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Daily Archives: November 16, 2012
Rocket from Gaza lands near Jerusalem
source by : http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/2012111615180851790.htm
Jerusalem police detained several protesters rallying against Israel’s Gaza operations on Friday [Reuters]
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip has struck an uninhabited area outside of Jerusalem, causing no damage or injuries, the Israeli army said, shortly after sirens wailed across the city.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the rocket landed on Friday in an open area near Gush Ezion, which includes several Jewish settlements and Arab villages in the occupied West Bank southeast of the city.
The armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement confirmed it had fired a Qassam rocket towards Jerusalem.
An attack on Israel’s self-declared capital marks a major escalation by Gaza fighters, both for its symbolism and its distance from the Palestinian territory. Located roughly 75km away from the Gaza border, Jerusalem had been thought to be beyond the range of Gaza rocket squads.
Fighters had already launched rockets at Tel Aviv, another unprecedented achievement, on Thursday and Friday.
“It changes the entire game”, Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from Jerusalem, said.
“Now that all Israeli eyes were on Tel Aviv, people are even more shocked to know that rockets from Gaza can reach Jerusalem. The concern before was about the Israelis in the southern Israeli communities, close to Gaza, because that’s where rockets were able to reach. Tel Aviv and Jersualem were not a concern. Now it is shocking news for the army.”
Earlier on Friday, Palestinian demonstrators protested against Israel’s military operations in Gaza at the Damascus gate in Old Jerusalem. Several protesters were detained as clashes with police occurred.
Escalating violence
Three days of fighting between Israel and Gaza fighters continued on Friday with numerous Israeli air strikes hitting the tiny Palestinian territory.
The operation began on Wednesday with the assassination of Hamas’ military chief Ahmad Jabari and dozens of air strikes on rocket launching sites.
At least 24 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed, according to medical officials on both sides. Approximately 150 Palestinians have been wounded.
After days of battering targets with air strikes in Gaza, Israeli forces were massing along the border in preparation for a possible ground invasion.
Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland, reporting from Gaza, said: “We have seen an intensification of firing from both sides.”
“What we have also seen, with outgoing rockets, incoming fire, whether from war ships or fighter jets, from the other side. What is concerning from the incoming fire is that in some cases it really isn’t accurate at all,” she added.
“If the Israeli army is seeking to kill the fighters firing rockets, the fighters are not in those locations. We are seeing the fighters have far more sophisticated weapons now, especially in the actual launching systems. They are able to operate them via remote control. They have been buried in the ground either days or weeks ago, so trying to target these locations is rather futile.”
Reforms in Myanmar: Challenges and prospects
![[QODLink]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2012/11/15/20121115105724489734_16.jpg "The cost of energy independence")
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Reforms in Myanmar: Challenges and prospects |
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Myanmar’s reforms are more about the interests and longevity of the country’s military than about public welfare.
Last Modified: 14 Nov 2012 14:15
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President Thein Sein’s government has embarked on reforms, ending Myanmar’s international pariah status and half-century of isolation, both self-imposed and externally-maintained [EPA]
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| In a week’s time, US President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Asia’s – and perhaps the world’s – hottest destination: Myanmar. He should “see” the ugly realities of the country’s reforms that lie just beneath their surface and hear the cries of the wretched of Myanmar, such as the Muslim Rohingya and the Christian Kachins.
These days, Myanmar’s coming out party is the talk of the town since President Thein Sein’s government has embarked on reforms, ending the country’s international pariah status and half-century of isolation, both self-imposed and externally-maintained. The generals’ rule since 1962 has resulted in policy-induced poverty, prolonged internal conflicts and international isolation, with devastating societal consequences. Despite its firm grip on power, the generals never really felt either secure or confident about their reign. They have always felt they are riding on the back of an angry and wounded tiger. Through their eyes, reforms – and bringing on board Aung San Suu Kyi, their long-time nemesis – is the last resort both for themselves and the society at large. This is the existential background against which changes in Myanmar need to be understood. As a welcome gesture, just about every leader of both the “free world” of the West and “un-free and semi-free worlds” of the East have hurried their way to Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s purpose-built capital replete with North Korean-designed underground tunnels and bunkers. The freshly re-elected US President Barak Obama will top this list of international visitors who have thrown their weight behind the generals’ reforms, with the Lady’s blessings. Development and humanitarian packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been pledged, a significant quantity of foreign debt to the tune of $3.7bn forgiven and official superlatives praise about Myanmar’s changes thrown around in Washington, Tokyo, London, Berlin, Paris, Oslo, Brussels and so on. New offices are springing in Myanmar. Every visitor or long-stay visitor to Myanmar is now involved in “institution- and capacity-building” of one kind or another. Investors, insurers and do-gooders alike are all elated. Finally, Myanmar has arrived. But there is more to the hyperboles of this “model transition”, as Washington put it, than meets the eyes. Collective future of Myanmar What really triggers these changes is as important to understand what prospects – and challenges – lie ahead. Further, what real-world impact are these unfolding reforms having on the lives of the public, ethnic majority Bama and non-Bama ethnic minorities such as the Kachins in the North, the Rohingya in the West, the Shans and the Karens in the East?
