Washington: Seattle has become the first US city to outlaw caste discrimination after its local council passed a resolution, moved by an Indian-American politician and economist, to add caste to its non-discrimination policy.

The resolution moved by Kshama Sawant, an upper-caste Hindu, was approved by the Seattle City Council by six to one vote. The results of the vote could have far-reaching implications on the issue of caste discrimination in the US.

“It’s official: our movement has won a historic, first-in-the-nation ban on caste discrimination in Seattle! Now we need to build a movement to spread this victory around the country,” Sawant, a city council member, said soon after the resolution was voted.

Hours ahead of the vote, Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal lent her support to the move.

“Caste discrimination has no place in society anywhere in the world, including here in America. That is why some colleges and universities have banned it on campuses, and workers are fighting for their rights and their dignity in cases involving caste discrimination,” she said.

Equality Labs, the brain behind the anti-caste discrimination resolution in Seattle and which has been spearheading a nationwide campaign said: “Love has won over hate as Seattle has become the first in the nation to ban caste discrimination. We have braved rape threats, death threats, disinformation, and bigotry.”

It has created a coalition of some 200 organisations in support of its efforts over the issue.

“Central to this coalition is a network of more than 30 anti-caste Ambedkarite organisations,” Equality Labs said. Among them are the Ambedkar King Study Circle, Ambedkar International Center, Ambedkarite Buddhist Association of Texas and Boston Study Group.

The Hindu American Foundation, which had campaigned against the resolution, said singling out South Asians and the addition of caste’ to the non-discrimination policy violates the very policies it now amends.

“The City of Seattle has voted to treat South Asians (and Southeast Asians and African) in a manner that no other ethnic or racial community is treated under the guise of non-discrimination. It has voted yes to discriminating against ethnic minorities, repeating the ugliness of nativists in the state nearly a century ago,” Suhag Shukla, co-founder and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation said.

In passing this resolution, Seattle is now in violation of the US Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process that prohibit the state from treating disparately people on account of their national origin, ethnicity, or religion, and implementing a vague, facially discriminatory and arbitrary category, Shukla alleged.

“Seattle has taken a dangerous misstep here, institutionalising bias against all residents of Indian and South Asian origin, all in the name of preventing bias,” said HAF managing director Samir Kalra.

“When Seattle should be protecting the civil rights of all its residents, it is actually violating them by running roughshod over the most basic and fundamental rights in US law, all people being treated equally,” Kalra said.

Madhu T from Ambedkar-Phule Network of American Dalits and Bahujans said this “ill-intended and rushed” ordinance by a “controversial council member” will only harm South Asians in particular Dalits Bahujans.

“It is traumatising to witness that a propaganda which is no less than a war on Dalits, makes this far, with no data, and with a fraudulent survey, while the real Dalit Bahujan voices continue to go unheard,” said Madhu.

“2022 report by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania not only discredited the caste survey referred by Seattle City Council, but it had shown that there are multiple reasons like ‘country of origin’, gender and ‘skin colour’ that need to be addressed as cause for discrimination. The ordinance will only increase the instances of hatred against South Asians, including Dalits,” said V Kadam from Dalit Bahujan Solidarity Network.

Many Indian-Americans fear that codifying caste in public policy will further fuel instances of Hinduphobia in the US.

Over the last three years, ten Hindu temples and five statues, including those of Mahatma Gandhi and Maratha emperor Shivaji, have been vandalised across the US as an intimidation tactic against the Hindu community.

Indian-Americans are the second-largest immigrant group in the US. According to data from the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS), which is conducted by the US Census Bureau, there are 4.2 million people of Indian origin residing in the United States.

India banned caste discrimination in 1948 and enshrined that policy in the Constitution in 1950.

FRANKFURT: German carrier Lufthansa said Wednesday IT problems were forcing it to cancel and delay flights across its different airlines, in what appeared to be a major outage.

