its record in ﬁghting human
trafﬁcking ahead of a US
deadline to show improvement.
In December the Labour
Ministry said that it would
send consenting prisoners who had less than a year
left of their sentence to go
and work on ﬁshing boats to
ease a labour shortage and to
combat human trafﬁcking.
On Wednesday the ministry said that the scheme was
intended to help ex-prisoners
ﬁnd work and would not send
current inmates to sea.
“We’ve found that ex-
prisoners are not welcome in
the Thai workforce so we’ve
found a way to help them,”
Labour Minister Surasak
Karnjanarat told Reuters.
A pilot programme in
Samut Sakhon province, west
of the capital Bangkok, was
currently employing 173 exprisoners to work on ﬁshing
boats, he added.
Thailand is ranked one
of the world’s worst centres
of human trafﬁcking. It was
downgraded to the lowest
“Tier 3” status last June on
the US State Department’s
annual Trafﬁcking in Persons
Report for not fully complying with minimum standards
for its elimination.
US / Americas
Friday, January 16, 2015
US eases travel, trade restrictions
on Cuba from today, says Lew
AFP
WASHINGTON
THE United States will ease
travel and trade restrictions
with Cuba on Friday, implementing last month’s agreement to begin normalising
ties with the Cold War-era
foe.
“Today’s announcement
takes us one step closer to
replacing out-of-date policies that were not working
and puts in place a policy
that helps promote political
and economic freedom for
the Cuban people,” Treasury
Secretary Jacob Lew said on
Thursday.
While a US trade embargo remains in effect, the rule
changes will ease restrictions
on travel, raise limits on remittances, allow US banks to
establish accounts in Cuban
banks, facilitate telecommunications services with the
island and allow exports of
communications devices and
supporting services.
“These changes will immediately enable the American people to provide more
resources to empower the Cuban population to become less
dependent upon the statedriven economy, and help fa-
Speaker of the House John Boehner (left) with President Barack Obama as he hosts a bipartisan meeting of Congressional leaders in
the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington recently. (REUTERS)
cilitate our growing relationship with the Cuban people,”
White House press secretary
Josh Earnest said.
US President Barack
Obama and Cuba’s President
Raul Castro announced the
historic agreement on December 17, opening the way
Obama plans to
push bill for
providing paid
leave to workers
NYT NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT
Barack
Obama unveiled plans on
Thursday to make paid
leave available to millions
of US workers by calling on
Congress to pass a bill that
would allow them to earn
up to seven paid sick days a
year and would create a $2
billion federal fund to help
states pay for family leave
programs, ofﬁcials said.
Obama will also ask Congress to pass legislation to
make six weeks of paid administrative leave available
to both women and men
working for the federal government upon the birth or
adoption of a child.
In the meantime, he
plans to sign a directive to
federal agencies requiring
them to advance their employees up to six weeks of
sick leave to be used after the
birth of a child or to care for
a sick family member.
The White House described the plans - the latest
in a series that have been
proposed in the days leading
up to the president’s State of
the Union address on January 20 - as part of Obama’s
focus on improving the lives
of middle-class Americans.
“The truth is, the success and productivity of
our workers is inextricably
tied to their ability to care
for their families and maintain a stable life at home,”
Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser, wrote
on Wednesday in a posting
on the employment network
LinkedIn, where the White
House shared the ﬁrst details of the proposal.
“The president intends
to ensure that the federal
government is a model employer,” Jarrett wrote. “We’ll
have the most skilled and
productive work force possible as a result.”
from Republicans, who control both Houses of Congress,
which must approve any
move to lift the embargo.
Critics fault the administration for gaining little from
Havana’s communist leadership in the way of commitments to undertake demo-
cratic reforms.
“One thing that has become even more crystal
clear today is that this onesided deal is enriching a tyrant and his regime at the
expense of US national interests and the Cuban people,” Senator Marco Rubio,
a Cuban-American Republican from Florida.
But Obama argues that
the US policy of isolating
Cuba has failed, and greater
trade and exchange could
help foster change in an island in transition under the
ageing Castros.
The changes go into effect
on Friday when they are published in the Federal Register,
the government said.
Among other things, they
will make travel to Cuba easier for approved categories of
Americans, like journalists,
scholars, artists and athletes.
American travellers will
be able to use US credit and
debit cards while there, and
bring home up to $400 worth
of goods, including a $100
worth of Cuban rum or cigars.
