Saturday, January 9, 2016

Dematagoda abduction incident: Hirunika arrested

January 9, 2016

MP Hirunika Premachandra has been arrested by the Colombo Crime Division (CCD) in connection with the abduction incident in Dematagoda, the Police Spokesperson confirmed a short while ago.

The MP will be produced before the Colombo Magistrate, this afternoon, Spokesperson ASP Ruwan Gunasekara said.

The Attorney General had instructed the CCD to arrest Colombo District MP Premachandra in connection with the incident this morning.

Police had sought the AG’s Department advice on the arrest of Premachandra over the alleged abduction while it has been reported that sufficient evidence has been found regarding her involvement in the incident.

On December 21, a 34-year-old man was abducted in the Baseline Road area in Dematagoda and assaulted by a group of individuals who had arrived in a Land Rover Defender which is reportedly owned by MP Hirunika Premachandra.

It was later revealed that a clandestine love affair between the abduction victim and the wife of one of the suspects had led to the incident.

Health Minister to raise age of retirement to 65

January 9, 2016, 9:32 am

Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senratne yesterday said he would submit a Cabinet paper to extend the age of retirement for government employees to 65 years.

Addressing the gathering at the inauguration of the new ‘Suwa Piyasa, health clinic at Sri Sumangala Boys School, Panadura, Dr. Senaratne said he was against the decision of retiring government employees at the age of 60. It was only a solution to unemployment. There were professors at Cambridge who taught at the age of 85. Knowledge can be imparted as one grows older. "But government employees are forced to retire at the peak of their service," he observed. Citing an example he said that former Ministerial secretaries had been appointed to the board of advisors to the Health Ministry to help in its functioning.

The Ministry donated the equipment for the school’s Suwa Piyasa health clinic which was constructed by its old boys association.

Dr. Senaratne said Education, Health and Defence had been allocated the largest amount of money from the 2016 budget. The health allocations would be utilised not only to upgrade hospitals in the country but would also be used to renovate the health clinics in schools and provide them with the necessary equipment.

The Minister observed that people should be respected when they were alive. But, Sri Lankans paid their respects to people only posthumously. It was the case with Premier S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. (DJ)

Sri Lanka’s Homophobia & Our Silence

By Dinidu Karunanayake –January 9, 2016

Dinidu Karunanayake

The Sri Lankan society in general is homophobic, and it notoriously prides itself on being so. During a recent public speech, monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara berated the current government for being “impotent” on grounds of homosexuality. “Today the country is governed by a group of homosexuals. This is a very serious concern…. I can recall the entire list, like The Dhammapada. There are about a hundred of them, and all of them are homosexual….” he yelled. He even went into naming several members of the cabinet, and called them a “p-set,” a term derived from a Sinhala slang word for “a person without male or female genitals.” In a separate incident, speaking to The Daily News on December 10, 2015, JVP parliamentarian Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa made a similar statement about homosexuality. Asked about his stance on LGBT rights, Dr. Jayatissa asserted, “I am totally against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) rights. This is not the need of the human being. We need a future generation.” Coming from two vastly different political backgrounds—monk Granasara from a neotribal “Sinhalese Buddhist” nationalist background, and Dr. Jayatissa, a Marxist nationalist background—it is noteworthy that both see eye to eye about homophobia. This piece of writing is not meant to be a personal attack on either the monk or the doctor, but a brief examination of an extremist line of thinking embraced by these two, who by and large represent and speak to a larger community of the country. This is also a follow-up response to a much-needed dialogue initiated by Ramindu Perera, Thiyagaraja Waradas and Upul Wickramasinghe.

