Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplement «

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Tuesday denounced the deprivations facing Palestinians in Gaza as unique in history, asserting that they are being treated ‘like animals.’
   ‘Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings,’ he said as he toured the war-torn, blockaded Gaza Strip.
   ‘The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life — never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself,’ Carter said at a UN school graduation ceremony in Gaza City.
   He was referring to the blockade that Israel and Egypt have maintained on Gaza since June 2007 when Hamas, a group pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state, violently seized
   power in the territory.
   The US and Europe ‘must try to do all that is necessary to convince Israel and Egypt to allow basic goods into Gaza,’ he said. ‘At same time, there must be no more rockets’ from Gaza into Israel.
   ‘Palestinian statehood cannot come at the expense of Israel’s security, just as Israel’s security cannot come at the expense of Palestinian statehood.’
   Earlier Carter, who brokered the historic 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, called for a halt to all violence around the territory where the Jewish state waged a deadly 22-day war in December-January in response to rocket fire.
   The offensive killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, 13 Israelis and left large swathes of the coastal strip sandwiched between Israel and Egypt in ruins.
   ‘I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wracked against your people,’ he said earlier at a destroyed American school, decrying the fact that the school was ‘deliberately destroyed by bombs from F16s made in my country.’
   ‘I feel partially responsible for this as must all Americans and Israelis.’
   
   ‘Israel stopping Gazans moving to West Bank’
   Israel is making it near-impossible for Gaza residents to move to the West Bank, even in humanitarian cases, two Israeli human rights groups said on Tuesday.
   ‘The procedure constitutes an escalation in Israel’s policy of separation between Gaza and the West Bank, undermining the prospect of a viable Palestinian state,’ said Joel Greenberg of the Hamoked Centre for the Defence of the Individual.
   ‘Israel is preventing civilians from changing their place of residence using the vague pretext that it is responding to the security-political situation in the Gaza Strip,’ he said at a joint conference with the Gisha Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement.

North Korea has finished preparatory work at a new launch pad for long-range missiles on its northwest coast, a report said Tuesday.
   Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted a government source as saying the launch structure has been installed and a hangar has been completed at the Dongchang-ri launch site.
   ‘Large girders have recently been installed and the two or three months of preparatory work at the launch pad have been completed,’ the source told the daily.
   ‘However, no radar has yet been set up and no missile has been brought to the launch pad. A launch is not imminent.’
   The paper said satellite photos showed the structure to be about 50 metres high, meaning it would be capable of firing an intercontinental ballistic missile measuring 40 metres or longer.
   The North’s three previous long-range missile launches were from Musudan-ri on the east coast, where the paper said the launch structure is 32 metres high.
   The North on April 5 conducted what it called a satellite launch from Musudan-ri.

Criminals sentenced to death in Beijing are to be killed by lethal injection, not by gunshot, by year’s end, state media has said in China, the nation that executes more convicts than any other.
   Authorities have built a site next to a prison outside Beijing housing most of the capital’s death row inmates where the lethal injections are to be carried out, the China Daily reported.
   Officials will soon start training judicial police to administer the injections, and medical staff will learn to supervise the use of drugs, monitor and confirm the deaths, the report said.
   Hu Yunteng, head of the Supreme People’s Court’s research bureau, told the China Daily that lethal injection — legalised here in 1997 — was considered cleaner, safer and more convenient than gunshot executions.

US talkshow host David Letterman sought to draw a line under his feud with Sarah Palin on Monday, apologising for making a raunchy joke about the Republican politician’s 14-year-old daughter.
   In a transcript of remarks Letterman was to deliver on CBS Television’s ‘The Late Show’ later Monday, the 62-year-old funnyman issued a heartfelt apology for a gag that drew a furious response from Palin, who is governor of Alaska.
   Letterman’s gag referred to Palin’s daughter being ‘knocked up’ by baseball star Alex Rodriguez after the governor and her family recently attended a New York Yankees game.
   Letterman said although his joke had meant to target Palin’s 18-year-old daughter, Bristol — whose teenage pregnancy became a talking point during last year’s presidential election campaign — his intent was irrelevant.
   ‘I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception,’ Letterman said.

