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| Saturday, February
24, 2001, Chandigarh, India    |
Borneo clashes leave over 200 dead
USA welcomes truce
extension |
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Anwar’s bid to sue Mahathir
fails USA to lodge protest with
China
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Sub captain knew ship was nearby: Washington Post China executes 7
for smuggling Kidnappers make
new demand
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Borneo clashes leave over 200 dead SAMPIT, (Indonesia), February 23 The central Kalimantan river town of Sampit, at the centre of the violence between indigenous Dayaks and Madurese immigrants, was relatively calm and under heavy security, the police said. But bodies still littered the streets and Dayaks, once fearsome headhunters, roamed around in search of Madurese, most of whom had taken refuge in makeshift camps in police or government offices in the centre of town. Dr Komarudin at Sampit’s main hospital said at least 143 persons had died at Sampit and its surrounding areas. Some victims have been beheaded and their heads paraded through town. Others have been burned to death in the violence which witnesses and officials say has largely gone from fighting between the rival groups to one-sided Dayak attacks on Madurese. The government has called in the navy to help evacuate thousands of refugee Madurese from Sampit. A navy warship capable of carrying 2,000 persons and ironically named Sampit Bay headed for the battered town. “There will be two ships to take the Madurese back to Java,” police official Andi Selvi said in the provincial capital of Palangkaraya. It was unclear if the second vessel was also a navy ship or a government ferry. “The situation this morning is quite calm, although the police is still on alert,” she added. Head of the police taskforce in charge of quelling the violence, Commissioner Sukardji, said many people who were neither Dayak nor Madurese were too afraid to leave their homes. “There are still many bodies on the streets,” he said. Smoke from smouldering buildings could be seen rising above Sampit from several kilometres away and truckloads of Dayaks hunting for Madurese cruised roads outside the town, about 750 km northeast of Jakarta. More Dayaks on foot searched buildings in town for isolated Madurese, but most had fled to the safety of the police and government offices in the town centre. Security forces and local residents had set up roadblocks around the town and surrounding roads. Officials estimate around 15,000 Madurese have fled Sampit and another 15,000 are crammed in the town centre, some under makeshift blue plastic shelters, guarded by a protective cordon of police and soldiers. Schools and most shops in Sampit were closed today, although the town market opened under heavy police guard. During the uneasy calm, aid workers had opened a temporary field kitchen to feed the refugees, the police said. But food remains in short supply. A carload of supplies brought in by a convoy of journalists from Palangkaraya was mobbed soon after it arrived at Sampit. Hundreds have died in Indonesian Borneo provinces in the past two years in unrest between Dayaks and immigrants, mainly from Madura island, which is off east Java. The latest bloodshed is an eruption of simmering tension between Dayaks and immigrants from Madura, who also have a reputation as fierce warriors. Tensions were stoked by the now abandoned and widely discredited policy of resettling Indonesians from overcrowded areas, such as Madura and Java, in underpopulated provinces. Central Kalimantan, a vast province home to just 1.5 million persons is Indonesia’s only Borneo province where Dayaks are still in a majority. The latest violence flared as embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid left for a two-week trip to the Middle East and Africa. Before leaving Jakarta yesterday, Mr Wahid dismissed fears that the country could descend into chaos, but he appealed for calm. National police chief Bimantoro has blamed the fresh unrest on two local officials angry at being overlooked for new jobs in a reshuffle after provinces received more autonomy.
Reuters |
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USA welcomes truce extension Washington, February 23 Welcoming India’s decision to extend the truce for three months, the State Department spokesman said: “We believe the peace process in Kashmir would be greatly enhanced if militant groups responded positively to the announcement by taking steps to halt the violence.” “We continue to encourage all parties to take the initiative to reduce violence and foster the process of dialogue,” they said. LONDON: The London-based Jammu and Kashmir National Awareness Campaign on Friday welcomed India’s decision to extend the ceasefire, describing it as an “expression of the will to promote peace in the sub-continent”. Campaign Director M.A. Raina said: “The ceasefire is a means to achieve an end. The real objective is to solve the Kashmir problem peacefully”. To make the ceasefire meaningful there was an urgent need for taking certain concrete “helpful measures” he said, adding that “the killings, arrests and custodial deaths of innocent people should end”. “Peaceful demonstrations should not be responded by opening fire as in a recent case in Baramula.,” he said.
PTI |
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Anwar’s bid to sue Mahathir fails Kuala Lumpur, February 23 The Federal Court said it upheld rulings made earlier by two lower courts that Mr Mahathir had not defamed Anwar because he was protected by the defences of “justification” and “qualified privilege” as premier. The court’s three-judge panel, headed by Chief Justice Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah, unanimously dismissed Anwar’s appeal with costs. Anwar, who is now serving 15 years in jail after he was convicted of corruption and sodomy offences, sued Mr Mahathir two years ago over the premier’s remarks made at a press conference that Anwar had committed sexual misconduct, such as adultery and having homosexual sex. The two lower courts, which rejected Anwar’s suit as “frivolous” and “an abuse of the court process,” upheld Mr Mahathir’s lawyer’s arguments that the premier had made the comments because he was explaining the reasons behind his shocking sacking of Anwar on September 2, 1998. However, Anwar claimed that the remarks were uttered “maliciously” because Mr Mahathir knew his comments would be widely publicised at home and abroad.