Nalinda Jayatissa

Several observations can be gleaned from monk Gnanasara’s speech. On the surface, it is a hate speech intended to entertain his followers, to make them feel proud of their own “patriotic” urges which are coded as “masculine.” However, we cannot simply dismiss his claims as such. The monk conflates “homosexual” with “napunska” (“neither male nor female”), revealing a common opinion held by many Sri Lankans. This betrays not only his homophobia—his hatred towards another minority community in the country—but also a gross ignorance about biology and socio-cultural behavior. It must be noted that this is not a unique problem the monk singularly undergoes. As a society in general, Sri Lanka deleteriously stereotypes the queer community so much so that masculinity is invariably a test. The likes of Gnanasara step into the robes of cultural judges and keep demanding laypeople for “masculine valor” by spearheading the wars they have conceptualized. Read More

Youth held at airport with currency worth over Rs 2m

January 9, 2016

A Sri Lankan youth was arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in Katunayake for attempting to leave the country with undeclared local and foreign currency worth over Rs 2 million.

The 28-year-old from Slave Island was preparing to board a flight to Dubai at 4.45am this morning when he was arrested by airport customs.

Upon searching the suspect’s baggage, customs officers discovered stacks of Sri Lankan Rupees, UAE Dirham, US dollars estimated to be worth Rs 2,048,110 in total.

Kumarasiri Hettige assaulted by Devinuwara Basnayake Nilame!

Jan 08, 2016

The Basnayake Nilame of Devinuwara Devale Dilshan Wickremasinghe assaulted and injured Kumarasiri Hettige, coordinating secretary for parliamentary affairs of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, last night (07). The assault took place at the Pelawatte, Battaramulla home of Wickremasinghe.

Last night, Wickremesinghe gave a ‘vodka party’ at his home, also attended by former Uva province chief minister and ex-Basnayake Nilame of Kataragama Devale Shashindra Rajapaksa, Port Authority former chairman Priyath Bandu Wickrema and Hambantota former mayor Eraj Ravindra Fernando (toy pistol mayor).

After having several drinks, Hettige became talkative and said, “Our boss was deceived by Maithri thrice. That cannot be allowed to happen again. We must form the new party somehow.” Responding, the host said, “Aney, Kumarasiri. It was fellows like you who ruined Mahinda boss. As long as he remained in power, he was given dead ropes, and now do not try to be a hero. Mahinda boss is suffering for your follies.” That exchange of words worsened into fisticuffs.

Wickremasinghe’s attack left Hettige injured in his face. Eraj took him to the nearby Hemas Hospital at Thalawathugoda. Examining him, doctors recommended that he be warded. But, Hettige got frightened that the incident would be leaked to the media and left after getting his wound dressed.

Eraj Fernado also took him home, and the funniest thing of this all is that it was none other than the ex-mayor who had egged on Wickremasinghe to assault Hettige by winking at him.

Killings of Palestinians in West Bank hit 10-year high

Palestinians carry the body of Ahmad Kawazba during his funeral in the West Bank village of Sair near Hebron on 6 January. The teenager was shot dead the day before by Israeli forces who say he attempted to stab a soldier.

Ali Abunimah-8 January 2016

The first days of 2016 offered no let up in the surge of violence that began in early October, provoked by Israel’sassaults and incursions in occupied East Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Killings of Palestinians in West Bank Hit 10-Year High by Thavam Ratna

Canada under pressure over $15bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia

Despite protests of the arms deal, Canada says 'what's done is done'

The multi-billion dollar deal involves manufacturing and sending light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia (Wikipedia)

Jillian D'Amours

TORONTO – Canada has no plans to review a $15bn weapons contract with Saudi Arabia, the foreign minister has said, despite calls from Canadians and human rights groups to cancel the deal after the kingdom executed dozens of people last weekend.

Stephane Dion told the national public broadcaster this week “what is done is done".

“We have said during the campaign, the prime minister has been very clear, that we would not cancel this contract or contracts that have been done under the previous government in general,” Dion said on CBC’s Power & Politics.

“We will review the process by which these contracts are assessed in the future. But what is done is done, and the contract is not something that we’ll revisit.”

The comments come amid growing pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new government to look into the multi-billion-dollar deal that will see Ontario-based company General Dynamics Land Systems’ export light armoured vehicles (LAVs) to Saudi Arabia.

