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PAKISTAN ELECTIONS
Imran vows to hold local government poll in 90 days
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19 injured in Quetta, Peshawar blasts
THE
RINGSIDE VIEW
Unhappy with probe, Savita’s father to sue Irish hospital
Boston blasts
Terrorist bomb attacks claim 21 lives in China
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PAKISTAN ELECTIONS
Pakistan People’s Party patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will be assisting in the party’s election campaign, but not leading it.
In a video message to party workers, Bilawal said he wanted to “contest polls and to launch the election campaign in the streets of my country alongside my workers. But we are at war against a mindset. The murderers of Quaid-e-Awam (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) and Benazir Bhutto Shaheed now want to eliminate us as well.”
This was Bilawal’s first public speech since April 4, the death anniversary of his grandfather and PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. On Sunday, party leaders said Bilawal would be leading the election campaign through a video link because of threats to his life. His father President Asif Zardari is restrained by courts to indulge in political activity. The PPP campaign has been severely impacted because of the absence of any leaders of national stature just as two of its major rivals - Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N and Imran Khan’s PTI - are already making waves in various parts of the country. “One day, I will also lead the election campaign of the PPP like (Zulfiqar) Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. Until that time, I will assist my elders in the campaign but not lead it,” said the party chairman. Speaking about south Punjab, which is a major part of the party’s manifesto, Bilawal criticised the former Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) provincial government. “Where are those people who claim to have given rivers of milk and honey to the Punjab? Can’t they see the development and prosperity of people of south Punjab?” “You had time to do politics on a metro bus scheme worth 70 billion but forgot the poor people of the Punjab,” he added. The young PPP leader seemed optimistic about the party’s future in Sindh in the coming polls. “I have faith that the people of Sindh will vote for the PPP. The PPP-led government has given the largest amount of development projects in the history of Sindh,” he said. He hoped to sweep the polls in parts of the country other than Sindh and south Punjab. “And remember that Peshawar, Quetta and Lahore are also dear to me like Larkana. Insha Allah, we will make Lahore and Peshawar the fortes of the PPP,” he said.
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Imran vows to hold local government poll in 90 days
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) will hold local government elections in 90 days after coming to power, party chairman Imran Khan announced in Lahore on Wednesday.
In a significant boost to its electoral prospects in the Punjab capital, over 70 nazims (town officials) of the metropolitan city joined the party. Lahore is regarded as the strong power base of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
Talking to reporters on the occasion, Imran threw a challenge to PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif to hold a TV debate with him on party programmes and past performance. Khan said both major political parties - the PML-N and the PPP - have failed to hold local government elections because they did not want to devolve power to the grassroots level. Explaining his strategy for improving rural life, Imran said he would ask overseas Pakistanis to own one village and sponsor development projects there. To ensure satisfaction of the sponsors, the PTI chairman said that all the developmental work in the villages would be monitored through satellite cameras. Explaining his optimism about fixing problems faced by Pakistan, Imran said he has lived abroad and has seen how the systems there work for the benefit of the people.
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MQM strike brings Karachi to a halt
A strike — called by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) against a bomb attack on the party’s election camp office — brought the country's financial hub Karachi to a standstill on Wednesday as businesses remained closed.
A similar shutdown was observed in Hyderabad, the second biggest town in Sindh, where an MQM candidate was shot a fortnight ago.
Public transport, markets and schools remained closed in the city. MQM chief Altaf Hussain said that secular parties, including the PPP and ANP, are being targeted by the Taliban in an apparent attempt to keep them out of the elections. The Pashtun-nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) has lost several leaders and activists as a result of bomb blasts in its rallies in the troubled Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa province. The MQM had given a strike call following the bomb attack on its camp office in Karachi on Tuesday. Party chief Altaf Hussain has claimed that about 25 MQM activists, including an election candidate, have been killed over the past few days.
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19 injured in Quetta, Peshawar blasts
Islamabad, April 24 Within hours, another bomb went off in the busy Saryab Road area of Quetta. Two policemen were injured and a car was damaged by the blast. In Peshawar, four persons, including two women, were injured when a bomb went off in the congested Sirki Gate area. A house was damaged by the blast. At least 2 kg of explosives were used in the attack, police officials said. In yet another incident, two bombs went off along a key road in Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province though there were no casualties. Israr Khan Gandapur, an independent candidate in the upcoming election, had a narrow escape as his motorcade passed through the area shortly before the blasts.
