Syrian rebels down Russian plane, kill pilot

The scene shows, what according to Syrian rebels were fires caused by Russian military plane shot down by rebel forces near Idlib, Syria, reportedly on February 3, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media via REUTERS

FEBRUARY 3, 2018

AMMAN/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syrian rebels shot down a Russian warplane on Saturday and killed its pilot on the ground after he ejected from the plane, Russia’s defence ministry and Syrian rebels said.

The incident took place in an area of Syria’s northern Idlib province that has seen heavy air strikes and fighting on the ground between government forces backed by Russia and Iran, and rebels who oppose President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrians opposed to Assad see Russia as an invading force they blame for the deaths of thousands of civilians since Moscow joined the war on the side of the Syrian government in 2015.

The Russian plane was shot down over the town of Khan al-Subl near the city of Saraqeb, close to a major highway where the Syrian army and Iranian-backed militias are trying to advance, a rebel source said.

Although the Russian pilot escaped the crash, he was killed by rebels who had tried to capture him, the source said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the aircraft was downed by a portable surface-to-air missile. The pilot reported that he had ejected by parachute, and he was later killed on the ground.

“The pilot died in a fight with terrorists,” it said.

Tass news agency quoted the Russian Defence Ministry as saying Moscow retaliated with a strike from an undisclosed high-precision weapon that killed more than 30 militants in an area of Idlib province where the plane was downed.

The Syrian opposition had shown on social media what they said was the wreckage of the plane and the body of the pilot surrounded by rebels.

They said the downed warplane was one of the planes used to target civilian convoys fleeing along a major Syrian highway from villages that the army and foreign militias had overrun.

Syria’s civil war, which is now entering its eighth year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven more than 11 million from their homes.

A Russian plane was blamed for the death of seven civilians and scores of injuries after cars were targeted on the highway, according to a witness and two rebels sources.

Syrian soldiers and Iranian-backed militiamen were now around twelve kilometres from Saraqeb, advancing towards the Damascus-Aleppo highway under cover of heavy Russian air strikes, two opposition sources said.

At least five civilians were killed in Saraqeb city on Saturday, which residents blamed on Russian planes.

Syrians in rebel-held areas say they can distinguish between Russian warplanes and those of the Syrian air force, because the Russian planes fly at higher altitude.

Residents say thousands of people have been forced by air strikes to flee the area, moving further north to the safety of makeshift camps on the Syrian side of the Turkish border.

Russia’s Defence Ministry regularly says it targets only hardline Islamist militants in Syria.

Rough political road lies ahead for Modi

 Saturday, 3 February 2018 

Given the drubbing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got in the by-elections in Rajasthan and West Bengal, results of which were announced on Thursday, its Supremo and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has to gird up his loins to face tough challenges to his supremacy in the coming months.

He is to face elections to four State Assemblies and parliament to boot. Before the parliamentary elections in May 2019, there will be State Assembly elections in Mizoram (December 2018); Chattisgarsh (January 2019); Madhya Pradesh (January 2019) and Rajasthan (January 2019).

On Thursday, the BJP, which heads the Rajasthan Government, lost the by-lections for the Lok Sabha (parliament) seats in Alwar and Ajmer. It also lost the Mandalgarh State Assembly seat. The victor was the Congress led by Rahul Gandhi, both entities ridiculed and written off by the BJP and the Indian intelligentsia after the Modi’s stunning victory in the May 2014 parliamentary elections. The banished ghost has come back to haunt the over-confident BJP and its right wing extremist allies.

In West Bengal, where the BJP is hoping to capture power from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the BJP failed to win the Uluberia Lok Sabha constituency and the Noapara assembly constituency which were up for grabs.

In both Rajasthan and West Bengal, the BJP was beaten by large margins.

Former Rajasthan Congress Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said: “This is a precursor to not just state assembly polls later this year but also the next Lok Sabha elections. The BJP government hasn’t done anything in the past four years.”

The President of the Rajasthan Congress unit, Sachin Pilot, said that the BJP’s politics of communal and caste mobilisation involving the creation of animosities and divisions, has not worked. The youth now want jobs and farmers want relief from difficulties and not communalism or casteism.