The company did not immediately specify which airports were affected but the departures board at its Frankfurt hub showed a slew of cancellations.

“Currently, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage,” the company tweeted.

“This is causing flight delays and cancellations. We regret the inconvenience this is causing our passengers.”

Lufthansa is Europe’s biggest airline group. It also owns Eurowings, Swiss, Brussels and Austrian Airlines.

“So far, we’re not sure if Lufthansa (group) is the only one affected,” a Lufthansa spokesman told AFP.

The group has assembled a crisis team that was racing to determine the cause and extent of the outage, he added.

Germany’s Bild newspaper spoke of scenes of “chaos” at Frankfurt and Munich airport, reporting trouble with the check-in and boarding systems.

KAHRAMANMARAS: Rescue workers made a final push Thursday to find survivors of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria that rendered many communities unrecognizable to their inhabitants and led the Turkish president to declare it “the disaster of the century.” The death toll topped 21,000.

The earthquake affected an area that is home to 13.5 million people in Turkey and an unknown number in Syria and stretches farther than the distance from London to Paris or Boston to Philadelphia. Even with an army of people taking part in the rescue effort, crews had to pick and choose where to help.

The scene from the air showed the scope of devastation, with entire neighborhoods of high-rises reduced to twisted metal, pulverized concrete and exposed wires.

In Adiyaman, Associated Press journalists saw someone plead with rescuers to look through the rubble of a building where relatives were trapped. They refused, saying no one was alive there and that they had to prioritize areas with possible survivors.

A man who gave his name only as Ahmet out of fear of government retribution later asked:

“How can I go home and sleep? My brother is there. He may still be alive.” The death toll from Monday’s 7.8 magnitude catastrophe rose to nearly 21,000, eclipsing the more than 18,400 who died in the 2011 earthquake off Fukushima, Japan, that triggered a tsunami and the estimated 18,000 people who died in a temblor near the Turkish capital, Istanbul, in 1999.

The new figure, which is certain to rise, included over 17,600 people in Turkey and more than 3,300 in civil war-torn Syria. Tens of thousands were also injured.

Even though experts say people could survive for a week or more, the chances of finding survivors in the freezing temperatures were dimming. As emergency crews and panicked relatives dug through the rubble — and occasionally found people alive — the focus began to shift to demolishing dangerously unstable structures.

The DHA news agency broadcast the rescue of a 10-year-old in Antakya. The agency said medics had to amputate an arm to free her and that her parents and three siblings had died. A 17-year-old girl emerged alive in Adıyaman, and a 20-year-old was found in Kahramanmaras by rescuers who shouted “God is great.”

In Nurdagi, a city of around 40,000 nestled between snowy mountains some 35 miles (56 kilometers) from the quake’s epicenter, vast swaths of the city were leveled, with scarcely a building unaffected.

Even those that did not collapse were heavily damaged, making them unsafe.
Throngs of onlookers, mostly family members of people trapped inside, watched as heavy machines ripped at one building that had collapsed, its floors pancaked together with little more than a few inches in between.

Mehmet Yilmaz, 67, watched from a distance as bulldozers and other demolition equipment began to bring down what remained of the building where six of his family members had been trapped, including four children.

He estimated that about 80 people were still beneath the rubble and doubted that anyone would be found alive.

“There’s no hope. We can’t give up our hope in God, but they entered the building with listening devices and dogs, and there was nothing,” Yilmaz said.

Mehmet Nasir Dusan, 67, sat watching as the remnants of the nine-story building were brought down in billowing clouds of dust. He said he held no hope of reuniting with his five family members trapped under the debris.

Still, he said, recovering their bodies would bring some small comfort.

“We’re not leaving this site until we can recover their bodies, even if it takes 10 days,” Dusan said. “My family is destroyed now.”

In Kahramanmaras, the city closest to the epicenter, a sports hall the size of a basketball court served as a makeshift morgue to accommodate and identify bodies.

