Burma: State of emergency imposed in Meiktila

Burma: State of emergency imposed in Meiktila

A state of emergency has been imposed in the Burmese town of Meiktila following three days of communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims.

A statement announcing the decision on behalf of President Thein Sein was broadcast on state television.

He said that the move would enable the military to help restore order in the riot-hit town, south of Mandalay.

At least 20 people are reported to have been killed since the violence began, but exact figures are unclear.

A BBC reporter who has just returned from the town said he saw about 20 Muslim bodies, which local men were trying to destroy by burning.

Meiktila MP Win Thein told the BBC Burmese service that scores of mostly Buddhist people accused of being involved in the violence had been arrested by police.

He said that he saw the bodies of eight people who had been killed in violence in the town on Friday morning. Many Muslims had fled gangs of Buddhist youths, he said, while other Muslims were in hiding.

Mr Win said that that violence that recurred on Friday morning has now receded, although the atmosphere in Meiktila remains tense.

Police say that at least 15 Buddhist monks on Friday burnt down a house belonging to a Muslim family on the outskirts of the town. There are no reports of any injuries.

The disturbances began on Wednesday when an argument in a gold shop escalated quickly, with mobs setting mainly Muslim buildings alight, including some mosques.

Nationalists urge Sindh govt to bury the new LG ordinance

HYDERABAD / SUKKUR: The nationalists claimed that they would continue to protest against the new local government ordinance till the government rescinds it.

According to the chairperson of the Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party (STPP), Dr Qadir Magsi, they planned to stage sit-ins every Wednesday till the ordinance is ‘buried’.

Leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Functional), Awami Tehreek (AT), Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), Sindh National Movement and Awami Jamhoori Party met at the Hyderabad Bypass for a four-hour long sit-in. Protesters blocked the National and Indus Highways in Matiari, Shaheed Benazirabad and Sehwan. They also carried placards and burnt tyres in Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas.

“There will be bloodshed if the Sindh Assembly votes in favour of the ordinance,” said Magsi. “The Sindhis are prepared to bleed to save their province from being divided. The ordinance is a conspiracy to divide Sindh.” JSQM’s Aakash Mallah chanted a slogan made famous by Hosh Muhammad Sheedi, a military general from the Talpur dynasty who died fighting the British Raj in 1843, “we will die, but we will not give you Sindh.”

In Sukkur

Workers of Sindh United Party, STTP, JSQM, Jeay Sindh Tehreek and other nationalists blocked the National Highway and major roads leading into cities. The Shah Hussain Bypass near Khairpur and Kandhkot was also blocked. In Daharki, hundreds of nationalists and workers of the PML-N carried placards and chanted slogans against the government. They were led by STPP’s Jam Fatah, PML-N’s Hafiz Mohammad Sadiq Samejo and Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz’s Dr Niaz Kalani. The protesters burnt tyres and blocked the traffic flow for three hours.

Afghanistan-Pakistan border fighting erupts in Kunar

There is heavy fighting between Afghan and Pakistani forces in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, which borders Pakistan, Afghan officials say.

Fighting started at around 0400 (0030 GMT) following an attack on a border police commander’s convoy, according to border police sources. According to Afghan officials in Kunar, one border policeman was killed and five were injured.

The Afghan authorities have since sent hundreds of troops to the area. The attack was from the Pakistani side of the border in the area of Binshay, Dangam District, Afghan police say.

Afghan officials in Kunar province have told the BBC that both sides have been using heavy and small weapons and a Dangam District tribal elder said the fighting was ongoing.

Turkish forces kill 15 female Kurdish rebels

Turkish security forces have killed 15 female rebel Kurds in the southeast of the country on Saturday, AFP cites the country’s interior ministry as saying. One member of a local group fighting alongside Turkish security forces was killed in the clashes, while three more were wounded. The female rebels belonged to a women-only unit of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The operation follows a large-scale offensive against PKK militants near the Iraqi border that left seven police officers and six rebels dead.

Courtesy: http://www.rt.com/news/line/2012-03-24/#id28470

Someone There to Rescue Pakistan!