DPA |
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USA to lodge protest with China Washington, February 23 Expressing concern over Chinese presence in Iraq, Mr Bush said his administration was sending an appropriate response to China. “Yes, it is troubling me that they had to be involved in helping Iraq develop a system that will endanger our pilots,’’ he said. “Let me just tell you this, it has risen to the level where we are going to send a message to the Chinese,’’ Mr Bush told his first official press conference at the White House after becoming the President. US and British jets chose Friday, a holiday in the Islamic world, to strike at military sites around Baghdad, to avoid hitting Chinese and Iraqi workers laying fibre optic cables to link Iraqi radars with anti-missile sites.
UNI |
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Bush warns Saddam Washington February 23 |
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Mass rape a war crime: Hague
court Brussels In a judgment that is likely to have far-reaching implications for war crimes trials in Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor, the tribunal elevated systematic rape from being a mere violation of the customs of war to one of the most heinous war crimes of all — a crime against humanity. “This verdict is a significant step for women’s human rights. Sexual enslavement in armed conflict is now legally acknowledged as a crime against humanity and perpetrators can and must be held to account,’’ said Amnesty International in a statement after the decision. The court ruled that the three veterans of the 1992-95 Bosnian war - who stood in silence as the verdict was read out - were guilty of the systematic and savage rape, torture and enslavement of Muslim women in 1992 in the town of Foca in south-eastern Bosnia. They were convicted on 19 separate counts. “This is the first case where sexual slavery has been charged,’’ UN prosecutor Dirk Ryneveld said. “What sets this apart is that this is a case in which we have a large rape camp organisation. This is the first case of sexual enslavement and the only one with sexual assaults and no murders.’’ In the past international courts such as the tribunals set up in Nuremberg and Tokyo after the World War II, have been reluctant to class wartime rape as a serious crime of war but the Hague tribunal took a much tougher line on the issue. The judgment will give hope to thousands of surviving “comfort women’’ used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during the World War II who have been fighting in vain for recognition and compensation from the Japanese government. The presiding judge, Florence Mumba of Zambia, described in graphic detail how the three Bosnian Serbs had in the summer of 1992 abducted girls as young as 12 and subjected them to appalling sexual torture in sports halls and a variety of “rape houses’’. “The three accused are not ordinary soldiers whose morals were merely loosened by the hardships of war. They thrived in the dark atmosphere of the dehumanisation of those believed to be enemies,’’ she told the court. “Rape was used by members of the Bosnian Serb armed forces as an instrument of terror,’’ the judge concluded at the end of the 11-month trial as she read out the verdict to the three accused. “You abused and ravaged Muslim women because of their ethnicity and from among their number you picked whomsoever you fancied. You have shown the most glaring disrespect for the women’s dignity and their fundamental human rights on a scale that far surpasses even what one might call the average seriousness of rapes during wartime.’’ In Sarajevo a group of Bosnian Muslim women reacted with fury to the sentences, which they regarded as insufficiently tough. “We are shocked with the verdict. Justice has not been done, as the three received a minimum punishment for what they have done,’’ argued Nezira Zolota of the Sarajevo association of former camp inmates. Human rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of Muslim women and girls were systematically raped during the war. Many were deliberately impregnated so as to bear Serbian babies and advance the cause of ethnic cleansing.
The Guardian, London |
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Sub captain knew ship was nearby: Washington Post Washington, February 23 But the captain has maintained that when he looked for the ship through a periscope, he saw nothing — and was not given any warning by a sailor whose job it was to plot the positions of nearby vessels, the newspaper said. The skipper, Cmdr Scott Waddle, has not publicly discussed the accident. But a person close to the investigation outlined for the newspaper the statements the captain has made to investigators. According to the account given by the Post, Waddle checked the compass bearing of the nearby ship, as indicated by sonar readings. Then he increased the periscope’s magnification and ordered that the submarine ascend two feet closer to the surface so he could peer over the waves. But he still did not see any vessel nearby. At about the same time, a sailor in the submarine’s control room calculated that the two ships were only 2,000 yards apart. But the enlisted man decided that he must be mistaken — and, therefore, did not call out a warning — because the Greeneville’s skipper had just made a careful periscope check and had pronounced the area clear of surface ships, according to The Post. The sailor, known as a fire-control technician, “arbitrarily moved” the plotted position of the Japanese ship to 9,000 yards away from the Greeneville, the Post said, citing the source familiar with the Navy investigation.
Reuters |
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China executes 7 for smuggling Beijing, February 23 China’s Supreme Court approved the executions of the seven, including a customs officer and a bank official in Xiamen — the eastern port at the centre of the scandal — after their appeals were turned down, the official Xinhua news agency said. They were among 14 persons, including senior police and customs officials, sentenced to death in November in the first verdicts of the scandal believed to have implicated top national and Communist Party officials. Xinhua named the seven who were executed as Wang Jinting, Jie Peigong, Huang Shanying, Zhuang Mingtian, Li Tuzhuan, Wu Yubo and Ye Jichen. Huang had evaded 5.8 billion yuan ($700 million) in taxes by smuggling cigarettes, while Zhuang had dodged 97 million yuan of duties through selling smuggled cigarettes and cars, it said.
Reuters |
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Kidnappers make
new demand Dhaka, February 23 The kidnappers, whose identity has not been clearly established, wanted one or more of the negotiators to act as human shields after any releases while they moved beyond the reach of police and soldiers, the officials added. The kidnappers, who once again failed to show for a meeting in the densely forested Chittagong Hill Tracts with negotiators yesterday, also stood by an earlier demand for withdrawal of security forces from the area. “Now it seems a solution to the hostage issue would take some more days,” an army officer told Reuters today, after the kidnappers made known their latest demands through an intermediary.
Reuters |
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