The new regulations allows them to take with them
up to $10,000 for families,
religious organisations or students.
for a reconciliation after more
than 50 years of hostile relations.
Roberta Jacobson, US assistant secretary of state for
hemispheric affairs, is leading a US delegation to Havana
January 21-22 for talks on
opening embassies in Havana
and Washington.
Thursday’s
announcement came just days after the
State Department said Cuba
had freed 53 prisoners, making good on a pledge to Washington.
The shift in policy, however, has come under ﬁre
Man arrested for
planning attack
on US Capitol
20 state officials probed in
Mexico military slayings
REUTERS
WASHINGTON
AP
AN Ohio man claiming sympathy with Islamic State
militants was arrested and
charged on Wednesday in
connection with a plot to
attack the US Capitol with
guns and bombs, court documents disclosed.
Christopher Cornell, 20,
of Cincinnati researched the
construction of pipe bombs,
purchased a semi-automatic
riﬂe and 600 rounds of ammunition and made plans to
travel to Washington to carry
out the plot, according to an
FBI informant’s legal testimony.
Court documents showed
that Cornell indicated on
Twitter that he supported the
IS group under the alias Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Acting Special Agent
in Charge John Barrios noted
that the public was not in danger during this investigation.
Cornell has been charged
in a federal court in Ohio with
attempting to kill a US government ofﬁcer and possession of a ﬁrearm in furtherance of an attempted crime of
violence.
MEXICO CITY
AT least 20 Mexico state ofﬁcials are under investigation
in the cover-up of threats
and torture of women who
were witnesses to the alleged
killing of prisoners by soldiers last year, state authorities said on Wednesday.
State attorney for Mexico
state, Alejandro Gomez, said
the ofﬁcials under investigation include prosecutors, forensic investigators and state
police.
On June 30, soldiers killed
22 alleged gang members
at a warehouse in Tlatlaya.
The army ﬁrst said they died
during a shootout, but it was
discovered that some were executed.
Federal investigators have
said eight people were killed
after surrendering to the soldiers, but the National Human Rights Commission put
the number between 12 and
15.
The commission also said
the state attorney’s ofﬁce tried
to cover up the torture and
sexual threats endured by at
least two of the three women
A child holds hands with demonstrators during a protest against
the visit of Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto to the city, in
Ciudad Juarez om Wednesday. (REUTERS)
who survived.
“None have been removed
from duty yet because there is
a presumption of innocence,”
Gomez said at a news conference. He said it was not clear
when a determination would
be made about the ofﬁcials’
involvement.
In a recent interview one
of the witnesses described the
torture she suffered. She said
that when she refused to sign a
false statement that all 22 had
died in a shootout with soldiers, state ofﬁcials kicked her
in the ribs, shoved her head
into a toilet and hit her in the
head.
Also on Wednesday, the
Federal Institute for Information Access ruled against
a decision by prosecutors to
keep the ﬁles on its investigation into the killings a state
secret for 12 years. The institute ruled that prosecutors
must turn over investigators
reports to an unidentiﬁed person who requested them, but
said prosecutors could redact
the names of people contained
in those reports.
Mexican law says authorities can keep some types of
sensitive information secret,
but not if the case involves
serious violations of human
rights or crimes against humanity.
15
Hearing on
states’ suit
against Obama
immigration
plan to begin
in court
REUTERS
DALLAS
A FEDERAL judge in Texas
is set to hear arguments
on Thursday in a lawsuit
brought by two dozen states
that seeks to block Obama
administration efforts to reduce the threat of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants.
The case led by Texas
and supported by several
other Republican-controlled states said President
Barack Obama’s executive
order in November violated
US constitutional limits on
presidential powers.
The hearing will be at
the US District Court in
Brownsville.
The White House has
said Obama was acting
within his presidential authority when he issued the
order.
Obama’s plan would let
up to 4.7 million of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the
United States stay without
threat of deportation, in-
The White House
has said Obama was
acting within his
presidential authority
when he issued the
order.
cluding about 4.4 million
who are parents of US citizens and legal permanent
residents.
Texas
Governor-elect
Greg Abbott, a Republican
and former state attorney
general, said the lawsuit
asked for the president’s
order to be declared illegal
and did not seek monetary
damages.
