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<strong>DT</strong><br />
8<br />
World<br />
THURSDAY, DECEMBER <strong>15</strong>, <strong>2016</strong><br />
SOUTH ASIA<br />
Pakistan, India to consider<br />
fresh talks on water dispute<br />
Pakistani and Indian officials said<br />
Wednesday they would consider<br />
resuming direct talks over water<br />
sharing after the World Bank halted<br />
a process to arbitrate a long-standing<br />
dispute over two Indian<br />
hydroelectric projects. Pakistan,<br />
a country of 180m people with a<br />
largely agriculture-based economy,<br />
fears the projects could severely<br />
deplete its water resources. AP<br />
INDIA<br />
Indian SC orders action on<br />
child drug abuse<br />
India’s Supreme Court court on<br />
Wednesday ordered the government<br />
to come up with a plan to<br />
tackle child drug abuse, acting on a<br />
petition from a child rights group.<br />
With government figures showing<br />
almost 20% of addicts in India are<br />
under 21, it said more needed to<br />
be done to educate young people<br />
about the dangers of substance<br />
abuse in India. AFP<br />
CHINA<br />
China urges Myanmar to<br />
ensure border stability<br />
China hopes Myanmar will ensure<br />
peace and stability along their border<br />
and keep stray bullets out of its<br />
neighbour’s territory, the defence<br />
ministry said on Wednesday. A<br />
series of attacks by ethnic armed<br />
groups on Myanmar security<br />
forces last month sent thousands<br />
of people crossing into China to<br />
escape the violence. REUTERS<br />
ASIA PACIFIC<br />
Malaysia court rejects<br />
Anwar’s bid for review<br />
Former Malaysian opposition leader<br />
Anwar Ibrahim will remain in jail<br />
after the country’s highest court<br />
on <strong>Thursday</strong> rejected his bid for<br />
a review of his controversial 2014<br />
sodomy conviction. Anwar last year<br />
began serving a five-year jail term<br />
for sodomising a male aide, charges<br />
that his supporters say were<br />
trumped up to sideline the former<br />
deputy prime minister. AFP<br />
MIDDLE EAST<br />
US cancels weapons<br />
transfers to Saudi over<br />
Yemen campaign<br />
The White House has blocked the<br />
transfer of precision munitions<br />
to ally Saudi Arabia, amid anger<br />
about the civilian death toll from<br />
the kingdom’s bombing campaign<br />
in Yemen. The White House has<br />
long struggled to balance its<br />
unease over the prosecution of<br />
the Saudi campaign and risking<br />
a broader feud with a key Middle<br />
Eastern partner. REUTERS<br />
Myanmar to write its ‘true history’<br />
without the Rohingyas<br />
• AFP, Yangon<br />
Myanmar’s religious affairs ministry<br />
plans to write a book to prove<br />
the Rohingya are not indigenous to<br />
the country, as tensions grow over<br />
a brutal military crackdown on the<br />
Muslim minority.<br />
Almost 27,000 Rohingya have<br />
crossed into Bangladesh since<br />
the beginning of November, the<br />
UN said Tuesday, fleeing a bloody<br />
military campaign in Myanmar’s<br />
western Rakhine state.<br />
Their stories of mass rape and<br />
murder at the hands of security<br />
forces have shocked the international<br />
community and cast a pall<br />
over the young government of Nobel<br />
peace prize winner Aung San<br />
Suu Kyi.<br />
Myanmar has angrily rejected<br />
the criticism and called an emergency<br />
Asean meeting next week<br />
to discuss the crisis, which has<br />
sparked protests in Muslim nations<br />
in the region.<br />
Late Monday, the country’s<br />
Ministry of Religion and Cultural<br />
Affairs announced plans to write<br />
a thesis to refute foreigners who<br />
“stir things up by insisting the Rohingya<br />
exist and (who) aim to tarnish<br />
Myanmar’s political image”.<br />
“We hereby announce that we<br />
are going to publish a book of true<br />
Myanmar history,” the ministry<br />
said in a statement posted on Facebook<br />
late Monday.<br />
“The real truth is that the word<br />
Rohingya was never used or existed<br />
as an ethnicity or race in Myanmar’s<br />
history.”<br />
Myanmar’s more than one million<br />
Rohingya are loathed by many<br />
from the Buddhist majority, who<br />
say they are illegal immigrants<br />
from Bangladesh and refer to them<br />
as “Bengali” even though many<br />
have lived in the country for generations.<br />
Even the term Rohingya has<br />
become so divisive that Suu Kyi<br />
has asked government officials to<br />
avoid using it.<br />
According to the ministry, the<br />
term was first used in 1948 by a<br />
“Bengali” MP.<br />
Rights activists say the Rohingya<br />
are among the most persecuted<br />
people in the world.<br />
They were removed as one of<br />
the country’s recognised ethnicities<br />
by the former military government<br />