Even before the by-elections, the Congress had won a majority of seats in local bodies such as Zila Parishads, Panchayat Samitis and Municipalities.

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) upset the BJP’s calculations and romped home easily in both the by-polls held there. In the Uluberia Lok Sabha constituency, TMC candidate Sajda Ahmed defeated Anupam Mallick of the BJP by 474,023 votes to retain the seat for the party.

The result was more or less similar in Noapara State Assembly constituency, where TMC won by a huge margin. Only here, the party wrested the seat from the Congress which had allied with the Left in the last assembly elections and bagged this seat.

The BJP’s tactic of creating Muslim sentiment did not work in West Bengal as one of the victorious candidates was a Muslim.

BJP’s record

The BJP under Modi had put up a stunning performance in the parliamentary elections in May 2014. It won 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, while the ruling Congress bit the dust getting just 44. But the BJP’s vote share was not stunning – just 31%.

But shock was awaiting the BJP government in New Delhi right at its doorstep – the Delhi State Assembly. In the Delhi State Assembly elections in February 2015, the people of the capital turned viciously against the BJP. The fledgling Aam Admi Party (AAP) crushed the BJP bagging 67 seats while the BJP got only 3. This after the BJP had won all the parliamentary seats in Delhi in the May 2014 elections.

BJP’s bad performance continued in 2015 when in the Bihar Assembly elections in November that year, the party lost to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Janata Dal United(JDU) coming third in the race.

But after the RJD-JDU coalition broke on the issue of corruption, the JDU struck an alliance with the BJP to form a government.

However, the Assembly elections in the far eastern State of Assam in April 2016, brought much needed relief to the struggling BJP. Riding on local anti-Muslim and anti-minority sentiments, the BJP won 60 seats while the ruling Congress had to make do with just 26.

In February-March 2017, State Assembly elections were held in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Goa. The BJP won decisively in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, capturing power from the Samajwadi Party in the former, and the Congress in the latter.

The BJP had actually lost in Goa but managed to form a government by striking post-election alliances to the detriment of the poll winner, the Congress.

Anti-incumbency had played a decisive role in all these elections. In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi government had become a by-word for corruption and casteism. It was also pro-Muslim at a time when anti-Muslim feelings were rising in the State. Modi capitalised on this by propagating Hindu unity (Hindutwa) over-riding caste divisions. The BJP won 325 seats against 54 by the Samajwadi-Congress combine.

But a shocker was awaiting the BJP and Modi in his home turf of Gujarat. He was expected to walk over this election held in December 2017 after his Uttar Pradesh triumph. Though the BJP retained Gujarat, its tally of seats was down from 115 to 99. The Congress’ tally, on the other hand, went up from 61 to 77. The BJP’s poor performance was marked among the rural folk, the Dalits and the youth who were facing joblessness.

The right wing urban middle class oriented BJP’s model of spurring economic growth at the expense of the downtrodden has had an adverse impact on its electoral prospects.

Frustration is evident even its strongholds like Gujarat and Rajasthan. Its policy of using Hindutwa and anti-Muslim actions to garner the support of the majority Hindus has proved to be only partially effective. Election results show that the final yardstick is economic performance in so far as they help the poor and the marginalised to come up in life. It is the hoi polloi who decide electoral success or failure.

With four State Assembly and parliamentary polls due from now to May 2019, the BJP government is looking to win over farmers with a higher Minimum Support Price (1.5 times the cost of production) and a health insurance scheme through its budget for 2018-2019.

But economists say that the health insurance is too small with an allocation of only INR 20,000 million this year. And it will benefit only the insurance companies they say. In India, health care has gone into private hands with governments wilfully neglecting State hospitals. Further, funds for the insurance scheme are to be collected from taxes on the public. Therefore the poor will be paying for treatment anyway.

Other experts complain that the budget will not help spur demand and encourage entrepreneurs to borrow, investment and export. Modi’s “Make in India” project has only been an empty slogan. The sluggish economy has to be kick-started.

