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Sunday,
May 25, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN Israel ready to accept road map
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Shia cleric returns
to Iraq
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SARS: Asian nations claim ‘some respite’ North’s subsidy hinders South’s farm export: Rao
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN THE Pakistani establishment is set against its neighbours, India and Afghanistan where either bands of terrorists are sent to stage ‘freedom struggle’ or villages are attacked to teach lessons and settle political scores. But in Pakistan itself, it has become normal for the police and other para-military outfits to stage-manage encounters, arrest innocent civilians, including journalists, on charges as serious as blasphemy that invites the death penalty. A recent tragedy, now widely reported in the newspapers and highlighted by a team of human right activists tells a barbaric tale. Nevertheless when you export violence, the culture that develops at times makes no distinction between innocents abroad or back home. Here is that sordid drama unrolled by a sensitive professor Pervez Hoodbhoy from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. He wrote in the daily DAWN: “On May 11, Amer Ali, a 60-year old peasant of Chak 4-L of Okara district, made his last good-neighbourly visit to the adjoining village, Chak 5-L. As the old man hobbled out of his hosts’ house to see what was going on, a hail of bullets cut him down.” Okara is a rich canal irrigated district known for golden wheat and fine quality cotton. Punjabis on this side know these chaks (villages) as they know the lines on their palms. Amir Ali was the seventh to have died in recent months in the bitter struggle between the peasants of Okara and the Rangers, now into its third year. Pervez wrote: “As I stood by the blood-spattered earth next to a wall pock-marked with bullets, grim-faced villagers indicated to me the field from where they said the Rangers had ceaselessly machine-gunned the village for over an hour. It is a fairly typical village with visible signs of poverty — mud-covered huts, open drains, bare-footed children, and scrawny chickens. Branches of trees that had fallen in the shooting lay all around. Many houses, as well as the village mosque, had bricks broken or chipped by the impact of heavy bullets. They are there for the next visitors to village 5-L to see — but only if they can successfully navigate through the siege imposed on the 70-odd villages in the area.” Roadblocks are everywhere, manned by soldiers with automatic weapons as well the lighter-armed police. Four-wheelers with mounted machine guns prowl menacingly on the dirt roads next to the irrigation canals. For all practical purposes, the nearly one million people of Okara are under military occupation. Why are they doing this? “They want to put us on contract to make us pay rent to them, take away our rights to the land, and then throw us out”, a farmer replied, “but this land is ours because our forefathers have tilled it and we have nowhere else to go.” And then, as if the floodgates had broken, villagers came to show us wounds on their bodies, some now turning septic. Visits to the neighbouring village, Chak 4-L, showed broken limbs, hollow faces, sunken eyes, and marks of beatings. And, what damn lies the officers from the Okara Ranger headquarters had to dish out. At the beautifully manicured lawns and flower-beds, gravelled paths, and ornate structures from colonial times, standing in stark contrast to the brick and mud hovels, the officers said that this fight was between the Sindhis and Machis and that they had nothing to do. Amir Ali was just caught in the cross fire of the two groups at loggerheads over some local dispute. The Rangers did not permit any post-mortem. And where did the torture marks on the bodies of so many villagers come from? These had been self-inflicted with the intent of defaming the authorities, or else they were wounds inflicted by one group on the other were the answer. Pervez and his team, including journalists, were told by soldiers that they too were disturbed about what they were being asked to do. The villages laughed bitterly at the excuse of the authorities, as there were no Sindhis or Machis in Chak 5-L, much less a fight between them. “The siege of Okara is a blot on Pakistan’s collective conscience and must be lifted immediately and unconditionally”, demanded Dawn. And, the incidents of torture, beatings and shooting by the uniformed services is a routine in most parts of Sindh, including Karachi and the North Western Frontier Province, Blauchistan and of course in the prosperous Punjab. “We cannot plausibly demand that India end the military occupation of Kashmir while employing similar brutal means and tactics at home. Pakistan cannot bear the shock of nearly a million of its own people being dispossessed of the lands they have tilled for over a century. To evict them would be cruel and unjust, and certainly was not what Pakistan was made for. Are Pakistan rulers, including President Musharraf, listening?” Pervez and his team asked in sheer anguish. |
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Israel ready to accept road map Jerusalem, May 24 The Israeli decision, which came hours after receiving assurance from the USA that its ‘’significant concerns’’ about the ‘’roadmap’’ to West Asia peace would be addressed, has been welcomed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). With the militant Islamic group Hamas indicating on Thursday that it would be willing to begin a limited truce with Israel at its meeting with PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, conditioning it on an end to strikes on suspected Palestinian militants, the chances of ‘’getting started’’ with the peace process looked promising. ‘’The Prime Minister says that the Israel is ready to accept the steps which are outlined in the road map and it will be presented to the government for approval,’’ the Prime Minister’s office said in a statement yesterday. The USA shares the view of the government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the road map,” the statement reportedly said. But Mr Colin Powell, speaking at a press conference during the G-8 summit in Paris shortly after the US statement was released, is said to have said that Washington was ‘’not planning on making any changes to the road map.’’
