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Thursday,
May 2, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Chandrika takes tough stand Referendum rigged, says rights panel Cambodia —haven for paedophiles
Millions decry Kremlin’s economic policies Osama-linked charity head held |
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US Muslims feel oppressed
Hu faces protest in USA Indian delegation for Bangladesh festival Hollywood calling Rahman
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Chandrika takes tough stand Colombo, May 1 Expressing ‘serious concern’ over the incident Ms Chandrika said the LTTE was taking advantage of the ceasefire agreement with the government, official sources said. As a result, the President, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, summoned a special National Security Council (NSC) meeting yesterday and directed the security forces to prevent recurrence of any such incidents in future. “The President is likely to take up the matter with the Norwegian Prime Minister and also offer her recommendations to ensure that such incidents will not take place in future,” the official sources said. According to the sources, she informed the service commanders, at the crucial NSC meeting, that though the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was not applicable under the ceasefire agreement, the armed forces were allowed to take action under normal laws such as Criminal Procedure Code and so on. She also acknowledged that although the SLMM had the right to take the final decision under the ceasefire agreement, the security forces could also have applied the due process of the law. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was surprisingly absent at this meeting although Defence Minister Tilak Marapana, Secretary to the Ministry of Defence Austin Fernando and Service Chiefs were present. UNI
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Referendum rigged, says rights panel
Islamabad, May 1 In the first independent assessment of yesterday’s referendum, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said gross irregularities, including physical abuse and intimidation, were seen across the country. “The HRCP regrets that the irregularities witnessed during (Tuesday’s) referendum exceeded its worst fears,” commission chairman Afras iab Khattak said in a statement. Polling staff, municipal councillors and the electoral commission’s so-called neutral observers, “stamped ballots themselves” in some polling stations, he said. At one station the “presiding officer was beaten up for resisting the stuffing of the ballot boxes,” he said, adding that reports of scuffles between councillors and polling staff were received from several towns. “Voters marshalled by local councillors enjoyed the freedom to vote as many times as they wished,” Khattack said, basing his information on reports from HRCP volunteers who monitored the referendum. Khattack said: “The voluntary turnout was very low” and most people who stamped the ballot were “captive voters” like prisoners and state employees who were obliged to participate. Women stayed away “in force”. Ballots were still being counted today morning but initial results, according to the state-run media, showed he had won more than 95 per cent of the vote. AFP
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Cambodia —haven for paedophiles
Svay pak (Cambodia), May 1 In the rough dirt road that runs through the village, two girls in their early teens play badminton. Three younger girls chase a chicken around in circles. Some teenagers in garish tight polyester dresses saunter past, deep in conversation. All of them are for sale. Svay Pak is a brothel village, a cluster of brick and concrete shophouses where immigrant prostitutes from Vietnam offer “boom-boom” — sex — and “yum-yum” — oral sex — for $ 5 a time in cramped, clammy rooms and makeshift plywood cubicles. Similar brothel villages can be found all over Cambodia. Many prostitutes are trafficked from Vietnam, but most are ethnic Khmers, the majority race in Cambodia. Recent surveys have estimated more than a third are under 18. “Many thousands of children are still being abused in Cambodia’s sex industry ,” said Laurence Gray, regional co-ordinator for development agency World Vision’s programme for children at risk. The physical and mental damage is severe. World Vision works with some 300 sexually exploited children in Phnom Penh. Nearly 60 per cent are malnourished, 46 per cent have sexually transmitted diseases and 18 per cent have HIV. In Svay Pak dozens of women stand in the doorways of their brothels, waving and blowing kisses at customers arriving in the village. Others crowd around the foreign men drinking in Svay Pak’s ramshackle beer bars, sweating in the afternoon sun. Most of the women are aged 16 to 20. But visitors who have come looking for even younger girls only have to wait. Soon the whispering starts.
