The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Film Fury
Islamist groups in B’desh enforce nationwide strike

Dhaka, September 23
A coalition of 12 Islamist groups enforced a nationwide shutdown to protest an anti-Islam video amid tight security today, a day after protesters clashed with the police leaving over 50 people injured in the capital.

The police and witnesses said today over 40 protesters were detained in Dhaka and over a dozen were arrested in southeastern port city of Chittagong and southwestern Bhola as they tried to obstruct vehicle movements.

The Dhaka streets witnessed thin traffic while most schools, shops and private offices were closed as the extreme rightwing groups enforced the strike to protest against the film deemed offensive to Islam.

"They exposed people to miseries enforcing the strike capitalizing the religion with a bad intension," Home Minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters.

Hundreds of police in riot gears and elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) forces patrolled streets in the capital and other major cities.

Law enforcement agencies yesterday arrested some 40 leaders and activities of the Islamists coalition as they tried to stage a street protest against the film.

They also blasted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ruling Awami League, which pursue a secular principle, for scrapping of "absolute faith in Allah" as one of four pillars of the constitution in line with a Supreme Court verdict.

The Bangladesh government, however, condemned the film and blocked video-sharing website YouTube in an effort to calm tensions while Hasina asked US government to immediately stop sale and projection of the controversial film.

"No Muslim can tolerate such defamation of Prophet," she said and asked US authorities to expose to "exemplary" punitive actions the filmmaker.

Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) officials said the Google US and the Google APAC that control YouTube facility across Asia pacific region were yet to respond to a Bangladesh request to block the film themselves. — PTI

Pak govt disassociates itself from bounty

Islamabad: The Pakistan government today disassociated itself from a federal minister's offer of a $100,000 bounty for the maker of an anti-Islam video that sparked worldwide protests, saying it had nothing to do with the move.

"We disassociate ourselves from the minister's remarks," a government spokesman said in a brief message sent to journalists, referring to the reward offered yesterday by Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour.

The office of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf too distanced itself from the minister's action, saying the government had nothing to do with Bilour’s statement.

Mob sets church ablaze

Islamabad: A mob of hundreds of Muslim men attacked and burnt an 82-year-old church and an adjoining school in northwest Pakistan during a protest against an anti-Islam film, sparking concerns among the minority Christian community. The mob broke through the gate of the St Paul's Lutheran Church inside the cantonment in Mardan city, 48 km from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa capital of Peshawar, on Friday while returning from a rally against the film ‘Innocence of Muslims’.

Three killed in Nigeria church suicide attack

Abuja, September 23
A suicide car bomber struck a Catholic church conducting Mass in northern Nigeria's troubled Bauchi city today, leaving at least three persons dead, including a woman and a child, and 48 others injured in a region plagued by violence unleashed by a Islamist militant group.

The bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a queue of church members who were being screened to go in for Sunday Mass, Red Cross official Adamu Abubakar said. The explosion killed the bomber, a woman and a child. About 48 others were seriously injured in the blast, Abubaker said.

Eyewitnesses said the police cordoned off the premises of St John's Catholic Church as soon as the explosion occurred.

The church is the biggest in the city and shares fence with a soccer stadium in Wunti city-centre district.

Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said the injured were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Bauchi's Commissioner of Police, T Stevens, said the bomber was prevented from entering the church at the gate by security men just as he decided to detonate the bomb.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the bombing but Bauchi is among the cities targeted by Islamist militant group Boko Haram which has vowed to install the tough 'Sharia' law in the country.

The militant group is against Western education and influence and has been carrying out its violent activities since 2009 when its leader Muhammed Yusuf was killed by the police. — PTI

Damascus meeting calls for peaceful change in Syria

Beirut, September 23
Members of Syria's internal opposition held a rare meeting in Damascus on Sunday to call for a peaceful end to President Bashar al-Assad's rule, after months of fighting in which thousands have been killed.

The meeting went ahead with the blessing of authorities despite the arrest of several opposition figures in recent days and accusations from rebel forces that it gave a false signal that Assad is seeking a political solution to Syria's crisis.

Rajaa Nasser, one of the organisers of the Syria Salvation Conference, called for "an immediate halt to the shooting, a halt to the brutal and barbaric shelling, a truce and a pause for the fighters."

Such a truce could "open the way for a political process ... which guarantees a radical political change, an end to the current regime and a serious and genuine democracy," Nasser told the meeting organised by the internal opposition's main umbrella group, the National Coordination Body.

Activists say 27,000 people have been killed in Syria since protests against Assad erupted in March last year, most of them in the last few months as the uprising turned into a violent insurgency.

Western countries, reluctant to intervene militarily, have called for the president to step aside but their pressure for UN sanctions against Damascus has been blocked by Russia and China, whose envoys both attended Sunday's meeting.

"The main goal now is to put an immediate end to the violence in Syria, whether from the government side or the armed groups," Russia's ambassador Azamat Kulmukhametov said.

"The other goal is no less important, to convert the current confrontation ... into a peaceful political solution." Assad has vowed to crush rebel fighters, who he portrays as foreign-backed Islamist terrorists, but says he accepts some opposition figures who call for a peaceful transition from a one-party state to democracy. His allies have pointed to the internal opposition as a sign Assad is serious about reform.

