Art, music provoke Islamists on Pakistan campuses

KARACHI, Nov 28: Murtaza Khaliq, a film student at Pakistan’s biggest university in Karachi, produced a music video for his .....more

Britain’s ruling Labour
Party slips in polls

LONDON, Nov 28: British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ruling Labour Party has fallen behind the main opposition ...more

International community
not to tolerate divisive outcome in Lanka: EU

NEW DELHI, Nov 28: European Union today said in unequivocal terms that the international community will not .....more

Bush returns to
Washington from Iraq trip

WASHINGTON, Nov 28: US President George W Bush arrived back in the United States shortly after midnight today after a clandestine trip to Iraq to ......more

10 dead in fire at
Chinese apartment house

BEIJING, Nov 28: A fire at an apartment building in eastern China killed 10 people, the Xinhua news agency reported today. .....more

Visiting professor
pleads innocence in
sexual misconduct case

NEW YORK, Nov 28: A visiting professor from India, accused of sexual misbehavior, has pleaded not guilty to three charges filed against him, ....more

BBC highlights contribution by indian doctors in Britain

LONDON, Nov 28: Not many Britishers would have known about the contribution ....more

Man runs Amok knife standoff, fires gun in Malaysian hospital

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 28: A Malaysian Police officer and a nurse were wounded when a man ran amok and fired ...more

Art, music provoke Islamists on Pakistan campuses

KARACHI, Nov 28: Murtaza Khaliq, a film student at Pakistan’s biggest university in Karachi, produced a music video for his final-year project.

But right-wing Islamic students opposed to holding art shows on campus attacked the graduating student’s year-end exhibition and smashed the computer he had planned to use to screen it.

"My video had no objectionable material. There weren’t even any women in it," said the frail-looking Khaliq. "They found it offensive because it was a musical video."

The battle on Pakistan’s campuses between liberal and conservative students mirrors a wider struggle for the soul of Pakistan since it won Independence from Britain in 1947.

Many Pakistanis are relatively liberal but the influence of conservative Islamists has grown since an Islamisation campaign by military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s.

Pursuing arts at the university of Karachi, the country’s largest Cosmopolitan city, is a risky business.

For years, the powerful Islamist lobby blocked the opening of a fine arts department and it was only in 1999 that courses for select fine arts disciplines, including textile design, film production and architecture, were allowed.

But these courses are constantly scrutinised by Islamists, who Abhor music, painting and sculpture and want them off campus.

"Our first challenge is to pursue arts over here," said Durriya Kazi, chairwoman of the department of visual studies. "Our presence here means that eventually the two sides will have to compromise and start tolerating each other."

Not just in Karachi, but at other major campuses there have been repeated incidents in which baton-wielding conservatives have imposed their moral values on the majority.

Musical concerts and mixed gatherings remain banned at most state-run institutions and a male student can be beaten just for sitting next to a female.

In the late 1980s, campus violence — including a series of killings and acid attacks on liberal female students — became so bad that authorities deployed paramilitary rangers to ensure academic peace.

The rangers’ presence put an end to the gunfights, but the tension remains.

Despite considerable self-censorship, students and teachers of the visual studies department say they remain under threat.

The Islamic students who attacked the final-year exhibition in November said it was sacrilege to hold the show during the fasting month of Ramadan.

"Ten to 15 boys stormed in and started throwing computers around," said textile design student Azeem Rana.

Rana’s computer displayed his textile patterns with soft music in the background the attackers threw it to the floor and slapped and kicked him.

Tooba Fatima said she and some other students locked themselves in a room to escape the assault. "It was very scary."

The exhibition reopened the following day, but only after teachers barred all videos and music.

"How can I show my work?" asked Zoheb Anwar, pointing to a couple of sketches he made for a cartoon film which is no longer part of the exhibition. "I am unable to define my ideas."

The student wing of leading religious party Jamaat-e-Islami was blamed for the attack. Its chairman Noman Ahmed denied they were involved, but implicitly backed the actions of "religiously minded" students who carried out the attack.

"We know that many things on display there were opposed to the country’s Islamic ideology. They should have no place here," said Ahmed, himself a final-year student in the mass communications department."

"We should promote Islamic arts such as calligraphy. Music, sculpture, or videos, such as one on eunuchs made by a student, should have no place here. We brought the issue to the notice of the registrar, but he took no action."

