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| Saturday, July 1, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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SC lifts ban on Lankan daily Window on Pakistan Prostitution is slavery, ‘not profession’ |
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Sogavare elected Solomons’ PM HONIARA, June 30 — Lawmakers today elected opposition leader Mannasseh Sogavare as the Solomon Islands’ new Prime Minister in a move which observers hope will end months of ethnic fighting. Koreas’ move to reunite families Ex- Ukrainian PM
sentenced for theft New wave Indian film festival |
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 Deposed Fijian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudray (L) walks with Labour backbench member Pradhuman Raniga during their daily exercise at Fiji's Parliament complex in Suva
on June 30, their 43rd day in captivity since they were taken hostage on May 19 by George Speight and his supporters. The military have threatened to enforce a no-go zone around the Parliament
building and cutting electricity and other services if coup leader Speight and his rebels do not return to the
negotiation table within the next 24 hours. — Reuters photo
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SC lifts ban on Lankan daily COLOMBO, June 30 (UNI) — The Supreme Court today ruled that the ban on “The Sunday Leader publications” by the competent authority was null and void and ordered immediate lifting of its ban. In a landmark judgement, the court also directed the government, which has appointed the competent authority under emergency regulations, to pay Rs 100,000 as damages. The competent authority had imposed a ban on “Sunday Leader” and ‘Rida Peramuna’ (Sinhala) newspapers for a period of six months from May 22. The leader publications had soon after appealed to the advisory committee. The committee had recently recommended reducing the ban by four months. The Sunday Leader publications in a fundamental rights violation plea had challenged the banning of newspapers by the competent authority. The respondent cited were competent authority Ariya Rubasinghe who is Director of Information, Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera and the advisory committee of the competent authority headed by Anil Obeysekera. The competent authority had banned the newspapers for the purported violation of the censorship on military related news. In an unrelated development the Sri Lankan Government and opposition have agreed on almost all outstanding issues and reached a broad agreement on the proposed ‘historic’ constitutional reforms, to find a lasting solution to the 17-year-old ethnic crisis. President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe are meeting here for a last round talk to give final touches to their five-month-long discussion on the draft constitution proposal of 1997. The visit of Norway’s special emissary Eric Solheim accelerated the momentum of the talks and his statement that ‘positive signals had emerged from the talks between the two political parties’ is clear indication that talks are making headway in the right direction. Notwithstanding the response from the LTTE. Official sources said the joint committee of the ruling People’s Alliance and opposition United National Party has agreed to the formulation that the Republic of Sri Lanka consists of the centre and regions. They said an agreement has also been reached that legislative and executive powers of the republic are distributed between the Centre and the regions and that the unity and territorial integrity of the republic is maintained while devolving powers to the region. The committee had already reached agreement on matters relating to the proposed commissions on public service, election and police. It has also been agreed upon to set up an interim council for five years to administer the north and east provinces till a referendum was held to decide upon whether both provisions should be merged or not. The new constitution is expected to be presented in parliament in the last week of July for its approval. |
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Window on Pakistan Newspapers from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad give the impression that General Pervez Musharraf is silently working on a grand political plan to remote-control the government when ( if at all) he hands over power to elected representatives after the deadline set for his exit by the Pakistan Supreme Court expires. In all probability, the top item on his agenda is to permanently paralyse or badly mutilate the two principal political parties — the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan People's Party — which have been competing with each other in the race for forming the government after Gen Zia-ul-Haq left the scene in 1988. Ever since he deposed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on October 12 last year the ruling General has been working overtime to discredit the entire political class and with considerable success. But in the process he has been making too much promises which are nearly impossible to be translated into reality. He has exposed political corruption to a great extent but has failed to improve law and order and the economic health of his country. The public has now come to realise that General Musharraf has been making hollow claims for over nine months that he has been in the saddle. The General is, therefore, scared that in the event of elections either the PML led by Mr Nawaz Sharif or the PPP of Ms Benazir Bhutto may stage a comeback to control the reins of what is known as the establishment in Pakistan. That will mean trouble for the Chief Executive and his family. Hence his efforts to make sure that under no circumstances should the two parties — which are even thinking of forming a front — in their present form be able to capture power. A recent report in The Nation quotes a