Films like Garm Hawa, with a unique perspective on Partition are of particular relevance today, given the current Indian regime that is characterized by a communal and fundamentalist outlook, noted film director MS Sathyu told Teesta Setalvad in this week’s special interview.
Archives for December 2014
Fourth phase: 49% cast vote in J&K, 61% in Jharkhand
Ranchi: Ignoring the boycott call given by separatists and braving cold weather, over 49 per cent of 14.73 lakh voters exercised their franchise in the penultimate phase of Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir.
Barring minor clashes between supporters of rival parties at a dozen places, polling in all the 18 constituencies spread over three districts of Kashmir, including summer capital Srinagar, and one district in Jammu region was by and large peaceful.
Despite severe cold, long queues of voters were seen outside the polling stations to exercise their franchise at many polling stations.
The trends in voter turnout in eight constituencies of Srinagar city, which have witnessed low voter turnout in the past elections due to separatist boycott calls, pointed towards a higher poll percentage this time.
While four constituencies of Khanyar, Habbakadal, Amirakadal and Zadibal had already surpassed the turnout recorded in 2008 assembly elections, the polling was going on briskly in other segments.
Sonawar constituency, where Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is contesting, witnessed the highest 33.85 per cent turnout in Srinagar followed by Hazratbal constituency at 22.77 per cent.
Edigah, Zadibal, Khanyar, Amirakadal and Batmaloo constituencies witnessed over 21.51 per cent, 20.14, 21.02 and 18.73 per cent turnout, respectively, till 2 PM in the fourth of the five-phased Assembly polls.
Anantnag constituency in south Kashmir, where PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed is a candidate, saw 30.58 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in the first six hours.
Pahalgam constituency in Anantnag district was leading in the turnout in Kashmir with 54.63 per cent of electorate exercising their franchise till 2 PM.
Shangus constituency recorded 53.46 per cent turnout, followed by Dooru (52.63), Kokernag (51.95), Bijbehara (44.07), Shopian (39.78) and Wachi (36.30).
Stringent security arrangements have been put in place to ensure incident-free polling across the state, the officials said.
Women outnumber men in Jharkhand
Women voters Sunday outnumbered men in the fourth phase of the assembly elections in Jharkhand. Around 61 percent balloting was reported from across the 15 constituencies that went to the polls, officials said.
“The highest polling was reported from Chankayari with 71.28 percent, followed by 70.2 percent in Madhupur. Polling was by and large peaceful. The turnout in Maoist-affected areas was more than 60 percent,” a poll official said. Women voters scored over the male voters.
“In the fourth phase, women’s turnout was around two percent more than male voters,” an Election Commission official said.
Balloting for 15 of the 81 assembly constituencies began at 7 a.m. While voting for 13 seats ended at 3 p.m., it continued in Bokaro and Dhanbad till 5 p.m. Voting took place at 5,482 booths, including 36 auxiliary ones.
As many as 716 booths were declared ‘very sensitive’ and 2,007 declared ‘sensitive’.
The Election Commission declared 183 polling stations as model polling stations. Webcasting facility was available in 335 polling stations and 27,410 polling personnel were deployed in the fourth phase.
A total of 43,48,709 voters, including 20,03,516 females, were eligible to elect their representatives.
The fate of 217 candidates, including 16 females, was sealed in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) by the end of balloting for the day. Former chief minister Babulal Marandi contested from Giridih constituency.
Ministers Mannan Mallik of the Congress, Haji Hussain Ansari of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Suresh Paswan of the Rashtriya Janata Dal were among the other prominent candidates in this phase.
In the 2005 assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its then alliance partner Janata Dal-United won seven of these 15 seats together. The JMM won four seats.
(Agencies)
Indian may be among Sydney hostages: minister
Armed police run toward a cafe in the central business district of Sydney on December 15, 2014. SAEED KHAN / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
New Delhi: An Indian origin IT professional may be among the hostages held by a gunman in a cafe in Australia, according to Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu who later said the reports were unconfirmed.
“We don’t want to discuss it because there is some information that one of our IT persons is also there. So the External Affairs Ministry is keeping in touch with concerned people there– both our embassy as well as our counterpart also,” Naidu told reporters outside Parliament House.
Later, Naidu added that there were no confirmed reports and it was only preliminary information.
“There is some initial information that some people were taken hostage in Sydney by some person.
What is the purpose, what is the motive, (it is) not known and our External Affairs Ministry is keeping in touch with our embassy there in Australia.
“So far information says that people who were held hostages are safe, no harm is done to them.
