23 - 29 October 2017

23 - 29 October, 2017 7
Neighbourhood News
Sri Lanka to set 100 Wi-Fi
zones in Colombo
S
I
◆◆By NDT Bureau
@NewDelhiTimes
info@newdelhitimes.com
ri Lanka is planning to set up 100 Wi-Fi
zones in the Colombo city as a part of
its program of providing free Wi-Fi zone in
the Island Country.
Colombo Municipal Council has initiated
the setting up 20 Wi-Fi zones within the city
and more than 10 Wi-Fi zones are already
running.
An official statement said that the program
aims at transforming Colombo into a
technologically advanced nation. It was
also stated that these zones will also include
T
◆◆By NDT Bureau
@NewDelhiTimes
info@newdelhitimes.com
facilities for the public to charge their mobile
phones while they are on the move.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
had said earlier that his government
envisioned the setting up of over 200 Wi-
Fi zones across the country in order to
transform into a digitally advanced nation.
M
NEW DELHI TIMES
Photo Credit : Shutterstock
Pakistan’s Persecuted Minority in Line of Fire
he son-in-law of Pakistan’s recently
ousted prime minister lambasted a
minority that human rights groups consider
one of the most persecuted in the country.
Mohammed Safdar said members of the
Ahmadiyya sect are a “danger to this
country, this nation, its constitution and its
identity.”
Speaking in the national assembly, of which
he is a member, Safdar demanded that
Ahmadiyyas, along with the minority Bohra
community, be barred from joining the
armed forces of the country because their
“false religions do not include the concept
of jihad in the name of God.”
Photo Credit : Shutterstock
IMF projects Nepal economic
growth at 5%
nternational Monetary Fund (IMF) has
projected Nepal’s economic growth
forecast at 5% for the current Fiscal Year
2017/18.
The forecast was made during the release
of World Economic Outlook (WEO) amid
the 2017 Annual Meetings of the IMF. The
IMF has lowered its growth projection for
Nepal by 0.5 percent this year. In its earlier
WEO released in April this year, the IMF
had projected the economy to grow by 5.5%.
Earlier this year, the World Bank had
forecasted Nepal’s growth rate at 4.6%
while the Asian Development Bank (ADB)
forecasted a 4.7% growth.
his daughter Maryam Nawaz, who has been
widely reported in the news as his potential
successor.
In his statement, Safdar also demanded that
the name of the physics department of the
Quaid e Azam University in Islamabad be
changed.
The department is named after Dr. Abdul
Salam, an Ahmadiyya who is also one of
Pakistan’s two Nobel laureates.
The other one is Malala Yousufzai, who
became the youngest person to win a Nobel
Peace Prize for her activism in favor of girls’
education.
Myanmar’s Suu Kyi Urges Unity,
Creates New Aid Committee
yanmar’s embattled leader, Aung San
Suu Kyi, called for national unity on
12th October and said she has created a
committee that will oversee all international
and local assistance in violence-struck
Rakhine state.
Photo Credit : AP Photo
More than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims
have fled from the state to neighboring
Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when security
forces responded to attacks by a militant
Rohingya group with a broad crackdown
on the long-persecuted Muslim minority.
Many houses were burned down. The U.N.
has called the violence “textbook ethnic
cleansing.”
Suu Kyi acknowledged in a speech on staterun
television that the country is facing
widespread criticism over the refugee crisis,
and called for unity in tackling the problem.
She said her government is holding talks
with Bangladesh on the return of “those
who are now in Bangladesh.” She gave no
details, but officials have suggested they
would need to provide residency documents,
which few have.
Myanmar’s Buddhist majority denies
that Rohingya Muslims are a separate
ethnic group and regards them as having
migrated illegally from Bangladesh, although
many families have lived in Myanmar for
generations. Suu Kyi did not use the word
“Rohingya” in her speech, but referred to
several other ethnic minorities by name.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and
former political prisoner, has been widely
criticized outside Myanmar for not speaking
out on behalf of the Rohingya.
She said in her speech that those who
return from Bangladesh would need to be
resettled, without providing details, and that
development must be brought to Rakhine,
one of the country’s poorest areas, to achieve
a durable peace.
She said she would head the new committee,
the “Union Enterprise for Humanitarian
Assistance, Resettlement and Development
in Rakhine,” and that it would coordinate all
efforts to create a “peaceful and developed
Rakhine state.”
The government has tightly restricted access
to Rakhine for international aid groups and
journalists.
Suu Kyi said her government has invited
U.N. agencies, financial institutions such as
the World Bank, and others to help develop
Rakhine.
Myanmar officials deny there has been
ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar’s ambassador to Japan, Thurain
Thant Zin, told reporters in Tokyo that his
government was providing humanitarian aid
to all affected by the violence and denied
reports of human rights abuses by the
military.
“To say the Myanmar military conducted
those illegal acts is untrue and cannot be
true,” he said. “The Myanmar government
protests the use of such terms as ethnic
cleansing and genocide.”
Credit : Associated Press (AP)
Safdar is the son-in-law of Nawaz Sharif,
who was forced to resign from premiership
in July after a court ruled against him in a
corruption case.
Sharif alleged that the ruling was a
conspiracy to remove him from power by
the establishment, a euphemism for the
country’s powerful military.
A member of Sharif’s ruling Pakistan
Muslim League party, Safdar is married to
“If the name of the department is not
changed, I would protest here every day,”
Safdar said.
His outburst in the assembly followed days
of uproar by the opposition parties over a
minor amendment in the election law that
was deemed to be pro-Ahmadiyya. The
government declared it a clerical error and
reinstated the original draft of the law.
Ahmadiyyas in Pakistan face a peculiar
dilemma. They insist they are Muslims, but
the country’s constitution declares them
non-Muslims.
Officials say Ahmadiyyas are welcome to all
the rights afforded to other minorities in the
country as long as they do not call themselves
followers of the Islamic faith. Ahmadiyyas, on
the other hand, insist that doing so would go
against their religious beliefs.
Credit : Voice of America (VOA)
Photo Credit : Shutterstock
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