Silence governs the crime
ISLAMABAD, April 1 — A new study on child sexual abuse in Pakistan reports a doubling of cases reported in newspapers in one year — to the dismay of child rights activists.

South African editor sacked for remarks
JOHANNESBURG, April 1 — A South African black editor has been sacked for his controversial anti-Indian remarks in an editorial earlier this week.

11 die in fresh Indonesia clashes
JAKARTA, April 1 — At least 11 people were killed in fresh clashes between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia’s remote eastern Kai islands today.

Serial killer jailed for 506 years

Yugoslav army commander replaced

PODGORICA (Montenegro), April 1 (Reuters) — Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has removed the head of the second Yugoslav army, stationed in Montenegro, and replaced him with a loyal ally, sources close to the military has said.

The sources yesterday said Gen Radosav Martinovic was urgently recalled to Belgrade on Tuesday and has not returned. They said he would be substituted by Gen Milorad Obradovic, a Serb who is currently Assistant Chief of Staff of the Federal Army.

The Montenegro Government, which has distanced itself from Milosevic and branded the federal administration in Belgrade as illegitimate, said earlier this week it had a steady rapport with Gen Martinovic, despite tensions over NATO military attacks.

Montenegro, which together with Serbia forms the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, refused to ratify Belgrade’s declaration of a state of war last wee .

Government officials here warned this week that President Milosevic may seize on the present troubles to undermine their administration and impose a Belgrade-friendly regime in Podgorica.

AP adds from Belgrade: Long lines of refugees formed yesterday at the borders of both Macedonia and Montenegro, where departing Kosovo Albanians said another 5,000 people were coming behind them. Some 22,000 refugees already were gathered in Rozaje, in north-eastern Montenegro the smaller of the two Yugoslav republics.

Refugees arriving in northern Albania from the southern Kosovo towns of Prizren and Djakovica complained that NATO air strikes in those areas had been ineffective, hitting military buildings abandoned by the Yugoslav army. They said soldiers now were staying in homes left behind by fleeing ethnic Albanians.

Mr Hashim Thaci, a leader of rebel ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, told Germany’s ZDF Television the Serbs had created three concentration camps, including one in a Pristina stadium that he said was holding 100,000 people.

Yesterday, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said it had indicted a notorious Serb paramilitary leader for Bosnian war-era atrocities, an announcement seen as a warning signal to Mr Milosevic.

Executions denied

BRUSSELS (Reuters): Two Kosovo Albanian leaders reported to have been summarily executed by Serbs at the weekend are alive, US diplomatic and Kosovo Albanian sources said.

Mr Fehmi Agani, a veteran politician who played a key role at the Rambouillet peace talks, and Baton Haxhiu, Editor-in-Chief of Koha Ditore, who voiced the aspirations of his people, had not been executed as reported by NATO on Monday, the sources said yesterday.

He said the two men were still in Kosovo so they could not be described as being safe, given the wave of intimidation and ethnic cleansing now under way.

Serbia’s cyber war

BRUSSELS, April 1 (AFP) — NATO’s website, an important source of information on the war in Yugoslavia, has been hit by a ‘cyber attack’ from hacker-type computer experts in Belgrade, the military alliance has said.

NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said yesterday that the site had come under a ‘ping’ bombardment - whereby a computer sends thousands of empty data packages to another computer over the internet, effectively blocking its access to other users.

He said a Belgrade computer was also sending more than 2,000 e-mails a day, freezing its e-mail capacities, and that macro-viruses (viruses hidden in user-defined programme areas in applications like Microsoft word) were also disrupting NATO computers.

4 US cops charged with black’s murder

NEW YORK, April 1 (AFP) — Four White New York police officers who killed a Black African immigrant in February have been indicted with second degree murder.

The four, who were also charged with first degree reckless endangerment, pleaded not guilty to the charges yesterday.

The four officers, members of an elite plain-clothed unit, fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo (22) of Guinea, riddling him with 19 bullets.

“They shot with the intention to kill,” Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said.

Officers Richard Murphy (26), Kenneth Boss (27), Edward MC Mellow (26) and Sean Carroll (36) headed off a seemingly unavoidable arrest by turning themselves over to the police yesterday.

Attorneys for the police officers said the four opened fire on Diallo because they thought he had a gun.

“This is a tragedy, not a crime,” or defence attorney Worth stated. “They believed Diallo had a gun, and Diallo was acting suspiciously” by making “certain actions and certain gestures”, he added, without giving many details which will likely be part of his defence.

But prosecutors dismissed that defence.