But time is running out for Modi. And between now and the parliamentary elections in May 2019, there will be compelling distractions like the State Assembly elections in Mizoram Chattisgarsh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

If the US and Turkey clash, gates of hell may open further in Middle East

2018-02-02 

The tension between the United States and Turkey strangely did not find mention in Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address on Tuesday, though the events on the ground are as worrisome as the North Korean missile-and-nuclear issue is.

 
As emotions run high in Turkey, the question that looms is: Will there be a war between the United States and Turkey? 

Both the US and Turkey are founder members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). The war of words in recent weeks between the US, a world power, and Turkey, a rising regional power, has stoked fears of yet another gate of hell being opened in the Middle East, where virtually every country is either involved in a war or in a state or war preparedness. 

Relations between the US and Turkey have been under strain since the United States, some three years ago, allied with Syria’s Kurdish rebels, whom Ankara has branded terrorists. Washington found Kurds as natural allies in its ‘delayed’ fight against the ISIS.  The emphasis on the word ‘delayed’ is because the US and its allies such as Saudi Arabia were initially reluctant to take on the ISIS while the terror outfit was making rapid territorial gains in the war against Syrian government troops.  

It was only after Russia’s entry into the Syrian civil war in September 2015 that the US launched a serious campaign against the ISIS in Syria and Iraq, in the backdrop of rising world opinion against ISIS.  In both countries, the Kurds were US allies.

 
Turkey, which has been fighting a Kurdish separatist rebellion for the past four decades, was alarmed over the growing military relationship between the US and the Kurds.  The Kurds form one fifth of Turkey’s population. The Turkish separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), maintains close ideological and military links with the Syrian Kurdish group, YPG, which the US has been arming, training and protecting.  
For Turkey, the redline came when the US last month set up Kurdish safe zones in Syria, ostensibly as a strategic measure to keep the ISIS on the run. But Turkey, sensing that the US move could be a step towards creating an independent Kurdish state, sent troops to Afrin, a US-protected Kurdish safe zone in Syria’s north. 

But it is here that the problem really started between the two Nato allies. Last week, President Trump urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to halt the military operation, codenamed Operation Olive Branch. Trump warned against actions that “could risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.”

But Turkey, sensing that the US move could be a step towards creating an independent Kurdish state, sent troops to Afrin, a US-protected Kurdish safe zone in Syria’s north

Further east from Afrin, the United States maintains some 2,000 troops in the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Manbij.  Turkey, which has deployed some 13,000 troops in Syria, wants to extend the campaign to Manbij – a move that could provoke US counteraction.

According to a White House statement, Trump phoned Erdogan to tell him that the Turkish operation “risks undercutting our shared goals in Syria”. But such warnings had no bearing on the Turks, who see any attempt at creating an independent Kurdish state anywhere in the region as an existential threat.  For Turks, the Kurdish question evokes memories of their War of Independence in 1920. 

Turkey’s war of independence had its origins in attempts by the victorious allied forces to set up an independent Kurdish state from the territory of the defeated Ottoman empire.  In terms of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, a referendum was to be held in the Kurdish region for an independent Kurdish state. The Ottoman emperor concurred, but the Turks opposed it. Military chief Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who had set up a rival government in Ankara declared that, if the Allies wanted to scissor up the Anatolian Peninsula, then they’d have to fight to do it. The war with the Allies went on for two years and ended in victory for Turkey. The Ottoman government was overthrown and the republic was proclaimed.

But since then, the Kurds have remained a minority in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia, and they have been dreaming of a separate state. The closest they came to a separate state was when, in September last year, Iraq’s Kurds held a referendum for secession, only to suppress the victory in the face of military threats from Iraq’s central government. The Kurds in Iraq, however, enjoy a good measure of autonomy with their own parliament and president. 

Since Erdogan’s rise to power in Turkey more than a decade ago, the country has been dreaming the Ottoman dream of becoming a regional power.  Erdogan came to Qatar’s rescue last year, when Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies laid an economic siege on the tiny but rich Gulf state.  
The war in Syria is so complicated that allies turn enemies and vice versa overnight. Turkey is no friend of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, who is also fighting the Kurds. But Assad has opposed the Turkey’s military adventure in Syria. All are, however, supposedly united in their war against the ISIS. But in Syria, ISIS and al Qaeda take many forms. Some, with the sobriquet ‘moderates’, are allied with the US troops and are armed and funded by one Gulf state or another.

