e_Paper 1-12-2016

DT
8
World
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2016
SOUTH ASIA
UN: Conflict displaces
record number of Afghans
The number of people displaced
by conflict in Afghanistan this year
has surpassed half a million people,
the UN reported on Wednesday, the
highest number since it began tracking
such statistics in 2008. More
than 515,800 people have been internally
displaced by fighting in 2016,
surpassing the previous record of
about 471,000 set last year. REUTERS
INDIA
Army plane crash kills
three Indian officers
Three army officers were killed
Wednesday after their five-seater
Cheetah helicopter crashed while
landing in eastern India, a defence
official said. Another officer was
seriously injured in the crash that
occurred in a military camp in
West Bengal’s Sukna district, a
spokeswoman of the Indian Army’s
Eastern Command said. AFP
CHINA
China slams Taiwan on
Hong Kong debate
China called on Wednesday on
Taiwan to stay out Hong Kong’s
affairs, saying self-ruled Taiwan was
talking nonsense about the former
British colony and warning it not to
damage Hong Kong’s stability. Chinese
leaders are concerned about a
fledgling independence movement
in Hong Kong and recent protests in
the city. Relations between China
and Taiwan have worsened since
the election of the DPP’s Tsai as Taiwan
president in January. REUTERS
ASIA PACIFIC
Philippines ends siege
against IS-linked rebels
Filipino troops on Wednesday,
ending an intense five-day siege
that killed dozens of fighters the
authorities say had pledged allegiance
to IS. The military stepped
up its offensive after the weekend,
pounding rebels holed up in a disused
municipal hall with artillery
and bombs dropped from aircraft.
The army said 30 security forces
were wounded and 61 rebels killed
in the operation. REUTERS
MIDDLE EAST
Abbas to address 1st Fatah
congress since 2009
President Mahmud Abbas addresses
his Fatah party’s first congress since
2009 on Wednesday as he contends
with internal dissent and grim prospects
for advancing his decades-long
goal of achieving a Palestinian state.
Speculation has mounted over who
will eventually succeed him as Palestinian
president. He has not publicly
supported a successor. AFP
UN: Myanmar’s reputation at stake
over Rohingya crisis
• Tribune International Desk
The reputation of Aung San Suu
Kyi’s government in Myanmar is
at stake amid international concerns
over how it is dealing with
violence in the country’s divided
northwest, a senior United Nations
official warned on Tuesday.
The conflict in Myanmar’s Rakhine
State has sent hundreds of
Rohingya Muslims fleeing across
the border to Bangladesh amid
allegations of abuses by security
forces. The crisis poses a serious
challenge to Nobel Peace Prize
winner Suu Kyi, who swept to
power last year on promises of national
reconciliation.
In a statement, Adama Dieng,
the UN’s special adviser on the prevention
of genocide, said the allegations
“must be verified as a matter
of urgency” and urged the government
to allow access to the area.
“If they are true, the lives of
thousands of people are at risk.
The reputation of Myanmar, its
new Government and its military
forces is also at stake in this matter,”
he said.
“Myanmar needs to demonstrate
its commitment to the rule of
law and to the human rights of all its
populations. It cannot expect that
such serious allegations are ignored
or go unscrutinised,” he said.
Soldiers have poured into the
area along Myanmar’s frontier
with Bangladesh, responding to
coordinated attacks on three border
posts on October 9 that killed
nine police officers.
Myanmar’s military and the
government have rejected allegations
by residents and rights
groups that soldiers have raped
Rohingya women, burnt houses
and killed civilians during the military
operation in Rakhine.
Suu Kyi vows reconciliation
Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi
vowed on Wednesday to work for
peace and national reconciliation
amid mounting international condemnation
of a bloody army crackdown
on her country’s Muslim Rohingya
minority. The Nobel Peace
Prize winner did not mention the
violence in Rakhine state, but told
a business forum in Singapore that
multi-ethnic Myanmar needed to
achieve stability to attract more
investment.