All these information here and there– nothing has been confirmed about any citizens of our country is in that or not. It is a sensitive matter. I request all people to show restraint till the issue is resolved,” he said.
The Minister said whatever steps need to be taken are being taken.
Several people were taken hostage at a popular cafe in the heart of Sydney city in south-east Australia by one gunman this morning, leading to evacuation of important buildings, including the Indian consulate which is located 300-400 metres from the cafe. An Islamic flag was also reportedly seen hanging from the window of the cafe.
The Indian Consulate in Sydney was evacuated in view of the hostage situation in a cafe near its premises and all the staff members are safe, the External Affairs Ministry today said.
In Sydney, Consul General Sunjay Sudhir said that due to security concerns “we locked down our office at 12:00 PM and asked all our officers to go to places of safety”.
He said that the Central Business District (CBD) where the cafe is located is the area where many Indian establishments including the SBI, Bank of Baroda and Indian tourism office are located.
“We are in touch with the security agencies and have asked them specifically if any Indians were present inside the cafe…they have not told us about the nationality,” Sudhir said.
(PTI)
Palestine to submit UN resolution for ending Israeli occupation
PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat (right), is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry within the coming days to discuss ending Israeli occupation. (AFP/File)
PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday that a resolution to end the Israeli occupation will be submitted to the UN Security Council “in the coming few hours, or maybe on Monday.”
Erekat told the official Palestinian radio station that he would meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in a European capital in the coming two days.
“We want a clear and specific resolution for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, resolving all the final status issues, releasing all detainees and refugees and labeling settlement activity illegal and should be stopped immediately, including in Jerusalem,” Erekat said.
Kerry left early Sunday for a series of meetings in Europe seeking to head off an end-of-year UN showdown over the Palestinian bid for statehood.
His first stop was to be Rome where he will meet separately with both Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Diplomats say negotiations on a UN resolution to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects are making little headway, with Europeans waiting for a US response to proposals.
Jordan last month circulated a draft Palestinian text to the Security Council setting November 2016 as a deadline for the end of the Israeli occupation.
But the text ran into opposition from the United States, which has veto power, and other countries that felt it lacked balance, diplomats said. It was never put to a vote.
France stepped in last month to try to cobble together along with Britain and Germany a resolution that would win consensus at the 15-member council.
And the Palestinians have said they would like a draft resolution to go to a vote before the end of the year.
The text would call for a return to negotiations with a view to achieving a two-state solution by which Israel and a Palestinian state would co-exist.
Negotiations have hit hurdles over whether to include a two-year deadline for talks on a final settlement to be completed.
France is also proposing to host an international conference to launch the new peace track.
Window of opportunity
Supporters of a UN resolution are now hoping to win US backing or at least ensure Washington will not oppose the measure — which would be the first text adopted by the council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2009.
“There is a window of opportunity,” said a European diplomat. “There is a willingness from the Americans to consider options at the UN.”
Kerry led dogged efforts earlier this year to try to reach an Israeli Palestinian peace deal, but the bid collapsed amid bitter recriminations by both sides.
Relations between the US and Israel have been uneasy since, amid a series of spats and behind-the-scenes name-calling.
Kerry is due to meet Lavrov on Sunday, shortly after arriving in Rome. Talks with Netanyahu follow on Monday, after which the top US diplomat is expected to travel on within Europe although no stops have yet been announced.
Russia responded angrily on Saturday to news that US senators had passed a bill calling for fresh sanctions against Moscow and the supply of lethal military aid to Ukraine.
The eight-month conflict in Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russian separatists has left at least 4,634 dead and 10,243 wounded, while displacing more than 1.1 million people, according to the United Nations.
Deputy Russian foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said however the main focus of the Rome meeting — the 17th between the two diplomats this year — would be the Middle East.
The talks come as European parliaments in Britain, France, Spain, Ireland and Portugal have asked their governments to recognize Palestinian statehood — a move that would bypass negotiations.
And the campaign for snap Israeli elections in March is also complicating the regional political landscape.
“There are a lot of different folks pushing in different directions out there, and the question is can we all pull in the same direction,” Kerry said Friday, when asked about his meeting with Netanyahu.
“We’re trying to figure out a way to help defuse the tensions and reduce the potential for more conflict, and we’re exploring various possibilities to that end.”
Hostages held in Sydney cafe siege
Five people emerge from Lindt Cafe in Australian city’s financial district amid negotiations with hostage-taker.
by Al Jazeera
Five people have escaped from a cafe where a man has an unknown number of hostages in the heart of Sydney’s financial and shopping district .
Two people inside the cafe were earlier seen holding up a flag with an Islamic declaration of faith that has often been used by armed groups.
