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Mass graves unearthed
in Iraq
Security Council should be expanded to keep UN credible: India
Pak PM to visit India
Angad Paul’s ‘EMR’
adjudged best UK feature film
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Homage paid to Yogi Harbhajan
New Saudi policy to affect Indian
workers
Winfrey, Cruise to co-host Nobel Peace Prize concert
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Mass graves unearthed
in Iraq
Hatra (Iraq), October 13 They say nine trenches in a dry, dusty riverbed at the Hatra site in northern Iraq, contain at least 300 bodies, and possibly thousands, including unborn babies and toddlers still clutching toys. “It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field. Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them, ‘’ said Greg Kehoe, a US lawyer appointed by the White House to work with the Iraqi Special Tribunal. “I’ve been doing grave sites for a long time, but I’ve never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason,’’ added Mr Kehoe, who spent five years in the Balkans. ‘’It’s a perfect place for execution.’’ The victims are believed to be minority Kurds killed during 1987-88. One trench contains only women and children, apparently killed by small arms. Another contains only men, also killed by automatic gunfire. Mr Kehoe said the women and children had been taken from their villages with their belongings, including pots and pans, shot - often in the back of the head - then bulldozed into the trench. Some of the mothers died still holding their children. One young boy still held a ball in his tiny arms. A thick stench hangs over the site, as well as at a makeshift morgue nearby. “The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 weeks old. Tiny bones, femurs, thighbones the size of a matchstick,’’ says investigating anthropologist P. Willey. International organisations estimate more than 300,000 persons died under Saddam’s 24-year rule and Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry has identified 40 possible mass graves countrywide. Authorities hope careful investigations of the sites will provide enough evidence to convict Saddam and other senior members of his regime, now in US detention, of crimes against humanity. During his reign, Saddam pushed hundreds of thousands of Arabs into Kurdish areas to force the locals out. He is accused of widespread abuses against the Kurds, including the ‘’Anfal’’ (The Spoils) campaign in 1988, during which thousands died in a mustard gas attack. Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 50,000 Kurds were killed during the campaign. “Everybody said ‘never again’ after the Holocaust. The world wasn’t listening. That’s how it happened again and again and again.’’ —
Reuters |
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Security Council should be expanded to keep UN credible: India
United Nations, October 13 “Any attempt to limit expansion in the category of non-permanent members alone would not introduce the required representative ness in the Council’s composition,” Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed said here. Nor would the creation of new quasi-permanent seats bring about equitable representation or enhance its legitimacy, effectiveness or representativeness, Mr Ahamed told the 191-member United Nations General Assembly yesterday. Such partial and piecemeal attempts would only serve to “conserve” the present structure of the Council and, in effect, erode its credibility even further, he said. “Instead of correcting, they would exacerbate the current shortcomings in the Council’s structure,” he warned. Pakistan’s delegate to UN, Mr Akram Zaki, on Monday had warned against rushing through the enlargement of the UN Security Council. The ambitions of the few must not drive the reform process in the world body, Mr Zaki had said. Observing that the 15-member Council, as currently configured, was not representative of contemporary realities, the minister said the four-fold increase in the UN membership since its inception in 1945, including a sharp rise in the number of developing nations, was not reflected on it. The permanent membership of the Council, Mr Ahamed said, must have the “critical mass” to respond to the aspirations of democracy of members states. “Without inclusion and presence of the developing countries in an expanded Security Council, all other reform elements aimed at restoring the authority of the General Assembly would be unavailing,” he told the delegates. — PTI
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Islamabad, October 13 “On the first leg of his regional tour Mr Shaukat Aziz will visit Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, and on the second he will visit Sri Lanka, Maldives and India,” Pakistan Foreign office officials said. The dates for his visits were currently under process; they were quoted as saying by the local daily Dawn. Pakistan is currently the Chairman of the SAARC, and the leader of the country who holds the post makes customary visits to member states before handing over the charge in the next summit. Mr Aziz’s visit to India was considered significant in the context of the ongoing peace process, as he would be the first Pakistani leader to visit New Delhi after President Pervez Musharraf’s Agra summit visit in July 2001. Mr Aziz’s meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was also considered an important follow up to the first meeting between Mr Manmohan Singh and Mr Musharraf at New York, last month. — PTI
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Angad Paul’s ‘EMR’
adjudged best UK feature film
London, October 13 The film was selected from a large number of features at the competition, it was officially announced today. It made the best five UK features which included strong competition with Olivier Assyas’s ‘Clean’, starring Nick Nolte, Beatrice Dalle and Maggie Cheung (who won Best Actress award at Cannes), along with the BBC Scotland Film ‘Blinded’, starring Phyllida Law and Peter Mullan and the new film from award-winning director Richard Jobson ‘The Purifiers’. “In this tough field, ‘EMR’, whose budget is a fraction of that of its competitors, triumphed winning the Jury Prize for Best UK feature, selected by a panel that included actors Jonny Lee Miller and Anna Friel, head of Miramax Europe Colin Vaines and the chief film critic of London’s Time Out Magazine David Calhoun.” The film revolves around a conspiracy theorist addicted to the net, who becomes convinced that he’s being experimented on by a multinational drugs company and begins to question the significance and truth of his world. No conventional thriller, EMR is a dark trip into the psyche. Evocative of “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Memento”, the film is directed by 29-year-old Emmy-Nominated James Erskine. —
PTI |
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Homage paid to Yogi Harbhajan
Washington, October 13 A master practitioner of both hatha and kundalini yoga, he was the “Supreme Religious and Administrative Authority of the Sikh Religion in the Western Hemisphere. Not that there weren’t tears at his memorial service on Saturday in Santa Fe at the Berardinelli’s Funeral Home, but they were few, and they were shed for the sudden “empty space” people felt, said Sat Jivan Singh Khalsa of the Sikh Dharma founded by the Yogi. —
PTI |
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New Saudi policy to affect Indian
workers
Dubai, October 13 Labour Minister Dr Ghazi Al-Gosaibi said the Ministry had adopted a three-pronged strategy to address unemployment among Saudis, which included increasing the cost of foreign manpower. There are about 15 lakh Indian migrant workers among the 88 lakh foreigners in Saudi Arabia, whose indigenous population is about 1.7 crore. Dr Gosaibi said the increase in the cost of hiring foreign labour was being contemplated by imposing new charges for recruitment. —
UNI |
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Winfrey, Cruise to co-host Nobel Peace Prize concert
Oslo, October 13 “They really wanted to do it, right from the start,” concert organiser Odd Arvid Stroemstad said on the telephone today. “As masters of ceremony for the December 11 concert in the capital, Oslo, Winfrey and Cruise will share the stage with plenty of high-profile entertainment. —
AP |
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