On the floor lay dozens of bodies wrapped in blankets or black shrouds. At least one appeared to be that of a 5- or 6-year-old.

At the entrance, a man wept over a black body bag that lay next to another in the bed of a small truck.

“I’m 70 years old. God should have taken me, not my son,” he cried. Workers continued to conduct rescue operations in Kahramanmaras, but it was clear that many who were trapped in collapsed buildings had already died. One rescue worker was heard saying that his psychological state was declining and that the smell of death was becoming too much to bear.

In northwestern Syria, the first U.N. aid trucks since the quake to enter the rebel-controlled area from Turkey arrived, underscoring the difficulty of getting help to people there. In the Turkish city of Antakya, dozens scrambled for aid in front of a truck distributing children’s coats and other supplies.

One survivor, Ahmet Tokgoz, called for the government to evacuate people from the region. Many of those who have lost their homes found shelter in tents, stadiums and other temporary accommodation, but others have slept outdoors.

“Especially in this cold, it is not possible to live here,” he said. “If people haven’t died from being stuck under the rubble, they’ll die from the cold.”

The winter weather and damage to roads and airports have hampered the response. Some in Turkey have complained that the government was slow to respond — a perception that could hurt Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a time when he faces a tough battle for reelection in May.

“As you know, the earthquake hit an area of 500-kilometer (311-mile) diameter where 13.5 million of our people live, and that made our job difficult,” Erdogan said Thursday.
In the Turkish town of Elbistan, rescuers stood atop the rubble from a collapsed home and pull

Rescue teams urged quiet in the hopes of hearing stifled pleas for help, and the Syrian paramedic group known as the White Helmets noted that “every second could mean saving a life.”

But more and more often, the teams pulled out dead bodies. In Antakya, more than 100 bodies were awaiting identification in a makeshift morgue outside a hospital.

With the chances of finding people alive dwindling, crews in some places began demolishing buildings. Authorities called off search-and-rescue operations in the cities of Kilis and Sanliurfa, where destruction was not as severe as in other areas. Vice President Fuat Oktay said rescue work was mostly complete in Diyarbakir, Adana and Osmaniye.

Across the border in Syria, assistance trickled in. The U.N. is authorized to deliver aid through only one border crossing, and road damage has prevented that thus far. U.N. officials pleaded for humanitarian concerns to take precedence over wartime politics.

It wasn’t clear how many people were still unaccounted for in both countries.
Turkey’s disaster-management agency said more than 110,000 rescue personnel were now taking part in the effort and more than 5,500 vehicles, including tractors, cranes, bulldozers and excavators had been shipped. The Foreign Ministry said 95 countries have offered help

World Bank to provide Turkey $1.78 bn for recovery after quake:

The World Bank announced Thursday $1.78 billion in aid to Turkey to help relief and recovery efforts after a massive earthquake hit the country and neighbouring Syria, claiming more than 21,000 lives.

“We are providing immediate assistance and preparing a rapid assessment of the urgent and massive needs on the ground,” said World Bank President David Malpass in a statement.

“This will identify priority areas for the country’s recovery and reconstruction as we prepare operations to support those needs,” he added.

Immediate assistance of $780 million will be offered via Contingent Emergency Response Components from two existing projects in Turkey, said the bank.

“The assistance will be used for rebuilding basic infrastructure at the municipal level,” the Washington-based development lender added.

Meanwhile, an added $1 billion in operations is being prepared to support people affected amid recovery and reconstruction from the catastrophe, the bank added.

The country’s needs are “immense and span the whole range from relief to reconstruction,” said Humberto Lopez, World Bank Country Director for Turkey.

Freezing temperatures

The crossing is the only way UN assistance can reach civilians without going through areas controlled by Syrian government forces.

A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals, collapsed the economy and prompted electricity, fuel and water shortages.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council to authorise the opening of new cross-border humanitarian aid points between Turkey and Syria to deliver aid.