Criticism of Buddhist-dominated
Myanmar’s treatment of
the Rohingya has been intense in
Muslim-majority neighbours Indonesia
and Malaysia. Suu Kyi was
scheduled to visit Indonesia after
Singapore but postponed the trip
in the face of public protests and
a thwarted bomb plot against the
Myanmar embassy.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib
Razak will take part in a rare rally
during the weekend to protest the
crackdown on Rohingyas, an official
from his office said Tuesday, as
the UN rights agency reiterated its
claim the stateless minority may
be victims of crimes against humanity.
•
Rush to build bunkers in Pakistani Kashmir as fears grow
• AFP, Neelum Valley, Pakistan
Residents in Pakistani Kashmir
are racing to build underground
bunkers for the first time since the
1990s, frightened by what they say
is the worst cross-border violence
since a ceasefire was agreed in 2003.
Months of tension between India
and Pakistan have erupted into
shellings and gunfire across the
disputed Kashmir frontier, claiming
the lives of dozens of people,
including civilians.
People in Azad Kashmir’s
Neelum Valley say the attacks
come once or twice a week, and
they never know when they might
have to dive for cover.
Chand Bibi has concrete and
steel rods waiting to be transformed
into an underground
bunker where her terrified family
can take shelter as the monstrous
boom of shelling reawakens old
nightmares.
“You are talking about fear,” the
62-year-old says. “We are near to
dying at the moment we hear the
STATELESS ROHINGYA
Myanmar is carrying out “ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims”,
a UN official has reportedly said
DHAKA
BANGLADESH
Some 30,000 people
have abandoned
their homes,
at least 70 killed under
military lockdown in
the north of Rakhine
since October
Ukhia
Hundreds
of families
in camps
Around 300,000 Rohingya
live in coastal areas
near the border
Cox's Bazar
Some 32,000 registered
Rohingya refugees
Ongoing violence
BAY OF
BENGAL
Teknaf
Hundreds
of families
in camps
More than 1,000
buildings and houses
destroyed, based on
analysis of satellite
imagery by
Human Rights Watch
boom.
When it comes, Bibi and her
relatives pile blankets, quilts and
clothes on top of their children to
muffle the noise and their panic.
Soon the extended family of
about 20 people will be able to
flee underground to the bunker
they have paid 300,000 Pakistani
rupees ($3,000) to build – just under
the cost of constructing a mud
house in the valley, where the average
worker makes around 800
rupees per day.
Sultan Ahmed is spending even
more: up to 500,000 rupees for a
three metre by four metre space
reinforced by more than 20 centimetres
of concrete, fortified with
steel rods, and buried under nearly
a metre of soil.
Some 25 people will be able to
take shelter inside the bunker once
it is completed, the 47-year-old
teacher says.
Valley cut off
Cross-border firing hit a civilian
bus there on November 23, killing
INDIA
Buthidaung
Maungdaw
Deadly attack on
police posts Oct 9
Sittwe
Home to most of the
1 million Rohingya
Buddhist-majority
Myanmar see the
Rohingya as
illegal Bangladeshi
immigrants
The Rohingya are
denied citizenship
and smothered
by restrictions on
movement and work
RAKHINE
STATE
Over 120,000
people have fled
Rakhine since religious
violence in 2012,
according to UNHCR
MYANMAR
Source : UNHCR/HRW
In this photograph taken on November 18, 2016, a Pakistani Kashmiri woman walks
out of an underground bunker in Athmuqam village at the Line of Control AFP
at least nine people, one of the
highest one-day tolls since the latest
unrest began.
In response authorities shut
down the main road connecting
the Azad Kashmir capital of Muzaffarabad
with the valley, effectively
sealing it off from the rest of
Pakistan with no word when it will
be reopened.
Before the valley was closed, many
residents said they could not afford to
leave and had nowhere to go.
Others, however, said they refused
to be driven away.
Those who cannot pay the high
cost of transporting bunker materials
from Kashmir’s main cities to
the remote valley are fortifying their
homes in whatever way they can. •