Turkey is no friend of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, who is also fighting the Kurds

There were no permanent allies or friends in the Syrian conflict. Every nation involved in the conflict tries to achieve its own national interest. Russia, for instance, at one point was supportive of the PKK when Turkish-Russia relations suffered a nosedive after Turkey shot down a Russian war plane in November 2015. But the following year, Turkey became Russia’s ally with President Erdogan accusing the US of having a hand in the failed military coup in August 2016. Since then, Turkey has supported efforts by Russia to find a solution to the Syrian crisis, much to the chagrin of the US. Turkey has also shown interest in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Relations between the US and Turkey took a further beating when Turkey arrested a US embassy staff member and the US refused to accede to Turkey’s request for the extradition of a popular Turkish scholar and religious leader, whom Ankara has accused of orchestrating the 2016 coup.
However, in this US-Turkey eyeball-to-eyeball game, the US has apparently blinked.  But a victory for Turkey is wishful thinking.  For the past three years, the Syrian Kurds, with the US military help, have been running a separate state of sorts in areas under their control. But they are deeply frustrated with the US, for it has abandoned the Kurds in the face of the Turkish offensive on Afrin.

  
The US behaviour raises a question of trust: Help is there as long as it serves the US interest. This is a key lesson in realpolitik.  
Well, the ultimate winners in this game will be Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They can’t be happier at the prospect of two Nato allies in combat.  The ultimate losers, as usual, will be the people. More wars mean, more civilian casualties and displacements. 

North Korea supplied arms to Syria and Myanmar, UN sanctions report finds

• Ballistic missile and chemical programmes may have benefited
• Pyongyang made nearly $200m in illicit commodity exports in 2017

North Korea has supplied weapons to Syria and Myanmar, according to a confidential report by independent United Nations monitors which also said Pyongyang violated UN sanctions to earn nearly $200m in 2017.

Reuters at the United Nations Fri 2 Feb 2018 21.56 GMT

The report to a UN security council sanctions committee, seen by Reuters on Friday, said monitors had investigated ongoing ballistic missile cooperation between Syria and Myanmar, including more than 40 previously unreported North Korea shipments between 2012 and 2017 to Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which oversees the country’s chemical weapons programme.

The investigation has shown “further evidence of arms embargo and other violations, including through the transfer of items with utility in ballistic missile and chemical weapons programs”, the UN monitors wrote.

They also inspected cargo from two North Korea shipments intercepted by unidentified countries en route to Syria. Both contained acid-resistant tiles that could cover an area equal to a large-scale industrial project, the monitors reported.

One country, which was not identified, told the monitors the seized shipments could “be used to build bricks for the interior wall of a chemical factory”.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013. However, diplomats and weapons inspectors suspect Syria may have secretly maintained or developed a new chemical weapons capability.

The Syrian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the UN report.

The UN monitors also said one country, which they did not identify, reported it had evidence that Myanmar received ballistic missile systems from North Korea, along with conventional weapons, including multiple rocket launchers and surface-to-air missiles.

Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN, Hau Do Suan, said the Myanmar government “has no ongoing arms relationship, whatsoever, with North Korea” and is abiding by the U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The report also said Pyongyang had shipped coal to ports, including in Russia, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam, mainly using false paperwork that showed countries such as Russia and China as the coal origin, instead of North Korea.

The 15-member council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in an effort to choke funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, banning exports including coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.

“The DPRK [North Korea] is already flouting the most recent resolutions by exploiting global oil supply chains, complicit foreign nationals, offshore company registries and the international banking system,” the UN monitors wrote in the 213-page report.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the UN report. Russia and China have repeatedly said they are implementing UN sanctions on North Korea.

Under a 2016 resolution, the UN security council capped coal exports and required countries to report any imports of North Korean coal to the council sanctions committee. It then banned all exports of coal by North Korea on 5 August.