“They could not See Diallo threatening them with a gun, since Diallo had no gun,” he stated at a press conference.

India among ‘most corrupt’ in Asia

SINGAPORE, April 1 (AFP) — Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are the cleanest places to do business in Asia, while Indonesia, India and China are the most corrupt, according to a survey of expatriate businessmen in the region.

Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Limited (PERC), in a report received here on Tuesday, said Singapore scored well ahead of the pack in the poll of over 450 respondents who graded 12 Asian countries.

On a scale of 0 to 10 — with zero representing the ideal situation - Singapore got an average score of 1.55 for corruption and 2.73 for cronyism, Hong Kong 4.06 and 3.68, and Japan 4.25 and 4.0 respectively.

At the opposite extreme, Indonesia scored 9.91 for corruption and 9.09 for cronyism, India 9.17 and 8.11, China 9.0 and 7.88 and Vietnam 8.5 and 7.75 respectively for the two categories.

In the middle rankings are the Philippines in fourth place, followed in descending order by Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea. The survey was carried out during the first quarter of this year.

Silence governs the crime

ISLAMABAD, April 1 (IPS) — A new study on child sexual abuse in Pakistan reports a doubling of cases reported in newspapers in one year — to the dismay of child rights activists.

As many as 478 cases of sexual assaults on children were reported by the national press in 1997. The number rose to 866 during 1998, said Saifullah Chaudhry of “Sahil”, an Islamabad- based group working for child protection from sexual abuse.

“Most such cases are never reported. Say only 10 per cent are reported to the police. Our study is based on cases reported by 11 national and four Sindhi-language newspapers... We cross checked them with relevant police stations,” Mr Chaudhry explained.

According to a recent report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). “The instances that made it to the press (in 1998) were often only those that had led to the murder of the child or grievous injury, or when the child remained kidnapped.”

Sexual abuse of children is rampant, across class and gender boundaries in Pakistan, but strong social taboos and notions of family honour bind communities into silence in this Muslim majority Muslim country.

Asked if he had ever handled a case of child sexual abuse, Farhat Kazmi, a former head of a police station in Islamabad, declared that in 14 years he has come across only one case of a five-year-old girl. “It’s not that they aren’t reported, such cases don't’t really take place,” he said firmly.

According to police rules, only rape constitutes a sexual offence in the case of children. “We only register cases where it is established that intercourse with the child has taken place,” confirms Mr Kazmi.

Activists point to the case of a judge of the supreme court who failed to register a criminal case against his cook who had sexually assaulted the 13-year-old daughter of his maid in 1997 in his official residence, preferring instead to have the cook dismissed from service.

The cook struck again the same year in November in the Supreme Court colony in Rawalpindi where he raped the three-year-old daughter of another court employee. Now he is in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail facing trial, though not on multiple charges of rape.

Instead of dealing sternly with child rapists, with a law that deals specifically with child sexual offenders, the government has sought to use laws that are either outdated or vague and specifically for adults.

It has been left to the discretion of the investigating officer to decide which one of the variety of laws - Pakistan Penal Code, Islamic Zina and Hudood Ordinance is to be applied against the child sexual offender.

Most of the cases are registered under Islamic Zina (adultery) and Hudood laws concerning rape, under which a woman has to produce witnesses to register a case of rape. The ordinances are a legacy of Pakistan’s martial law past.

Women’s groups have been campaigning for the repeal of the Islamic laws. According to an Islamabad-based lawyer, they punish the victims and in many cases allow the perpetrators to go scot free.

“For example if a 15-year-old girl gets pregnant after rape and she fails to produce four adult witnesses against the accused, then she will be charged with Zina,” he explained.

In 1997, the present Nawaz Sharif government introduced the death penalty for rapists charged with attacking children under 10 years, and said such cases should be tried in the special courts set up under the anti-terrorism laws.

But the death sentence, experts around the world have pointed out repeatedly, has never served as a deterrence. Instead it is a death sentence for the victims of sexual crimes who are killed by their violators.

South African editor sacked for remarks

JOHANNESBURG, April 1 (PTI) — A South African black editor has been sacked for his controversial anti-Indian remarks in an editorial earlier this week.

Amos Maphumulo, Managing Editor of the Durban-based Zulu-language Illanga bi-weekly newspaper, was relieved of his position after a disciplinary hearing held on Tuesday.

The newspaper is owned by Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party.

Maphumulo wrote on March 22 that Indians wanted the oppression of blacks to continue, drawing howls of protest from the sizeable Indian community here.