Members of the internal opposition, which includes outspoken critics of Assad who have spent years in jail, said Moscow and Beijing promised to exert influence to protect Sunday's meeting. But eight members of the National Coordination Body were detained by Syrian security forces last week, including three who were seized outside Damascus airport after they returned from a trip to China, the group's spokesman said.

The internal opposition has been accused of being too passive by rebel fighters and members of the largely foreign-based Syrian National Council, a political group calling for the international community to arm rebel factions.

"This is not a real opposition in Syria. This opposition is just the other face of the same coin," a spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army said. — Reuters

Free Syrian Army shifts base from Turkey to Syria

Cairo: Commanders of the rebel Free Syrian Army said they have moved their headquarters from Turkey to an unidentified location in Syria. They said that the move is an effort to unite and coordinate the armed insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad's government. Colonel Riad al-Assad, a leader of the force, announced the move in a video posted on YouTube titled 'Free Syrian Army Communique No. 1 From Inside'.

China cancels events marking 40 yrs of Japan diplomatic ties

Beijing, September 23
Amid their raging dispute over a group of islands in the East China Sea, China has cancelled events to commemorate 40 years of diplomatic ties with Japan.

The reception to mark the 40th anniversary of the normalisation of China-Japan relations "will be held at a proper time", the official Xinhua news agency reported, quoting officials, without giving the reason behind the cancellation of the event, which was to take place on Thursday.

Japan's Kyodo news agency also quoted its sources as saying that China has conveyed to Japan that the anniversary event has been called off.

China and Japan have been involved in a row over the islands since the 1970s, but tensions escalated in August after pro-China activists landed on one of them.

Japanese government subsequently bought three of the islands from their private owners, deepening further the rift between the two countries.

Chinese cities have witnessed anti-Japan protests in recent days over the disputed islands, called Diaoyu by China and Senkaku by Japan. — PTI

World Hindi Conference
‘Language should be promoted, not imposed’

Johannesburg, September 23
Scholars debating the issue of linguistic pride at the World Hindi Conference here emphasised the need to promote Hindi vigorously, but at the same time agreed that the language must not be imposed.

As they gathered to discuss the state of Hindi and prospects of it to be elevated to the status of an official language of the United Nations, a number of doyens of the language also regretted the decline witnessed by writing.

Rajya Sabha MP Karan Singh said Hindi as a language was not just confined to native speakers but has had a much wider impact, but stressed that that no language must be imposed.

A number of scholars and academics spoke on the occasion or sent in their messages as the conference discussed the 'identity of language and globalisation of Hindi'.

"Other languages must be respected in order to promote Hindi. The purpose of this conference is to familiarise people with Hindi and so it must be welcomed as India is a rising power and has the financial clout to promote the language," said literary critic Namwar Singh.

The event also recalled the historic role the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi played in exhorting Indians to shun the use of English and take up Hindi as medium of instruction in schools and universities.

Gandhiji had termed it a national calamity that people had a slavish mentality towards English, believing it to be the only language of knowledge and excellence saying that this impeded the growth of young talents.

Information technology experts participating in the conference agreed that the need of the hour was to develop new techniques and strategies for using Hindi in high technology fields.

Scholars also expressed concern over the official Hindi used by the government which they said was totally different from common spoken Hindi and was alienating many people from Hindi. Language that has an inextricable link with media and democracy, also helps bind people together and strengthens democracy, experts argued.

Prominent Indian scholars who will be honoured are Himanshu Joshi, Rajendra Mishra and Kailash Pant while the foreign scholars to be felicitated include Peter Friedlander from Australia, Sergei Sereberyani and Marco Jolie from Italy among others.

The three-day event began here yesterday with the participation of about 700 non-native Hindi speaking scholars and delegates from India and abroad. — PTI

BRIEFLY

Gandhi, Nehru among greatest sources of influence: Suu Kyi
New York: Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has described Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru among her "greatest sources" of influence, as she encouraged American students to read the works of India's Father of the Nation. "Gandhi is somebody really phenomenal. I think you must all read his works, the more you read Gandhi, the more impressed you are by who he was and what he was," Suu Kyi said. India-educated Suu Kyi said she "felt a little bit closer" to Nehru since she had a similar education pattern as he had, having being educated in London. — PTI

BACK TO SCHOOL: Iraqi children walk to school on Sunday morning after three months of summer vacation in Baghdad. — AP/PTI

LMU licence remains revoked: UK
London: As the high court granted a reprieve to current Indian and other non-EU students at the London Metropolitan University (LMU), immigration officials said the university’s licence to admit and teach them remains revoked. A UK Border Agency spokesperson said after the court ruling: “London Metropolitan University's Tier 4 sponsor licence remains revoked. London Metropolitan has failed to get its sponsor status restored and the judge has not granted interim relief”. — PTI

Nine climbers killed in Nepal
Kathmandu: At least nine persons, including foreign tourists, were killed and eight others went missing when an avalanche hit climbers on a Himalayan peak in Nepal on Sunday. The avalanche hit a camp in Gorkha district. There were at least 50 people from different expeditions on the mountain when the avalanche hit the Camp III at Mt Manaslu situated at 7,300 metre altitude as the climbers heading towards the peak. — PTI