Four million people living in rebel-held areas of northwest Syria have had to rely on the Bab al-Hawa crossing as part of a cross-border aid operation authorised by the Security Council nearly a decade ago.

“This is the moment of unity, it’s not a moment to politicise or to divide but it is obvious that we need massive support,” Guterres said.

Temperatures in the Turkish city of Gaziantep plunged to minus five degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) early Thursday, but thousands of families spent the night in cars and makeshift tents — too scared or banned from returning to their homes.

Parents walked the streets of the city — close to the epicentre of Monday’s earthquake — carrying their children in blankets because it was warmer than sitting in a tent.

Gyms, mosques, schools and some stores have opened at night. But beds are still at a premium and thousands spend the nights in cars with engines running to provide heat.

“I fear for anyone who is trapped under the rubble in this,” said Melek Halici, who wrapped her two-year-old daughter in a blanket as they watched rescuers working into the night.

International rescuers have said the intense cold has forced them to weigh whether to use their limited fuel supplies to keep warm or to carry out their work.

Racing against the clock
 

“Not a single person has failed to mention this, the cold,” Athanassios Balafas, a Greek fire official, said in Athens. “Obviously we chose to keep operating.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged on Wednesday that there were “shortcomings” in the government’s handling of the disaster.

Monday’s quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern Erzincan province.

Officials and medics said 17,674 people had died in Turkey and 3,377 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 21,051.

Experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply.

Anger has mounted over the government’s handling of the disaster.

“People who didn’t die from the earthquake were left to die in the cold,” Hakan Tanriverdi told AFP in Adiyaman province, one of the areas hardest hit.

Despite the difficulties, thousands of local and foreign searchers have not given up the hunt for more survivors.

Two dozen children and some of their parents from northern Cyprus — 39 Turkish Cypriots in all — were on a school trip to join a volleyball tournament when the quake hit their hotel in southeast Turkey’s Adiyaman.

Their home region’s government has declared a national mobilisation, hiring a private plane so they could join the search-and-rescue effort for the children.

Ilhami Bilgen, whose brother Hasan was on the volleyball team, looked at the frightening pile of concrete slabs and heavy bricks that used to be the hotel.

“There’s a hollow over there. The children may have crawled into it,” Bilgen said. “We still haven’t given up hope.”

Videos and photographs of the two earthquakes that have destroyed southern Turkey and northern Syria show rescuers digging with their hands, apartment blocks crushed to the grouds in seconds and the shaking apart of a castle that had stood for almost two millennia. The incident has killed at least 7,800 people.

One of the photographs from the Turkish region of Kahramanmaraş depicts the sufferings of a father who holds the hand of his dead teenage daughter as rescuers and civilians search through the flattened building where she died on Monday, reports The Guardian.

Mesut Hancer, the father of 15-year-old Irmak, holds her hand sitting hunched in the rubble as she lies on her bed beneath the slabs of concrete, smashed windows and broken bricks that were once apartments. Close to them, a man with a sledgehammer tries to smash his way through the ruins.

Pazarcık district of Kahramanmaraş, which lies in south-east Turkey, was the epicentre of the first earthquake. The initial, 7.8-magnitude earthquake, was followed, hours later, by a second quake that measured 7.7 on the Richter scale, reports The Guardian.

Pictures from the affected zone present to us the level of suffering of the people, following the natural disaster.
Rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, one of whom lay on a stretcher on the snowy ground elsewhere in Kahramanmaraş province and also quieted the people who had gathered, trying to help so they could hear survivors and find them.

New Delhi: An Indian is missing and 10 others are stuck but safe in remote regions of earthquake-hit Turkiye, even as specialist teams sent by India to the West Asian country commenced their search and rescue operations, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Wednesday.

India launched ‘Operation Dost’ to extend assistance to Turkiye as well as Syria following Monday’s devastating quake that has killed over 11,000 people in the two countries.