“This lawsuit is not about
immigration. It is about the
rule of law, presidential
power, and the structural
limits of the US Constitution,” the plaintiffs said in
court documents.
Earlier this week, a dozen states led by Washington
state Attorney General Bob
Ferguson ﬁled a brief defending Obama’s policies.
Ferguson, a Democrat,
said the president’s action
beneﬁted Washington and
other states by improving public safety, keeping
families together and aiding
their economies.
On Wednesday, the Republican-led US House of
Representatives approved
a Department of Homeland
Security spending bill that
included amendments that
would block Obama’s immigration initiatives. The bill
next goes to the US Senate.
Birdman, Budapest, Boyhood lead pack in Oscar Nominations
AP
SAN FRANCISCO
THE race for the Oscar took
leave of what might be called
the primary season and entered the general election,
as the nominees for the 87th
annual Academy Awards
were announced on Thursday morning.
Leading the pack with nine
nominations were Birdman
and Grand Budapest Hotel,
followed by The Imitation
Game with eight and Boyhood
and American Sniper, with six
apiece.
So it’s turning into what
we all were predicting as early
as last October, a Boyhood vs
Birdman battle, with the addition of The Grand Budapest
Hotel and perhaps American
Sniper, just to make things interesting.
Also nominated for best
picture are Selma, The Theory
of Everything and, a surprise,
Whiplash, for a total of eight
nominees in the category.
There are two ways to
handicap best picture. The
ﬁrst is to say the obvious: It’s
going to be Boyhood and it
should be Boyhood. The second is examine the best director category. Eight ﬁlms were
nominated for best picture,
but you have to ﬁgure that the
Academy most loves the ﬁlms
it also nominated for best director: Birdman (Inarritu),
Boyhood (Linklater), Imitation Game (Morton Tyldum),
The Grand Budapest Hotel
(Wes Anderson) and Foxcatcher (Bennett Miller).
Of these, Inarritu, Linklater and possibly Anderson have
the inside track for best director, and one of their ﬁlms,
probably Boyhood will win
best picture.
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Actor Chris Pine (left) and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce the Best Motion Picture
of the Year category during the nomination announcements for the 87th Academy Awards in Beverly
Hills, California on Thursday. (EPA)
The mere fact that Boyhood stands a strong chance
is already good news. Every
year, if we’re lucky, there
is some breakthrough ﬁlm,
something that advances the
art, what I call “the thing that
happened in cinema” for that
year. But most of the time,
the thing that happened in
cinema (Citizen Kane, ‘Raging Bull, Pulp Fiction) doesn’t
win, and often it’s not even
nominated (City Lights, A
Hard Day’s Night).
That the Academy is already so much behind Boyhood, which is essentially an
avant-garde,
experimental
ﬁlm, is heartening, though
this is probably not evidence
of any newfound daring on
the Academy’s part. It’s probably just a testament to the irresistible appeal of Linklater’s
masterpiece.
The acting awards were
also anticipated as Julianne
Moore leads the pack of best
actress nominees, which also
includes Felicity Jones (The
Theory of Everything), Reese
Witherspoon (Wild), Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) and
Marion Cotillard (Two Days,
One Night).
Best actor, slightly more
competitive, is going to be a
battle between Michael Keaton (Birdman) and Eddie
Redmayne (The Theory of
Everything), with the other
nominees there as distant alternatives: Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game),
Bradley Cooper (American
Sniper) and Steve Carell (Foxcatcher).
It is not always that the
future can be so easily anticipated. But more than a month
away from the award ceremony, which will take place on
February 22, this year’s Oscars
are shaping up to be the most
predictable in recent memory.
In the supporting categories,
Patricia Arquette’s award for
Boyhood is practically a foregone conclusion, and deservedly. (Jessica Chastain, who
was quite wonderful in A Most
Violent Year. and theoretically her strongest competition,
wasn’t even nominated.)
Some people see the best
supporting actor race as shaping up as a battle between J K
Simmons (Whiplash) and Edward Norton (Birdman), but
it looks to me like Simmons
has it.
16
The Last Word
Friday, January 16, 2015
QATAR FALCONS AND HUNTING FESTIVAL
Some of the participants and guests at the falcon event being held at Mesaieed.
Young Falconer event begins today
festival’s location.
Meanwhile, the Tala’a
event’s third round is to be
held early on Friday, while
the Hudud al Tahaddi challenge will continue in the
afternoon.
