Spell of consumerism cause a sea change in China

BEIJING, Apr 11: It is the rapid social and cultural changes induced by global markets that characterise today’s China, which has steadily dropped its policies of a closed and Government-controlled economy.

Kentucky Fried Chicken , Mcdonalds for quick snack and Western influences in the lifestyle have overwhelmed the images and ideals of Mao and Karl Marx- once the driving forces behind the Chinese socio-cultural and economic thinking in the past.

Bicycles, which were once a trademark of Chinese roads, are fast becoming rare and are being replaced by expensive Luxury cars.

A calm silence pervades the imposing Tianenmen Square — which was in news the world over twelve years ago on account of hundreds of people having been killed in the crackdown on pro-democracy student demonstrators by the state forces — as couples, families and tourists take a stroll here, oblivious of their surroundings.

China has been changing rapidly during the past two decades. While the communist party has retained its influence and the country has emerged as a major economic and military power in the world, there has been a marked change in the lifestyle of the ordinary Chinese citizen as consumerism has started dominating communism and the markets are full of expensive and comfortable luxury consumer goods.

The wealthy Chinese, specially the people of Chinese origin in Hong Kong and Taiwan, prefer staying in penthouses of sky scrappers, as against residential apartments in small blocks which were made in view of the old Chinese principle of social equality. The Government, however, is trying to preserve some of such old buildings.

One can see construction work in progress in every part of Beijing and Shanghai. Old small buildings are being razed and sky scrappers, fly-overs and roads are being constructed in their place. The image of the bicycle-riding, plainly dressed (like Mao) prototype Chinese is fast becoming hazy.

The present-day Beijing and Shanghai compete with cities like New York and are full of expensive fashionable stores, night clubs and discos, frequented by the Chinese youth, dressed up in chic western-wear, who believe in partying hard after a day’s work and can be seen perpetually engaged in shopping, talking on their cell-phones and generally having a nice time.

A complete change has come about in the mind-set and lifestyle of the Chinese youth, who now prefers the backstreet boys to the traditional music of Mao V K.

However, an entirely different China exists at night outside big hotels and restaurants, where helpless beggars begging before foreigners introduce people to the dark and closed road of social inequality which exists here despite all the economic development.

American fast food chain Mcdonalds, which entered China in 1992, is now a craze with the Chinese youth, for whom it has become the favourite spot for a birthday bash. Shopping-culture has become so widely prevalent that even a chinese kid is considered a master shopper.

An indicator of the fast growing economic prosperity is the fact that while one crore Chinese owned a television in 1998, the number increased to one billion in 2000. The country’s GDP per person is 782.4 dollars, per capita income is 840 dollars per annum and the growth rate is 7.1.

However, one thing that has not changed is the influence of the Chinese Communist Party. For the common man who visits the Tianenmen Square, personal fulfillment has become the first priority in life. The traditional values adhered to by the Chinese society are also being rejected in this atmosphere of change. The Chinese youth, brought up in the traditional family set-up, has started disregarding the institution of marriage.

While 95,10,000 marriages were registered in 1990, the corresponding figure for 2000 was 84,80,000. The need for the one child norm, which the Government permitted, also seems to be disappearing in the working couples.

The result of the one-child norm has started surfacing in the Chinese society, where young couples, who have spent their childhood in loneliness, now have to take the responsibility of two sets of parents.

In 2000, out of every 10 Chinese, one is 60-years-old or older than that. Citizens above 65-years-old comprise more than 7 per cent of the total population of the country. The average age has increased from 49.5 years to 78.6 years over the past 50 years. Rehabilitation of the old people is a major challenge being faced by Chinese policy makers. (UNI)

Colombian rebels kidnap 12 provincial lawmakers

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, Apr 12: Leftist Colombian rebels masquerading as members of a police bomb squad kidnapped 12 provincial lawmakers in a daring raid on the legislature in city of Cali, luring victims to buses with a bomb-threat warning, authorities said.

Witnesses yesterday said armed men burst into the chamber in bomb-squad uniforms, using a megaphone to order lawmakers to evacuate through an emergency exit where transportation was waiting. One police officer, who was stationed at the legislature, was shot and killed during the getaway.