Members of the UN security council vote during a meeting on sanctions against North Korea on 2 March 2016. Photograph: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

The UN monitors investigated 16 coal shipments between January and 5 August to ports in Russia, China, Malaysia and Vietnam. They said Malaysia reported one shipment to the council committee and the remaining 15 shipments violated sanctions.

After the coal ban was imposed on 5 August, the UN monitors investigated 23 coal shipments to ports in Russia, China, South Korea and Vietnam. The UN monitors said all those shipments “would constitute a violation of the resolution, if confirmed”.

“The DPRK combined deceptive navigation patterns, signals manipulation, transshipments as well as fraudulent documentation to obscure the origin of the coal,” the monitors said.

The UN monitors “also investigated cases of ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products in violation [of UN sanctions].”

The monitors said one country told them North Korea had carried out such transfers off its ports of Wonsan and Nampo and in international waters between the Yellow Sea and East China Sea between October and January.

Syrian Kurds vow revenge over mutilated body of female fighter

Video of the mutilated body of Barin Kobani circulated on social media

A YPG parade in Syria (AFP)

Saturday 3 February 2018 

Kurdish groups vowed to take revenge on Saturday against Turkish-backed Syrian rebels after footage emerged of militants gathered around the mutilated body of a dead Kurdish female fighter. 

The footage surfaced on Friday and sparked outrage amongst Kurds inside Syria and diaspora communities in Iraq and across Europe. 

 A YPJ official identified the young woman as Barin Kobani, who took part in a US-backed campaign to drive the Islamic State militants group from the northern town of Kobane.

In response to the video, the Kurdish community reacted with outrage, and social media users shared online a portrait of Kobani smiling next to another shot of her brutalised body.

"Barin did not surrender, she fought to the death," said Amad Kandal, an official with the Women's Protection Units, vowing to avenge her comrade's brutal murder.

"This kind of behaviour will only serve to reinforce our determination to resist until victory," said Kandal.

This kind of behaviour will only serve to reinforce our determination to resist until victory

- Amad Kandal, official with Women's Protection Units

Turkey and allied Syrian rebels have since 20 January pressed an offensive against the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, whose Kurdish fighters Ankara views as "terrorists".

The Kurds in a statement blamed the "terrorist allies of the enemy Turkish state" for mutilating the body of Kobani, who was a member of the all-female Kurdish Women's Protection Units (YPG).

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Saturday said that it was forming a follow-up committee and intended to investigate the allegations made against its troops. 

In the statement, the FSA announced that it wouldn’t hesitate to punish individuals “involved in the incident if true."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said it received the video from a Syrian rebel fighting with Turkish forces in the Afrin offensive.

The rebel told the Observatory the footage was filmed on Tuesday after rebels found the young woman's corpse in the village of Qurna near the Turkish border in the north of the enclave.

In the footage, a dozen men, some armed, gather around the badly mutilated body of a woman lying on the ground.

View image on Twitter

Para Keta@ParaKeta

#YPJ: What has been done by Turkish soldiers & Al-Qaeda faction in mutilating the corpse of our comrade fighter, confirms that Turkish army is fundamentally not different from Al-Qaeda. In such a bestial scene, it's proven to the world the identity of real terrorists in #Afrin.

2:55 AM - Feb 3, 2018

•  88 Replies
 
•  145145 Retweets
 
•  178178 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

YPG male and female fighters have taken part in the battle by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to expel IS militants from large parts of Syria.

SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said the video of the fighter's body was reason to continue fighting back against Turkey and its allies.

"Imagine the savagery of these invaders with the bodies of our daughters. How would they behave if they took control of our neighbourhoods?" he wrote on Facebook.

"All this hatred and barbarity leaves us with a single option: to continue the resistance," he said.

Afrin resident Hussein Cheikho, 65, said he was "deeply pained" when he saw pictures of Kobani's mutilated body but said her death will not be in vain.

"The death of a young man or a young woman will not weaken us. Out strength will be bolstered every day," he said.

Indonesia’s parliament looks to criminalise homosexuality

Source: Peter Hershey/Unsplash

By Max Walden | 2nd February 2018

JUST months after its southern neighbour Australia legalised gay marriage, Indonesia’s parliament is considering a controversial bill which would officially criminalise extramarital sex including homosexuality for the first time.