North Korea said Tuesday that two female US journalists whom it jailed last week for 12 years had admitted to a smear campaign against the communist state.
   State media, giving its first details of their alleged crimes, said they crossed the border illegally ‘for the purpose of making animation files to be used for an anti-DPRK smear campaign over its human rights issue.’
   A Pyongyang court on June 8 sentenced Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years of ‘reform through labour’ for the illegal border crossing and an unspecified ‘grave crime.’
   Border guards detained them on March 17 along the frontier with China while they were researching a story about refugees fleeing the hardline communist North.

The human rights situation in Sudan is ‘critical,’ an independent UN expert said Tuesday, accusing the nation’s government of cracking down on its critics and shielding those responsible for gross violations such as rape, torture and murder.
   Sima Samar, the UN special investigator for Sudan, said Khartoum has persecuted human rights activists, aid workers and journalists since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
   ‘The human rights situation in the Sudan remains critical,’ Samar said in a 22-page report.
   ‘I continue to receive reports of arbitrary arrests, detention, as well as allegations of ill-treatment and torture of human rights defenders and humanitarian workers by security forces, in particular by the National Intelligence and Security Service,’ she told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
   ‘I would also like to express concern about the ongoing censorship of newspapers, and restrictions on journalists, human rights defenders, and members of the political opposition from freely expressing their opinion,’ she said.
   In Darfur, where a six-year conflict has killed up to 300,000 people and uprooted 2.5 million, government forces and rebels continue to attack civilians, Samar said.

The presence of Pakistani soldiers and intelligence agents inside camps for war-displaced civilians may jeopardise their security and provide a soft target to Taliban militants looking to carry out revenge attacks, aid workers are warning.
   Around 2.5 million people in the north of the country have been uprooted by a military offensive to expel Taliban insurgents from the picturesque region of Swat valley.
   Over the past month, hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes and sought refuge in camps run by aid agencies or within host communities in neighbouring areas.
   But relief workers are worried the safety of these families could be compromised by a government drive to weed out any Taliban fighters and their sympathisers who might be hiding among the displaced families.
   Intelligence agents, present inside the camps, have arrested dozens of people and human rights groups say there is no information as to where they have been taken and what will happen to them.
   Furthermore, aid workers say the presence of the military who have established field hospitals in some camps may exacerbate a tense situation.
   ‘While we understand the need to root out militants, we are very concerned about the protection of the internally displaced people,’ said one aid worker.
   ‘Having uniformed, armed soldiers inside the camps, albeit doing humanitarian work, will bring the conflict inside the camps as the Taliban who are under pressure, are looking for soft targets for their revenge.’
   Since the military offensive began in early May, the Taliban have warned of retaliation and there has been a string of attacks throughout the country.
   In the latest incident, nine people, including two UN staff members, were killed after a suicide attack on Peshawar’s top hotel on Tuesday.
   Aid workers say that although arrests and incidents of troops in camps are not widespread at the moment, they are worried that as the offensive widens to Taliban strongholds along the Afghan border, more systematic arrests and human rights violations may occur.
   ‘People in areas like South Waziristan support the Taliban and hate the military so it is very different from Swat where army had support,’ said one aid worker.
   ‘There is a mutual suspicion between them and we fear the army will be much more heavy-handed in its response to dealing not only with the militants there, but also the civilians.’
   Concerns are growing among some aid groups that if the military campaign spreads to areas which are considered sanctuaries for the militants, Pakistan will use similar tactics to those employed by Sri Lanka during its 26-year-old war against Tamil Tiger separatists.
   