The audacious assault in Colombia’s second-largest city further stoked fears that the country’s 38-year-old mostly rural conflict was evolving into urban guerrilla warfare, just as the nation heads toward may 26 presidential elections.

In a desperate phone interview with a local radio network yesterday, the president of the legislature, Juan Carlos Narvaez, confirmed he was among the abducted and asked the armed forces to call off their search. He was speaking from a guerrilla hide-out, apparently reading a statement prepared by rebels of the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"The detained lawmakers ask for an end to the military’s harassment, that they prioritize negotiation to win our freedom. Our lives are in danger. Please stop the harassment," he said, as army helicopters buzzed Cali’s skies.

Narvaez then passed the phone to a man claiming to be a leader of the Marxist-inspired Farc, who said Latin America’s largest and oldest guerrilla force would issue a communique on the kidnapping today.

President Andres Pastrana condemned the attack and canceled his Thursday flight to Costa Rica, where he was scheduled to attend a two-day summit of Latin American leaders. He appealed for the region’s Presidents to follow Washington’s example and brand the Farc "terrorists."

"All Latin American nations should say that any terrorist group, like the Farc, is not welcome in our country," Pastrana said in an apparent reference to the Farc’s offices in Mexico.

Yesterday’s kidnapping follows threats by rebels to take their fight for a socialist state to Colombia’s cities after the collapse of peace talks in February. The conflict, which has claimed 40,000 lives in a decade, has long been confined to the lawless countryside. "The war has moved from rural areas to the cities," said John Maro Rodriguez, the mayor of Cali, which is home to 2 million people.

In Cali and elsewhere, front-running, anti-rebel candidate Alvaro Uribe has soared in opinion polls ahead of next months’s presidential election. His campaign pledge: a dramatic hike in military spending. The recent attacks may win him more votes.

On Tuesday, suspected Farc rebels planted four bombs in downtown Bogota. Three of them exploded near Government offices, injuring two adults and a six-year-old girl. Another bomb was safely detonated by police.

The attack came the same day as a car bomb exploded on Bogota’s outskirts, killing two bomb-squad officers. The police were tricked by trying to remove the booby-trapped corpse of a kidnapped farmer from the vehicle, and detonated the bomb.

Yesterday’s raid was much more ambitious.

Even Colombian police chief Gen Luis Ernesto Gilibert said the rebels — who wore red berets, camouflage fatigues and were accompanied by dogs — were the spitting image of the country’s bomb squad.

"In came a squad, I thought it was the army, and at the front there was guy in uniform, with a megaphone hung from his neck, a radio in his hand and a dog," said one lawmaker, who narrowly escaped abduction by running out an exit.

"Everybody was alarmed and then they said there was a bomb and evacuated the congressmen," he said.

The rebels later released four of the kidnap victims, all legislative aides. It was not clear whether any other aides were being held by the 17,000-member Farc.

A driver for a local news crew was was killed and a tv camera-man suffered serious gunshot wounds after driving into a combat zone on Cali’s outskirts following the kidnapping, but circumstances around the incident were murky.

The guerrilla fighters have kidnapped and are holding more than 800 hostages, including five national lawmakers and presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt — abducted on Feb 23. The Farc want to swap those lawmakers for jailed rebels.

Colombia has the highest kidnapping rate in the world, with more than 3,000 abductions last year. The conflict has claimed 40,000 lives in the past decade. (AGENCIES)

ARD to hold anti referendum rally in Lahore on Apr 27

ISLAMABAD, Apr 12: Pakistan’s Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) has geared up for a major showdown with President Pervez Musharraf, who is seeking an extension to his tenure in office through a referendum, by announcing a public meeting in Lahore on April 27 in defiance of the orders banning all political activity.

The meeting of Punjab provincial leaders of ARD, which includes Pakistan’s mainstream political parties — the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (PML) met in Lahore yesterday and decided to organise the rally at Minare-e-Pakistan from where Musharraf kicked off his campaign on April 9.

Musharraf launched a scathing attack on political parties, specially former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

A similar plan by the 15-party alliance to hold a meeting in Lahore on ‘Pakistan Day’ on March 23 was foiled by police. Even though the referendum would be held on April 30, Pakistan Government has so far not lifted the ban on outdoor political activity.