By Saeed Qureshi

Excerpt;

Is there someone who can rescue Pakistan and its hapless people from the bloody clutches of Wolves and predators in the garb of humans? A massive deep drift and deadly decay is caving into the fabric of Pakistan and debilitating it like slow poisoning. …

…. Lawlessness in Pakistan and pointedly in Pakistan’s leading city Karachi seems to be a blood soaked legacy of the Rwandan massacre. There is no let-up in bloodletting between the rival factions or by the trigger happy shooters. One can draw the only conclusion from incessant wanton killings that either the government is an accomplice or it is not concerned about such manslaughters and target killings that have become the order of the day. ….

….. There is no use of projecting ourselves as nuclear power when the common man is caught in a fatiguing struggle of earning two loaves of bread for his starving children.

Why is the army fighting a war to serve the interests of other nations? It is a supportive fight for establishment of neo-colonialism whose agenda is to establish military bases, capture markets and to further their nefarious objectives of robbing and exploiting the untapped resources of the captive nations for their factories and mills.

The Pakistan armed forces are mandated to protect Pakistan and its people from external aggression. It is not obligated to fight in submission to the wishes and designs of foreign powers that nurse their own blighted concepts of self protection and priorities.

Why should Pakistan a poor and economically weak country become pawn and part of the global diabolic game that is hollowing her from inside like termite and one day the edifice would crumble to the ground?

Can the leaders of Pakistan both in power and out of power think rationally and patriotically to apprehend and foresee the horrendous dangers and threats lurking over its stability and existence? Would they continue their sinister and insidious musical chairs game of intrigue and greed to take turn in ruling the country and grabbing power by foul and dubious means?

Do they realize that Pakistan is in deep and dire straits? Do they have an iota of commonsense to comprehend the hurricanes that are ferociously blowing to tear this country into pieces?

Can they feel the pains and sufferings of the oppressed people of Pakistan passing every day through a life and death ordeal due to hunger, poverty, disease, unbridled and galloping cost of living and scarcity of items of daily use?

Do they know people are losing their lives because of bomb blasts and vendetta killings and gang wars? Do they know young girls are kidnapped on the way to schools and colleges and subjected to rape and sold to prostitute dens? Do they know every day 22000 young boys are molested by the sex predators in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan?

We call ourselves Muslims and that is what the Islamic demagogues exhort us from the pulpit and from lavishly decorated religious congregations, to become. What is the ground reality? These religious orators incite their followers and sect fellows to slander their opponents and even kill them.

These religious zealots never initiate or start a campaign or float a mission against the social crimes, against the blood-thirsty mafias, against the evil doers, the rapist, the thugs, the looters of public funds, the adulterators, the bribe takers and bribe givers, the up to neck corrupt parliamentarians, the easy to buy jurists, the corrupt bureaucrats, the sleazy generals and the robbers occupying the power corridors.

These religious preachers can interpret to hang a powerless woman for adultery but do not want to punish a muscular and powerful man who kidnaps her and ruins her life at gun point or knife. We believe in distorted version of religious injunctions that hardly bring us any relief, redemptions and justice against the heinous culprits. Where are we heading to?

How can a woman produce four witnesses to prove that she was raped or molested? How a young and teen age girl molested by savage men can brace against the perpetrators for dishonoring her? Why, in the first instance, the laws are not implemented in letter and spirit.

To read complete article → Upright Opinion (Saeed Qureshi blog)

Pakistan and the US: beyond the tailspin – Dr Mohammad Taqi

Excerpt:

The military events surrounding Senator Kerry’s Pak-Afghan visits suggest that the US is not about to blink first. The question remains whether the Pakistani establishment will pull back from the brink

So, he surrendered to parliament. Or did he? The Pakistani government’s minister for information would have one believe that he did. But General Ahmed Shuja Pasha may actually be recalling Julius Caesar’s words: veni, vidi, vici! The only difference is that when Caesar claimed ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’, he was reporting to the Roman Senate about his swift military victory over Pharnaces II of Pontus. However, for all practical purposes, General Pasha and the security establishment’s triumph is on the domestic front. For now, they seem to have vanquished parliament quite successfully. Like Molly Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, the PPP, PML-Q and the MQM threw themselves into the military’s arms with a fervent “…and yes I said yes I will Yes”. The PML-N’s chiding notwithstanding, Generals Pasha and Ashfaq Kayani had their cake and got to eat it too.