   Pak military prepares
   to hunt Taliban chief
   Pakistan’s military is taking ‘necessary steps’ to prepare for an offensive into the lawless northwest tribal belt to hunt down a feared Taliban commander and his network, a spokesman said Tuesday.
   A government official had Sunday announced that Pakistan would open up a second front in a seven-week offensive against Taliban militants and pursue Baitullah Mehsud into his stronghold of South Waziristan.
   The army had so far stayed silent on a fresh campaign in the semi-autono-mous region along the rugged Afghan border, but military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told reporters Tuesday they had received their orders.

UN investigators said on Tuesday the trial of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi flouted international standards and urged the country’s military rulers to ensure it was open and fair.
   In a strongly worded joint statement, the five human rights investigators noted a UN panel issued an advisory ruling a year ago that the Nobel laureate’s continued house arrest was arbitrary.
   The trial of Suu Kyi and of American John Yettaw, whose uninvited visit to her home last month was deemed a breach of her house arrest, is set to resume on June 26.
   ‘The five experts called upon the authorities of Myanmar to allow the justice system to function in an independent and impartial manner, so as to guarantee an open and fair trial for the defendants, and to grant unfettered media access,’ the joint statement said.
   Suu Kyi says the trial is politically motivated to keep her in detention during next year’s multi-party elections.
   ‘So far, the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi and her aides has been marred by flagrant violations of substantive and procedural rights,’ said Leandro Despouy, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers. ‘Transparency in the administration of justice is a pre-requisite of any state governed by the rule of law,’ added Despouy, an Argentine lawyer.
   All witnesses with relevant evidence must be allowed to testify, he said. Only one witness called by the defence had been permitted to give evidence so far, although a second has been granted permission, compared with 14 called for the prosecution.
   The trial had mostly been conducted behind closed doors and the media were prevented from speaking to the defence lawyers, according to the statement issued in Geneva.
   ‘National and international media should be granted full access to the trial,’ said Frank La Rue, UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression.
   The UN working group on arbitrary detention declared arbitrary her house arrest after May 2008. Chairwoman Manuela Carmena Castrilo said on Tuesday this meant ‘Aung San Suu Kyi needs to be released immediately and unconditionally’.
   Suu Kyi faces up to five years in prison if found guilty of violating her house arrest after Yettaw swam across Inya lake and stayed for two nights at her Yangon home.

A Sri Lankan government investigation into human rights abuses during its war with Tamil Tiger rebels has been disbanded with more than half of its cases unresolved, an official said Tuesday.
   The decision came as the government brushed off demands for an international investigation into the final ferocious battles of the war, which ended last month after the military routed the rebels in an offensive the UN says killed more than 7,000 civilians.
   Human rights groups accused the military of shelling civilian areas and said the rebels held hundreds of thousands of people as human shields, shooting those who attempted to flee.
   A presidential commission of inquiry was established two years ago under intense international pressure to investigate earlier claims of abuses in the war. It was assigned 16 cases of alleged abuses by both sides, including the 2006 execution-style slaying of 17 aid workers for the French organisation Action Against Hunger.
   Nissanka Udalagama, a former Supreme Court justice who chaired the commission, said it had only completed work on seven of the assigned cases by the time its mandate expired Sunday. Extensions had been routinely granted in the past, but not this time. Instead, the commission was dissolved, he said.
   ‘We ran out of time,’ he said. ‘If we had gotten another year, probably we could have done it.’
   It was not clear why the inquiry was ended.
   ‘I have no idea what the reasoning is,’ said Rajiva Wijesinha, the secretary in the ministry of human rights, who usually serves as a government spokesman in such matters.
   The commission’s dissolution came days after Amnesty International accused the government of failing to seriously investigate reported abuses during the 25-year civil war. It said the few cases that are brought to trial rarely end in convictions and accused the government of using bribes, threats and even murder to eliminate witnesses. Government officials denied the allegations.
   The London-based rights group called for the establishment of an international commission to investigate allegations of recent human rights violations. The government has repeatedly rejected such calls as a violation of its sovereignty.