National Accountability Bureau official without naming him to say that the Election Commission will soon come out with far-reaching electoral reforms as a result of which over 600 politicians will stand disqualified to contest elections forever. They will have to suffer this punishment as it has been detected that they committed the crime of filing their nomination papers with false details about their assets during the 1997 elections. The list includes the names of Mr Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto. Though even otherwise both of them remain debarred from contesting elections for different reasons, the PPP leader, who was disqualified by the Lahore High Court to hold any public office in April, 1999, for five years, will be in a position to enter the electoral arena in 2004. In the absence of Mr Nawaz Sharif, no political fighter, as it appears today, has enough following to defeat Ms Bhutto in a battle of the ballot though her base has shrunk considerably because of her long and continuing self-imposed exile. The General's strategy is not only to create such a political heavyweight but also to ensure that Ms Bhutto is debarred from ever
occupying the top executive post in Pakistan. Only her disqualification for life can guarantee this. That is believed to be the first part of General Musharraf's plan for future survival. The second part includes grooming a leader a la General Zia, who patronised Mr Sharif to first become the Chief Minister of Punjab and then to emerge as a national leader with admirable following. Mr Nadeem Shahid in his article carried in The Nation of June 12 has focused on certain personalities who may succeed in securing the patronage of the General. His list includes Maulana Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat-e-Islami, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, former President Farooq Ahmed Leghari, not so well-known figure Tahirul Qadiri and Sindh Governor Mohammad Mian Sumroo. The article does not go beyond mentioning these names except in the case of the Jamaat leader, who has been constantly asking the ruling General to hand over power to people's representatives and send the army to the barracks. However, the maulana is too old to learn to change his style of functioning to be acceptable to a majority of Pakistanis. The General might be having in his mind a younger and promising personality to fit in his scheme of things for the future. It is time for Pakistan watchers to keep guessing. — Syed Nooruzzaman |
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Prostitution is slavery, ‘not profession’ MADRID, June 30 (DPA) — Prostitution is not a profession, it is slavery, a congress of 400 experts from 13 countries was told during three days of deliberations in Madrid. Swimming against the European trend toward liberalisation, the congress, which ended on Wednesday, condemned the red light business in the harshest terms, branding it a form of slavery and demanding its eradication rather than legalisation. Some women may fantasise about sex with handsome strangers, but clients of prostitutes are usually too old, shy or simply unattractive to find other sexual partners, conferees were told. The other group of typical clients consists of men who are looking for bizarre sexual acts, Swedish sociologist Axel-Sven Mansson said. Around a half of prostitutes are beaten up or otherwise abused by their clients or pimps, the congress was told. Prostitutes suffer from work-related inflamations and chronic pelvis pains. The vast majority contract sexual diseases and undergo abortions. The practice of selling their bodies brings most prostitutes serious psychological problems, including depression, anxiety attacks, and post-traumatic stress disorder — which is also suffered by war veterans, the congress was told. In Spain, for instance, 70 per cent of a total of at least 300,000 prostitutes are illegal immigrants who have been lured to the country with false promises of jobs and who live in terror of their pimps. Around a million such women are estimated to have been smuggled into the European Union from Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. Four million immigrants, including men and young boys, are working in the worldwide sex trade. “Future generations of girls in poor countries will be sacrificed to the growing sex industry,” in western countries, which assuage their consciences with the “bland consensus that adult women do it voluntarily”, Filipino expert Aurora Javate said. In Spain, 90 per cent of the non-foreign prostitutes are drug addicts. Only around 5 per cent of prostitutes working in the EU are high-class call girls who are in the business voluntarily, experts said. Even when they claim to be happy with their jobs, prostitutes have usually been driven to it by poverty, drug addiction, or psychological problems stemming from sexual abuse in childhood, Spanish Social Affairs official Pilar Martinez stressed. Yet many countries do not regard prostitution as an important problem, and officials may even describe it as a “profession”, experts complained. Sweden has resorted to the unprecedented measure of punishing the curb-crawling clients of prostitutes, a law which was cut the trade by 35 per cent in six months, the congress was told. But most countries shrink form such drastic measures and prefer to discuss milder possibilities, such as the legalisation of prostitution to free the women from the power of pimps. With the trade in immigrants rapidly growing, the problem demands urgent solutions, the congress stressed. |
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Sogavare elected Solomons’ PM HONIARA, June 30 (Reuters) — Lawmakers today elected opposition leader Mannasseh Sogavare as the Solomon Islands’ new Prime Minister in a move which observers hope will end months of ethnic fighting. “My new government will address the crisis that have been affecting this nation for the last 19 months,” Mr Sogavare said immediately after the vote, which he narrowly won 23-21. Swearing to form a