Thursday’s results included the qualiﬁcation of
Faisal Mohammed Rashed
al Ma’adhid in the second round of the Tala’a, as
Sheikh Khalifa bin Nasser
bin Abdullah al Thani and
Mohammed Salah al Nabet
emerged from the Hudud al
Tahaddi challenge to qualify
for that event’s ﬁnal round.
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
THE Young Falconer event
for participants aged six to
ten years old takes off today.
The event’s organising committee has advised parents of
participating young falconers to be present at the start
of the competition at 11am.
The committee said the
registration for the event
remains open to any young
falconers who would like to
participate right up until the
competition begins, when
they must be present at the
Faisal
Mohammed
Rashed al Ma’adhid said his
falcon’s winning performance in the event was due
a strict training schedule
prior to the event.
He said the Tala’a event
differs from other festival
events in that the falconer
does not interact with his
falcon during the competition as such, and so can but
hope that his training of the
bird is sufﬁcient to pull it
through the competition.
Hudud al Tahaddi challenge is an event in which
falcons seek to obstruct the
ﬂight of homing pigeons especially trained to ﬂy away,
and instead causing them
to land.
The Tala’a event tests
the falcon’s speed and ability to identify the location of
its prey.
The sixth edition of the
Qatar Falcons and Hunting Festival is being organised by Gannas Society
under the patronage of HE
Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad
bin Khalifa al Thani at Sabkhet Marmi near Sealine,
Mesaieed. The festival runs
until January 31.
Queen Rania at INJAZ’s 10th anniversary
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
HER Majesty Queen Rania al
Abdullah on Thursday met a
group of INJAZ Al-Arab alumni and entrepreneurs at an
event celebrating the organisation’s 10th anniversary.
The meeting, attended by
Sean Rush, President and CEO
of US-based Junior Achievement Worldwide (JAW), INJAZ’s parent organisation;
Soraya Salti, MENA Regional
Director of INJAZ Al-Arab; and
Akef Aqrabawi, Deputy Chief
Executive Ofﬁcer of INJAZ AlArab; showcased the success
stories of 14 young entrepreneurs from different countries,
including Jordan, Algeria,
Bahrain, Egypt, KSA, Kuwait,
Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine,
Qatar, Yemen and Oman.
Queen Rania praised the
role of INJAZ and stressed the
importance of its programmes
in providing youth with various job opportunities.
Her Majesty also emphasised the importance of featuring INJAZ’s different training
courses on Edraak’s platform
in order to beneﬁt the highest possible number of Arab
youth.
During the session, attendees watched a short video
highlighting INJAZ Al-Arab’s
key achievements. Since its
launch in Jordan in 2004, the
organisation has reached two
million students with the support of more than 22,000 volunteers from 14 countries in
the MENA region, in addition
to Pakistan.
Marking the occasion,
Soraya Salti said: “We would
not be here today without
the support of Her Majesty
and her belief in our mission
to plant the seeds of entrepreneurship and promote it
among our youth to encourage
self-employment and the creation of more jobs.”
Aqrabawi said: “Our students represent the spirit of
experimentation and leadership in the Arab world, which
is not only essential in creating
jobs and offering entrepreneurial opportunities for our
youth, this spirit is at the core
of a youth-led economic renaissance.”
QM artworks for handball tourney
QATAR Museums (QM) has unveiled three
new artworks commissioned to celebrate
the 24th Men’s Handball World Championships in Doha.
Thanks to collaboration between Qatar
Museums and Qatar 2015 Organising Committee, the artworks are installed at the
Lusail multipurpose hall as part of an ongoing public art programme designed to bring
culture to the streets of Doha.
The pieces include two murals created
by the Qatari artist Mohammed al Nasif,
inspired by different elements of Qatari
culture and the country’s development and
Queen Rania al Abdullah at the INJAZ Al-Arab alumni in Amman, Jordan, on Thursday.
progress. The second artwork is a large
bronze sculpture entitled ‘The Challenge
2015’ produced in just five months by noted
Iraqi artist Ahmed al Bahrani.
The third artwork is a ‘calligraffiti’ piece
by renowned Tunisian artist El Seed. The work
includes poetry quotes by Sheikh Jassem bin
Mohammed bin Thani, the founder of Qatar.
This is El Seed’s second project in Qatar.
