6 November - 12 November 2017 - 16-min

More documents

Recommendations

Info

10 6 - 12 November, 2017 Z Africa News Zimbabwe’s Mugabe says he favors resumption of executions imbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has said that he is in favor of resuming executions after more than a decade in response to rising murder rates. The last execution in the southern African nation was in 2005. Although he said his cabinet is divided on the issue, Mugabe said he favors lifting the moratorium on executions. “Let’s restore the death penalty,” he said, speaking at the burial of a political ally. He did not say when it could happen but said that “if you hear people are being executed, know Mugabe’s thinking has prevailed.” Zimbabwe’s law allows for the death penalty for people convicted of murder “in P www.NewDelhiTimes.com A NEW DELHI TIMES Burundian Refugees: It’s Not Safe to Go Home olitical unrest and violence prompted more than 400,000 people to flee Burundi and relocate to nearby countries, primarily Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. Despite appeals from Burundi and other central African countries to leave their camps and repatriate, Burundian political refugees say they wouldn’t feel safe going back home. Refugees who spoke to VOA say they fear government persecution if they return to Burundi, where President Pierre Nkurunziza remains in power after defying both domestic and international opposition to pursue a third term in 2015. One such refugee is Jacqueline Nduwayezu, a former secondary school teacher who is now living with her six children in the Mahama refugee camp in eastern Rwanda. “We are here because there is no security in our country,” Nduwayezu told a VOA Central Africa reporter who recently visited the camp. “It was not out of fun that we walked for miles and abandoned our homes and land. It is because the threat was real. People were being killed and are still being killed and dumped in mass graves and rivers.” Eloge Rugemangabo, who heads the refugee community in Mahama, says he was beaten by the pro-government Imbonerakure milita because he was a member of the opposition MSD party. “I was tortured and discriminated against at work. I slept outside for three days for fear of being killed,” he said. He says conditions must be very different if refugees are to go aggravating circumstances.” Women and offenders younger than 17 and older than 70 are exempt from executions. Over 90 prisoners are on death row, according to official figures. The hangman’s job has been vacant in Zimbabwe for over a decade, but justice ministry permanent secretary Virgina Mabhiza has said recent months have seen a “flood” of applications in the economically struggling nation. She said more than 50 people had applied. Zimbabwe imposed eight death sentences last year, according to Amnesty International. The human rights group said 97 people were known to be facing death sentences in the country as of the end of 2016. Credit : Associated Press (AP) back. “We left our parents, houses, brothers and sisters, and in order for us to return we must be assured of security and protection from violence, from being killed and so on,” he said. Burundi: refugees fled ‘rumors’ Photo Credit : AP Photo While visiting the Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda early this year, Burundi’s Home Affairs minister Pascal Barandagiye called on Burundian refugees to come back, adding that the country was ready to welcome its citizens. “We are convincing them to return home and come to build their nation. Many are just scared or fled rumors,” he said. President Nkurunziza made a similar pitch during a visit to Tanzania in July. “Today I want to tell Tanzanians and Burundians that Burundi is now peaceful and I am inviting all Burundi refugees to return home,” he said. Tanzanian President John Magufuli echoed Nkurunziza’s remarks saying, “I have been assured, the place UN Sounds Alarm on Humanitarian Crisis in Congo’s Kasai n official from the United Nations’ World Food Program has issued a warning about the situation in the southwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where conflict has left 3.2 million people severely hungry. In the past year, about 1.4 million residents of Congo’s Kasai region have been displaced by violence that has killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed entire villages, according to Claude Jibidar, who heads the WFP in Congo. Jibidar says the situation is comparable to well-known crisis zones like Syria and Yemen. Congo, the massive central African nation, now has the highest burden of displaced people in Africa. “The number of people displaced during that time period is more than Syria, than Yemen, than all the other emergencies that you know of,” he said. “That just tells you about how serious the situation is in the DRC.” The WFP is not the only humanitarian group calling attention to the Kasai region. Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders recently warned of widespread malnutrition among children, with rates of severe acute malnutrition as high as 10 percent in some areas. Horrific tales The violence began last year after the killing of a tribal leader who defied longtime President Joseph Kabila, whose term officially ended in December 2016. Critics is now calm.” But Amnesty International disagrees. The rights group released a report in September which said refugees who return home would be at risk of death, rape and torture from the security forces and the Imbonerakure, who it said continue to commit human rights violations against perceived opponents of the ruling CNDD- FDD coalition. One man told Amnesty, “If you are not CNDD-FDD, you are considered their enemy.” “Let’s be clear, Burundi has not yet returned to normality and the government’s attempts to deny the horrific abuses still taking place within the country should not be given credence,” Amnesty’s Burundi researcher, Rachel Nicholson, said in the report. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) warns that political and human rights conditions in Burundi continue to prompt increasing numbers of refugees to flee to neighboring countries in search of asylum. The reasons for flight by most refugees have been the same, says Paul Kenya, head of the UNHCR office that oversees the Mahama camp. “Most of them are fleeing persecution because of their perceived political opinion,” he said. “Most of them did not accept the current president to go for a third term. Many of them flee because they were in demonstrations and others are following family members who already fled.” A senior official at the Nakivale camp, John Bosco Sentamu, also reports a continuing influx. “The number of refugees keep going up. We have a lot of walk-ins from Burundi,” have accused Kabila of being slow to hold fresh elections, in what they say is a bid to cling to power. The Kasai violence quickly spiraled into ethnic clashes, massacres and abuses at the hands of armed groups, including Congo’s army. Jibidar, who visited the area last week, says many residents who had fled into the bush to escape violence emerged with horrific tales to tell. “It is the use of machete; it is the systematical use of rape on women; it is really terrible, terrible things,” he said. “Kasai has been characterized by the beheading of a lot of people. You have heard about the mass graves; it has been a terrible situation. People who are coming out, they are just traumatized. Traumatized.” Without significant increases in funding from donor nations, he says, the agency will run out of food by mid-November. He says the bigger solution to Kasai’s woes is beyond the scope of his U.N. agency. Jibidar noted the DRC government has made progress in restoring peace, along with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo. “It is a question of sustained, long-term security and peace,” he said. “That is the first thing. Without peace and security maintained, now it is calm, it has to remain calm. People have to regain confidence and they all have to come out of the bush.” Credit : Voice of America (VOA) said Sentamu. Tough conditions Earlier this year, UNHCR and partner agencies launched an urgent $429 million appeal to meet the needs of Burundian refugees across the region. But of the requested amount, only 19 percent has been provided, making the Burundians’ situation one of the least funded refugee crises in the world. In camps like Nakivale, refugees live in overcrowded shelters and have to endure shortages of everything, from food to water to healthcare. Sentamu says Uganda is generally hospitable to the refugees and Nakivale residents are given land to grow food. But he adds, “of late we were hit by the drought and for three seasons the refugees have not cultivated.” Felicien Habumugisha, 52, has lived in Nakivale for nearly 10 years, after fleeing an earlier wave of unrest in Burundi. “Food is not sufficient, no education for our children, no sponsorship and no resettlement, especially for Burundians,” he said. But Habumugisha says he is not ready to go back to Burundi. The son of politically active parents who were killed in Burundi, he said he was arrested, released and then “hunted” the last time he lived there. “The politics of Burundi itself is not stable. We don’t feel that Burundi is safe today for us to go back,” he told VOA. Credit : Voice of America (VOA)
6 - 12 November, 2017 11 I’ Editorial ◆◆ By Mark Parkinson @Mark_Parkinson markp.india@gmail.com markparkinson.wordpress.com NEW DELHI TIMES Carol Dweck applies Growth Mindset to Issues of Growth Mindset m never quite sure if it’s exclusive to the education field, or more extreme, but there is a very bad habit of latching on to ‘the latest new thing,’ demanding that it represents a magical simple wand to change the profession. Then, when simplistic representations of the concept or idea don’t deliver instant, easy payoff there’s a backlash and attention switches to attempts to tear down any validity in the idea or concept. In recent years we’ve seen this happen with differentiation, at times with the emphasis on formative assessment, with the concepts related to Grit (Angela Duckworth) and very strongly in relation to Carol Dweck’s work on Growth Mindset. So it’s very refreshing to hear this interview with carol Dweck, conducted by Times Education Supplement; TES – Carol Dweck – On Growth Mindset Theory To my mind, the real value that comes out C ◆◆By NDT Bureau @NewDelhiTimes info@newdelhitimes.com hina deals with defense sector establishments in a very critical and planned way. The nation has a strategic discourse on what and where to invest. It provides its army with best of equipment and tries to make it the best in the world. The United States of America and other western powers like Britain, France etc. are also dealing with zeal in the process of establishing their defense as one of the best. This race of being the best is actually a strategic planning especially between US and China, to emerge as the superpower. Where on one hand, the US after Second World War led the world with its capitalistic policy of becoming more and more of the interview is that Dweck’s work has caused masses of teachers to focus on the issues of student motivation and its impact on learning outcomes to an extent far greater than ever before. I believe it’s also lead to a far greater level of attention to the fact that what has to matter more is learning rather than teaching and that teaching is nothing if not evaluated on the basis of its impact on learning and the fulfillment of potential on the part of learners. As