The first three people ran out of the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Sydney’s Central Building District six hours into Monday’s hostage crisis, and two women sprinted from a fire exit into the arms of waiting police shortly afterwards.
Both women were wearing aprons with the Lindt chocolate logo, indicating they were cafe employees.
It was not clear exactly how many people remained inside the cafe at Martin Place, a plaza that is packed with holiday shoppers this time of year.
The hostage-taker is reported to have conveyed some demands when an Australian media network interviewed some of the hostages over phone.
Some media networks have announced that they are complying with a request from New South Wales Police not to report the demands.
Andrew Scipione, New South Wales Police commissioner, said police did not know the hostage taker’s motivation.
“We have not yet confirmed it is a terrorism-related event,” he said.
“We’re dealing with a hostage situation with an armed offender.”
As the drama dragged into its 10th hour, NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said negotiators were talking with the hostage-taker.
Officials had no information to suggest anyone had been harmed, although a hospital said it was treating a man in satisfactory condition.
Pacing back and forth
Television video shot through the cafe’s windows showed several people with their arms in the air and hands pressed against the glass, and two people holding up a black flag with the Shahada, or Islamic declaration of faith, written on it.
Seven Network television news staff watched the hostage-taker and hostages for hours from a fourth floor window of their Sydney offices, opposite the cafe.
The man could be seen pacing back and forth past the cafe’s four windows. Reporter Chris Reason, a reporter for Seven Network, said the man carried what appeared to be a pump-action shotgun, was unshaven and wore a white shirt and a black cap.
Network staff counted about 15 different faces among hostages forced up against the windows.
“The gunman seems to be sort of rotating these people through these positions on the windows with their hands and faces up against the glass,” Reason said in a report from the vantage point.
“One woman we’ve counted was there for at least two hours – an extraordinary, agonising time for her surely having to stand on her feet for that long.
“Just two hours ago when we saw that rush of escapees, we could see from up here in this vantage point the gunman got extremely agitated as he realised those five had got out. He started screaming orders at the people, the hostages who remain behind.”
St Vincent’s hospital spokesman David Faktor said a male hostage was in satisfactory condition in the hospital’s emergency department. He was the only one of the freed hostages to be taken to a hospital.
Hundreds of police flooded into the area, streets were closed and offices evacuated. The public was told to stay away from Martin Place, site of the state premier’s office, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the headquarters of two of the nation’s largest banks.
The state parliament house is a few blocks away.
“This is a very disturbing incident,” Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, said.
“It is profoundly shocking that innocent people should be held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation.”
Terror threat warning
The Australian government raised the terror warning level in September in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
Counterterror law enforcement teams later conducted dozens of raids and made several arrests in Australia’s three largest cities – Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
One man arrested during a series of raids in Sydney was charged with conspiring with an ISIL leader in Syria to behead a random person in downtown Sydney.
ISIL, which now holds a third of Syria and Iraq, has threatened Australia in the past.
In September, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, an ISIL spokesperson, issued an audio message urging “lone wolf” attacks abroad, specifically mentioning Australia.
Lindt Australia posted a message on its Facebook page on Monday thanking the public for its support.
“We are deeply concerned over this serious incident and our thoughts and prayers are with the staff and customers involved and all their friends and families,” the company wrote.
Thousands march against U.S police killings
Demonstrators gather in Washington and New York to rally against the killings of unarmed black men by police officers.
![Thousands rallied in Washington in what was dubbed a 'Justice for All' march [Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/nasheman.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Justice-for-All-march.jpg)
Thousands rallied in Washington in what was dubbed a ‘Justice for All’ march [Reuters]
by Al Jazeera
Thousands of demonstrators have marched in Washington and New York to protest against the killings of unarmed black men by police officers and to urge politcians to do more to protect African-Americans.
Organisers said that Saturday’s marches in Washington DC and New York City would rank among the largest in the recent wave of protests against killings that have brought the treatment of minorities by police onto the national agenda.
Decisions by grand juries to not indict the police officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York have sparked weeks of protests in major cities across the country.
Al Sharpton, a leading civil rights activist, called for “legislative action that will shift things both on the books and in the streets”.
Sharpton, whose National Action Network organised the Washington rally, urged the US Congress to pass legislation that would allow federal prosecutors to take over cases involving police.
He said local district attorneys often work with police regularly, raising the potential of conflicts of interest when prosecutors investigate incidents, he said.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, said there had been impassioned speeches and that the crowd seemed overwhelmingly positive.