His first, in 2013, involved painting four
underground tunnels on Salwa Road with
artistic graffiti themes and quotes focusing
on themes of identity, education, history and
several other aspects of life in Doha. (TNN)
Sidra experts enlighten women on healthy pregnancy
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
THE Maternal Fetal Medicine
team at Sidra Medical and Research Center (Sidra) has issued guidelines for maintaining a healthy pregnancy, the
key to limiting the probability
of birth defects in newborns,
in support of Birth Defect
Prevention Awareness Month
this January.
According to World
Health Organisation, birth
defects result in approximately 3.2 million disabilities every year globally. The
March of Dimes Foundation,
a US-based organisation
concerned with improving
infant health by preventing birth defects, premature
birth and infant mortality,
says Qatar is among the 20
countries with the highest
rates of birth defects: 73.4
per 1,000 live births.
Sidra’s Maternal Fetal
Medicine team will provide
care for pregnant women with
complex maternal and foetal conditions. Cutting-edge
prenatal diagnosis and foetal
therapy will be offered to meet
the needs of patients and those
referred from other centres for
evaluation and management
of foetal anomalies.
“Birth Defect Prevention
Month puts healthy pregnancy in the spotlight. Although
not all birth defects can be
prevented, awareness and
education are crucial steps to
help increase the chances of
having a healthy baby,” said
Dr Karim Kalache, Sidra’s Division Chief of Maternal-Fetal
Medicine,
One of the tips from Sidra
experts for expectant mothers to help them prepare for
a healthy pregnancy is, hav-
Awareness and
education are crucial steps to help
increase chances of
having a healthy baby
~ Dr Karim Kalache
Dr Karim Kalache.
ing 400 micrograms (mcg)
of folic acid every day. Sufﬁcient amounts of folic acid
in a woman’s body at least
one month before and during
pregnancy can prevent defects of the baby’s brain and
spine, such as spina biﬁda.
Fortiﬁed supplements and
foods rich in foliate are great
sources of vitamin B.
Sidra experts have advised
pregnant women to guard
against infections, especially
in the ﬁrst months of pregnancy as it can pose serious
danger to the baby with lifelong consequences.
Easy steps to prevent infections include: washing
hands often; avoiding sharing
utensils and food (preventing exchange of saliva) with
young children who can carry
infections that are dangerous
for the foetus; cooking meat
until it is well done; avoiding
unpasteurised (raw) milk; not
changing cat litter and avoiding contact with people who
have an infection.
Experts have also asked
pregnant women to maintain healthy weight. A woman
who is overweight or obese
before pregnancy has a higher risk for complications during pregnancy.
Pregnant women have
been urged to avoid smoking
especially during pregnancy.
Risks associated with smoking or being around smoke
during pregnancy include
premature birth, cleft lip and
cleft palate and infant death.
The experts have also
urged expectant women to
consult a physician before
taking any medications as
certain medications can cause
birth defects if taken during
pregnancy. A woman should
not start or stop taking medications if she is pregnant or
planning to become pregnant
without consulting her doc-
tor. This includes prescription
and over-the-counter medications and dietary or herbal
products.
Besides, according to
experts, most vaccinations
are safe and recommended
during pregnancy. Pregnant
women are more prone to severe illness from the ﬂu and
face an increased chance of
premature birth. Getting a ﬂu
shot is a crucial step in protecting against these complications and should be taken
during pregnancy.
Pregnant women in Qatar have also been advised to
increase their Vitamin D intake by consuming foods rich
in Vitamin D (eg egg yolk,
salmon and cod liver oil), get
5-10 minutes of sun exposure
a day and use Vitamin D supplements (4-6).
Due to intense heat, a
majority of people opt to stay
out of the sun and many outdoor activities take place at
night during the hot summer
months. As a result, many
people in Qatar are Vitamin
D deﬁcient. According to a
recent study by the College
of Arts and Sciences of Qatar University, that number
can be as high as 65 percent
of the population. Vitamin D
deﬁciency is associated with
an increased risk of adverse
outcomes for both mother
and baby.
Pregnant women have
also been urged to attend
regular check-ups with a physician to monitor health of the
mother and the baby and ensure a safe and healthy pregnancy. An ultrasound scan
during prenatal check-ups
can conﬁrm the health of the
baby and assist the physician
in properly monitoring the
pregnancy.