Addressing the media later, Alliance’s Punjab unit president Qasim Zia said the move to hold a rally was in line with the decision taken by the central leaders to "chase the president" in all the districts wherever he planned to address his referendum meetings.

Zia said the ARD was of the view that the President was violating the constitution by holding a referendum to extend his stay in power. (PTI)

Quake hits again in Afghan town of Nahrin

KABUL, Apr 12: An earthquake hit the northern Afghan town of Nahrin today causing dozens of buildings to collapse little more than two weeks after a series of tremors killed more 1,000 people in the area, officials said.

A military official in nearby Kunduz province in radio contact with the town said at least three people were reported killed.

"Tens of shops and houses have collapsed as a result of the quake," he told media.

He said aftershocks from the tremor, which Pakistani seismologists said were felt as far away as Kabul 160 km (100 miles) to the south and Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, continued to rock the area.

"As I speak to you, the tremors come and go," the officer said.

The quake struck around 0430 GMT and aftershocks were still rattling the area three hours later, he said. The Oakistani seismologists said the quake measured 5.6 on the open-ended richter scale — much the same as the tremors which rocked the Nahrin area late last month.

They, too, were followed by waves of aftershocks which hampered rescue work in an area littered with landmines laid during years of war.

However, the survivors of last month’s earthquakes were luckier than some in the quake-prone Hindu Kush region because aid agencies were relatively close and well prepared to help.

In 1998, when more than 5,000 people were killed in an earthquake just north of Nahrin while the ultra-Islamic Taliban ruled in Kabul and were making life difficult for aid agencies, it took many days to get help to the region.

Last month, help was on the way in a matter of hours from the United Nations, private aid groups and international military forces hunting down remnants of the Taliban and their allies of the Al Qaeda, blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Civil engineers with the international military force were also drafted in to clear broken down vehicles from the Salang tunnel, the world’s highest at 3,363 metres (11,034 feet), to allow aid to move on the vital highway north from Kabul.

But mines in the Nahrin area, much fought over in recent years, were a major problem with maps of minefields out of date and the movements of the earth shifting mines, bringing them to the surface or burying them deeper. (AGENCIES)

Govt asked to seek immunity from ICC jurisdiction

WASHINGTON, Apr 12: A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the United States have called upon the Government to seek immunity from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their soldiers deployed in Bosnia.

"When the United Nations mandate for the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia is renewed in June the Government should seek immunity for the 3,000 US servicemen deployed there," the leader of the group house international affairs committee chairman Henry Hyde said yesterday.

The group, consisting of Democratic and Republican members of the House and Senate, made the request to Secretary of State Colin Powell following yesterday’s announcement in New York that the Rome statute has been ratified by more than the 60 nations needed for the establishment of the ICC.

"Supporters of the ICC have persuaded themselves that the threat of UN prosecution will deter the Saddam Husseins and Slobodan Milosevics of the world. But we know you agree with us that dictators with the blood of thousands on their hands will scoff at the threat," the legislators wrote to Mr Powell.

"The real deterrent effect of the ICC will be on nations like our own that respect the rule of law and will in future hesitate to act in situations like we faced in Kosovo in 1999," they said.

Among signatories to the letter were the hyde and senators Zell Miller (Democrat-Georgia) and Jesse Helms (Republican-North Carolina) and representatives Tom Delay (Republican-Texas) and Bob Stump (Republican-Arizona), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

They said supporters of the ICC had conceded that some countries may hesitate to participate in future UN peacekeeping operations if their military personnel were at risk of criminal prosecution by the ICC for activities undertaken by them on behalf of the United Nations.

The way to solve this problem is for the United Nations Security Council to routinely include in its resolutions establishing UN peacekeeping operations a grant of permanent immunity from ICC jurisdiction for personell participating in the operation, they said.

"Indeed, we would oppose any future US military participation in UN peacekeeping operations where the Security Council refuses to grant such immunity to our personnel," they said.

"Now that the Government of Bosnia is poised to ratify the Rome statute, thereby imposing ICC jurisdiction on those same forces, it is perfectly reasonable to ask the Security Council to grant immunity from ICC and ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia) jurisdiction corresponding to the grant of immunity from Bosnian criminal jurisdiction provided in the Dayton accords," the lawmakers said. (UNI)

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