About 500 people protested at the Canadian parliament building on Wednesday calling on Ottawa to cancel the trade deal. Protesters also condemned the killing of Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, who was among 47 prisoners executed in Saudi Arabia on 2 January.

A deal ‘contingent on secrecy’

Canada’s then minister of trade, Ed Fast, first revealed details of the agreement – the largest weapons export contract in Canadian history – in 2014. Fast said at the time that the deal would bring 3,000 jobs to southern Ontario.

A federal crown corporation, Canadian Commercial Corp, which also acts as the main contractor supplying the LAVs, brokered the agreement.

“The money flows through Canadian Commercial Corporation. It is by no means a private contract in the usual sense, and the government is very much involved,” said Ken Epps, an arms trade treaty policy advisor at anti-war group Project Ploughshares.

Epps told Middle East Eye the contract is expected to span 10 years and equipment shipments may begin later in 2016. The exact number of vehicles being manufactured remains unconfirmed, he said, but the size of the contract leads him to estimate “it’s going to be in the hundreds, if not thousands”.

A recently reported side deal General Dynamics Land Systems holds with a Belgian company that makes turrets and cannons also signals that “a tank on wheels” will be among the LAVs being sent overseas, Epps said.

The Globe and Mail reported last year that the deal was “contingent on secrecy".

Stephen Harper, Canada’s former prime minister, personally promised the Saudi government to keep the details of the sale under wraps, the newspaper said.

Ottawa had also reportedly not conducted a review of the Saudi human rights record prior to the 2014 announcement, a requirement under federal export laws when military equipment is being shipped to countries “with a persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens”.

Those regulations oblige Canada to demonstrate “that there is no reasonable risk that the goods might be used against the civilian population” in the importing country.

“The risk of course that [the Canadian government is] taking by closing off any revisiting of the contract is that this equipment will be used either in Yemen or internally in Saudi Arabia,” Epps said, “and it’ll come back to haunt the government.”

Saudi Arabia an ‘important partner’ for Canada

Dion, the foreign minister, “decried” the recent executions in Saudi Arabia and said in a statement that Ottawa “raises concerns over human rights and due process” with Saudi officials regularly.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an important partner for Canada in efforts to counter terrorism, in contributions to the international coalition combating ISIL [Islamic State] militants and in international efforts to find a political solution in Syria,” Dion said in another release after he met Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel Al Jubeir in Ottawa in mid-December.

The strategic importance of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries was mentioned again in a government-briefing book obtained by The Canadian Press through an Access to Information Request.

Federal officials reportedly advised Trudeau to strengthen ties Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, CP reported on Thursday, as this “would serve Canadian commercial and possibly security interests".

“Current bilateral engagement includes a particular focus on Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” the memo states. “Saudi Arabia is a regional power, the only Arab country in the G20. It is a key contributor to global energy security and Canada's largest trading partner in the region.”

Anthony Fenton, a PhD candidate at York University in Toronto researching the political economy of Canada-GCC relations, said Canada and Saudi Arabia have had 50 years of strong diplomatic and economic ties.

Strengthening ties with Saudi Arabia today gives Canada "a seat at the table" and so long as the U.S. backs the Kingdom, so too will Ottawa. "Cultivating closer ties with the Saudis helps bolster Canada's standing as a emerging, secondary imperialist power," he told Middle East Eye in an e-mail interview.

Fenton said it's not only the arms deal that ties Canada to Saudi Arabia; Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin has 7,000 employees in the Kingdom, a US-Saudi firm recently bought the former Canadian Wheat Board, and GCC countries - Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular - are categorized as a "priority" market for Canada, among other examples.

And there has been no indication that this will change under the Trudeau government, Fenton said.

"The same state functionaries who worked so hard to cultivate these ties under Harper will see no reason to take the wind out of the Canada-GCC sails, and appear to have advised the new government accordingly," he said.