government of national unity in the strife-torn South Pacific nation, Mr Sogavare said his government was committed to bring Solomon Islands into national unity and reconciliation. There was no immediate reaction from the former government or from rival rebel groups who had been fighting for 19 months on the nation’s main island. A spokesman for the main rebel group Andrew Nori had, however, previously stated that his group, from Malaita island, would accept any of the three candidates who fought the election. One of the government candidates, Francis Bill Hilly, withdrew from the election today, so as not to split the government vote. Today’s vote went ahead amid tight security after a vote scheduled for Wednesday was called off because government lawmakers refused to attend it citing safety fears. Sogavare replaced the ousted Prime Minister Bartholemew Ulufa’alu, who resigned under duress two weeks ago after armed rebels seized Honiara and briefly held him at gunpoint. The rebels from the island of Malaita, motivated by a long-running ethnic dispute over land, raided a police armoury on June 5 to seize the weapons they needed for the coup. |
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Koreas’
move to reunite families SEOUL, June 30 (AFP) — South and North Korea are ready to sign a deal reunite relatives separated for decades and to repatriate long-term Communist prisoners, officials said here today. Under the interim agreement struck overnight, two groups of relatives will be allowed to visit each other’s capital around August 15, the 55th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from the Japanese rule. North Korea has demanded that the number of visitors on each side should be around 150, while South Korea wants it slightly higher at around 160, the officials said. The breakthrough came after four days of talks between the representatives of the Red Cross from the two Koreas at Mount Kumkang. Pyongyang backed down from its earlier demand that South Korea return freed pro-North Korean prisoners before the family reunions, consenting to the South’s proposal that the ex-prisoners be returned in early September. North Korea also agreed in principle to the opening of an inter-Korean meeting place to help reunite separated relatives. |
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Ex- Ukrainian PM sentenced for theft GENEVA, June 30 (AP) — Mr Pavlo Lazarenko, a former Prime Minister of Ukraine, has been given an 18-month suspended prison sentence for money laundering. Mr Lazarenko admitted earlier this week that he funneled $ 9 million in stolen money through Switzerland. The funds came from commissions paid on the export of manganese through a Ukrainian company. The Geneva police court suspended the sentence, announced yesterday, because the 47-year-old Lazarenko has spent more than a year in prison. He is being held in San Francisco on suspicion of money-laundering offences in the USA. Prosecutors told the court that Lazarenko is believed to have stolen a total of $ 880 million from Ukraine between 1994 and 1997, with more than $ 170 million passing through Switzerland. He was arrested in Basel in December 1998 but was released on 4 million francs (then dirs 3 million) bail. He was detained in San Francisco in April 1999 after a Swiss judge issued an international arrest warrant for him and asked the US authorities to extradite him. Lazarenko has fought extradition, maintaining he would not get a fair trial in Ukraine. Lazarenko, named Prime Minister in 1996 by Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, served 13 month before losing a power struggle. |
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New wave Indian film festival LONDON, June 30 (PTI) —A week-long film festival of “New Wave of Independent Cinemas” emerging from India will be held here from tomorrow. At the “Filmi Fundas Film Festival 2000” six films including ‘Bombay Boys’, ‘Hyderabad Blues’, ‘Split Wide Open’ and award winning ‘Godmother’ will be screened. Filmi fundas is a private limited company set up in London to promote and publicise the new wave of Indian independent film making. Channel 4 and ITV are playing an active role in promoting Filmi Fundas which was launched at Chor Bizzare, listed among UK’s top Indian restaurants in London. Renowned actress Shabana Azmi who lent support to the new wave film festival said Indian cinema had very successfully withstood the onslaught of Hollywood films with the Indian movie industry producing the largest number of films in the world. “The film festival aims to promote the work of a new wave of independent film-makers from Indian subcontinent,” Patrick Yong, Channel 4 Commissioning Editor, Multi-Cultural Programming, said. “The film-makers describe their work as stories of new, hip culture and changing, progressive India that’s post-millenniumal, post-colonial and post-cliche,” he said. “Unlike parallel cinema which show moralistic stories in rural settings, independent cinemas show urban, fast-paced delight made on a small budget. ‘Hyderabad Blues’ and ‘Bombay Boys’ have managed to rake in moolah by spending far less on sets and stars compared to what Bollywood blockbusters spend on their productions,” Writer-Director Kaizad Gustad, who is the brain behind the festival said. In the last four or five years London has become a vital centre for Indian film producers with a vast young and affluent audience of Indian-origin, Gustad told reporters here. Shabhana Azmi said she was against Hindi movies being called Bollywood movies. “It gives an impression that Hindi films are inferior rip-offs of Hollywood films which is not the case,” she said. All the six films being screened in the festival including ‘English August’ directed by Dev Benegal and ‘Rockford’ directed by Nagesh Kukunoor of ‘Hyderabad Blues’ fame were a box office success in India. |
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