Student leader release fails to quell Bangladesh protests

Student leader release fails to quell Bangladesh protests
Student action against civil service job quotas sparked days of unrest that killed at least 206 people last month. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 02 August 2024
Follow

Student leader release fails to quell Bangladesh protests

Student leader release fails to quell Bangladesh protests
  • Student rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem that killed at least 206 people last month
  • The violence was some of the worst of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure

DHAKA: Demonstrations in Bangladesh after Friday prayers demanded justice for victims of nationwide unrest and police crackdown, after the release of protest leaders failed to quell public anger.
Student rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem that killed at least 206 people last month, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data.
The violence was some of the worst of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure, and the actions of her government’s security forces provoked widespread rancor at home and international criticism abroad.
A day after police freed six top members of the group which organized the initial protests, its leaders urged their compatriots to once again return to the streets.
“We want justice for the murders of our sisters and brothers,” Students Against Discrimination said in a statement.
Thousands of young men in the capital Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong heeded the call after midday worship in the Muslim-majority nation, defying torrential monsoon rains.
“Why are our brothers in graves and the killers outside?” one crowd chanted outside the country’s largest mosque in central Dhaka, a teeming megacity of 20 million people.
Students Against Discrimination had demanded the release of its detained leaders, three of whom were forcibly checked out of a hospital and taken away by plainclothes police last week.
Their release was a sign the government was hoping to “de-escalate tensions” with protesters, University of Oslo researcher Mubashar Hasan said on Thursday.
But other demands by the students remain unmet, including a public apology from Hasina for the violence and the dismissal of several of her ministers.
They have also insisted that the government reopen schools and universities around the country, all of which were shuttered at the height of the unrest.
Many protesters have gone further, demanding Hasina step down altogether.
“She must go,” writer and activist Arup Rahee said from a rally in the capital. “There will be no justice for the student murders if she remains in power.”
Internet outage monitor Netblocks reported that service providers had again restricted access to Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram, all used last month to organize protests.
“We were instructed by the authorities to block Facebook,” said an official from one phone company, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.
Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.
Demonstrations began in early July over the reintroduction of a quota scheme — since scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court — that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.
With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.
Critics say the quota system was used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League.
Last month’s protests had remained largely peaceful until attacks on demonstrators by police and pro-government student groups.
Hasina’s government eventually imposed a nationwide curfew, deployed troops and shut down the nation’s mobile Internet network for 11 days to restore order.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell this week condemned the police clampdown that followed for “excessive and lethal force against protesters and others,” urging an independent investigation into their conduct.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters last weekend that security forces had operated with restraint but were “forced to open fire” to defend government buildings.
At least 32 children were among those killed last month, the UN children’s agency said Friday.
Diplomats said Hasina’s government had approached the United Nations to assist with its own probe into the unrest but had been rebuffed.
“The UN called for an impartial, independent and transparent investigation into all alleged human rights violations,” a United Nations official said on condition of anonymity.
“The UN, however, does not support national investigations in the way that is being suggested.”


India asks top court not to toughen marital rape penalties

India asks top court not to toughen marital rape penalties
Updated 7 sec ago
Follow

India asks top court not to toughen marital rape penalties

India asks top court not to toughen marital rape penalties
  • Penal code introduced during British colonial rule of India explicitly states that ‘sexual acts by a man with his own wife... is not rape’
  • India’s current penal code mandates a minimum 10-year sentence for those convicted of rape
MUMBAI: India’s government has asked the country’s top court not to toughen criminal penalties against marital rape during an ongoing case brought by campaigners seeking to outlaw it.
The penal code introduced in the 19th century during British colonial rule of India explicitly states that “sexual acts by a man with his own wife... is not rape.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government enacted an overhauled code in July which retains that clause, despite the decade-long court challenge by activists seeking to make marital rape illegal.
India’s interior ministry filed an affidavit to the Supreme Court on Thursday stating that while marital rape should result in “penal consequences,” the legal system should treat it more leniently than rape committed outside of marriage.
“A husband certainly does not have any fundamental right to violate the consent of his wife,” the affidavit said, according to The Indian Express newspaper.
“However, attracting the crime in the nature of ‘rape’ as recognized in India to the institution of marriage can be arguably considered to be excessively harsh.”
India’s current penal code mandates a minimum 10-year sentence for those convicted of rape.
The government’s statement said that marital rape was adequately addressed in existing laws, including a 2005 law protecting women from domestic violence.
That law recognizes sexual abuse as a form of domestic violence but does not prescribe any criminal penalties to perpetrators.
Another section of the penal code punishes broadly defined acts of “cruelty” by a husband against their wife with prison terms of up to three years.
Six percent of Indian married women aged 18-49 have reported spousal sexual violence, according to the government’s latest National Family Health Survey conducted from 2019 to 2021.
In the world’s most populous country, that implies more than 10 million women have been victims of sexual violence at the hands of their husbands.
Nearly 18 percent of married women also feel they cannot say no if their husbands want sex, according to the survey.
Divorce remains taboo across much of India with only one in every 100 marriages ending in dissolution, often owing to family and social pressure to sustain unhappy marriages.
Chronic backlogs in India’s criminal justice system mean some cases take decades to reach a resolution, and the case pushing for the criminalization of marital rape has made painfully slow progress.
It was referred to the Supreme Court after a two-judge bench in the Delhi High Court issued a split verdict in May 2022.
One judge in that case ruled that while “one may disapprove” of a husband forcibly having sex with his wife, that “cannot be equated with the act of ravishing by a stranger.”