"I see no reason to expect this to change, so long as the petrodollars are flowing, and the GCC states are at war (be it against other states, IS, etc., or against their own people)."

A recent review of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is being kept confidential in Ottawa, The Globe and Mail reported. A request for comment from MEE to Global Affairs Canada was not immediately returned on Friday.

But Alex Neve, head of Amnesty International Canada, told the newspaper that the results of any assessment need to be shared publicly. He also raised concerns about how the LAVs might be used by Saudi forces if protests erupt again in the Shia community in Saudi Arabia’s eastern provinces.

“How will Saudi authorities react to that? What equipment and weaponry will they resort to? Is there a potential that armoured vehicles of this sort could be used in ways that cause or contribute to human rights violations?” said Neve, who has been using the hashtag #ExplainTheDeal on Twitter.

Epps, meanwhile, called on Canada to implement existing regulations “to ensure that the Canadian equipment doesn’t get into the wrong hands".

“They called for transparency,” he said, referring to the Liberal party’s federal election campaign comments last year. “Well, this would be an opportunity for them to be more transparent by opening up and even potentially [holding] public hearings on what’s happening in Saudi Arabia.”

Did Russia Knock Out Ukraine’s Power Grid?

Some 700,000 Ukrainians lost electricity as Christmas approached. Signs point to Russian hackers — and it could be a harbinger of cyberstrikes to come.

BY ELIAS GROLL-JANUARY 8, 2016

American officials have long warned that hackers could use digital tools to knock out a power grid. A Russian-linked group may have done exactly that in Ukraine, killing power for 700,000 people on Dec. 23 — and offering a warning of how cyberweapons have become a tool of modern warfare.

Details on the attack, which affected one Ukrainian energy firm and may have targeted two more, remain scant. Ukrainian authorities, however, have accused Moscow of causing the late December outage, and now a leading American cybersecurity firm says that its own analysis suggests that Russian-linked hackers — who often appear to be carrying out the Kremlin’s bidding — were responsible.

The company, iSight Partners, analyzed some of the code found on infected computer systems in Ukraine and concluded that a hacking group it calls Sandworm — and which is thought to have links to Moscow — was almost certainly responsible for the attack. The hack knocked out power for several hours in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of western Ukraine.

U.S. officials have long warned that attacks of the kind possibly observed in western Ukraine could affect the United States. By knocking out a section of the power grid, hackers working on behalf of a foreign power could cripple entire sections of the country and cause enormous economic damage. These warnings have been alternately cited as the inevitable outcome of how digital tools will revolutionize warfare or as hopelessly outlandish fearmongering to help boost defense spending on cybertools. If confirmed, the attack in western Ukraine would likely be the first time a digital weapon has been used to cut power in a large area.

The National Security Agency referred questions on the iSight report to the Department of Homeland Security, which declined to comment. The White House did not return questions about the report. The CIA declined to comment.

If events in Ukraine turn out to be the work of a hacker group, the power outage provides a taste of how digital tools can be put to work as offensive weapons in the 21st century. While cyberweapons have been touted as the next frontier of warfare, achieving physical effects through the use of digital weaponry — hacking a system to, say, blow something up — remains confoundedly complex. Stuxnet, a U.S.-Israeli bug that attacked centrifuges used in Iran’s nuclear program — has until now been one of the few examples of code being successfully used for sabotage.

John Hultquist, iSight’s director of cyber-espionage analysis, acknowledged that his analysts couldn’t definitively confirm that Sandworm is working on behalf of the Russian government. But for several years, Hultquist has watched as Sandworm — so named because the group riddled its code with references to the science fiction classic Dune — has carried out operations clearly in line with Russian national interests.

“They go after targets that provide no immediate monetary value, operations that have no street value outside of government work,” Hultquist toldForeign Policy.

Last year, iSight observed the group deleting videos and other content from the servers of Ukrainian media organizations during the country’s October elections. At other times, iSight has documented the group attempting to hack European Union institutions, NATO targets, and American government entities. The group has repeatedly carried out what Hultquist describes as reconnaissance operations against European energy firms, possibly with a view toward carrying out cyberattacks against them.

