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Ethnic violence spreads, toll 86
Supporting Taliban ‘official ISI policy’
Washington Diary |
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Indian waiter shot dead in Malaysia
Kanishka inquiry report on June 17
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Ethnic violence spreads, toll 86
The violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and minority Uzbeks that flared up in the southern Osh city on Thursday has spread out to other southern regions, considered a stronghold of deposed President Kurmanbek Bakayev. The death toll rose to 86 today, while over 1,000 were reported injured, according to the figures of Kyrgyzstan's health ministry. A state of emergency was extended to a 24-hour curfew in the tense Osh city where street battles continued with no let up in violence. The authorities also extended a state of emergency today across the entire southern Jalalabad region as heavy fighting spread there from neighbouring Osh. Struggling to contain rampaging mobs, the government announced a partial mobilisation of reservists and urged persons under 50 subject-to-recall to report today, ITAR TASS reported. The government decreed that lethal force would be authorised to repel attacks against authorities and civilians and to stop destruction of property. "If we do not take opportune and effective measures the unrest could become much more serious and descend into a regional conflict," it said. Jolted by the violence, Kyrgyzstan's interim President Rosa Otunbayeva yesterday sought the help of Russian forces to quell the unrest, but Russia declined saying it was an internal conflict of the country. The minority Uzbeks lined up to flee the city of Osh, which according to many accounts was black with smoke, with plumes emerging from residential and business quarters of Uzbeks. Thousands of people are fleeing the fighting and looting and heading towards the border with neighbouring Uzbekistan, reports said. In Jalal-Abad, a crowd of 3,000 to 5,000 people gathered, some of them carrying sticks and stones, and demanded that ethnic Uzbeks be evicted from the region, Interfax reported. Medical brigades from Bishkek and other regions were being dispatched to the south to help the local doctors as hospitals overflowing with people. Some witnesses said the situation in Jalal-Abad appeared to be more tense than in Osh as incidents of shooting, arson and looting were reported. Local residents said they could hear blasts, and that the explosions led to fatalities. The Kyrgyz interim government also authorised the military, policemen and vigilantes to apply combat weapons in emergency situations to control the spreading violence. With international calls seeking calm growing, Kremlin spokesperson Natalia Timakova said President Dmitry Medvedev, as rotating president of CSTO collective security pact of CIS nations has called for national security councils-level consultations tomorrow to explore possibility of sending a joint force to Kyrgyzstan, a member of the post-Soviet military bloc. Meanwhile, human rights groups have warned of a humanitarian crisis brewing in the region as the minority Uzbeks are fleeing to Uzbekistan using any means of
transport. — PTI
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Supporting Taliban ‘official ISI policy’
London, June 13 Saleh, who resigned last week from his post, said: "The ISI is part of the landscape of destruction in Afghanistan, no doubt, so it will be a waste of time to provide evidence of the ISI involvement. They are a part of it." Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude in
Afghanistan — A London School of Economics report The paper said testimony by western and Afghan security officials; Taliban commanders, ex-Taliban ministers and a senior Taliban emissary show the extent to which the ISI manipulates the Taliban's strategy in Afghanistan. It also referred to a report published by the London School of Economics which summed up that "Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude" in Afghanistan. The report's author, Matt Waldman, a Harvard analyst, argued that previous studies significantly "underestimated" the influence that the Pakistan's ISI exerts over the Taliban. Far from being the work of rogue elements, interviews suggest this "support is official ISI policy", he said. "The report is consistent with Pakistan's political history in which civilian leaders actively backed 'jihadi' groups that operate in Afghanistan and Kashmir," Waldman said. Pakistani support for the Taliban is prolonging a conflict that has cost the West billions of dollars and hundreds of lives, the report said. Strategies that the ISI encourages, according to Taliban commanders, include: cutting NATO's supply lines by bombing bridges and roads, attacking key infrastructure projects, assassinating pro-government tribal elders, murdering doctors and teachers, closing schools and attacking school girls.
— PTI
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The price of life
ASHISH KUMAR SEN The light sentences handed down by an Indian court almost 26 years after deadly methyl isocyanate leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal have reopened the painful wounds of survivors of one of the worst industrial disasters of our lifetime. For those who have dedicated their lives fighting for justice, the ongoing BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico provides stark similarities to what happened in Bhopal. Shana Blustein Ortman, US coordinator for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, said Bhopal and the BP disasters are both tragic examples of multinational corporations recklessly putting profits ahead of public safety. "In both situations the corporations had put in place dangerous cost-cutting measures, which had devastating effect on people and the environment," she said. Survivors of the Bhopal disaster received about $500 for injuries from their exposure to the gas on December 2, 1984. "When Dow acquired UCC in 2001, it set aside $2.2 million to pay off 11 workers in Texas for a UCC asbestos liability, while refusing to pay for its liabilities in the UCC," said Ortman, adding, "A Dow executive once even said that $500 was plenty good for an Indian." Nityanand Jayaraman, with the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, said the "manner in which the Obama administration has been making ominous statements on making BP pay every cent is not consistent with their policy of hoping that Indians will be satisfied with this travesty of justice." Sikh sense
The National Mall in Washington will come alive with the spiritual tones of kirtan and the aroma of Punjabi cuisine in a couple of weeks. These events are part of the Smithsonian Institution's annual Folklife Festival, which this year is celebrating Asian Pacific Americans. Sikh culture will be showcased at the festival, which runs from June 24 to June 28 and then carries on between July 1 to July 5. The Sikh Kirtani Jatha of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation will be performing twice on July 1. There will also be a demonstration of turban tying and Punjabi folk dance performances.
In the lead
Haley, whose parents moved to the US from Amritsar, now faces a runoff with second-place finisher Representative J. Gresham Barrett. Haley, who was born Nimrata Randhawa, is widely expected to win that contest. She will then face the Democratic nominee, Vincent Sheheen, in November. Pundits say Sheheen faces an uphill battle in the conservative state. The Indian American Conservative Council praised Haley's success. "Nikki Haley is poised to become the next governor of the great state of South Carolina, and we are going to be there every step of the way with her," said council Chairman Dino Teppara. "We are on the brink of history. Nikki is set to do something the political class doubted she could do.”
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Indian waiter shot dead in Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, June 13 The killer then ran across the street to a waiting car that sped off. Dash, 30, worked as a waiter in a restaurant in the Kota Damansar suburb near here. Football fans watching the live telecast World Cup 2010 match between South Africa and Mexico at a restaurant in Kota Damansara on Friday night were jolted by the sound of a gunshot. They were shocked to learn that the target, who later died in hospital, was a waiter who had just gone off duty. It was close to midnight, and the waiter, an Indian national known only as Dash was making his way to the restaurant workers' dormitory located near the restaurant in Dataran Sunway when a man approached him. From a foot away, the man shot Dash in the stomach. Petaling Jaya district deputy police chief Superintendent Abdul Razak Eliyas said yesterday that Dash was rushed to Sungai Buloh Hospital but died after arrival.
— PTI
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Kanishka inquiry report on June 17
Toronto, June 13 "The Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182 will be released in Ottawa on June 17," spokesperson of the Commission Michael Tansey said. The report would be released just before the 25th anniversary of the history's deadliest aviation disaster which claimed 329 lives.
— PTI
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Moscow, June 13
Nikki Haley, the Indian American South Carolina gubernatorial candidate who a state senator disparagingly described as a "raghhead," won 49 per cent of the vote in the Republican Party's four-way primary.