— PTI
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Ahmadis’ discrimination: Kerry’s help sought
Where are the women candidates, asks daily
Islamabad: There are only 36 women candidates for the 272 National Assembly general seats, a Pakistani daily said on Tuesday while noting that parties had once again relegated women's participation in the transition of power to the sidelines. An editorial in the Dawn on Wednesday said that once again, it seems the electoral field was going to be a largely all-male spectacle. "It’s clear that while political parties may court the female vote for its strategic value, they cannot bring themselves to consider women as viable candidates for general seats." The list of candidates for 272 National Assembly general seats includes only 36 women, a figure that has remained more or less unchanged since the last two elections in 2008 and 2002.
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PTI Govt official kidnapped in Balochistan
Islamabad: Unidentified armed men abducted a government official in the restive Balochistan province of southwest Pakistan on Wednesday, the police said. Roshan Khan, an official of the Customs Department, was passing through Khuzdar city when armed men intercepted his vehicle and took him away to an unknown location, police officials said. The police has launched a search for the official. No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction. Balochistan has witnessed a sudden surge in violence ahead of the May 11 general election.
— PTI
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123 killed in Bangladesh factory building collapse
Dhaka, April 24 Television showed young women workers, some apparently semi-conscious, being pulled from the debris. One fireman told Reuters that about 2,000 people were in the building when the upper floors jolted down on top of each other. Bangladesh's booming garment industry has been plagued by fires and other accidents for years, despite a drive to improve safety standards. In November last year, 112 workers were killed in a blaze at the Tazreen factory in a nearby industrial suburb. "It looks like an earthquake has struck here," said one resident as he looked on at the chaotic scene of smashed concrete and ambulances making their way through the crowds of workers and wailing relatives. "I was at work on the third floor, and then suddenly I heard a deafening sound, but couldn't understand what was happening. I ran and was hit by something on my head," said Zohra Begum, a worker at one of the factories. An official at a control room set up to provide information about the missing and injured said that 96 people were confirmed dead and more than 700 were injured. Mohammad Asaduzzaman, in charge of the area's police station, said factory owners appeared to have ignored a warning not to allow their workers into the building after a crack was detected in the block on Tuesday.
— Reuters
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13 die in Afghan quake, tremor felt in India
Jalalabad, April 24 The quake was felt as far away as the Indian capital of New Delhi. Buildings in Delhi swayed and people ran onto the streets in Kashmir. It struck at 0925 GMT at a depth of 62 km, with its epicentre 24 km northwest of the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad near the Pakistani border, the USGS said in a revised update. Six people died in Nangarhar province of which Jalalabad is the capital, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, and 75 people were injured. Forty of them were given first aid and the rest admitted to hospital for further treatment. "We are still in the process of getting information from the affected areas. Among the dead are some children," Abdulzai said. One person was killed and one injured in neighbouring Kunar province and many homes were destroyed, said provincial spokesman Wasefullah Wasef. In Kama district outside Jalalabad, people ran from their mudbrick homes in panic when the tremor was felt, a witness said, describing it as "very powerful". Two walls in one village collapsed. Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range which lies near the juncture of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
— Agencies
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Unhappy with probe, Savita’s father to sue Irish hospital
"I believe we will never get justice from the Irish Government so we are definitely going to take legal action against the hospital [University Hospital Galway]," Andanappa Yalagi told the 'Irish Daily Star' from his home in Belgaum, Karnataka. "No one has yet told us the real reason for my daughter’s death. I am not satisfied by the inquest because the truth about what led to my daughter's death still has not come out. What I think is that the government and the doctors need to take responsibility for what happened to Savita but so far no one is doing that. "No one from the hospital or the government - not the doctors, not the politicians - have spoken of the negligence that killed my daughter," he added, in reference to the "medical misadventure" verdict at the end of a seven-day inquest at Galway Courthouse last Friday. The 31-year-old Indian dentist was 17 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to University Hospital Galway in October 2012 suffering a miscarriage. She died in intensive care from multi-organ failure from septic shock and E coli, four days after she delivered a dead foetus. A spokesperson for the hospital has since acknowledged there were lapses in the standards of care provided to Savita. Expert witnesses at her inquest said that a timely abortion may have saved Savita’s life. A mid-wife, Ann-Marie Burke, had come forward during the hearings to confirm her family's claim that Savita had been denied an abortion on the ground that Ireland was a "Catholic country". "I salute her because she spoke the truth and if she came to India she would be welcome in my home. I invite her to come here because she told the truth," Savita's father said in reference to the mid-wife’s testimony. Savita's husband, Praveen Halappanavar, has already revealed plans to take the case to the European Court of Justice. Meanwhile, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has said he is "hopeful" that long-awaited abortion legislation will be ready as planned by July. Speaking to Midwest Radio, Kenny said clarity must be brought to the law. "It's a sensitive issue. It's one that requires very careful consideration because you are talking about two lives, the life of the mother and the life of the unborn," he said. — PTI ‘Negligence killed her’