As early as 2013, Sandworm attacked NATO computers, and researchers have observed the group targeting industrial control systems operating GE software. The group has also repeatedly targeted European telecommunications firms.

Sandworm uses a distinctive hacking tool known as BlackEnergy, and the presence of that program on one of the affected Ukrainian computer systems is a key piece of evidence that has led iSight to finger the group. In 2014, American authorities alerted industrial control systems operators about the possibility that BlackEnergy could be used to infect their systems.

Moreover, iSight has found that the infected Ukrainian systems also contain a wiping tool — a program that deletes computer data and can be used to cover up the evidence of a cyberattack — known as KillDisk that was also observed in the cyberattacks in Ukraine around the time of last year’s elections.

But the cybersecurity community remains intensely divided about what exactly the presence of BlackEnergy and KillDisk goes to show. KillDisk is merely a wiping program, and industrial security experts say the deletion of data is not enough to trigger a power outage. BlackEnergy can be used to give hackers remote access to a system, but it can’t, on its own, bring down an electricity grid.

But Ralph Langner, an industrial security expert perhaps best known for authoring the definitive analyses of Stuxnet, the U.S.-Israeli bug that attempted to cripple the Iranian nuclear program, said the mere presence of BlackEnergy and KillDisk doesn’t prove that power was knocked out with a cyberweapon nor that Sandworm was involved.

As a result of Sandworm’s reconnaissance activities, BlackEnergy is present on hundreds of computers used in managing power grids. Langner says its presence in Ukraine is perhaps not surprising, and, as of now, analysts poring over the available code have been unable to determine how the hackers turned off the lights in western Ukraine.

Researchers analyzing the attack have not identified any code that could have been used to target an industrial control system, and without that code, Langner says there is little basis to call the power outage the work of a cyberattack. “Once we see that, then we would have the evidence on the table,” Langner said. “With Stuxnet, it was clear from the code: OK, this is a cyber-physical attack against an enrichment facility in Iran.”

Robert M. Lee, an instructor at the SANS Institute and a former Air Force cyberwarfare operations officer who has examined code found on affected Ukrainian machines, said the analysis of the attack remains in its early stages. While BlackEnergy and KillDisk have been used to identify the likely perpetrators, they provide little indication on the mechanics of the attack. “The overall narrative of an attack on the Ukrainian power grid will likely be true, but the exact methods may change,” Lee said.

If the power outage in western Ukraine is confirmed to have been caused by a cyberattack, it would mark a major escalation in the use and proliferation of cyberweapons. But if a Russian-linked group was responsible for the attack, its motive would be a bit difficult to discern. In recent months, Russia has sought to tamp down fighting in eastern Ukraine and has militarily intervened in Syria at least in part to undermine the isolation imposed on Moscow in the aftermath of its annexation of Crimea. Knocking out power in western Ukraine would seem to escalate conflict in that country at a time when Russia would like things to stay quiet there.

Still, there is a plausible rationale for Russia carrying out such an operation. In recent weeks, pro-Ukrainian activists have reportedly cut power lines to Crimea, causing widespread power outages in the Russian-claimed enclave. Knocking out power for thousands in western Ukraine may be an attempt to retaliate for that sabotage, said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the director of the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiativeat the Brookings Institution.

Photo credit: ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/Getty Images

Calais ‘Jungle’: anger over fate of child refugees denied UK asylum hearing

Masud, 15, died on a lorry after losing hope that his claim to live with his sister in Britain would ever be heard

Children in a French refugee camp. Aid workers estimate there may be hundreds of unaccompanied minors in the camps at any given time. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Mark Townsend in Calais and Tracy McVeigh-Saturday 9 January 2016

Just before the New Year, Masud decided he couldn’t wait any longer. Christmas had come and gone. Life in the sprawling Calais “Jungle”, a squalid home for up to 6,000 migrants, was becoming increasingly unbearable for the 15-year-old. He had a legitimate claim for entry to the UK because he has a sister living here. But no one, least of all the British government, was listening.