UNI |
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15-yr-old
scales Everest Kathmandu, May 24 |
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Shia cleric returns
to Iraq Karbala, May 24 Hakim, who made a triumphant return to Iraq this month, was greeted by thousands of cheering supporters whose shouts kept him from beginning a speech he was to deliver at the Imam Hossein mosque, one of the holiest Shia shrines. “With our souls and with our blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for you Hakim!” the ecstatic crowd chanted. Photos of the cleric were displayed everywhere along with banners reading “Freedom, independence and Justice.” Hakim lived in neighbouring Iran. He returned to the country earlier this month amid talk of building an “Islamic Iraq” but has since toned down his criticism of the presence of US and British troops in the country.
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Cannes reels off gloom Cannes (France), May 24 Hotel bookings were down, Hollywood complained there were ew deals and a French restaurateurs association claimed a 25 per cent fall in turnover against the previous year. Washington was plumb in the centre of the firing line with the Palme d’Or for best film being announced tomorrow widely tipped to go to one of the several movies critical of the USA. The youngest of the 20 directors competing for the coveted Palme, Iran’s Samira Makhmalbaf, offered the first of the 12-day festival’s batch of movies with a contemporary focus in “At Five In the Afternoon”, set in post-Taliban
Afghanistan. The 2002 film by the 23-year-old, which is a contender for a prize of some sort if not for best film, sent a chill across Cannes, showing the continuing plight of Afghanistan, with its legions of homeless returnees and lingering memories of the Taliban. Academy Award winning US director Gus Van Sant next revived the horror of the Columbine school massacre in “Elephant”, the second year running that the 1999 killing has kept festival-goers glued to their seats, after Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” became a hit following its success at Cannes. Unlike Moore, Van Sant avoided the all-encompassing explanatory documentary, coming up instead with a painful fiction that is a docu-lookalike, in which a day in the life of the school unfolds slowly and uneventfully until its climax — the massacre. Violence and despair in South America’s biggest jail until its razing last year was the theme of director Hector Babenco’s latest film, “Carandiru”, which again was a fiction story that unrolled almost like a documentary.
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Algeria quake toll 1600
Corso (Algeria), May 24 With the death toll topping 1,600 and expected to climb, grief turned to anger with widespread complaints that rescue efforts were inadequate and that shoddy construction compounded the devastation of Wednesday evening’s quake, when buildings collapsed like card-houses. After two days of counting bodies and fewer and fewer survivors, the remarkable rescue on Friday of Emilie Kaidi from the rubble of her family’s home in Corso, in the quake zone east of the capital Algiers, offered momentary hope.
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SARS: Asian nations claim ‘some respite’ Beijing, May 24 Neighbouring Taiwan claimed that the situation was stabilising with no new SARS death. However, Canada, the hardest-hit place outside Asia, today reported 20 more suspected cases of the virulent epidemic. Mainland China reported 34 new cases of SARS and five deaths during the past 24 hours. However, “it would be fair to say the situation of SARS in Beijing is taking notable downward trend,” Cai Fuchao, head of Information Office said, referring to the drop in confirmed cases .
PTI |
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North’s subsidy hinders South’s farm export: Rao Washington, May 24 “Countries like India which can export food find their path barred by developed country subsidies”, Mr Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao, Andhra Pradesh Minister of Agriculture said on the sidelines of the conference at St.Louis. Highlighting a pilot project taken up by Wangingin University in Netherlands near Chirala in Andhra Pradesh, Mr Rao said the project aimed to make saline lands more productive had been successful in reducing the intensity of salinity. The Dutch had sanctioned Rs 40 crore to implement the project.
PTI |
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