Brazilians choose mayors, councilors in bellwether election

Brazilians choose mayors, councilors in bellwether election
Updated 22 min 37 sec ago
Follow

Brazilians choose mayors, councilors in bellwether election

Brazilians choose mayors, councilors in bellwether election
  • The municipal outcome will serve as a bellwether of political sentiment in a deeply divided country
  • The election campaign has taken place in the absence of Brazil’s most popular political platform

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilians go to the polls Sunday to elect mayors and councilors in more than 5,500 cities after a vitriolic, sometimes violent, campaign two years after presidential elections that polarized Latin America’s biggest country.
As the prelude to the next presidential vote in 2026, the municipal outcome will serve as a bellwether of political sentiment in a country deeply divided between followers of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro backers stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court after he lost the vote in 2022, calling for the military to oust Lula and claiming, without evidence, that the election was stolen.
Bolsonaro, now under investigation over those events, remains hugely influential.
In Sao Paulo, Latin America’s biggest city, he has backed incumbent mayor Ricardo Nunes to retain the mayorship.
Lula, for his part, has come out in support of MP Guilherme Boulos.
But adding a new dimension to a traditional political rift, outsider career coach and influencer Pablo Marcal has become a surprise hit with voters — with polls showing a near three-way tie between the men.
Rightwing Marcal, a provocative 37-year-old, has brought chaos to the campaign.
Regularly accused of spreading fake news, he has been thrown out of several debates — one of which saw an exasperated rival beat him with a chair.
With his aggressive style of politics, Marcal has attracted votes even from the Bolsonarista bloc, as well as Evangelical sectors and staunch opponents of “communism” — a tag Bolsonaro has regularly tried to put on Lula.
Alarmed by the rise of Marcal, Brazilian artists, intellectuals, businessmen and legal scholars have urged residents of Sao Paulo not to split their vote and unite behind Boulos to avoid a “tragic” outcome for the city.
In Rio de Janeiro, centrist mayor Eduardo Paes is by far the favorite for a fourth term.
His closest rival, rightwing MP Alexandre Ramagem, has proven a controversial choice — he is under investigation for allegedly spying on politicians and other public figures when he served as head of intelligence under then-president Bolsonaro.
There have been concerns raised over alleged organized crime infiltration of municipal politics, with the head of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal warning of attempts to influence the election outcome in some municipalities.
In September, there were at least a dozen attacks on and threats against candidates for mayor and other municipal posts, and three deaths, according to press reports.
The election campaign has taken place in the absence of Brazil’s most popular political platform.
Social network X has been suspended in the country since August 31 in a disinformation tug-of-war between the Supreme Court and owner Elon Musk.
It also occurred as the country battled record fires and a critical drought fueled by climate change, according to experts.
Yet the environmental emergency confronting Brazil, from the Amazon rainforest to the Pantanal wetlands and beyond, hardly feature in the campaign.
Overall, polling does not bode well for Lula’s Workers’ Party which may, once again, find itself without a single state capital.
“Not even the political strength of the (president) or the good numbers of the economy seem able to reverse” the party’s years-long decline, said political analyst Andre Cesar.
Polls show that 11 of the 26 state capitals, including Rio de Janeiro, could elect their mayor in the first voting round.
If no candidate obtains more than 50 percent of votes cast, the contest will be settled in a second election round on October 27.