Calais ‘Jungle’ Anger Over Fate of Child Refugees Denied UK Asylum Hearing by Thavam Ratna

Nine months on, Nepal finally set to start quake reconstruction work

A door of a collapsed house stands after the earthquake damaged it earlier this year at Khumjung, a typical Sherpa village in Solukhumbu district also known as the Everest region, in this picture taken November 30, 2015.

Nepal will start repairs and reconstruction next week for nearly a million homes damaged by last year's deadly earthquakes, the head of a state agency said on Saturday, nearly nine months after the disaster left hundreds of thousands homeless.

Two tremors last April and May killed 9,000 people, injured more than 22,000 and damaged or destroyed more than 900,000 houses, forcing many to brave freezing temperatures living in temporary shelters made from tarps and corrugated iron sheets.

"We realise that the victims are very much in trouble. We'll start the reconstruction work from January 16," Sushil Gyewali, chief of the National Reconstruction Authority, told reporters.

The agency was launched in September but political squabbling has delayed the deployment of $4.1 billion pledged by foreign donors for reconstruction.

UNICEF estimates that more than 200,000 families affected by the quakes are still living in temporary shelters at an altitude above 1,500 meters (4,920 feet), where harsh winter conditions will continue through February.

The delay has been blamed for more than a dozen deaths since the onset of winter, mostly of people over 65, according to domestic media reports.

Gyewali said the agency would start training engineers, masons and other technicians and dispatch them to districts ravaged by Nepal's worst disaster on record.

Kathmandu has said it needs to train 50,000 people and has pledged up to $2,000 for each home destroyed by the quake.

Gyewali added that his agency would offer up to $15,000 in soft loans to each affected household for reconstruction.

The disaster spurred the country's feuding politicians to set aside differences and adopt a new constitution after a seven-year delay. But the charter sparked protests by ethnic Madhesi groups, who blocked key trade crossings with India and brought on severe fuel shortages.

Aid agencies say the shortages have constrained efforts to transport blankets, clothing and other essential relief materials to earthquake survivors in mountainous areas.

"We are in the middle of winter now and still struggling to survive without any support," said Kanchhi Bika, an earthquake survivor, outside her tarp hut near Kathmandu.

"I don't think the government really cares about us."

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Rajesh Kumar Singh and Edmund Klamann)

Nigeria: the "repats" who have returned

SATURDAY 09 JANUARY 2016

The children of Nigerian migrants who came west are returning to the land of their parents - and finding the jobs and opportunities that Britain has failed to deliver, writes Inigo Gilmore.

Nigeria the Repats Who Have Returned by Thavam Ratna

Yogi Adityanath’s Hindu Yuva Vahini involves in abducting, raping teenage Muslim girls: Mushawerat

Tuesday January 5, 2016

New Delhi: The All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM), an umbrella body of Indian Muslim organisations, in a shocking revelation has confirmed that BJP MP Yogi Adityanath’s Hindu Yuva Vahini is involved in abducting, raping and frocing the teenaged Muslims girls to live with Hindu boys.

After a vist to Kushinagar district in eastern Uttar Pradesh, the renowned Muslim organisation has asked the state government to take notice of these atrocities, send a high-level committee to the district to examine the situation, reassure its harassed Muslims and issue strict orders to the local police and administration to act impartially and in accordance with law.

"A team of the All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM) found that reports of kidnappings of Muslim girls, sometimes as young as 12 years, are true. Many of such girls have vanished, some are known to be living with their Hindu “husbands” while some have succeeded to run away and return to their families", the NGO said after visiting the district.

"The delegation found that young girls are kidnapped or lured away from their villages. They are taken to Gorakhpur and other places where they are raped, subjected to shuddhi (purification) and then forced to marry Hindu boys", it added.