Mr Buthelezi, who is also Minister of Home Affairs in the Mandela government, quickly dissociated himself from the remarks, insisting Maphumulo’s views were his own and did not represent the views of any segment of the population.

In his article Maphumulo blamed Indians for the problems being encountered by Africans and hoped that an Idi Amin would be born to deal with them. The former Ugandan dictator was responsible for driving out Uganda’s Indian community in the late 1970s.

Maphumulo also accused Indians of fanning intra-black violence by providing firearms to black youth.

The paper’s Managing Director, Arthur Konigkramer, told PTI in an interview that Maphumulo would be given another position where he would not be able to influence editorial opinion. He said Maphumulo had also apologised for writing the editorial without the authority of the owners.

In his apology, Maphumulo said: “I accept that I made myself guilty of bad judgement and that I violated the editorial guidelines of the newspaper.”

“I broke a commitment on behalf of the owners to foster the cause of non-racialism and to pursue balanced policies that alone can guarantee the welfare of all people of South Africa.

11 die in fresh Indonesia clashes

JAKARTA, April 1 (ANI) — At least 11 people were killed in fresh clashes between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia’s remote eastern Kai islands today.

Witnesses said some people were shot by the police trying to stop fighting that erupted over a plot of disputed land. Others were hacked to death, they said.

Two persons were killed after violence broke out between local protesters and security forces on the islands yesterday.

Delayed reports reaching here today quoted security officials and some residents as saying that the clashes led to the burning of several hundred homes, and that many people fled into the nearby forests for safety.

In East Java, several shops and houses were wrecked by around 3,000 supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle who are protesting against the arrest of three fellow activists. The police in Madiun, 560 km east of Jakarta, had to fire warning shots to disperse the crowd, which was blocking a main street.

Serial killer jailed for 506 years

JOHANNESBURG, April 1 (Reuters) — A South African serial killer, who brutally murdered 16 women, has been given a 506-year prison sentence so he could never be freed, the South African Press Association (SAPA) reported.

Sipho Agmatir Twala, (31) was handed the jail term yesterday after being found guilty on 27 charges of murder, attempted murder, indecent assault and rape, it said.

Royal train on hire
LONDON: The British royal train could be rented out for private trips and charity functions, The Times has said. The paper said on Wednesday the Buckingham Palace had launched an initiative to try to recoup some of the annual £ 1.5 million ($ 2.4 million) running costs of the train, which was used just 19 times in the last financial year. Under the plan, companies and charities will be allowed to apply to hire the train for events “deemed to be in the national interest”. According to the paper, the train could also be used by Prime Minister Tony Blair and his ministers. — AFP

World’s biggest book
BARCELONA: The world’s biggest book is a real blockbuster — a whopping four metres tall, four metres wide and weighing two tonnes. It can’t be read yet, however, because it hasn’t been written. The writing got under way on Wednesday with the presentation of “World Book on Tour” in Barcelona, Spain. For a small contribution to charity people will be able to write in the 10,000-page tome as it visits cities around the globe over the next five years. The organisers estimate that 2 million persons will contribute their thoughts to the book. A part of the proceeds will go to the United Nations children’s fund. — DPA

Award for Mary Robinson
AMSTERDAM: The 1999 Erasmus prize has been awarded to Mary Robinson, former Irish President and United Nations High Commissioner for human rights since 1997, it was announced here. Mr Robinson received the prize in recognition of her role as a “worthy standard-bearer for collective responsibility” — the theme chosen for this year’s award, the Netherlands’ highest cultural prize. The Erasmus prize, which includes a reward of 300,000 quilders ($ 145,000), is awarded annually to an individual or organisation “that has made an exceptionally important contribution to European culture, society or social science.” — AFP

Yeltsin vetoes Bill
MOSCOW: President Boris Yeltsin on Wednesday vetoed legislation that would have allowed lawmakers to ban material from Russian television or radio if it was believed to be morally impure for viewers. The Bill, approved by both houses of Russia’s parliament in early March, would have established a council of lawmakers to oversee the protection of morals in Russian TV and Radio broadcasts. Mr Yeltsin vetoed it, however, saying it was inconsistent with the fundamentals of constitutional order of the Russian Federation and an array of federal laws. — AP

Arms embargo sought
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has demanded a complete arms embargo on all warring factions to stop the protracted civil war in Afghanistan and called for punitive measures against countries violating such curbs. “A steady inflow of arms from outside is responsible for prolonging the conflict in Afghanistan,” Pakistani foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed told newsmen here on Wednesday. — PTI