Historically, it was the generals’ fear of the loss of their half-century grip on power and wealth that led to state-ordered chronic waves of bloodbaths since “8.8.88 Popular Uprising” when the entire nation rose up against the one-party military dictatorship of General Ne Win. In 2012, nearly a quarter century after the country’s greatest revolt in modern history, it is again the same fear factor that has propelled the generals to make moves: Reform the institutions and reform the way they rule the population. Shwe Mann, Speaker of the Lower House, reportedly admitted the generals’ collective fear. Within an hour of his meeting with the visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the parliament in December last year, the former third most powerful general in Than Shwe’s ruling council was telling the Myanmarese journalists, “We do not want to end up like the Arab dictators. One day they were very powerful. The next day they died ignoble deaths.” Of course, Washington’s new strategy of “pivoting” back to Asia has also made it possible for the generals to come out of their bunkers, literally and figuratively. The Americans wanted the Myanmarese to walk away, as much as geo-strategically possible, from Beijing’s embrace. The Myanmarese, on their part, are grateful to Washington in helping wean them of China’s international protection, ironically, against Washington’s perceived attempts at regime change in Myanmar. This is a classic geo-strategic symbiosis that is looking increasingly promising for the Myanmarese and the Americans. However, through the natives’ eyes, that is, the Myanmar public, the country’s recent history stands in the way of embracing the outsiders’ rose-tinted views of Myanmar’s reforms. They don’t share the international community’s “reckless optimism” about its collective future. The generals’ past waves of nation-building have been nothing but national nightmares. Since 1962, Myanmarese military leaders have made and re-made themselves first as “socialist soldiers” bent on building a socialist economy and now overzealous “capitalist democrats” embracing the Free Market with fist and fury. Fifty years ago, the late General Ne Win, then commander-in-chief, green-lighted to deputies to end the country’s fragile parliamentary democracy and build a “socialist democracy”. Overnight, military officers who had never dreamt of socialism to be their guiding light were ordered to become the cadres of the Burma Socialist Programme Party. This socialist experiment ended up as a policy and system failure with devastating societal consequences in terms of human resources, public health, ethnic relations, economy and culture. The 25 years of continued military rule post-socialist dictatorship has only made the social legacy even worse. Almost 50 years after the late General Ne Win’s military’s socialist experiment, the “retired” Senior General Than Shwe ordered his juniors to discharge their new mission of building a “discipline flourishing democracy”. Like the theatrical director, he slotted his deputies to play Speakers of the Houses, Chairman of the new army-backed ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, Commander-in-Chief, and so on. ‘Buy-the-impoverished-population’ approach In Naypyidaw’s new play, the soldiers are to form the backbone of reform push as “democratisers”, while western educated technocrats with developmental nationalism are to be advisers. Importantly, in this new cast of characters, the Lady too has an important role to play. The psyche-war savvy generals have worked on the Lady with a “soft spot” for the Army which her martyred father founded three years before she was born. Through the regime’s eyes, it has bagged the only thing in the world it needed to make itself entirely acceptable to the West. Indeed Aung San Suu Kyi has ceremoniously helped sell the generals’ new play to the world while unceremoniously choosing to remain silent on the military’s war crimes against the Kachin minorities in Northern Myanmar, the ethno-religious cleansing of the Rohingya in Western Myanmar, or economic disempowerment of ordinary farmers whose ancestral land is being confiscated by army-owned mining and commercial agricultural companies. To belabour the obvious, the ex-military officers and their active-duty brethren retain complete monopoly control over all aspects of reforms. In the new era of “democratic transition”, these men, in skirts or in green shirts, continue to hold all levers of state power at all levels of administration, including “people’s bicameral parliament”, judiciary, foreign affairs and finance, besides their legitimate domain, namely state security apparatuses. And it is these “men on horseback”, not collaborating dissidents or the advisory developmental technocrats, who determine the reforms’ nature, scope, priorities and pace. This is the picture that increasingly worries the Myanmar public who have borne the brunt of the military’s policy, leadership and system failures. Here, the cynical Myanmar public know best.