After one parliamentarian recently erroneously claimed that certain political parties supported LGBT rights and the legalisation of gay marriage, lawmakers in the House of Representatives are now looking to introduce changes to the criminal code which would criminalise same-sex relations, as well as impose new restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly.

While adultery is already illegal in the world’s largest Muslim country, homosexuality is not explicitly outlawed unlike in neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore. Recent years have, however, seen a marked uptick in anti-LGBT sentiment amid the rise of increasingly influential, fundamentalist strains of Islam in Indonesia.

SEE ALSO: LGBT activists in Indonesia face rising death threats

In 2017, more than 100 people were arrested in raids on ‘gay parties’ in Jakarta, Bogor, Surabaya and elsewhere, many being charged Indonesia’s loosely-defined pornography laws. The country’s Attorney General posted a job advertisement in September which barred LGBT applicants and referred to homosexuality as a mental illness.

The Indonesian communications ministry said this week that Google had agreed to remove the gay social media app Blued from its Play Store. The government has requested some 73 LGBT-friendly apps be removed from Play Store, reported Kompas, of which 14 have been deleted to date.

Ahead of important provincial elections this year and the presidential poll in 2019, the crackdown against LGBT Indonesians continues unabated.

The revised criminal code – which has been suggested for introduction as soon as Valentine’s Day – proposes a wide range of harsh new penalties for various ‘moral’ offences, spreading fake news, insulting authority and even hosting public party without a permit.

Indonesian children walk past a banner reading ‘Indonesia LGBT Emergency’ in front a mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, January 25, 2018. Source: Reuters/Beawiharta

Women’s rights activists fear it will applied selectively to criminalise their activities. For example, providing information about contraception without a permit will be punishable by fines of up to 10 million Rupiah (US$745).

“From a human rights perspective, the increased criminalisation [of sexual behaviour] seems to far outweigh its benefits,” said Imam Nahe’i of the National Commission on Violence Against Women, as quoted by The Jakarta Post.

Worryingly for any politically active Indonesian, the bill also includes punishment for “insulting” authority or state institutions, which is punishable by a year imprisonment or up to US$3,700.

SEE ALSO: Why are LGBT Indonesians under siege?

In public debates of the legislation, however, cracking down on the LGBT community has been the emphasis.

When polled, Indonesians overwhelmingly disapprove of non-heterosexual relationships. A national survey released last week by local pollster Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting showed that of those who had heard of the LGBT community, almost 90 percent felt “threatened” by them.

Half said they wouldn’t accept an LGBT person in their own family, 80 percent said they wouldn’t tolerate LGBT people as neighbours, while a majority said they would not approve of LGBT people in public office. A slim majority of respondents – 57.7 percent – believed that LGBT people have the right to live in Indonesia.

“You can see how I’m ‘dangerous’ and ‘not supposed to be protected’ in my own country,” said Andri*, a gay man, in relation to the study. “I wanna leave this country if I had the chance,” he told Asian Correspondent via WhatsApp.

But the changes in law sought by parliamentarians are “relevant with the majority” in Indonesia, he said.

Women’s and LGBT activists protest at the Women’s March Jakarta in the Indonesian capital on 4 March 2017. Source: Women’s March Jakarta

Indonesia’s Constitutional Court recently rejected a proposal from a conservative Islamic group calling itself the Family Love Alliance, which would have criminalised extra-marital sex and homosexuality, ruling that it was for parliament to pass legislation.

Nevertheless, as Family Love Alliance member Euis Sunarti recently told Reuters: “the truth is the majority of religions in Indonesia hold the same values, so… [the revisions] are representative of the majority and of all cultures in Indonesia.”

The Wahid Foundation this week released a study into the attitudes of Muslim women across Indonesia, finding that more than a quarter said LGBT were their “most disliked” group.

“If the proposed revision of criminal code actually becomes law, these vigilante attacks will only increase,” wrote Naila Rizqi Zakiah, a lawyer for Jakarta-based community legal centre LBH Masyarakat.