Naheed Raza, a leading painter, said only a small minority opposes arts being studied at the universities.

"They use strong-arm tactics to dictate their views," said Raza, herself under fire by rightwing students for drawing nudes. "They find nudity in everything.

"These are forces of the dark ages who want to destroy arts and science. But they are failing, as privately people are promoting arts despite the opposition." (AGENCIES)

Britain’s ruling Labour Party slips in polls

LONDON, Nov 28: British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ruling Labour Party has fallen behind the main opposition conservatives, according to a newspaper poll published today.

The Yougov survey for the right-leaning daily telegraph showed the tories on 38 per cent, up four points on last month and two ahead of Labour.

Blair has seen his party’s once towering lead slip away in the face of protests against war in Iraq and rebellion in his party over plans to charge students tuition fees.

Commentators say the conservatives have found their feet under new leader Michael Howard, who replaced the unpopular Iain Duncan Smith on November 6.

The right-wing tories have trailed Labour for much of Blair’s six years in office, although they edged ahead in the same poll in June.

The Yougov survey of 1,952 voters found Blair ahead of Howard in the leadership stakes. Asked who would make the best leader, 31 per cent said Blair, against 27 per cent for Howard.

A third said they would trust the conservatives if Britain were in economic difficulties, two points ahead of Labour.

The poll will come as a further blow to Blair, who on Wednesday unveiled the Government’s agenda for the last full legislative year before an expected 2005 general election.

Blair will today launch the "big conversation", a bid to gauge what ordinary voters think are Labour’s priorities.

In an interview with Friday’s Guardian newspaper, Blair focused on voter-friendly domestic issues such as crime, education and health.

"We must engage people about the choices needed," Blair told the Guardian. "At the end of the process, the nation will still have the democratic right to vote out the Government.

"The central belief of the Labour party is social justice, with individual ambition best achieved through the help of the community."

The revitalised tory party gunned for the Prime Minister this week, with Howard accusing Blair of losing control after two election victories.

"After six-and-a-half years, this is a Prime Minister who has lost his grip and a Government that has lost its way," Howard told Parliament. (AGENCIES)

BBC highlights contribution by indian doctors in Britain

LONDON, Nov 28: Not many Britishers would have known about the contribution of these Indian medicos to their National Health Service (NHS) for over four decades but for the BBC documentary telecast yesterday.

"From Raj to Rhondda: How Indian doctors saved the NHS" showed how these "strangely named doctors" like Krishnamurthis, Bhattacharyas and Bodiwalas had astonished many in the coal-mining areas of wales as the only faces they got to see there were those of miners coming out of coal pits.

In 1963 Conservative Health Minister Enoch Powell had called Indian doctors to save the NHS from a staff crisis.

More than 18,000 doctors had arrived in Britain but were sent to crime and unemployment ridden areas or rural communities where English doctors refused to go. They were offered the Cinderella posts in specialities such as mental health or geriatrics or General Practitioners (GP) jobs in some of the country’s most needy and deprived areas, including the South Wales valleys.

Speaking on the programme, Aneez Esmail of Manchester University said, without the doctors from south Asia, the NHS would have collapsed. They provided a huge service to the NHS. But what really annoys me is that they have almost been written out of NHS history.

In England, the NHS at present serves 1.4 million patients every week, delivers 10,000 babies, performs 3,000 heart operations, 1,200 hip replacements and 1,050 kidney operations. It employs more than 100,000 people of which a quarter of them are from India.

In the Rhondda valley of South Wales 73 per cent GPS are south Asians and in Cannon valley 70 per cent of them are of South Asian origin, and many of them are on the road to retirement.

In this critical situation the Blair Government needs to employ an extra 7,500 consultants and 2,000 GPS by the end of 2004. (UNI)

12-year-old Accuser and mother praise Jackson as father figure

NEW YORK, Nov 28: An audio cassette of the 12-year-old boy who has accused Michael Jackson of sexual abuse, and his mother, praising the popstar as a father figure, has emerged in the United States, CNN reported.

In the recording, they also said, "God had blessed them", by bringing them into contact with Jackson.

A legal member of CNN staff, Kimberly Guilfoyle newsom, said yesterday Jackson’s lawyers had played her a copy of the cassette which was recorded in February.

Jackson’s accusers and the 12-year-old’s brother emphasise on tape that the 45-year-old singer had, "never acted inappropriately", in their presence.