In dealing with unhappy Arab Streets, the House of Saud, for instance, has thrown billions at the Sultanate subjects to placate the latter while the Jordanian crown has created wiggle room for its subjects. Former generals in Naypyidaw, or “Abode of Kings”, have in part adopted this “buy-the-impoverished-population” approach. The catch here though is this: Unlike the House of Saud which sits on the world’s largest reserve of “black gold”, the cash-strapped reformist President Thein Sein – cash-strapped because the country’s revenues have been stashed away in personal bank accounts of senior and junior generals – wants the international community, including the UN, international lending agencies and development banks, and “donor” countries, to foot his administration’s bill. Take, for instance, the literal cost of Naypyidaw’s peace negotiations with ethnic armed resistance organisations. According to former Colonel Aung Min, the Union Minister for Peace and a confidant of the President, his government does not even pay the hotel bills for peace negotiators. Thankfully from Naypyidaw’s perspective, Oslo, bent on rebuilding its tarnished image of a global peacemaker par excellence post-Sri Lanka conflict, has stepped up to the plate, and so have the local Myanmar cronies from Myanmar Egress, the best-known proxy for the Myanmar intelligence services. Everyone in the peace process is poised to reap commercial and/or strategic gains, if and when the country’s war zones are transformed into multi-billion dollar special economic zones and ethnic guerrilla fighters “swap their guns for laptops”, as President Thein Sein poetically put it. Emphatically, the generals are, however, pursuing reforms largely for the wrong reasons – for their own long-term survival, both as powerful military families and as the most powerful institution with “a deeply ingrained corporate sense of entitlement to rule”. Motives do matter. As a direct consequence, they remain wholly unprepared to do the needful in terms of what will really promote public welfare and advance the cause of freedom, human rights and democracy. Negative consequences of the generals’ reforms As a matter of fact, the reforms are contradictory, reversible and fragile. They are confined to such narrow domains as freedom of speech, new business and investment law. That is, the areas important to middle class Western liberals and attractive to venture capitalists and corporations. Further, reform moves bypass active conflict zones, strategic buffer areas and resource-rich virgin lands. When it comes to economically and strategically important regions on the country’s peripheries, that is, the ancestral homes of the country’s 40 percent of ethnic minorities such as the Kachin, the Rakhine, the Shan, the Karen, the Mon and the Karenni, the reforms simply translate into forced displacement, the rise in militarisation, a sharp increase in war-fleeing refugees, loss of livelihoods and so on. It is indeed no coincidence that all fresh waves of violence, atrocities and raging wars happen to be in the ethnic minority regions designated to be homes of virtually all mega-development initiatives, commercial projects, resource extraction, Special Economic zones and industrial agricultural schemes – worth billions of dollars. Curiously, both the origin and tail of China’s 2,800-plus kilometre-long twin pipeline bear witness to the unfolding violence: Ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in the coastal region where the pipelines begin and the hot war against the Kachins in the Sino-Myanmar highlands of Northern Myanmar. To date, close to an estimate 100,000 Rohingyas have been caged in new UN-financed refugee camps on the west coast while roughly the same number of Kachins in the North have fled the war on their ancestral highlands. On the eastern side of Myanmar along Thai-Myanmar borders, donor agencies, for instance, Britain’s Department For International Development (DFID) and the host country of Thailand are preparing to repatriate another 150,000 Karen and Karenni war refugees back to their regions, despite the absence there of either a meaningful and functioning ceasefire or lasting peace. Because these wars and atrocities are off the beaten-path and largely inaccessible to the UN and other aid agencies, the dark side of Myanmar’s economic reforms by and large go unnoticed except by the US military’s surveillance satellites, which captured images of entire neighbourhoods in the strategic deep-sea port city of Kyauk Phyu razed to the ground. Why pay compensation for relocating a popularly disliked ethnic and religious minority community from strategically and commercially important locations if you can drive them out to the sea and torch their homes completely? These state-orchestrated crime scenes also lie outside the purview of the growing pool of visiting dignitaries, renowned experts and international statesmen and women on their whirlwind state visits to Myanmar. More ominously, many international agencies and national governments by and large view this ugly side of development – ethnic, class and provincial conflicts, large scale displacement, pervasive land confiscation, absence of