Families of Eric Garner and Akai Gurley, who were killed by New York police; Trayvon Martin, slain by a Florida neighbourhood watchman in 2012; and Michael Brown, killed by an officer in Ferguson attended the protest.
At a parallel march in New York tens of thousands of people braved cold weather to join the protest, Al Jazeera’s Courtney Kealy reported.
“Some of the protesters are calling for the police commissioner to resign, for the officer blamed for the death of Eric Garner to be fired and for an independent prosecutor’s office to be set up to look into police brutality,” Kealy said.
“They want to see change in the judicial system, not just take to the streets, but have actual political and judicial reform.”
Hundreds of protesters also took to the streets of California, Nashville and Boston, where state police arrested 23 people after clashes broke out.
Politicians have talked of the need for better police training, body cameras and changes in the grand jury process to restore faith in the legal system.
Kasargod: Court pronounces Praveen Togadia as absconder in hate speech case
Kasargod: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) international working president Praveen Togadia has been declared an absconder by the Hosadurga first class court in connection to a hate speech case.
Togadia was accused of making a provocative speech at a VHP convention in Kanhangad on April 30, 2011. The Hosadurga police had booked him for trying to create communal tension through his speech.
Togadia was then issued summons to appear before the court, but he failed to oblige. Despite warrants, Togadia did not appear in the court, and thus, the Hosagurga court has now declared him as an absconding accused.
During the last hearing in the case, the court issued a non-bailable warrant against him. On Saturday, the police told the court that they were unable to trace Togadia. Hence, the court decided to pronounce him as an absconder.
Another case had been registered against Togadia for making a provocative speech at Marad in Kozhikode during a VHP convention in July 2003. However, the state government recently withdrew this case, sparking much controversy. Chief minister Oommen Chandy had later clarified that the case was withdrawn as part of a Marad peace deal, and it was done after reviewing the legal procedures.
Pro-IS tweeter Mehdi Biswas sent to five days police custody
Bengaluru: A local court Sunday sent pro-Islamic State (IS) terror group tweeter Mehdi Masroor Biswas to five day police custody for interrogation, a police official said.
“We had produced Mehdi before the sessions court, which remanded him to five day police custody till Dec 18 for interrogation by our investigation team on his unlawful activities,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Abhishek Goyal told IANS here.
Biswas was arrested early Saturday following a British news channel Dec 11 unmasking the city-based 24-year-old executive as a supporter of IS through social media and Twitter handle @ShamiWitness.
“Preliminary investigation reveals that Mehdi Biswas is a propagandist of IS ideology and has been instrumental in influencing minds against our friendly countries against whom the terror group is at war,” Additional Director General of Police Hemant Nimbalkar told reporters later.
Police registered a case against Biswas under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act.
“We are quizzing him on his virtual and actual relations with the terror group and checking his antecedents, including mobile calls, e-mails, chat sessions and postings in the social media like Facebook, blogs and Twitter,” Nimbalkar said.
A police team raided Biswas’ one-room apartment in the northern suburb early Saturday and apart from arresting him, seized two mobiles, one laptop, incriminating documents, religious literature, pictures, pen drivers and compact discs (CDs) from the premises.
“We are also probing if Biswas or the terror group has any local presence in the form of sleeper cells or networks,” Nimbalkar added.
Biswas, who hails from Gopalpur town in West Bengal’s Nadia district, is employed in the foods division of the Kolkata-based ITC Ltd in Bengaluru.
He admitted to the probe team that he had been operating the Twitter account after he got interested in the developments of the Middle Eastern region.
He has about 17,000 Twitter followers and used to aggressively tweet by collecting information on regional developments.
Bangalore Police Comissinor Mr. M.N Reddy, said on Monday that Shamiwitness could have been anyone in the world, it is only a coincidence that he happened to be in Bangalore.
When Nasheman inquired about his Twitter being reactivated, Mr. Reddy smiled and said that he does not knows who did it.
(With inputs from IANS)
Mehdi Masroor Biswas aka @shamiwitness had no direct contact with ISIS
Bengaluru: Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who went by the nomme de guerre Shamiwitness was undoubtedly the most popular English voices of the Islamic State on Twitter, but the police interrogation since his arrest Saturday Dec 13th, has revealed that he had no direct contact with ISIS or any Jihadi groups.
Biswas was detained by Bengaluru police early Saturday morning, after Britain’s Channel 4 News had aired the report regarding the country’s IT capital’s link with the Twitter account that is followed by foreign fighters.
Mehdi, an electrical engineer from Kolkata, had moved to Bengaluru in 2011. He has two sisters and his father is a retired employee of the West Bengal state Electricity Board. He had been employed with the multinational corporation as a marketing executive since 2012 at an annual salary of Rs. 5.3 lakh.
