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Politics of confrontation grips Bangladesh DHAKA (BANGLADESH), Oct 4: Politics of confrontation will continue to grip Bangladesh even after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s two-third .......more Muslim
charities QUETTA (PAKISTAN), Oct 4: A large billboard above a crowded street in downtown Quetta boldly proclaims the premises as being the local....more Pak
gets 20-page ISLAMABAD, Oct 4: Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar has said the United States presented very impressive evidence of international terrorist ....more Al
Rashid to contest ISLAMABAD, Oct 4: Al Rashid Trust, one of the Pakistan-based organisations which was recently banned by the US for its alleged links with .......more |
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Electric rat traps kill 5 HANOI, Oct 4: Vietnamese authorities have vowed to crack down on the use of electric traps intended to protect crops from rats after the accidental . ........more Resolution
in Senate WASHINGTON, Oct 4: A resolution calling for protection of the "civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Sikh-Americans".....more ‘Terrorism
defined by UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4: Emphasising that no distinction should be made between freedom fighters and terrorists, India has said the term ‘terrorism’ .......more New
report sounds MELBOURNE, Oct 4: Asia risks an explosion of HIV infection unless Governments wake up to the problem, a report released on the eve of the sixth International Congress on AIDS in Asia........more |
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Politics of confrontation grips Bangladesh DHAKA (BANGLADESH), Oct 4: Politics of confrontation will continue to grip Bangladesh even after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s two-third majority in the 300-member Jatiya Sansad (Parliament). While the Awami League has announced its decision to launch a six-day agitation beginning tomorrow demanding fresh elections throughout the country, the BNP-led four-party alliance leader and former Prime Minister Begum Khalida Zia called on President Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed and urged him to speed up the process of formation of the new Government. The Prime Minister-designate of the four-party alliance, Begum Zia who led the opposition parties to agitate against the previous Awami League Government, tried to contact the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina which, however, proved futile. The BNP chief, however, said she would avoid any confrontation and sought cooperation from the awami league for smooth functioning of the Government, expected to be formed after October ten. But the opposition Awami League is not prepared to wait and announced its decision to take to agitational path protesting what it called "doctored election" with the help of the administrative machinery. Meanwhile, Justice Lutfur Rahman, the Chief Advsiser to the present care-taker Government, said the election was free and fair and rejected the allegations of the "rigged polling." He said his administration was now working out programmes to handover power to the elected Government in the country. While the BNP leadership is keen to see that its elected members take oath in the nation’s eighth Sansad at the earliest, the Awami League has decided to lay a seige in the capital on October ten and go for the non-cooperation movement, if their "genuine demands" are not met by then. The Awami League president made it clear that the party’s elected members to the new Sansad would not take oath to protest what she called the "crudely rigged polls." Mrs Hasina said she did not knew how 101 per cent and 99 per cent votes had been cast in the elections. She pointed out that it was not possible for the foreign observers to understand how polling was rigged. "It is not possible for them to understand the manipulations done with the help of the care-taker Government." She said she had promoted the idea of a care-taker Government for ensuring a free and fair polling in the country for the sake of the promotion of democracy but regretted that the same machinery had been "misused". "It is very unfortunate," she added. The opposition party leaders are expected to meet the Chief Election Commissioner soon to place its demands for holding "free and fair polls" again in all the 300 constituencies. Even though the main opposition party is getting ready to launch political agitation demanding fresh polls, the BNP-led four party alliance is expected to form the new council of ministers early next week. (UNI) |
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Muslim charities treading fine line on politics QUETTA (PAKISTAN), Oct 4: A large billboard above a crowded street in downtown Quetta boldly proclaims the premises as being the local headquarters of the al Rasheed trust. The United States says it suspects it has links to terrorist organisations. Al Rasheed insists it is a charity. Al Rasheed is one of 27 groups or individuals whose assets were frozen by the United States in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington because of alleged links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. The Pakistan Government — while complying with the US order —says it believes Al Rasheed has only innocent aims, and is investigating further. There are scores of charities of all sizes scattered throughout Pakistan and the Muslim world that serve as a social security