London, December 18
Immigration groups have termed the UK’s new visa proposals as ‘unfair’ on poorer families, while the Conservatives dismissed the proposals as a ‘headline grabbing gimmick’ and repeated their call for an annual limit on immigration.

Releasing consultation papers connected to the proposals, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said visitors to the UK will have to leave within three months.

Habib Rahman, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said the new measures would discriminate against families from countries such as India.

“Only people with fat wallets will be able to bring their families,” Rahman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“If you have for example a big wedding in Leicester you are dealing with 20 people coming and therefore if you have to put up a bond of 1,000 pounds for each, it’s a huge amount of money. The government is trying to deter people to come for family visits. This is unfair,” he said.

“Tougher checks abroad mean we keep risky people out. By next spring we’ll check everyone’s fingerprints when they apply for a visa,” the minister said.

“Now we’re proposing a financial guarantee as well - not for everyone, but where we think there’s a risk. Our aim is to make the system both more secure, but also to ensure that we maintain the UK’s position as a destination of choice for tourists” Byrne said.

So far visa applicants in more than 120 countries worldwide are required to provide fingerprints if they want to visit the UK for work, study or for tourism.

The visitor consultation proposals build on proposed new penalties on employers of illegal immigrants and a licensing system for any employer or college wishing to recruit from outside the EU.

Together these are a part of the changes the Border and Immigration Agency are introducing over the next 12 months.

They include an Australian style points based system for managing migration, a unified border force bringing together the Border and Immigration Agency, Customs and UK Visas providing a tougher, highly visible policing presence at Britain’s ports and airports; and compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals “Allowing us to know who is here and what they are entitled to,” the minister said. — PTI

Indian-born Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani and his Indonesian-born wife Varsha were convicted by a jury on Monday of enslaving two Indonesian women they kept at their New York mansion to work as housekeepers.

Sabhnani and his wife were each convicted of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens.

Prosecutors had earlier told the jury the two women, kept by the couple for five years, were forced to work long hours, fed measly meals and made to sleep on mats on the floor.

The two women were frequently subjected to physical violence by the Sabhnanis, including brutal beatings, knife wounds and cigarette burns. In some instances, they were tortured and force-fed hot chili peppers. Prosecutors said the women were also subjected to repeated psychological abuse and were forced to work 18 hours or more a day.

The Sabhnanis operate a worldwide perfume business out of their home in Muttontown on Long Island’s Gold Coast. They could face up to 40 years in prison. Both are naturalised US citizens.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Hoffman said he would appeal. “Apparently, the jury was taken by the histrionics ...” of the Indonesian women, he said, according to wire service reports. Another defense lawyer Stephen Scaring said another of the Sabhnanis’ children, daughter Tina, told him: “We never did anything to anybody, how could this happen to us in America?”

The prosecution described by the case as “modern-day slavery.” The two women were only identified as Samirah (51) and Enung (47). The women were reportedly made to repeatedly climb stairs and take freezing cold showers as punishment for misdeeds that included sleeping late or stealing food from trash bins because they were poorly fed.

Authorities found Samirah in May wandering the streets dressed only in pants and a towel after escaping from the couple’s home. She was treated at a local hospital for injuries to her ears, face, arms, neck, chest and back that she told authorities were caused by torture inflicted by Sabhnani.

Samirah said she was forced to eat dozens of chili peppers and then was forced to eat her own vomit when she failed to digest the peppers. “This did not happen in the 1800s,” prosecutor Mark Lesko said. “This happened in the 21st century.”

Enung testified that Samirah’s naked body once was covered in plastic wrapping tape on orders from Sabhnani, who then instructed Enung to rip it off. “When I pulled it off, she was screaming,” the housekeeper said through an interpreter on the witness stand. The Sabhnanis’ defense attorneys accused the two women of concocting the story. They claimed the housekeepers practiced witchcraft and may have abused themselves as part of an Indonesian self-mutilation ritual.

THE All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) has decided to launch a countrywide election boycott campaign from December 24.

“We will hold eight public rallies across the country to ask masses to boycott the elections,” said the APDM steering committee convener Manzoor Gillani while addressing a news conference.

Gillani said the first rally would be held in Pasheen on December 24, the second in Quetta (Dec 25), third in Hyderabad (Dec 28), fourth in Karachi (Dec 29), fifth in Mardan (Jan 1), sixth in Peshawar (Jan 2), seventh in Rawalpindi (Jan 4) and the last one in Lahore on January 5.

He said the APDM and three other parties, which had decided to boycott the elections along with civil society members and students, would meet here soon to work out details for a strategy to streamline a strategy for the mass public campaign.

Gillani said representatives of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Istaqlal, Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan and Pakistan Jamhri Party had been invited to the meeting. The strategy to boycott the elections on January 8 would be decided at a high-level meeting in Lahore on January 6.

According to a booklet, distributed among journalists, the main objectives of the APDM are restoration of the constitution as it was on October 12, 1999, undoing of all steps taken by President Pervez Musaharaf against judiciary, including the imposition of emergency, establishment of an independent election commission, freedom of media, end to the ongoing military operations in tribal areas, Swat and Balochistan and release of political workers and lawyers.

Dubai, December 18
A court here has sentenced two Indian brothers to life imprisonment for murdering a compatriot and dumping his body in a hole after stealing his mobile phone.

The Dubai Court of First Instance awarded the life-term, which effectively means 25 years in prison. The convicts as well as the victim have not been identified by their full name as per the laws here.

The duo was convicted of the premeditated murder of their compatriot, who was beaten with an iron bar and suffocated with a wet towel. They will be deported after serving their sentence, which is subject to appeal.

The duo denied they intended to kill the victim and told the court they accidentally murdered him.One of the brothers confessed to drinking and hiding the victim’s body. — PTI

Kirkuk (Iraq), December 18
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice arrived in Iraq on an unannounced visit today, and a US official said she planned to urge Iraqi leaders to speed up the national reconciliation.

It was her first trip to Iraq since September, when she accompanied US President George W Bush on his visit to the western province of Anbar, a former Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold, now hailed by US officials as a success story.

She came at a time when frustrated US officials have urged the Iraqi leaders to take advantage of a downturn in the violence and make more political progress.

Attacks in Iraq are down by 60 per cent since June, but the government has little success in passing laws aimed at reconciling sects and ethnic groups. Kirkuk has been one of the main sticking points in the political deadlock.

A clause in Iraq’s constitution provides for a referendum to be held to determine whether the area joins a Kurdish autonomous region in the north, but it has been delayed because of deep divisions between the Arabs and the Kurds.

Rice made the trip to Iraq after attending a meeting of the Quartet of West Asia peace mediators and a Palestinian donors’ conference in Paris following the Annapolis meeting on November 27 that relaunched the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. — Reuters

Lviv (Ukraine), December 18
A Ukrainian shepherd, believed by some to be the world’s oldest man has died at the age of 116, authorities in the western Lviv province announced today.

Grygory Nestor put his longevity down to never being married, “If I had a wife, I would have been in a coffin long ago,” he told the AFP in a recent interview.

Nestor’s passport and birth certificate put his date of birth as March 15, 1891, but he is thought to have been awaiting confirmation from the Guinness Book of World Records when he passed away.

The Ukrainian media has claimed him as the world’s oldest man. He remained a shepherd until nearly his 100th year, and could still read the newspaper without glasses.

Nestor died on Saturday, in the town of Stary Yarychiv. — PTI