human and food security, growing income disparity, etc – as the necessary cost locals must bear if they are to enjoy projected fruits of developmental reforms in some distant future. Here, the prevailing two-fold ideology of unfettered development and “sustainable economic growth” is at work. Even the country’s iconic politician Aung San Suu Kyi, who has never set foot on active war zones of ethnic minorities, lacks any empirical understanding or experience to truly appreciate the negative consequences of the generals’ reforms she is helping market in Western capitals with great success. New era of reforms and ‘Buddhist’ racism The regime’s pursuit of peace with armed ethnic resistance communities warrants a closer scrutiny than has been subject to. While running the country that has not seen real peace since independence from Britain 60-plus years ago, the generals talk the talk of peace, but do not walk the walk. Take, for instance, its hyped-up ceasefire talks with two of the country’s oldest and most resolute revolutionary organisations – the Karen National Union in Eastern Myanmar and the Kachin Independence Organisation in Northern Myanmar. The widespread perception among the Kachin and Karen negotiators, and respective communities, is that the reformist government is more intent on imposing peace on its own terms, more or less. Naypyidaw is far more interested in exploiting natural resources in minority regions and securing strategic and commercial routes there than discussing seriously about the root cause of the country’s ethnic rebellions, namely political autonomy founded on the principle of ethnic equality. The Kachins who maintained a truce for 17 years no longer feel they could trust the Myanmar generals who attempted to lure them into trading the Kachins’ collective drive for political autonomy in a genuinely federated Union of Myanmar for commercial deals for the Kachin upper crust. This has led to Ko Mya Aye, one of the most prominent dissidents from the 88 Generation Group who travelled to the war zone and met with the Kachin resistance leaders, to remark pointedly, “The Burmese government knows what to change in order to have peace, but they do not want to do it. The government just does a little to look good to the international community”. Myanmar’s reforms are, upon closer look, more about the interests and longevity of the country’s military and army-bred crony interests than about inter-ethnic and inter-faith peace, public welfare or democracy. Upon a closer and honest look, Myanmar’s extraordinary reforms begin to lose their lustre. There is no denying that the country’s quasi-civilian government has ushered in a new era of reforms. However, the types of reforms that President Thein Sein – an ex-general and a figurehead – is pursuing are the ones that will protect the military’s core interests above all else. At heart, the reforms are largely geared towards creating a “late developmental state” along the lines of Vietnam and China, a benign Leviathan that will secure the generals’ electability on the basis of its economic performance and along popular “Buddhist” racism. When the illiberal society’s deeply ingrained racism thunders the traditionally liberal discourses of human rights, democracy and multi-culturalism go muted. The current reform movement therefore lacks any real potential to result in a new democratic polity which will build, and in turn feeds off, a new and sustainable economic system. Sadly, the West and the rest alike are choosing to overlook the apparent pitfalls of Myanmar’s reforms, ignoring the cries of the wretched of a new Myanmar. Maung Zarni is founder of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004) and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Myanmar will be published by Yale University Press. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy. |
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Couldn’t agree more. Right on the spot! Let’s see how Obama will handle this mess since they’ve chosen to be apart of it.
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Obama is multinational and zionist puppet master and he will do anything as he did last 4 years, but make easy for the shark to make more profit exploiting resources and cheap labours
AlKhalil liked this -
In its attempt to be cynical at all costs, this article lacks balance. While the motivations of the generals for reform may be true, the course of action cannot and will not be determined by the generals alone. Lets wait and see when happens in Kachin for example. The ethnics, united and with international backing, might have more clout than you give them credit for. So might the opposition, bolstered by the the return of vocal 88ers and a new generation of constructive, rights based political actors.
“The current reform movement therefore lacks any real potential to result in a new democratic polity which will build, and in turn feeds off, a new and sustainable economic system.” I don’t know how you can say this if you have been to Myanmar recently or follow what’s happening in the parliament. Even the ruling party is having to become more democratic or risk losing relevance in this new era.