Gabon was on Tuesday to pay its final respects to Omar Bongo Ondimba, with a state funeral for the former president who ruled the oil-rich equatorial African country for 41 years.
   The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was set to join more than a dozen heads of African states to pay their respects to Bongo, who died last week aged 73 at a private clinic in Spain.
   The presidents of Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, France, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Sao Tome and Togo have all confirmed attendance.
   Foreign dignitaries were to pass in front of Bongo’s coffin at the presidential palace, where it has lain in state since last Thursday, beginning at 9:00am (0800 GMT).
   An ecumenical service was to follow at 10:00am, with eulogies by the prime minister, Jean Eyeghe Ndong, the national assembly speaker, Guy Nzouba, and the Interim president, Rose Francine Rogombe.
   It has not been confirmed who will speak on behalf of Bongo’s family, but it was considered likely his 50-year-old son Ali Ben Bongo, Gabon’s defence minister and a favourite to succeed him, will address the funeral.
   Following the funeral the coffin was to be moved outside for a two-hour military procession.
   The coffin will then head to the city Franceville, capital of Bongo’s native southeastern Haut-Ogouue region, where he will be buried on Thursday.
   Bongo came to power in 1967 with French support and ruled over a state that grew rich on abundant oil, while most of the 1.5 million population remained poor.
   In his last months, Bongo’s relations with Paris were marred by a French probe into his luxury residences in France and a court order to freeze his bank accounts, amid allegations of embezzlement.
   His demise raised fears of a power vacuum and initial reports of his death prompted Libreville residents to stock up on fuel, but the government has moved fast to avoid a power vacuum during 30 days of official mourning.
   The interim president, Rose Francine Rogombe, has asked the government to come up with a schedule for presidential elections, which according to the constitution must take place within 45 days of the appointment of an interim president.

More than 40 miners were feared dead Tuesday after a massive explosion of methane gas collapsed a coal mine in Indonesia, highlighting rampant illegal mining in the resource-rich archipelago.
   Senior health ministry crisis official Rustam Pakaya said the death toll had risen to nine after two badly burned miners died in hospital.
   ‘Our latest data at 6:00pm (1100 GMT) showed that nine people were dead and 32 people were still missing,’ Pakaya said in a text message.
   Nine people were being treated in hospital, two of whom had severe burns, Pakaya said.
   Officials said that seven bodies had been pulled from the rubble and hope was all but gone for the missing miners believed to be buried deep below the surface with no ventilation or safety equipment.

Election posters have been going up in Afghanistan as two months of campaigning officially kicked off for the August 20 presidential polls, being contested by 41 candidates.
   Large posters were being fixed to telegraph poles across Kabul featuring some of the leading candidates, including incumbent president Hamid Karzai and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani.
   Ghani, an academic promising ‘a new beginning,’ invited people to meet him at his Kabul home, his campaign office said, adding that 3,000 were expected.
   Another frontrunner, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah who says Afghanistan needs change, was expected to address a gathering at a Kabul hotel, his office said.
   Karzai, on a state visit to Russia, would be represented at a press conference by his campaign organisers, a representative said.

Suspected Maoist rebels in India killed at least four policemen in a gun battle in the eastern state of Jharkhand, officials said Tuesday.
   Between 30 to 40 guerrillas opened fire on security forces, killing four officers and injuring three others in a three-hour-long shoot-out.
   ‘The security personnel were killed in a gun battle with Maoist rebels,’ said police spokesman Satyanarayan Pradhan, adding that authorities were hunting for the militants.
   The police said the clash occurred in the district of Palamau, 190 kilometres from the state capital Ranchi.
   A Maoist insurgency, which grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967, has hit more than half of India’s 29 states. The guerrillas say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribespeople and landless farmers.