Japan PM warns ‘today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia’

Japan PM warns ‘today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia’
Updated 04 October 2024
Follow

Japan PM warns ‘today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia’

Japan PM warns ‘today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia’
  • Japan’s relations with China have deteriorated in recent years as Beijing asserts its military presence around disputed territories in the region and Tokyo boosts security ties with the United States

TOKYO: Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba warned in his first policy speech Friday that “today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia” while also dubbing the country’s low birth rate a “quiet emergency.”
“Many fear that today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia. Why did deterrence not work in Ukraine?” Ishiba told parliament.
“Combined with the situation in the Middle East, the international community is becoming increasingly divided and confrontational,” the 67-year-old former defense minister said.
Japan’s relations with China have deteriorated in recent years as Beijing asserts its military presence around disputed territories in the region and Tokyo boosts security ties with the United States and its allies.
In August, a Chinese military aircraft staged the first confirmed incursion by China into Japanese airspace, followed weeks later by a Japanese warship sailing through the Taiwan Strait for the first time.
Ishiba backs the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO, saying on Tuesday that the security environment in Asia was “the most severe since the end of World War II.”
Japan, like many developed countries, is facing a looming demographic crisis as its population ages and the birth rate stays stubbornly low.
The country has the world’s oldest population after tiny Monaco, according to the World Bank.
Last year its birth rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her life — stood at 1.2, well below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the population.
On Friday, Ishiba called the birth rate situation a “quiet emergency,” adding that the government will promote measures to support families such as flexible working hours.
Kishida was unpopular with voters because of a string of scandals and inflation squeezing earnings in the world’s fourth-biggest economy.
Ishiba wants to boost incomes through a new monetary stimulus package as well as support for regional governments and low-income households.
Within this decade, he said Friday he wants to hike the average national minimum wage to 1,500 yen ($10.20) per hour, up nearly 43 percent from the current 1,050 yen.
The yen surged last Friday after the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) voted Ishiba leader, because he had broadly backed the Bank of Japan’s exit from its ultra-loose policies.
But Ishiba told reporters late Wednesday that he did not think the environment was right for further interest rate hikes, sending the Japanese currency south again.
On Friday morning, one dollar bought 146.42 yen, having slightly recovered from levels past 147 earlier this week.


Vietnam condemns China for assault on its fishermen in the disputed South China Sea

Vietnam condemns China for assault on its fishermen in the disputed South China Sea
Updated 04 October 2024
Follow

Vietnam condemns China for assault on its fishermen in the disputed South China Sea

Vietnam condemns China for assault on its fishermen in the disputed South China Sea
  • Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed Chinese law enforcement personnel on Thursday for the high-seas attack, saying it “seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty in the Paracel islands