net where the Government’s stretched resources cannot reach. Most have impeccable credentials. One of the five pillars of Islam insists on Muslims paying "Zakat", or tax, to the less fortunate. Generosity is almost a fault amongst many muslims — and deeply entrenched in Pakistan’s culture where clan and family come long before self. On the surface, Al Rasheed appears typical of such charities. Based in the port city of Karachi it provides crucial food aid to widows and children in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan. Its biggest project is bakeries in the Afghan capital Kabul, which provide subsidised daily bread for tens of thousands of residents. In Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Tuesday, dozens of children staged a rally to protest against the freeze on Al Rasheed, saying they faced being kicked out of school because their source of fees had dried up. Yet Al Rasheed does have some links with Jihadi groups, which mushroom in Pakistan. The organisation first raised eyebrows earlier this year when they offered to take over bakery projects in Kabul run by the World Food Programme (WFP) during its standoff with Afghanistan’s Taliban over the employment of local women in the project. Although that standoff was resolved, Al Rasheed’s offer struck some aid officials as odd, and they wondered if it wasn’t a ruse to siphon off food to the Taliban’s fighters. There are signs that suggest while Al Rasheed may not actively support Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network, two of its publications advocated Islamic Jihad, or holy war, a common rallying call of all Islamic groups. Sharing Al Rasheed’s building in Quetta is the office of "Dharb-i-M’umin", a weekly newspaper published by the trust and registered in Karachi. The paper’s content leaves little doubt as to its political bent. The Urdu-language daily Islam, published from Karachi, is another newspaper of the trust focusing on Jihadi activities and groups. "Muslims should be ready for the Jihad", screamed the banner headline on one recent front page. "Four thousand Jew employees in World Trade Center absent on attack day," read another. An editorial suggested the attacks were a Jewish plot to discredit Muslims. A few minutes away from Al Rasheed’s offices is the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of the Prophet Mohammad), which first claimed and then denied responsibility for Monday’s suicide attack on the Kashmir provincial Assembly in neighbouring India in which 39 people were killed. The group, also on the US watch list, is headed by Maulana Masood Azhar who has been a key member of various extremist Muslim groups that have been banned over the years. Azhar, detained for years in India because of his Kashmir activities, was released in December 1999 in a complicated exchange involving hostages on a hijacked Indian airliner and three Kashmiri militants. New Muslim trusts and charities spring up as fast as old ones are banned. Critics say the leaders and activists remain essentially the same. So do their aims. "Wherever Muslims are under attack, we are ready to fight," said Abdul Jabar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad in Pakistan’s Baluchistan’s province. "We are international," Jabar told Reuters. "Our goal, when Muslims are in trouble, is to free them, to fight with them against our common enemies, wherever that may be." Al Rasheed says its aims are more prosaic. "Al Rasheed trust is a charity working for the welfare of people of Pakistan and Afghanistan," spokesman Abdullah told Reuters from the port city of Karachi. "We have been working for the last five to six years under the Government rules for Non-Governmental Organisations and our accounts are audited annually," he said. "We are prepared to defend ourselves at any forum with all our books and accounts." (REUTERS) |
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Pak gets 20-page document, says US evidence ‘impressive’ ISLAMABAD, Oct 4: Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar has said the United States presented very impressive evidence of international terrorist Osama Bin Laden’s involvement in the September 11 attacks at New York city and Washington. He, however, categorically said pakistan would not sit in judgement over the issue. Pakistan had been shown 20 pages of documents, besides an oral presentation and Islamabad was evaluating the evidence, the news, quoting Mr Sattar in an interview with CNN, said today. The Foreign Minister said Pakistan would respect the judgement taken by the US on the basis of this evidence. He, however, repeatedly emphasised that the US should publicise the evidence for the people of the world to see as he was certain that they would be impressed by the good work done by the us in a short time after the attacks. "The US should be confident that it has impressive evidence, but Pakistan would not sit in judgement," he said adding, "we are hesitant to pronounce a judgement." Asked about some people who had been shown certain parts of the leaked evidence that they had rejected as fabricated, Mr Sattar said these people were in a small minority and they had pre-conceived ideas. "They have already made up their minds and they will not accept any evidence," he added. Foreign Office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan yesterday said the US provided Pakistan with some more evidence related to Bin Laden, accusing and linking him and his organisation Al-Qaeda with the terrorist attacks. Earlier, the US Ambassador