The litmus test should be “is the average person on the street better off than they were three years ago”. While in the ethnic areas you are right, they largely aren’t yet, in most of the country the answer is irrefutably yes. A great article and some good points, but on the ground the reality is much rosier than this article suggests..
Obama should not visit Burma
source by : http://www.adn.com/2012/11/14/2693433/obama-should-not-visit-burma.html#storylink=cpy
By MAUNG ZARNI
President Obama should reconsider his upcoming trip to Myanmar. While the ruling junta appears to be making reforms, there is less there than meets the eye.
President Thein Sein’s government has opened up the political process, freeing longtime political prisoner Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and even allowing her and dozens of her fellow party members to serve in Parliament. He has also loosened up some of the state control of the economy.
As a result, he has erased the country’s international pariah status and half a century of isolation, both self-imposed and externally maintained. The military has ruled since 1962. But despite their firm grip on power, the generals have always felt they are riding on the back of angry and wounded tiger.
“We do not want to end up like the Arab dictators,” Shwe Mann, once the third most powerful general in the junta, told reporters last December after meeting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “One day, they were very powerful. The next day, they died ignoble deaths.”
But don’t be fooled: The ex-military officers and their active-duty brethren retain complete monopoly control over all aspects of reforms. In the new era of “democratic transition,” these men continue to hold all levers of state power. And it is these “men on horseback,” not collaborating dissidents or developmental technocrats, who determine the reforms’ nature, scope, priorities and pace.
Still today, the Burmese army brutally represses ethnic minorities, and army-owned mining and commercial agricultural companies boot ordinary farmers off their ancestral lands. It is the ethnic minority regions that are being designated as the sites of virtually all mega-development initiatives, resource extractions, special economic zones and industrial agricultural schemes worth billions of dollars.
But we don’t hear about any of that in Washington, where the emphasis is on the new strategy of “pivoting” back to Asia. This pivot has made it possible for the generals to come out of their bunkers. The Americans want the Burmese to walk away from Beijing’s embrace. The Burmese, for their part, are grateful to Washington in helping wean them off of China’s international protection in exchange for dropping the U.S. demand for regime change in Myanmar (the name that the ruling clique has given to the country historically known as Burma). This is a classic geostrategic symbiosis that is looking increasingly promising for the junta and the Pentagon.
The generals are pursuing reforms largely for the wrong reasons – for their own long-term survival, politically and economically. Motives do matter. As a direct consequence, they remain wholly unprepared to do what is necessary to promote public welfare and advance the cause of freedom, human rights and democracy. So, the generals talk the talk of peace, but do not walk the walk.
Myanmar’s reforms are, upon closer look, more about the interests and longevity of the country’s military rests than about interethnic peace, public welfare or democracy.
These are reasons enough for Obama to stay away.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Maung Zarni (http://maungzarni.com) is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and founding director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004). Readers may write to the author at: Progressive Media Project, 409 East Main Street, Madison, Wis. 53703; email: pmproj@progressive.org; Web site: http://www.progressive.org. For information on PMP’s funding, please visit http://www.progressive.org/pmpabout.html#anchorsupport.
This article was prepared for The Progressive Media Project and is available to MCT subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.
2012, Maung Zarni
Rohingya Muslims
Speed News »
TOI 10 Nov 2012,03:40 ISTAlso, Akhilesh had personally promised him that full compensation would be paid to the victims of Pratapgarh violence for their loss but nothing has been done so far.
TOI 10 Nov 2012,03:40 ISTAs part of an SP delegation, Azmi had earlier visited Asthan village of Pratapgarh in June after houses of Muslims were burnt after the rape and murder of a Dalit girl. The delegation had submitted a report to the Chief Minister. Azmi said the chief minister had promised that the Goonda Act slapped on four Muslim youths in Pratapgarh will be revoked but it turned out to be a false assurance.
News»
Security concerns behind India’s ties with JuntaET 4 hrs ago…talked about a pragmatic approach, reflecting her understanding of international affairs and the compulsions the countries work with. Indian officials also condemned violence involving Rohingya Muslims, a minority community in Myanmar’s Rakhini district….