SEE ALSO: Rights groups slam Aceh transgender raid as investigation ordered

“People will likely feel they have the right to conduct raids on LGBT Indonesians, teenagers, unmarried couples, or even married couples,” she said. People with Islamic customary marriages – common in Indonesia but not formally recognised by the state – could also be prosecuted under the laws.

“Sexual minorities are increasingly under threat from persecution by those claiming to uphold morality and religion,” a Jakarta Post editorial on Thursday said, arguing that Indonesia should be striving to protect LGBT rights as it seeks a spot on the United Nations Security Council.

“While we raise solidarity for the Rohingya and fight for the coveted UN seat, our minorities may join Myanmar’s Muslims in fleeing for asylum from the largest Muslim populated country.”

Not only do members of the LGBT community face threats of violence, but also “rejection by their families, neighbourhoods and universities” advocacy coordinator at local LGBT rights organisation Arus Pelangi told Asian Correspondent last year. “The situation is getting worse and worse.”

Maya civilization was much vaster than known, thousands of newly discovered structures reveal

This digital 3-D image provided by Guatemala's Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation, PACUNAM, shows a depiction of the Maya archaeological site at Tikal in Guatemala created using lidar aerial mapping technology.  (Canuto & Auld-Thomas/PACUNAM via AP)

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. February 3 at 3:22 PM

Archaeologists have spent more than a century traipsing through the Guatemalan jungle, Indiana Jones-style, searching through dense vegetation to learn what they could about the Maya civilization that was one of the dominant societies in Mesoamerica for centuries.

But the latest discovery — one archaeologists are calling a “game changer” — didn't even require a can of bug spray.

Scientists using high-tech, airplane-based lidar mapping tools have discovered tens of thousands of structures constructed by the Maya: defense works, houses, buildings, industrial-size agricultural fields, even new pyramids. The findings, announced Thursday, are already reshaping long-held views about the size and scope of the Maya civilization.

“This world, which was lost to this jungle, is all of a sudden revealed in the data,” said Albert Yu-Min Lin, an engineer and National Geographic explorer who worked on a television special about the new find. “And what you thought was this massively understood, studied civilization is all of a sudden brand new again,” he told the New York Times

[ Archaeologists unearth a 500-year-old tower of skulls — and another gruesome Aztec mystery ]

Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist at Ithaca College who led the project, called it monumental: “This is a game changer,” he told NPR. It changes “the base level at which we do Maya archaeology.”
The findings were announced by Guatemala's Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation, which has been working with the lidar system alongside a group of European and U.S. archaeologists.

The lidar system fires rapid laser pulses at surfaces — sometimes as many as 150,000 pulses per second — and measures how long it takes that light to return to sophisticated measuring equipment.

Doing that over and over again lets scientists create a topographical map of sorts. Computer modeling allows the researchers to virtually strip away half a million acres of jungle that has grown over the ruins. What's left is a surprisingly clear picture of how a 10th-century Maya would see the landscape.
Scientists used similar scans to unearth a network of ancient cities in Angkor, the heart of the Khmer empire in Cambodia that includes the famed Angkor Wat, according to the Times.

The find was as astonishing as it was humbling, archaeologists said.

The plane that shot lidar pulses at pieces of the Guatemalan jungle did so in less than a day. It unearthed Maya structures researchers had literally walked over before, including a temple they thought was a hill.

Using the data, researchers have been able to refine their thoughts about Maya civilization.

According to the Associated Press, researchers now believe that as many as 10 million people may have lived in the area known as the Maya Lowlands — two or three times as many as scientists had thought. And because all those people needed to eat, in some areas, 95 percent of available land was drained — including areas that have not been farmed since the Maya fell.

“Their agriculture is much more intensive and therefore sustainable than we thought, and they were cultivating every inch of the land,” Francisco Estrada-Belli, a research assistant professor at Tulane University, told the AP.

During the Maya classic period, which stretched from A.D. 250 to 900, the civilization covered an area twice the size of medieval England, according to National Geographic, and was much more densely populated.