in a meeting with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had provided the status of the ongoing investigations. "The material we received is under study by the officials concerned. How could we be convinced immediately? how do you expect us to jump the gun? now that we have received ‘some’ evidence, we are examining it," Mr Khan replied when asked why despite the fact that world leaders and bodies, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, were convinced about the evidence provided by the US, but Pakistan was reluctant to accept it. When asked whether Islamabad was contemplating sharing of US evidence with the Taliban militia, Mr Khan said, "Pakistan is not an intermediary between the Taliban and US. It is for the US to interact. Unless we are requested, we will not take the initiative." Commenting on reports from New Delhi that it wished to be used as a frontline state against terrorism instead of Pakistan, Mr Khan said, "Pakistan has not assumed any status. The fight against terrorism is by an international coalition and all countries of the world are participating. There is broad international consensus on this." "If there is need for Pakistan to act within the UN Security Council resolution, Pakistan will be responsive to play that kind of a role," he added. (UNI) |
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Al Rashid to contest US ban in intl court ISLAMABAD, Oct 4: Al Rashid Trust, one of the Pakistan-based organisations which was recently banned by the US for its alleged links with Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, has said it would challenge the American decision in the International Court of Justice at Hague. Claiming that it has "no links with any sort of terrorism," the in-charge of the trust here, Mohammad Arshad said his organisation has appealed to the Pakistan Government to de-freeze its accounts and said it planned to go to the international court of justice to contest the American ban. Despite the ban, the organisation was still operating in Pakistan and all its offices were open and volunteers working for the welfare of the Muslims, arshad was quoted as saying by daily ‘Dawn’. The trust claims to distribute bread daily to over three lakh displaced persons inside Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said yesterday Islamabad would ask the US Government to furnish details of the trust’s involvement in terrorist activities. Al Rashid was banned by US along with Pakistan-based militant group, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen for having links with Bin Laden. (PTI) |
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Electric rat traps kill 5 people in Vietnam HANOI, Oct 4: Vietnamese authorities have vowed to crack down on the use of electric traps intended to protect crops from rats after the accidental deaths of five people in northern Ha Tay province. "We have put out the word that the electric traps are dangerous, but people continue to use them," an official with the hay tay provincial police said yesterday. The province will now begin arresting anyone caught setting the home-made traps, the official said. The rat traps are typically fashioned from wood and wire and plugged into electrical outlets. When the they are submerged in rice paddy, they create a deadly charge to hungry rats - but also to any humans that happen along. In the past six weeks, at least five people have been killed by electrocution after stumbling into traps unaware, the state-run Vietnam News reported. The farmers who set those traps will be prosecuted for manslaughter, police said on Wednesday. Farmers have resorted to desperate measures to protect because of a drastic increase in the rat population over the past three years. Authorities blame the bumper crop of rats on the decrease of the rodents’ natural predators, cats and snakes, which have been captured to serve as delicacies in restaurants. (DPA) |
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Resolution in Senate condemns bigotry, violence against Sikhs WASHINGTON, Oct 4: A resolution calling for protection of the "civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Sikh-Americans", in the wake of hate attacks against the community after the Sept 11 terrorist strikes, has been introduced in the US Senate by 32 lawmakers. Senator Richard Durbin (Democrat of Illinois) introduced the Senate concurrent resolution in the Senate, which referred it to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. The resolution condemns "bigotry and any acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans, including Sikh-Americans". It calls upon local and federal law enforcement agencies to "work to prevent hate crimes against all Americans, including Sikh-Americans," and to "prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all those who commit hate crimes." The resolution, the sponsors noted, stems from a series of attacks on Sikhs following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The attackers took the simplistic and ill-informed view that all who wear turban and have a beard must be supporters of Osama Bin Laden, who wears a turban and has a beard. The consequences of such ignorance have been tragic. "Unfortunately, in the aftermath of Sept 11, there are those, who in misguided anger and fear, turned on their neighbours and fellow Americans," Durbin said in remarks introducing the measure. He recalled the "staggering loss of life of over 6,000 innocent people," that day, noting it was "more than in any other day in our nation’s history." (PTI) |