Suu Kyi on same page with junta over Rohingyas’TOI 16 hrs ago…the minority Rohingyas. Sources said that she herself brought up the situation in Rakhine state — rocked by violence between Muslims and Buddhists — but didn’t say anything to even remotely indicate a deviation from her stated position. The two leaders discussed…
Aung San Suu Kyi says Myanmar unrest an ‘international tragedy’TOI 15 Nov 2012, 14:17 IST…Bangladesh had to be stopped. Suu Kyi, on a visit to India, said she had declined to speak out on behalf of stateless Rohingya Muslims who live on both sides of the border as she wanted to promote reconciliation after recent bloodshed. More than 100,000 people…
Myanmar to free 452 prisoners ahead of Barack Obama visitTOI 15 Nov 2012, 10:04 IST…between Buddhists and Muslims in the country’s impoverished west casts a shadow over the political changes. Clashes in Rakhine State have claimed 180 lives since June and forced more than 110,000 people, mainly Rohingya Muslims, into makeshift camps….
Jamiat urges Islamic nations to help Rohingyas’ causeTOI 07 Nov 2012, 02:24 IST…Muslim clerics, urged Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia, to mount pressure on Myanmar for “cessation of attack” on Rohingya Muslims. In a letter to the Islamic countries sent through their embassies in India, the JuH also sought an international probe…
Related Topics »
European leaders seek Asian support on debt crisisET 05 Nov 2012, 13:27 IST…list. Optimism over the sweeping changes, however, has been dampened by deadly clashes between Buddhists and stateless Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine. British Foreign Secretary William Hague called on Myanmar to address “the unresolved…
EU urges end to Myanmar unrest, pledges aidET 04 Nov 2012, 14:22 IST…to back either side in the Rakhine unrest, which has mainly pitted ethnic Rakhine Buddhists against stateless Rohingya Muslims. Her comments are likely to disappoint rights groups hopeful that she would speak up on behalf of the Rohingya, who make up the majority…
Displaced in Myanmar need food, shelter: UNHCRTOI 03 Nov 2012, 10:12 IST…Kyaukpyu, Yanbye and Thandwe – and then a state of emergency was declared June 10. According to media reports in August, tension between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine also left hundreds of homes destroyed and at least 64,000 people displaced….
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23 Oct 2012,20:59 ISTNayab Mohatamim (pro vice-chancellor) of Islamic Seminary Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband Maulana Abdul Khaliq Madrasi said that the institution was also in favour of Muslims avoiding cow slaughter. He said in some states there is a ban on cow slaughter but Muslims should avoid sacrificing the animal even at places where it has not been prohibited.
23 Oct 2012,20:59 ISTMaulana Sadiq, who is known for promoting modern and scientific education among Muslims, said, “A fatwa was issued for Shia Muslims after Independence in which sacrificing cow was prohibited in the country.”
23 Oct 2012,20:59 ISTAll India Muslim Personal Law Board vice-president and Shia cleric Maulana Syed Kalbe Sadiq, in a statement Sadiq, said “It is my appeal to Muslims to completely restrain from sacrificing cow on the Eid-ul-Azha. India is our country and we should respect the feeling of Hindu brethren who are in the majority.”
23 Oct 2012,20:58 ISTMuslim clerics have appealed to the Muslims to refrain from cow slaughter on the occasion of Eid-ul-Zuha as a mark of respect for the religious feelings of Hindu brothers.
09 Oct 2012,19:02 ISTThe members of Muslim community under the banner of North Canara Muslim United Forum took out a huge procession in Karwar protest against the cartoons and the movies on Prophet Mohammad.
15 Sep 2012,23:40 ISTAssociation of All Goa Muslims Jamaats has urged the government to allow the community members to hold the annual Qurbani – slaughtering of animals as per religious rites – in designated places in the state for three days during Ed ul Adha. Slaughtering of animals in Goa meat complex is not feasible, the association said in a representation to the CM Manohar Parrikar.
22 Aug 2012,17:14 ISTA goodwill delegation of Muslim community in Nagaland left for Bangalore and Pune on Wednesday. They would meet various organizations in these cities and tell public, NGOs and Muslim civil society that situation in Northeast and Nagaland is most peaceful and appeal them to see that no unwanted elements create any chaos and rumours against Nagas.
20 Aug 2012,21:21 ISTIn order to give due importance to the minority community, central government might have come up with specific programmes including guidelines to the banks for giving attention and emphasis in lending advances to the Muslims but on ground the community continues to be ignored for various reasons. IN the financial year 2010-11 the achievement was 4.5% of the priority sector credit (PSC) volume whereas this year till June 30 the achievement reached 8.13% which is again nearly half the target.