under a 1982 law stipulating<br />
minorities must have lived in Myanmar<br />
before the first Anglo-Burmese<br />
war of 1824-26. •<br />
Turkey leads rise in journalist detentions<br />
• AFP, Paris<br />
The number of journalists detained<br />
worldwide rose in <strong>2016</strong>, an<br />
increase related to Turkey where<br />
more than 100 journalists and<br />
media contributors are in jail, Reporters<br />
Without Borders (RSF) said<br />
Tuesday.<br />
“A total of 348 journalists are<br />
currently detained worldwide – 6%<br />
more than were detained at this<br />
time last year,” RSF said in its annual<br />
report. The figure includes bloggers<br />
and freelance contributors.<br />
“The number of detained professional<br />
journalists in Turkey has<br />
risen 22% after quadrupling in the<br />
wake of the failed coup d’etat in<br />
July,” it said.<br />
The number of women journalists<br />
imprisoned more than quadrupled<br />
over the period (from 5 to 21).<br />
“The persecution of journalists<br />
around the world is growing at a<br />
shocking rate,” RSF secretary general<br />
Christophe Deloire said in a<br />
statement.<br />
“At the gateway to Europe, an allout<br />
witch-hunt has jailed dozens of<br />
journalists and has turned Turkey<br />
into the world’s biggest prison for<br />
the media profession. In the space<br />
of a year, the Erdogan regime has<br />
crushed all media pluralism while<br />
the EU has said virtually nothing.”<br />
USA<br />
5,000<br />
By walking through<br />
the borders of<br />
neighboring<br />
countries<br />
Canada<br />
2,000<br />
Number of migrants<br />
in the world<br />
Their number reached<br />
outside Arakan<br />
2,000,000 estimated<br />
They are present in more<br />
than 50 countries around<br />
the world<br />
By Sea with the help<br />
of human traffickers<br />
Norway<br />
300<br />
Denmark<br />
400<br />
Ireland<br />
200<br />
UK<br />
500<br />
Turkey<br />
100<br />
Jordan<br />
388 Sudan<br />
200<br />
52 held hostage, 341 in prison<br />
according to Reporters<br />
Without Borders<br />
Bahrain 14<br />
Vietnam <strong>15</strong><br />
Eritrea <strong>15</strong><br />
Saudi Arabia 10<br />
Aside from Turkey, between<br />
them China, Iran and Egypt account<br />
for more than two-thirds of<br />
journalists imprisoned, RSF said,<br />
calling for the creation of a special<br />
representative for the safety of<br />
journalists directly attached to the<br />
office of the UN secretary general.<br />
The number of journalists held<br />
hostage has however fallen this<br />
year, with 52, mostly locals, held<br />
around the world compared with<br />
61 last year, although RSF said the<br />
CAUSES OF EXODUS:<br />
1. Racism<br />
2. Bloody massares against them by the<br />
government and extremist Buddhists.<br />
3. Denial of exercising fundamental rights.<br />
4. Restrictions on practicing their religon.<br />
5. Restricting them to work.<br />
Airborne who were in<br />
the capital of Myanmar,<br />
‘Rangoon’<br />
Sweden<br />
300<br />
Azerbaijan 8<br />
Uzbekistan 9<br />
Bangladesh<br />
Pakistan 500,000<br />
400,000<br />
India<br />
<strong>15</strong>,000<br />
Saudi Arabia<br />
250,000<br />
UAE<br />
10,000<br />
Yemen<br />
1,000<br />
Ethiopia<br />
8<br />
Nepal<br />
100 Singapore<br />
100<br />
Thailand<br />
50,000<br />
Malaysia<br />
50,000<br />
UAE<br />
4<br />
Japan<br />
300<br />
China<br />
5,000<br />
Combodia<br />
1,000<br />
Indonesia<br />
6,000<br />
Turkey<br />
+100*<br />
Syria<br />
28<br />
Laos<br />
4<br />
27 27<br />
Egypt Iran<br />
Australia<br />
8,500<br />
JOURNALISTS DETAINED IN THE WORLD<br />
Source: RSF<br />
Journalists<br />
in prison<br />
*of which 41 confirmed cases<br />
3 Bangladesh<br />
102<br />
China<br />
3 Russia<br />
Hostages<br />
26 Syria<br />
16 Yemen<br />
10 Iraq<br />
2 North Korea<br />
2 Cuba<br />
2 Libya<br />
17 Others<br />
20<strong>15</strong> number was particularly high.<br />
This year all the hostages are in<br />
the Middle East – Syria, Yemen and<br />
Iraq – with 21 held by the Islamic<br />
State group alone.<br />
The group considers journalists<br />
missing when there is insufficient<br />
evidence of their death or<br />
kidnapping and no credible claim<br />
of responsibility for their death or<br />
abduction.<br />
In a separate report released<br />
Tuesday, the Committee to Protect<br />
Journalists (CPJ) reported that<br />
259 journalists were imprisoned<br />
around the world in <strong>2016</strong>, 81 of<br />
them in Turkey.<br />
Its number is lower because<br />
the CPJ only counts journalists detained<br />
by the state, while RSF also<br />
reports on those held hostage by<br />
non-state groups.<br />
The CPJ said the top five countries<br />
for jailing journalists are Turkey,<br />
followed by China, Egypt, Eritrea<br />
and Ethiopia. •