The well-choreographed Pasha tamasha in parliament and the events preceding and after it has left the Pakistani parliament weaker than ever before. Many of us never had any illusions about the security establishment’s tall tale that the civilians should take charge of foreign and security affairs. But anyone who still had a doubt about the ones calling the shots need not look any further than the US Senator John Kerry’s very first stop on his visit to Pakistan this week. Despite his recent tame requests for the prime minister to convene parliament to discuss the Osama bin Laden fiasco, General Kayani did not find anything wrong with Senator Kerry seeing him before meeting the civilian leadership. A simple change in the visiting senator’s itinerary could have been requested — and very likely accepted by the guest — but it was not. Well, so much for the military’s newfound love for parliament’s supremacy. But one must give credit where it is due. A bakery-running enterprise may not be a fighting force but it could be pretty deft at politics.  ….

…. No matter how Pakistan spins it, the tailspin in its relationship with the US and the world at large cannot be reversed by returning the stealth H-60 Blackhawk’s tail. The Pakistani brass is way too familiar with the words “peanuts” when describing a disproportionately minuscule response to tectonic shifts in geopolitics. Osama bin Laden’s lair, less than a mile away from the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, is not a pinprick that the world, let alone the US, would forget so easily. The Pakistani parliament may have been duped with it, but there is every indication that the US Congress and the White House consider the ‘intelligence failure’ excuse an insult to their intelligence.

Senator Kerry’s soft but measured tone indicates that the Pakistani brass still has some time, perhaps through July, to make serious amends but all options, including moving the UN, remain on the table. The senator also seems to have spelt out some of the bare-minimum metrics for any rapprochement. Pakistan’s position vis-à-vis Mullah Omar and his Quetta Shura on the one hand and the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and its various incarnations on the other, will certainly determine the future relationship between Pakistan and the world at large. But if the senator’s visit to Khost — across from North Waziristan — is any indication, the dismantling of the Haqqani network is at the top of the confidence-building agenda. The military events surrounding Senator Kerry’s Pak-Afghan visits suggest that the US is not about to blink first. The question remains whether the Pakistani establishment will pull back from the brink. Unlike the Pakistani parliament, the UN Security Council may actually be difficult to conquer.

To read complete article: Daily Tiems

Sunni Tehreek : Mullahs fighting each other for political gains

by Wichaar Analysis

Sunni Tehreek, that includes the Brailvi sect of Indian Muslims, was the last straw that broke the religious tolerance’s camel’s back. Now, it can be safely said that there is no tolerant Islami sect among Pakistani Muslims: they have all become ritualistic and part of Mullah Shahi.

The Sunnis, particularly Brailvis were the least politicized by political Islam. Following the Sufi traditions faith was purely personal belief for them. However, the temptation of power and fame (or notoriety) of political Islam was hard to resist for Mullahs even of Brailvi sect. When they saw JI and JUI leaders like Liqat Baluch and Fazalur Rehman regularly appearing on the TV talk shows and rubbing shoulders with most powerful people they thought that they were majority and yet ignored. Therefore, they had to venture into political Islam and TNR was a perfect excuse for them.

As a matter of fact the Brailvis had abandoned the Sufi tradition long ago. They had become a ritualistic sect who took ‘khatam, drood’ as their basic distinction. The Sufi shrines had become the jagirs (estates) of sajjada nashins who were running them like feudal dynasties. The trend had started much earlier in the history. Baba Farid and his nominated leader of Chishtia sect, Nizamud Din Aulia had refused to see kings and their men. However, great grand sons of Baba Farid joined the Tugliq’s and were awarded a huge estate in Pakpattan. It was a noteworthy estate when Ranjeet Singh conquered Punjab and he had to negotiate with the then sajjada nasheen.

Read more : Wichaar