18 Aug 2012,18:58 ISTCongress-led Vijay Bahuguna Government on Saturday decided to introduce mid-day meal schemes in all madrassa( Muslim religious schools) run by Uttarakhand Madrassa Board for the first time after state was carved out of U.P. in 2000.CM Bahuguna introduced mid-day meal scheme for all madressa as part of sops announced for members of minority community to woo them keeping in mind upcoming parliamentary by-poll in Tehri.Tehri Lok Sabha seat was declared vacant a day after Bahuguna resigned as member of Tehri Lok Sabha.
18 Aug 2012,17:32 IST”We are reminded by a similar campaign in Assam in May 2005 which had affected lakhs of people. Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi had then blamed the BJP and RSS for trying to foment communal tension in Assam. We hope the authorities will not develop cold feet in probing the origins of the present campaign and punishing them,” it added.
ASEAN declaration falls short on human rights: UN
Posted 9 November 2012, 21:39 AEST
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, says drafts of the ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights may not meet international human rights standards.
A Rohingya woman from Burma, who tried to cross the Naf river into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence, cries while holding her six-day-old baby in a Bangladeshi coast guard station, before being sent back to Burma.
Ms Pillay says the Declaration should be postponed, because of the inadequate involvement of civil society and other stakeholders in the drafting of the Declaration.
She says the document places restrictions in the name of “regional and national particularities”, and creates requirements such as the balancing of rights and duties.
“They have to adhere to the universal standards adopted by all states under the UN charter,” Ms Pillay told Radio Australia’s Asia Pacific at the close of the Bali Democracy Forum.
“But these lapses in this document are not in line with international standard and as I have stated many times, regional human rights instruments can and should enhance and complement the international human rights system.”
Ms Pillay says she has called on the governments of ASEAN to consult broadly with civil society before adopting the current draft of the Declaration.
She says the current draft of the Declaration has not yet been published.
Burma concerns
Ms Pillay says she met with Burma’s Deputy Foreign Minister at the Forum to discuss the human rights situation in Rakhine state.
“[I] urged that Myanmar should show more concern for the suffering and loss of life in the communities impacted by the violence there,” she said.
“If the communal violence is not resolved it can undermine the reform process in Myanmar.
“One of the underlying causes of the violence since June between communities in Rakhine state is the endemic discrimination against the 800,000 Rohingya.”
Ms Pillay says leaders who visit Burma should not just have bilateral discussions but also make “a public statement on where they stand with human rights violations.”
Thailand and the ICC: Wrong reason, right idea
Special to The Nation November 16, 2012 1:00 am
source by : http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Thailand-and-the-ICC-Wrong-reason-right-idea-30194407.html
A red-shirt protester holds a Democracy Monument model during a demonstration at the Monument in Bangkok in June to commemorate the end of the absolute monarchy in Thailand 80 years ago.
The intermittent talk over the past several years of having the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigate deadly events in Thailand’s recent history, has taken an unintended if undeniable positive turn. While Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul’s meeting two weeks ago with the ICC’s chief prosecutor was politics as usual in Thailand, for the first time in a decade it has placed the ICC and the Rome Statute that established it firmly on the Thai government’s agenda.
Moreover, where Thailand took a regressive step in 2003 (deciding not only against ratifying the Rome Statute but to protect US officials from ICC jurisdiction in Thailand in exchange for major non-Nato ally status), in 2012 it could – and should – result in Thailand becoming a full-fledged state party.
The ICC debate in Thailand has occupied a small corner of its seven-year and ongoing political crisis, with both sides issuing ill-informed threats of the Court’s involvement to exact political revenge for electoral, judicial and extra-legal defeats.
Surapong’s latest move is no different, arguing that Thailand should grant the ICC jurisdiction to investigate the previous government’s crackdown on red-shirt protesters, which resulted in 92 deaths. It comes after – and has spurred renewed – calls by that government’s foreign minister, for the ICC to investigate the 2003 “war on drugs”, orchestrated by the current prime minister’s brother and resulting in at least 2,500 extrajudicial deaths.