“You want a young girl? Very good for you,” says “Luc”, a 12-year-old Vietnamese boy pimping girls no older than he is. “Come with me and I’ll show you.” In curtained-off alcoves in the brothels, customers can sit drinking chilled beer and choose from a selection of underage girls. Many of the Svay Pak brothels have some for sale. Brothel managers, usually women, bring a selection of girls in their early teens, telling them to lift their skirts and T-shirts to show prospective clients their bodies. The managers offer advice on each girl’s sexual experience and ability. Some customers like girls with a reputation for “good service”. Others are looking for virgins. Sex with a girl aged 10 to 13 costs about $ 30. Younger girls cost more. A virgin costs a few hundred dollars. Many of the foreign men who come to Svay Pak prefer younger girls, partly in the hope of avoiding disease. “They’re clean,” Luc says. “They haven’t been with many men.” But disease is everywhere. Up to half of Cambodia’s prostitutes are estimated to be infected with HIV. Local authorities across the country were told to shut down brothels. The government said the crackdown would end the trafficking of women and the sexual exploitation of children. Svay Pak still operates openly, and still sells sex with children. Cambodia’s reputation as a haven for paedophiles is still intact.
Reuters |
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Millions decry Kremlin’s economic policies
Moscow, May 1 For the first time since the break- up of the erstwhile USSR, pro-Putin demonstrators were allowed to march through the Red Square to gather at a rally behind St Basil’s cathedral near the Kremlin walls. At the rally, claimed by organisers to have been attended by 14 lakh people waving blue flags and banners and portraits of Putin, the economic course of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov government came under fierce attack from Moscow Mayor Luzhkov and other speakers. However, amid looming rift in its ranks over Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov’s refusal to obey party whip and resign from top parliamentary post, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov managed to gather largest anti-government demonstration and rally in a decade. After marching through the central Moscow from a giant statue of Lenin at Kaluzhskaya Square 100,000 Left supporters converged at the Karl Marx Square in front of the Bolshoi Theatre several blocks from Red Square, demanding immediate dismissal of the government. Speakers criticised President Putin for siding with the oligarchs who “amassed their wealth by robbing the masses”. A marked presence of youth in the Communist ranks was a distinctive feature of the Leftist rally, usually dominated by the old generation nostalgic of the Soviet past. The state-controlled RTR TV Network also admitted the fact. May Day protest rallies in about 500 Russian cities and towns for the first time, were of unprecedented strength in last 10 years, due to the governments economic reforms including steep rise in the municipal, housing and services bills have affected each and every family in the country where 10 per cent persons control two-thirds of the national wealth. The authorities have declared a state of alert during the May Day holiday coinciding this year with the Orthodox Easter on May 5. Some 4,000 police officers and traffic cops were deployed in Moscow Centre alone to control the situation, ITAR-TASS said. PTI
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Osama-linked charity head held
Chicago, May 1 Enaam Arnaout (39), executive director of the Benevolence International Foundation, was arrested yesterday at his home in the Chicago suburbs and charged with lying under oath in documents his group had filed in US federal court, the Justice Department and the FBI said. The documents involved were filed to support a lawsuit the group filed against the US government in January after its assets were seized as part of investigations into the September 11 attacks. At the time, the group said it was a “faith-based humanitarian organization that engages in charitable work around the world’’ and “does not engage in or fund terrorist activity.’’ Its headquarters are in Palos Hills, Illinois, and it has offices in Pakistan, Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Yemen, Bangladesh, Turkey, Georgia, China and elsewhere. In Tuesday’s announcement, the US government said the foundation was “engaged in the support of various persons and groups involved in military and terrorist type activity.’’ Reuters