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Boston blasts
Moscow, April 24 The parents of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are currently living in Dagestan, an overwhelmingly Muslim region on the Caspian Sea where the family briefly lived before leaving for the US. "The FBI is receiving cooperation from the Russian government in its investigation of the Boston marathon bombing," a US embassy official, who asked not to be named, told AFP. "A group from the US Embassy in Moscow travelled to Dagestan yesterday as part of this cooperation with the Russian Government to interview the parents." The official declined to say whether the delegation was still in Dagestan. It was not immediately clear if the interviews had already taken place. Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a shootout with US police while Dzhokhar, 19, was gravely wounded during his capture last week. He remains hospitalised and has been read the charges of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. The brothers’ father Anzor, an ethnic Chechen born in Kyrgyzstan, has repeatedly said in media interviews that his sons were innocent and could not have carried out the bombings. Their mother Zubeidat hails from Dagestan itself. The trip by the US delegation to Dagestan comes amid mounting questions in the United States about whether the US authorities misses crucial signals that should have raised suspicion about the two brothers before the bombings. Particular interest has surrounded trip of around six months made by Tamerlan in 2012 to Dagestan and Chechnya. Russian security sources in Dagestan have told AFP he was seen four times with a figure suspected of links with the Islamist underground during his visit but there was never any reason to apprehend him. The two brothers, who had been living in the United States for over a decade, are accused of the twin marathon bombing on April 15, which killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.
— AFP
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Terrorist bomb attacks claim 21 lives in China Beijing, April 24 Confirming reports of incidents of “terrorist violence” which took place yesterday in Bachu county near Kashgar city in the Xinjiang province, Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, in a media briefing here today, said that 21 persons were killed. She said the area witnessed a series of bomb attacks in which 21 people were killed including six suspects who were shot dead by the police. Eight suspects have been arrested. State-run Xinhua news agency said that the dead included 15 community workers and police officers. This is the first major attack here since the new leadership headed by President Xi Jinping took over power last month. The trouble began when three community workers found suspicious individuals and knives in the home of a local resident. They then reported the matter to their supervisors over phone, but were taken hostage by the suspects who had been hiding in the house, the Xinhua report said. The police officers and community officials who rushed to the scene were attacked and killed. The three community workers who had been taken captive were also killed and their house burnt. Police reinforcements which then arrived there shot at the suspects and brought the situation under control. An initial investigation has indicated that the suspects were all terrorists who were planning violent attacks, the report said. Besides the six suspects, the dead included 10 Han Chinese, two Uygur Muslims and three Chinese Mongolians, the spokesperson said. Uygurs who constitute over 45 per cent of Xinjiang province, bordering Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Afghanistan resent the growing settlement of Hans, the majority Chinese race, who now constitute 40 per cent of the population. — PTI root cause Xinjiang has been frequently hit by heavy violence between native Uygurs, Muslims of Turkic origin and Han Chinese settlers in the past few years
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Karzai orders crackdown on TV shows Body found could be of missing Indian student: US police 
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Pakistan People’s Party patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will be assisting in the party’s election campaign, but not leading it.
In a video message to party workers, Bilawal said he wanted to “contest polls and to launch the election campaign in the streets of my country alongside my workers. But we are at war against a mindset. The murderers of Quaid-e-Awam (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) and Benazir Bhutto Shaheed now want to eliminate us as well.”
Washington: A bipartisan group of Congressmen have urged the US Secretary of State John Kerry, to help end discrimination of Ahmadi community voters in Pakistan. Led by Republican Congressmen Frank Wolf from Virginia, 33 lawmakers in a letter urged Kerry to impress upon the Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to immediately repeal 'Executive Order No 15' and remove any discriminatory restrictions on Ahmadis being able to vote in the upcoming May elections. The letter sent to Kerry last week was released to the press on Tuesday. The government requires voters to indicate their religion when registering to vote. To register, the government requires Ahmadis to declare themselves as non-Muslims. Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, and as a result, the community is unable to vote. — PTI
London, April 24