In theory both sides’ calls on the ICC are viable, despite Thailand’s non-member status: a country that has not ratified the Rome Statute may still request the ICC to investigate events that took place on its territory for which one or more of its citizens is allegedly responsible. Hence Surapong’s focus on former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, and his predecessor’s focus on former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
It is worth noting that this has never happened in the ICC’s ten-year history. All three countries that expressly requested the Court’s involvement were state parties to the Rome Statute, and on the one occasion where the Court investigated a non-member state’s situation, it did so on its own initiative and not at that state’s request. Nonetheless, as the ICC’s chief prosecutor reportedly assured Surapong, it is technically possible.
Even should the Court consider the cases however (noting that only the 2010 crackdown has been officially brought to its attention), two factors make the subjects of both foreign ministers’ calls unlikely to be substantively investigated.
First, the ICC’s substantive jurisdiction is currently limited to the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Genocide and war crimes (Thaksin’s “war” not being an armed conflict in the legal sense) clearly do not apply. Crimes against humanity include murder (such as alleged in both the 2010 crackdown and the 2003 drugs campaign) “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”.
A cursory review of the facts suggests that Abhisit’s crackdown almost certainly falls outside this definition, while Thaksin’s war appears to check all of the boxes. Thailand’s advocates for ICC investigations would be charged with convincing the Court’s prosecutor(s) – whose expertise would also be brought to bear – that crimes against humanity took place. However, it is as doubtful in the case of the crackdown as it is likely in the situation of the drugs campaign, that the Court would actually deem itself to have substantive jurisdiction. On this factor, Thaksin fails, Abhisit passes.
The other factor militating against substantive ICC involvement is the principle of “complementarity”, which provides that the Court can only investigate a situation if it has not been or is not being investigated or prosecuted by the country itself. An exception may be made where the country is unwilling or unable to genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution.
On the situation of Abhisit’s 2010 crackdown on the red-shirt protesters, the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has implicated soldiers in at least 36 of the 92 deaths, and has sent most cases to the Office of the Attorney-General for further consideration. In the case of Thaksin’s 2003 “war on drugs”, earlier this year Thailand’s Criminal Court convicted five police officers for the extrajudicial execution of a 17-year-old “drug suspect” in July 2004 (widely considered a continuation of Thaksin’s 2003 initiative).
How the ICC would consider these facts in the context of “complementarity” is difficult to say, much less whether it would deem the investigations and prosecutions “genuine”. It might consider how frequently and drastically DSI has altered its conclusions on Thai soldiers’ location and ballistics during the 2010 crackdown, particularly after public protest by the Army. It might also take into account (if officially requested) that the drugs case is the only such case after nine years, and that the convicted officers have been both granted bail by the court and awarded financial compensation by a regional police commander.
But it would also be made aware that the red-shirt protesters also used lethal force during the 2010 demonstrations, and that the tenure of DSI’s director-general has straddled governments of both sides. In the drugs case, the police officers’ convictions were considered a seminal decision in the fight against official impunity in Thailand – one that occurred with a Thaksin-friendly government in power – and other similar cases are in train. And that Abhisit and Thaksin themselves have not (yet?) been prosecuted does not on its face make the investigations and prosecution disingenuous. It is thus doubtful, on balance, that the ICC would undertake an investigation in either case. On this factor, Thaksin passes, Abhisit passes.
For one of these events to warrant a substantive ICC investigation, the individual(s) allegedly responsible must fail in relation to both factors: the event must constitute a crime against humanity, and Thailand must be unable or unwilling to genuinely investigate or prosecute those responsible (including, potentially, the prime minister). In all likelihood, this is not the reality in either case.
Still, Surapong’s latest move presents an opportunity for Thailand to meaningfully advance the cause of justice. He and his predecessor should persist in their efforts, only by redirecting them away from politicised references and referrals to the ICC and toward a more principled commitment to combating impunity for grave international crimes. They should advocate for Thailand’s ratification of the Rome Statute, and thus the country’s full acceptance of ICC jurisdiction in the rare situations in which the criteria described above are met.
The high substantive bar prevents against frivolous or unwarranted cases, while “complementarity” assures that Thailand’s sovereignty – in contrast to certain Thai MPs’ recent claims – is not violated. Unlike Thai politics, genuine justice is colour-blind; it cannot distinguish between red and yellow. If both sides are as committed to justice and accountability as their rhetoric suggests, they should set politics aside and see that Thailand ratifies the Rome Statute.
Benjamin Zawacki is the Southeast Asia regional representative of the International Development Law Organisation.
Myanmar Ethnic Rohingyas Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHROM) 
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