The Mushawerat delegation visited Kushinagar in compliance with a decision of the Central Committee of AIMMM on 5 December 2015 to send a fact-finding committee to the district.

The delegation toured various areas of the district on 30 and 31 December. It met a number of victims, talked to community leaders and visited some villages wherein repair and extension of mosques are not allowed by the police and local administration. The delegation unveiled its fact-finding report at a press conference held at Lucknow on 1 January 2016.

Adityanath’s Hindu Yuva Vahini and allied militias play a major role in this criminal activity which is made more sinister because all girls are under-age.

The fact-finding delegation also visited some mosques in various villages where repair and extension work is not allowed by the police and local administration. The delegation came across a mosque in village Ahroli Rai under thana Kasia where both Muslims and Hindus are requesting the local police and administration to allow the extension of the village mosque but their request is denied.

The fact-finding delegation also made enquiries about some past one-sided riots in which whole Muslim village populations had to flee and spend days and weeks outside their villages due to active police involvement on the side of rioters.

Full text of Mushawarat’s fact-finding repor on disturbing conditions in Kushinagar district:

Lucknow, 1 January, 2016: A fact-finding delegation of the All-India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM) visited district Kushinagar in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The delegation, led by AIMMM President Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, included AIMMM General Secretary and President of AIMMM UP, Prof. Mohammad Sulaiman, General Secretary AIMMM UP, Mr Mohammad Khalid, Maulana Shahabuddin Madni, Mr Arshad Azmi, Hafiz Muhammad Yusuf, Mufti Asif Anzaar Nadwi, Maulana Abdul Wahid Madni and Mr Anwaar Siddiqui.

The delegation visited Kushinagar in compliance with the decision of the Markazi Majlis (Central Committee) of AIMMM in its meeting of 5 December 2015 following persistent reports about the persecution of the Muslim community in Kushinagar, engineered riots, denial to repair, extend and build mosques and dozens of cases of rapes and forcible kidnappings of young Muslim girls by local goons with the support of the Hindu Yuva Vahinni of the BJP MP Adityanath and his allied militias. Kushinagar district has a total population of 36 lakhs out of which 17.4 percent is Muslim.

The delegation toured Kushinagar district on 30 and 31 December and visited about a dozen villages in various parts of the district and found:

1) Reports of large-scale rapes and kidnappings of Muslim girls: Sometimes as young as 12 years, are true. These criminal incidents started on a large-scale since 2013. Most of the kidnapped or lured girls remain untraced while some are known to be living as Hindus. According to girls who have managed to flee from the clutches of their kidnappers, it has emerged that they were lured under various pretexts or snatched away from their villages. They were taken to distant places and temples where they were raped, forced to undergo shuddhi (purification) and then married forcibly to Hindu boys.

Girls who have managed to return are threatened and attempts are made to kidnap them again. The few who had the courage to go public and lodge complaints with the police, are harassed and threatened with the connivance of the local police and administration which threatens the victims and files counter cases against them under SC/ST and Goonda Acts as a pressure tactic to force the victims to withdraw their complaints and cases. In one such case, Muhammad Haneef of village Dharmauli, father of a victim girl collapsed and died in the office of the CO due to dire threats and filthy abuses.

The delegation members met a number of such girls who are living under terror in villages like Dharmauli (thana Hata), Bajaria (thana Bishanpura), Gram Madhopur (thana Bishanpura) and Bajnaria (thana Bishanpura).

2) Denial of repair and extension of mosques: The delegation came to know that in dozens of places in Kushinagar district police and local administration are preventing the Muslims to repair, extend existing mosques or build new mosques on private land throughout the district although there is no legal reason to deny such work necessitated by normal wear and tear or to meet the normal growth of population.