Police interrogation after Mehdi’s arrest
Mehdi got interested in the developments in middle-east countries like Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza strip, Egypt and Libya since 2003. He used to work during the day and surfed internet on a 60 GB monthly plan late into nights.
During the initial questioning, he said that he mainly concentrated on Muslims living abroad “as the Indian muslims were incapable of Jihad.” It is also learnt that more than 17,000 followers in his twitter account were English-Speakers from Europe.
Most of his tweets have been deleted and the account was shut down after the report surfaced. Even the police have not found any activity against India or anti-India tweets so far. Also there is no evidence to prove that he had planned terror attack in India. He had no previous criminal record too.
Even though Mehdi had contact with English speaking ISIS men on twitter, he did not reveal his true identity to them. Mehdi was not involved in any of the activity in propagating the ISIS agenda. He was just translating the arabic tweets into English. He collected the data and videos of ISIS from cyberspace and then posted on the internet.
Police also said that Mehdi has not travelled outside the country neither he received any funds from ISIS.
Mehdi’s interview to UK Channel 4
Channel 4’s investigators, meanwhile, discovered that Mehdi aka @ShamiWitness had used a personal email address, ElSaltador@gmail.com, to set up a personal Twitter account, @ElSaltador. Based on this lead, the channel found out that the same email address had been used to open personal LinkedIn and Google Groups accounts. The data enabled them to contact Mehdi in Bangalore.
Reached by Channel 4, he denied that he intended to win over recruits to the Islamic State, saying his tweets only expressed his opinion. “Just because someone follows me, it doesn’t mean that I am the reason for their joining ISIS,” he said in the audio interview that was telecast along with the report.
But in the Channel 4 interview, he made clear his support for Islamic State, adding that he was prevented from joining the group by his commitments to his family.
According to Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a graduate from Brasenose College, Oxford University, and an authority on the ongoing conflict in Syria, “It would not really be accurate to characterize Shami so much an ‘IS source’ as much as a ‘disseminator’, as Peter Neumann of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization puts it…If one looks back on Shami’s Twitter feed, as more and more official IS venues of information on Twitter emerged, much of the time he was simply retweeting. Shami’s role can therefore also be described as an ‘aggregator’ of IS content, something he also did in the days before official IS (IS) provincial news feeds and the like.”
Indian government sources said the UK’s intelligence services had been contacted for any information they might have on Mehdi, but were told he was not a person of interest for any ongoing terrorism investigation.
Saudi Cleric Says Women Are not Required to Wear Hijab, Can Put Makeup
by Aziz Allilou, Morocco World News
Rabat: A new fatwa against wearing Hijab has been issued last week by a Saudi Cleric who said that “Islam doesn’t require women to wear veil,” adding that women can put makeup on, take pictures for themselves and post them on social media networks.
The fatwa was issued by Saudi Arabia’s former head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Makkah, Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamidi.
Answering a question in which a Twitter user asked him whether women can post their pictures on social media, the Saudi cleric said that “there is nothing wrong if a woman showed her face or put make-up.”
He goes on to add that it is permissible for a woman to post her pictures on social media, reported Al Moheet.
In another tweet, Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamidi goes as far as to claim that only the wives of prophet (MPBUH) “were required to wear Hijab so that adult males outside of their immediate family couldn’t see them.”
To support his claims, he quoted a previous saying of the Palestinian Islamic scholar Ibn Qudamah al-Maqdqsi in which he said that “if the woman’s face and hands were intimate parts of her body, it would not be Haram for her to cover them while performing Al Haj.”
قال ابن قدامة في المغني :(ولو كان الوجه والكفان عورة لما حرم سترهما ولأن الحاجة تدعو إلى كشف الوجه للبيع والشراء والكفين للأخذ والإعطاء)..
— أحمد بن قاسم الغامدي (@DAhmadq84) December 1, 2014
Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamidi goes on to add instead of blaming women, the blame should put on men who are required to lower their gaze. The Saudi cleric quoted Morocco’s scholar Qadi Ayyad, who once said: It’s not mandatory for woman to cover her face outside her house, but it is a Sunna Mustahaba_ (preferable not obligatory). Men, on the other hand, shall lower their gaze.”
قال القاضي عياض:"قال العلماء: لا يجب على المرأة أن تستر وجهها في طريقها, إنما ذلك سنة مستحبة لها, ويجب على الرجل غض البصر في جميع الأحوال".
— أحمد بن قاسم الغامدي (@DAhmadq84) November 30, 2014
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