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‘Terrorism defined by act not description of perpetrator’ UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4: Emphasising that no distinction should be made between freedom fighters and terrorists, India has said the term ‘terrorism’ is defined by the act, not by the description of the perpetrator. "While fighting terrorism, there can be no moral relativism - either one is with civilisation or with terrorism and there is no middle ground," indian ambassador to United Nations Kamalesh Sharma said. "These terrorists wherever they might strike come from the same stable.... They are trained in the same camps, financed and backed by same people," he said. "Normatively, international humanitarian law does not permit methods or means that can only be described as terrorism in pursuit of any cause." He said India has been a victim of terrorism for several years. The latest was an attempt to blow up Jammu and Kashmir Assembly with a car bomb. Sharma said piecemeal conventions adopted earlier would not serve the purpose of eradicating terrorism. "We must destroy terrorism as a system. Terrorism is an organic whole. It would be dangerous to try to cut one of the cells out and tell ourselves that we had killed it off. It is an evil that metastasises. Terrorism must be destroyed root and branch," Sharma told the 189-member Assembly. Sharma said when political office and bureaucratic and diplomatic immunity have not protected some who committed grave violations and have now been brought to justice, it cannot be possible to argue that freedom fighters or any other group would only be individuals above all law. Stressing that the menace of terrorism could be fought only collectively, he said America, "far and away" the most powerful state in international community, believes that it needs and must have the assistance of a coalition of states to successfully mount an offensive against the terrorists who attacked it. "If the US needs this, how much more do others, infinitely more weak and vulnerable, need the same solidarity," he said. The convention against terrorism is sponsored by India and is held up mainly because of differences over definition of terrorism. (PTI) |
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New report sounds alarm over AIDS MELBOURNE, Oct 4: Asia risks an explosion of HIV infection unless Governments wake up to the problem, a report released on the eve of the sixth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICCAP) warns. The report, released today, warns there is clear potential for an extensive spread of HIV if preventive action is too little or too late. Early and large-scale preventive action has kept prevalence low in parts of Asia but according to "status and trends of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Asia and the pacific," these low HIV infection rates do not necessarily mean rates will remain low forever. "Some countries in the region began prevention efforts early and they are reaping the benefits today," Peter Piot, Executive Director of the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said. "Elsewhere, however, epidemics will continue their natural course unless prevention programmes quickly reach the population groups most vulnerable to HIV." "HIV related stigma and discrimination remain an immense barrier to effectively fighting the most devastating epidemic humanity has ever known," Piot added. Although only three Asian countries — Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand — have registered nationwide prevalence rates of over one per cent, the report says these low rates mask an uneven geographic spread. It says that national figures are meaningless in huge countries like China and India, where some states or provinces have larger populations than most of the world’s countries. The report, published by Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic (MAP), an international network of HIV experts, warns that recent HIV increases in specific locations should be seen as a serious warning of a more widespread epidemic. In the Guangxi province in China, 9.9 per cent of sex workers were found to have HIV in the second quarter of 2000 but the figure rose to 10.7 per cent by the fourth quarter. And in Vietnam, infection levels are rising quickly, in some cases exponentially. In Ho Chi Minh City, HIV infection rates among sex workers and their clients increased from virtually nil in 1996 to more than 20 per cent in 2000. Recent data from Indonesia — where for many years the epidemic was virtually undetectable — also shows a significant increase in HIV. Indonesia has recorded a jump in HIV among sex workers from six per cent to 26 per cent in three centres, with several recorded HIV outbreaks among injecting drug users. Nationally, the proportion of blood donors infected — in this context, an indication of HIV spread in the population at large — increased significantly, from almost nothing in the early 1990s to one per 1,000 in 1999-2000. HIV infection among pregnant women, often used as an indicator of HIV penetration into the general population, is also quite significant in some countries. The report warns that China, Indonesia and Vietnam are in a transitional phase and may be on the brink of potentially explosive epidemics. And it calls for prevention programmes targeting the general population to be put in place alongside programmes for high-risk groups. (AFP) |
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