But CNN pointed out that it had not been proven whether the voices on the tape were really those of the boy, his mother and brother.

According to newsom, the boy’s mother said that Jackson had treated her son like his own son.

In the CNN programme "Anderson Cooper 360" broadcast on Wednsesday evening, newsom said that a private detective had made the 20-minute recording on Jackson’s behalf.

Newsom had been invited to Las Vegas to give an expert opinion, but her request for a copy of the cassette was refuted.

"At no time does it appear this statement is coerced, that there is any kind of duress or any undue influence being exercised over any of the parties", she said.

Newsom said the mother also signed an affidavit a month after the recording in which she confirmed that Jackson had never molested her child. The lawyer told the programme that she had had never seen the document, but simply heard of its existence.

According to newsom, the material could damage the case of the District Attorney in Santa Barbara, California. If the tape proved to be genuine, the District Attorney would have to prove that the alleged sexual abuse took place after the recording in February.

The 20-minute tape was made after completion of a documentary on Jackson showing the singer holding hands with the then 12-year-old.

The boy said in the documentary that he had been invited to Jackson’s Neverland ranch when suffering from cancer. He said he had shared the singer’s bed with him while there. (DPA)

Red Cross launches fund to save own staff from AIDS

GENEVA, Nov 28: The world’s largest relief agency, worried about the loss of staff and helpers to AIDS, launched a fund to finance antiretroviral treatment for those infected by the killer virus.

The international federation of Red Cross and red crescent societies has some 97 million helpers and employees around the world and it estimates at least 200,000 of them are living with HIV/AIDS.

"This poses an enormous challenge — not only to our ability to carry out our humanitarian mandate, but also to the survival of our organisation," said Razia Essack-Kauaria, a member of the Federation’s Governing Board and Secretary-General of the Namibia Red Cross.

The fund, which will be operated separately from the federation’s other work and to which employees will donate one percent of their salaries, aims to provide treatment for some 300 people in the first phase.

Each AIDS sufferer would be guaranteed five years of drug supplies, with priority given to those in countries where there is no other funding option. Officials said they estimated the cost of treatment at 40-50 dollars a month.

"We hope (it) will encourage other organisations and companies to care for their staff who have AIDS," said federation Secretary-General Markku Niskala. (AGENCIES)

Prison terms given to Tiananmen square demonstrators

BEIJING, Nov 28: Two men were sentenced today to prison terms for protesting at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, a news report said.

The Chinese internet legal service fayuanwang said a 49-year-old from the southern province of Fujian received a six-year term, while a 43-year-old from Beijing got two years.

Authorities were quoted as saying the man who received the six-year sentence was convicted of illegally distributing leaflets from his car and tried to light a gas container on fire, the internet service said.

The second man had been accused of repeatedly demonstrating in the famous Beijing plaza to protest being relocated from his residence as part of a construction project. (DPA)

South Iraq fairly stable :Japan’s Defence Minister

TOKYO, Nov 28: Japan inched closer to sending troops to Iraq today when Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba said a report from a fact-finding mission indicated that the southern part of the country was relatively stable.

Members of a Japanese military survey team had returned home yesterday after investigating security around the town of Samawah, where Japan is planning to send its forces.

A bomb attack in nearby Nassirya killed 19 Italians earlier this month, forcing Japan to put its plan to send troops by the end of the year on hold.

"I got the impression that the security situation in southern Iraq is reasonably stable, compared with other parts of the country," Ishiba told journalists after hearing the report.

The team also confirmed that the area’s needs included tasks that Japanese troops were prepared to carry out, such as medical treatment, education and water purification and distribution, Ishiba added.

Japan has passed a special law to enable it to bypass its pacifist constitution and send troops to Iraq, but they can only be sent to "non-combat zones" and must take part only in reconstruction and humanitarian work.

Domestic media said the survey team’s report cleared the way for Japan to agree next week on a basic plan for the dispatch, but Ishiba said this would probably not set a date nor stipulate the size of the contingent.

Those specifics will be included in a deployment plan to be drawn up by the Defence Ministry later.

Japan has been vacillating for months over the dispatch due to security worries, but Shinzo Abe, Secretary General of the ruling liberal democratic party, said today that there would be no backing down.

"I want to make it quite clear that it would be out of the question for us not to send troops," he said in a speech in Tokyo. "We will send troops to help with the reconstruction of Iraq, without fail." (AGENCIES)