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US Muslims feel oppressed The civic rights of 60,000 American Muslims were negatively impacted by the Bush Administration’s policies instituted in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a prominent Islamic advocacy group based in Washington has claimed. According to a report released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the affected victims included some 1,200 Muslims who were detained nation-wide mostly on immigration charges, but who were treated as if they were terrorists, 5,000 legal visa-holders who were asked to submit to “voluntary” interrogations and an estimated 50,000 individuals who donated to American Muslim relief agencies were shut down by the government. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said, while releasing the report on Tuesday: “Muslims, like all Americans, support policies that result in genuine increase in security. Unfortunately, many of the government actions prompted by September 11 (terrorist attacks), particularly those based on ethnic and religious profiling or stereotypes, merely create a false sense of security and preclude effective initiatives.” The report, which covers the period from March, 2001, outlines 1,516 reports of denial of religious accommodation, harassment, discrimination, bias, threat, assault, and even several murders. It indicates that anti-Muslim incidents in the USA increased three-fold over the previous year, up from 366 validated reports in 2001 to 1125 this year. The majority of violent incidents occurred in the period immediately following the September 11 attacks. If post-September 11 backlash incidents are eliminated from the court, the remaining report (525) show a 43 per cent increase over the 2001 study. |
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Hu faces protest in USA
Washington, May 1 Dr Hu, expected to succeed Jiang Zemin as head of the Communist Party this year and as China’s president in 2003, is on his first US visit, and US officials were eager to take the measure of the man. He met on the Capitol Hill with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senate Republican leader Trent Lott as well as 11 other senators. He met separately with the speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert. Hu was to dine with Secretary of State Colin Powell at the State Department yesterday and outside several hundred Chinese and Chinese-American well-wishers waved Chinese and US flags, along with a smaller contingent of Tibetans and pro-Tibetan activists shouted “Hu Jintao is a killer! Hu Jintao is a murderer! Stop the killing in Tibet.’’ Hu was the Communist Party chief in Tibet earlier in his career. Senior US officials said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney wanted to get to know Hu since he was heir apparent to Jiang and would raise substantive issues such as Taiwan and human rights practices in China. Reuters
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Indian delegation for
Bangladesh festival Dhaka, May 1 The Muktijoddha Utsav (liberation war festival) will recall the contribution of the people of Agartala in the nine month-long war. “The people and the government of Tripura made significant contribution during the war of liberation by giving shelter to about 17 lakh refugees from Bangladesh. We have organised the festival to recall the glorious memory of 1971 and to make the new generation aware of the contribution,” Mr Kamal Lohani, the convener of the festival, told reporters. Led by Education Minister of Tripura Anil Sarkar, the delegation will comprise six ministers of the Tripura Cabinet and a dozen members of the Vidhan Sabha besides several painters, poes and culture groups. The celebration, which begins tomorrow at Savar, north-west outskirts of the capital, is a follow-up of a similar utsav held in Agartala early last year. The four-day festival will, however, be formally opened on Friday at the capital’s high profile Osmani Memorial Auditorium. Exhibition of documents of the war of liberation, model of war theatre, poetry sessions, photography, discussion meeting and cultural function are the hallmarks of the festival.
PTI |
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Hollywood calling Rahman
London, May 1 Rahman, whose first musical “Bombay Dreams” opens at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London on June 19, told reporters here late last night that he had received a couple of Hollywood offers from Sony music. The 35-year-old Rahman who has composed hit soundtracks for over 50 films including Oscar-nominated Lagaan, Fiza, Taal, Earth, Dil Se, Fire and Bombay, however, declined to give details. “I wanted Rahman’s work to reach a new audience. It was his music which inspired the whole project,” said Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, producer of ‘Bombay Dreams’. The musical is based on an original idea by Shekhar Kapoor and Webber and the Bollywood dance sequences in it are directed by noted choreographer Farah Khan. Terming his project as a “wonderful story” which would “break new grounds”, Webber, says “it is a story of Akaash and Priya: two lovers from different worlds, sharing one dream”. “The box office for ‘Bombay Dreams’ has already opened and so far advance booking has grossed £ 700,000,” says Webber, adding that it took nearly three years to complete the musical. Some of Rahman’s hit tunes from Bollywood films like Dil Se, Rangeela and Taal also find their echo in Bombay Dreams. Webber said the idea of producing a Bollywood musical had been brewing in his head for about five years. “It started when I was pottering round the kitchen... Channel 4 used to do a Bollywood movie on a Saturday morning and rather good song came on, but I completely forgot to write down what it was.” A little later, he met Kapoor and he offered to put together a video of the best of Bollywood. I found that one in every five songs was great and one in every five songs was composed by Rahman.” PTI
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