educators, we work with the human mind. This is incredibly complex and will never lend itself to simplistic prescriptions. The nearest comparison is to look for a desire that simple formulaic approaches to leadership can create highly effective organisations. The human mind, human motivations and the dynamics of human interaction are incredibly complex. Therefore, it will always require maximum flexibility, conscious reflection and ability to calibrate responses. It is vital to be open and receptive to all evidence of what’s working and how and dominated, China, on the other hand, was a communist regime which was emerging with the same pace to be one of its kinds. In this continuous struggle, China and US, both have spent billions on defense establishments. China has been expanding at a very rapid speed in building its three sectors of defense i.e. land, sea, and air. One of the recent explorations in case of China’s intent to strengthen its defense was building up of a pier at its base in Djibouti. The main motive of China behind establishing a pier was to provide a base for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels. Opened in 2016, the base is the biggest pier for the PLAN vessels. It will mark a new tradition in PLA’s Navy establishment. It has also been mentioned or stated by the Chinese authorities that the base is made operationalize to provide support to PLAN’s operations in the Gulf of ready to continuously build a flexible tool kit that offers increasing levels of responses and refinements. For any of us whose work involves working with other human beings, we can never get good enough. We have to relish the process of continually learning more, refining our skills and adding more skills to our ‘toolkit’ in order to give us more refined choices for the decisions we take when dealing with others. I believe Carol Dweck’s work is just such a new tool that is thoroughly worth having in the toolkit. Photo Credit : Shutterstock It’s not a panacea, a magic bullet and we need to rebuff those who seek to write it off because it didn’t deliver instant gratification. China to build naval dock at Djibouti base Photo Credit : Shutterstock Aden and the Arabian Sea. In the working of its planned structure, the base will also help in peacekeeping operations and humanitarian missions which are going on in Africa. The estimated 50-year lease of the base would suffice it to be quite productive and target-oriented for the PLAN. Djibouti holds a strategic importance for the foreign bases. It is a West Virginia size nation with the population of less than a million. Plus the country’s political setup is so stable since 1977 that there has been no upheaval of the government since it got independence from France. The country also holds a geographically beneficial stand as it provides easy access to the nearby Suez Canal via Strait of Ban-el-Mandeb. It is believed that Djibouti and Yemen are the only two nations which border with the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The primary reason why the Chinese are so interested in establishing its base in Djibouti is that they need a large-scale pier which could act as a support to the Chinese flotillas which are conducting anti-piracy operations in Somali waters. The prepared wharf is estimated to hold docking of a four-ship flotilla, which will include China’s new generation Type 901 supply ship which holds a displacement factor of around 40,000 tonnes. There is special importance given to type 901. It is an 800-foot long fast combat support ship which had been launched in January 2016. The developments are huge and it seems that it is even a matter of worry for the US and other western powers. China doesn’t seem to be stopping at any cost in reaching far off with its strategic goals for the defence sector. On the similar pattern, US have been providing an agitated way out for its army and navy and air-force to keep a check on the Chinese invasions. These two countries are so immersed into the war factors that they keep war missiles pointed at each other’s cities from target points though they do not even share borders. The US in counter to China’s establishment of a pier in Djibouti has been sponsoring the debt-ridden Djibouti in order to establish ties with the Washington and prove beneficial in the long run. Overall, the scenario is quite competitive. The China’s work on the pier would not start until there is the construction of accommodation for Chinese military personnel. But the Chinese base was opened officially on 1 August but PLAN vessel has not been given the permission to use it. Even the Type 920 hospital ship, Daishandao, was docked at a berth in the old port when it visited Djibouti. The whole idea behind building up a port for Type 901 is that it can be used as an aircraft carrier and in future China can deploy fast jets in a region where it has no air bases. Not to be much of its concern but UN must interfere in such a strong accumulation of arms and ammunition. This activity by China though will strengthen the military base and will even provide leverage over attacking US cities in future if the war breaks out. But on the other hand, US are no less in implementing its terms and policies which will counter Chinese ideas. Thereby it is a situation where no would win but both have to invest extremely. www.NewDelhiTimes.com
Page 1 and 2: NEW DELHI TIMES R.N.I. No 53449/91
Page 3 and 4: 6 - 12 November, 2017 3 Editorial N
Page 5 and 6: 6 - 12 November, 2017 5 T World Isl
Page 7 and 8: 6 - 12 November, 2017 7 T Delhi/NCR
Page 9: 6 - 12 November, 2017 9 Canada News
Page 13 and 14: 6 - 12 November, 2017 13 O N Think
Page 15 and 16: 6 - 12 November, 2017 15 Entertainm

6 November - 12 November 2017 - 16-min

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?