[ Mexico’s Teotihuacan ruins may have been “Teohuacan” ]

“Most people had been comfortable with population estimates of around 5 million,” said Estrada-Belli, who directs a multidisciplinary archaeological project at Holmul, Guatemala. “With this new data, it’s no longer unreasonable to think that there were 10 to 15 million people there — including many living in low-lying, swampy areas that many of us had thought uninhabitable.”

Lidar revealed a previously undetected structure that Garrison told the AP “can’t be called anything other than a Maya fortress.”

That and other newly discovered fortresses indicate that the Maya may have been involved in more conflict — even outright warfare — than previously believed.

“It’s this hilltop citadel that has these ditch and rampart systems. … When I went there, one of these things in nine meters [30 feet] tall,” he said.

Researchers also have a newfound way of thinking about the jungle: as both impediment and preserver.

The remains of other cultures have been destroyed by generation upon generation of farming. But after the Maya abandoned their empire in A.D. 900, the jungle grew over abandoned fields and structures.

It hid them but also helped to conserve them.

“In this, the jungle, which has hindered us in our discovery efforts for so long, has actually worked as this great preservative tool of the impact the culture had across the landscape,” Garrison said.

Philippines gripped by dengue vaccine fears

Enrique Domingo expressed concerns about potential epidemics in the Philippines

2 February 2018

Fears over a dengue vaccine in the Philippines have led to a big drop in immunisation rates for preventable diseases, officials have warned.

Health Under-Secretary Enrique Domingo said many parents were refusing to get their children vaccinated for polio, chicken pox and tetanus.

The fears centre on Dengvaxia, a drug developed by French company Sanofi.

Sanofi and local experts say there is no evidence linking the deaths of 14 children to the drug.

However, the company had warned last year that the vaccine could make the disease worse in some people not infected before.

Dengue fever affects more than 400 million people each year around the world. Dengvaxia is the world's first vaccine against dengue.

The mosquito-borne disease is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in some Asian and Latin American countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

What did Mr Domingo say about immunisation rates?

"Our programmes are suffering... (people) are scared of all vaccines now", he warned.

Mr Domingo added that vaccination rates for some preventable diseases had dropped as much as 60% in recent years - significantly lower that the nationwide target of 85%.

Dengue is a potentially deadly mosquito-borne disease

Mr Domingo expressed concerns about potential epidemics in the Philippines - a nation of about 100 million people, many of whom are impoverished.

What triggered fears about Dengvaxia?

More than 800,000 children were vaccinated across the country in 2016-17. Fourteen of them have died.

Dengvaxia immunisations were halted last year, as the Philippines launched an investigation into what caused the deaths.

On Saturday, Doctors for Public Welfare (DPW) said a clinical review conducted by Philippine General Hospital forensic pathologists had determined that the deaths were not linked to the vaccine, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported.

What about Sanofi's reaction?

In a statement, the French company said: "The University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital expert panel confirmed... that there is currently no evidence directly linking the Dengvaxia vaccine to any of the 14 deaths.

"In Dengvaxia clinical trials conducted over more than a decade and the over one million doses of the vaccine administered, no deaths related to the vaccine have been reported to us.

"Clinical evidence confirms dengue vaccination in the Philippines will provide a net reduction in dengue disease."

Last November, Sanofi announced that its vaccine could worsen the potentially deadly disease in people not previously infected.

"For those not previously infected by dengue virus, however, the analysis found that in the longer term, more cases of severe disease could occur following vaccination upon a subsequent dengue infection," the firm said in a statement.

Sanofi says Dengvaxia has been registered in 19 countries and launched in 11 of them.

In its latest advice on the vaccine, the WHO said that "until a full review has been conducted, WHO recommends vaccination only in individuals with a documented past dengue infection".

Recent vaccine controversies:

• 'Anti-vax' movement: activities in the past few years by fringe campaigners against immunisation - particularly for measles - lead to falling immunisation rates in France, Italy and the US

• Polio: Islamist militants in Pakistan have carried out attacks against workers vaccinating children in recent years. The militants say immunisation is a Western campaign to sterilise Pakistani children
• MMR (measles, mumps and rubella): starts with a publication of a 1998 paper falsely linking the vaccine to autism. This leads to a drop in immunisation rates in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.