Among the villages visited by the delegation the most peculiar case was seen in village Ahroli Rai (thana Kasia) where both Hindus and Muslims want to extend the existing mosque which was originally built in 1960 but does not cope with the current need of the population of the village. One hundred and ten Hindus of the village have signed a petition addressed to the SDM (Kasia) to allow the extension of the existing mosque. A copy of this petition was provided to the delegation. But the local administration and police are adamant not to allow the same due to the application of of a leader of the Hindu Yuva Vahini militia who lives seven kms away. The reason cited for refusal is that a tiny part of the extension plan falls on the land of a garhi (pond) while the official land records show it to be part of gaddha (uneven land), a copy of which was obtained by the delegation.

Moreover, the Muslim community of the village is ready to compensate the same in terms of money or land but the local SDM (Kasia) is not read to even listen to the persistent requests of the village Muslims and Hindus. It may be mentioned here that the village Muslims had earlier helped the local Hindus build a temple.

The delegation also visited the Jama Masjid of Digwan Khurd village where a ladder from the ground to the first floor to make room for more worshippers, is not being allowed. Persistent applications by the local Muslims to the SDM (Kasia) and DM (Kushinagar) have failed to convince them to visit the place and see the matter for themselves that there is no extension or construction beyond or outside the old moque.

The delegation also visited village Parwarpar (thana Ramkula) where 47 Muslims familes and 1000 Hindu families live. The Muslims are being forced to shift the old mosque, built in 1990, to a distant place so that azan is not heard by the Hindus. Muslims are threatened by Bajrang Dal and Hindu Yuva Vahini people that if they fail to do so, they all will be expelled from the village. Here a Muslim (late Ees Mohammad Ansari) had donated his house a quarter of a century ago to build the mosque. In early 2014, while the local Muslims were building a pillar inside the mosque someone complained and the police rushed to stop the work. But the police and local administration have so far failed to divulge the name of the complainant.

The delegation also visited a mosque in Piprajham village where part of the lane leading to the mosque was forcibly occupied with active police participation. Before the occupation of a part of the lane, 16 Muslim men of the village were arrested and jailed. A room was built on the usurped land during their detention and when the local Muslims protested, police thrashed them, entered their homes and beat up their women as well. The village has 25 Muslim houses and 750 Hindus houses. Local Muslims alleged that the forcible usurpation of the mosque land was done at the behest of the village pradhan and the connivance of the local MLA (Brahma Shankar Tripathi) who is a minister in the current U.P. government.

3. One-sided riots: The delegation visited some villages like Misrpatti, Dubauli Bazar, Madhopur, Kothahi (Chappan Tola) and Malokahi where, among other places, one-sided riots have been instigated since 2013 to usurp Muslim land or on minor issues with a view to teach Muslims a lesson with active local police support. In some of these places like the villages of Molokahi and Madhopur, Muslims had to flee to save their lives and could return only after weeks. Counter cases were filed against them to force them to withdraw their complaints.

The delegation has found that the atrocities against Kushinagar Muslims, kidnappings of their young girls, anti-mosque agitation, and engineered riots are going on with the active support of the local police and administration.

The AIMMM asks the U.P. government to take notice of these atrocities, send a high-level committee to the district to examine the situation, reassure its harassed Muslims and issue strict orders to the local police and administration to act impartially and in accordance with law.

Mexican officials chipped away at ‘El Chapo’s’ network to recapture him

The leader of the Sinaloa cartel, who had been locked up in what has been described as the country’s most impenetrable prison, was recaptured in western Mexico after a shootout that left five dead.

By Joshua Partlow-January 9

CULIACAN, Mexico — From the moment Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán popped out of his tunnel and was whisked to a pair of waiting Cessnas, Mexican authorities chipped away at the vast network of accomplices that helped the billionaire drug lord escape from maximum-security prison.

[In Mexican town where ‘Chapo’ broke out of jail, admiration and awe]

In a statement Friday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Guzmán’s capture represented “a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States, and a vindication of the rule of law in our countries.” She later called her Mexican counterpart, Gómez, to congratulate her.

Mexican Officials Chipped Away at ‘El Chapo’s’ Network to Recapture Him by Thavam Ratna