At a media briefing, Secretary (West) in the MEA, Sanjay Verma said while one Indian has gone missing in one of the affected areas in Turkiye, 10 others are stuck in some remote parts but they are safe.

He said three Indians who approached the Indian government were taken to a safe location, adding that the Indians in Turkiye are relatively safe.

“We set up a control room at Adana in Turkiye. Ten Indians are stuck in remote parts of the affected areas, but they are safe. We have one Indian national missing who was on a business visit to Turkiye. He has not been traced in the last two days. We are in touch with his family and the company in Bengaluru which employs him,” Verma said.

“We have received calls from around 75 people asking our embassy there about information and assistance,” he said.

The number of Indians residing in Turkiye is around 3,000, out of which about 1,800 live in and around Istanbul, while 250 are in Ankara and rest are spread all over the country, according to the official.

“Under #OperationDost, India is sending search and rescue teams, a field hospital, materials, medicines and equipment to T rkiye and Syria. This is an ongoing operation and we would be posting updates,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar tweeted.

On Tuesday, India sent to Turkiye relief materials, a mobile hospital and specialised search and rescue teams in four C-17 Globemaster military transport aircraft to support the country’s rescue efforts.

India also sent relief materials on board a C-130J aircraft of the Indian Air Force to Syria.

Officials said India is sending more aid to Turkiye.

Verma said Turkiye had sent a message to India seeking assistance.

Asked about sending aid to Syria when the country has been under US sanctions, Verma said India is following the G20 mantra of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’.

“Sanctions do not cover such humanitarian assistance,” he said.

On Twitter, Jaishankar shared photos of teams from India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) commencing search operation in Turkiye’s Gaziantep.

“It was perhaps the furthest that we have gone in terms of HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) involving specialised teams. We tried to live up to our reputation as first responders,” Verma said.

At the press conference, NDRF Director General Atul Karwal said the force is ready to send more teams.

India had on Monday decided to immediately dispatch search and rescue teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), medical teams and relief material to Turkiye following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s instructions to offer all possible assistance to the country.

Several countries, including the US and the UK, are sending relief materials and search and rescue specialists to Turkiye to help search for survivors of the quake.

The massive earthquake has killed more than 11,000 people and flattened thousands of buildings in Turkiye and neighbouring Syria.

On aid to Syria, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the consignments were handed over to Deputy Minister of Local Administration and Environment of Syria, Moutaz Douaji at Damascus airport Wednesday morning.

“The consignment consists of emergency medicines and equipment, including portable ECG machines, patient monitors and other essential medical items,” it said in a statement.

The MEA said India, over the years, has been extending humanitarian, technical and developmental assistance to Syria through bilateral and multilateral channels.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf’s body will be laid to rest in Karachi, and will be brought back to the country on a special flight that will leave for Dubai on Monday, media reports said.

Musharraf, the architect of the Kargil War in 1999, died on Sunday in Dubai after a prolonged illness.

The 79-year-old former military ruler, who had been in the UAE since 2016, was undergoing treatment for amyloidosis at American Hospital Dubai.

Musharraf’s body will be laid to rest in Karachi and will be brought back to Pakistan on a special flight that would leave for Dubai on Monday.

However, the Pakistan government has not issued an official statement on the date or venue of the burial of the country’s former president.

Meanwhile, the Khaleej Times reported that the Consulate General of Pakistan in Dubai has issued a no-objection certificate (NOC) to repatriate his body to Pakistan.

“We are in touch with the family and the consulate will facilitate in whatever way it can; the consulate has issued the no-objection certificate,” a media report quoted Consul General Hassan Afzal Khan as saying.

Musharraf seized power by ousting Sharif in a 1999 bloodless coup. He served as Pakistan’s president from 2001 to 2008.

Musharraf, who was born in New Delhi in 1943 and fled to Pakistan in 1947, was the last military dictator to rule Pakistan.