HANOI: Vietnam condemned China on Thursday, saying Chinese law enforcement personnel assaulted 10 Vietnamese fishermen, damaged their fishing gear and seized about 4 tons of fish catch near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
The fishermen reported the assault near the Chinese-controlled islands by radio on Sunday but did not identify the attackers.
Three of the fishermen suffered broken limbs and the rest sustained other injuries, according to Vietnamese state media. Some were taken on stretchers to a hospital after they returned to Quang Ngai province late Monday.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed Chinese law enforcement personnel on Thursday for the high-seas attack, saying they had “seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty in the Paracel Islands,” international law and an agreement by the leaders of the two countries to better manage their territorial disputes.
Chinese officials did not immediately issue a reaction.
Vietnam conveyed a protest and alarm over the attack to the Chinese ambassador in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
Vietnam demanded that Beijing respect its sovereignty in the Paracel Islands, launch an investigation and provide it with information about the attack, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said in a statement.
China has become increasingly aggressive in asserting its claims in virtually the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in global trade transits each year. The sea passage is also believed to be sitting atop vast undersea deposits of oil and gas.
Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the strategic waterway.
The United States has no claims in the disputed waters, but has deployed Navy ships and Air Force fighter jets to patrol the waterway and promote freedom of navigation and overflight. China has warned the US not to meddle in what it says is a purely Asian dispute.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement Thursday on the social media platform X that the US “is deeply concerned by reports of dangerous actions by (Chinese) law enforcement vessels against Vietnamese fishing vessels around the Paracel Islands on September 29. We call on (China) to desist from dangerous and destabilizing conduct in the South China Sea.”
The Vietnamese newspaper Tien Phong cited one of the fishermen, Tran Tien Cong, as saying that two foreign boats approached them from the rear and that personnel from the vessels boarded their boat and started beating the fishermen with a meter-long (three-foot-long) pole, apparently made of iron.
The Vietnamese fishermen panicked and did not fight back because they were overwhelmed by an estimated 40 attackers, it said. Another fisherman, Nguyen Thuong, was cited as saying that the attackers, who spoke through a translator, ordered them to sail back to Vietnam. The assailants then seized their fishing gear and fish catch.
After being beaten, the Vietnamese fishermen were forced to kneel and were covered with plastic sheets before the attackers left.
The Paracel Islands lie about 400 kilometers (250 miles) off Vietnam’s eastern coast and about the same distance from China’s southernmost province of Hainan. Both countries, along with the self-governing island of Taiwan, claim the islands.
The islands have been under the de facto control of China since 1974, when Beijing seized them from Vietnam in a brief but violent naval conflict.
Last year, satellite photos showed that China appeared to be building an airstrip on Triton Island in the Paracel group. At the time, it appeared the airstrip would be big enough to accommodate turboprop aircraft and drones but not fighter jets or bombers.
China has also had a small harbor and buildings on the island for years, along with a helipad and radar arrays.
China has refused to provide details of its island construction work other than to say it is aimed at promoting global navigation safety.
It has rejected accusations, including by the US, that it is militarizing the sea passage.


Taiwan re-opens, mopping up after Typhoon Krathon

Taiwan re-opens, mopping up after Typhoon Krathon
Updated 04 October 2024
Follow

Taiwan re-opens, mopping up after Typhoon Krathon

Taiwan re-opens, mopping up after Typhoon Krathon
  • Krathon, now downgraded to a tropical depression, hit land in the southwestern city of Kaohsiung
  • Nearly 100,000 households, almost all in Kaohsiung and Pingtung, still had no power on Friday

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan: Southern Taiwan worked on Friday to clear up damage from flooding and high winds after Typhoon Krathon slammed into a major port city, while most of the rest of the island resumed work and financial markets re-opened.
Krathon, now downgraded to a tropical depression, hit land in the southwestern city of Kaohsiung, inundating streets, blowing out the windows of some buildings and scattering debris amid record-breaking winds.
While the rest of Taiwan resumed work, the governments in Kaohsiung and neighboring Pingtung county declared a fourth successive day off work as they scrambled to pump away floodwaters, remove fallen trees, and clear roads.
“We hope as fast as possible to resume transport, water and electricity supplies, so work and life can get back to normal,” Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai told reporters.
The city government said it was tackling more than 2,000 trees that had fallen on roads, but reported only two injuries.
Workers used cranes to remove downed trees and traffic signs in Kaohsiung, a city and surrounds of 2.7 million people, with some roads blocked, forcing diversions of traffic and pedestrians.
“Sandbags didn’t work. The wind pressed the water in anyway,” said Clark Huang, 49. “Fortunately it lasted only a couple of hours and then we started cleaning up.”
Engineer Tsai Ming-an was cleaning up his home after floodwaters about 20 cm (7.8 inches) high washed through the entire ground floor.
“I have never seen winds like that,” said the 51-year-old. “It was so bad.”
Typhoons almost always hit Taiwan’s mountainous and sparsely populated east coast which faces the Pacific Ocean, but Krathon, unusually, struck its flat west coast.
Nearly 100,000 households, almost all in Kaohsiung and Pingtung, still had no power on Friday, while 129,000 households in Kaohsiung lacked water supply.
The fire department said the death toll remained at two, both men killed on the east coast before the typhoon made landfall, with one person missing and 667 injured.
Taiwan re-opened its north-south high speed rail line, as well as most ordinary rail routes except for two branch lines, but disruptions to air transport continued, with cancelations of 15 international and 88 domestic flights.
Workers at Kaohsiung port were clearing some freight containers blown off their stacks to make sure operations went unaffected, the transport ministry said.
Kaohsiung airport suffered damage to two air bridges, while the airport on the outlying Orchid Island had landing aids washed away, though both remained open, the ministry added.
The government also said it was investigating the cause of a Pingtung hospital fire that broke out as the typhoon was bearing down, killing nine people.