Author name: admin

SITAPUR, Uttar Pradesh: Another discriminatory and horrific incident occurred with the largest minority in India—Muslims wherein an elderly Muslim couple was killed in Uttar Pradesh over their son’s relationship with a Hindu woman. The incident occurred in Sitapur city of UP. The couple—Abbas and his wife Kamrul Nisha—died on the spot in the attack and all the accused fled from the crime scene. Indian media reported that Sitapur Superintendent of Police (SP) Chakresh Mishra said a few years back Abbas’s son had eloped with a girl from the neighboring household. A case was registered in this regard and Abbas’s son was sent to jail, but as soon he came out of jail, some members of family planned the attack on the couple. Chakresh Mishra said, “According to the villagers, the son of the deceased couple, Shaukat, and Rampal’s daughter Ruby had an affair.” “Shaukat had abducted Ruby in the year 2020. At that time, Ruby was a minor and after registering a case, the police sent Shaukat to jail. He again abducted and married Ruby in June,” the Police said. Source:https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/muslim-couple-killed-sitapur-uttar-pradesh-india-b2396193.html

It’s Friday afternoon, August 18, two days after dozens of Christian homes and 19 churches in various neighbourhoods and villages of Faisalabad’s Jaranwala tehsil were vandalised and burned down by a mob over blasphemy allegations. Sayedwala Road, which cuts through Jaranwala city is lined with rows of prison vans and police vehicles. Law enforcement agencies are on high alert in surrounding cities, including Faisalabad, where most residents of Jaranwala had fled ahead of the attacks on their homes. They say they are expecting another mob attack after Friday prayers. Inside Jaranwala, the road leading from Sayedwala Road to Cinema Chowk is blocked with barbed wire and all entrances leading to the roundabout have been cordoned off. The alleged blasphemy incident occurred at Cinema Chowk, a few hundred meters from Jamia Masjid Mahtab, where the prayer leader made announcements, inciting the violence that followed. Additional police contingents from Faisalabad and Rescue-1122 fire engines dot all road entrances from Christian Town to Essa Nagri in Chak 127 on the fringes of Gogera Bank Canal, around two kilometres away, all the way to the Parish House, a further 2kms away. In the street next to Jamia Masjid Mahtab, two to three homes out of many are reduced to ashes. Here, a man sits outside his burned house on a chair and his neighbour, a woman, stands on the footsteps leading to hers. “Someone knocked on my door early in the morning and said everyone in Christian Town has left because of an impending attack and you need to hurry,” she says, reminiscing the ordeal matter-of-factly. The blasphemy suspects were residents of Christian Town, a crisscross maze of narrow streets and no sewage system, a few blocks behind Jamia Masjid Mahtab and adjacent to Chammra Mandi (leather market). An adjoining street carries a makeshift banner with the slogan of Tehreek-i-Labaik Pakistan. A makeshift banner of the TLP hangs in a street adjacent to Christian Town. All photos by author Tents and barbed wire secure the perimeters of the streets where the suspects lived and if those weren’t enough, policemen wade through overflowing gutter water to turn people away from the place. All the homes in those streets are almost burnt to ashes. But in the street next to the mosque where the lady lives, someone had to identify for the mob which of those homes belonged to Christian families. Pointing at her neighbour sitting outside his burned house, she says they only returned Friday morning at around 10am because officials of the building department were supposed to visit their homes to estimate damages. Valuables stolen from a trunk inside a home in Essa Nagri. The Punjab government is considering an offer of recompense for damages between Rs200,000 and Rs1 million, depending on the scale of the damage. On Friday, building department officials began visiting homes in various neighbourhoods to begin to devise a mechanism to estimate damages. “We will measure the size of these houses and arrive at an estimate based on what we can see,” said a building official, making the rounds in Essa Nagri. Irreplaceable losses In Essa Nagri, a member or two of each house that was torched also sit on chairs waiting for the inspection teams to arrive. In this neighbourhood, the boundary wall of the United Presbyterian Church, whose pink walls with painted Christmas ornaments still emanate heat, were broken down using hammers and set alight. The church leads into an extremely narrow street littered with the burned frames of cycles, furniture, and refrigerators. The first house on the right belongs to Allah Ditta and his mother. The 30-year-old was employed as a gardener at Jaranwala Assistant Commissioner Shaukat Masih’s home, who had to flee himself. Allah Ditta says his house was targeted because people in the vicinity knew of his employment. His mother walks me through the ransacked and burnt down rooms, but especially asks me to see the roof. Broken furniture inside a room in Allah Ditta’s home. Iron girders of the roof have melted to the ground inside a home that was vandalised by the mob. “My special needs son lived here,” she says, pointing at the scorched remains of a once bedroom. The iron girders of the roof have melted and fused with the floor. Charred remains of her son’s pigeons litter the ground. “They burned his pigeons,” she says, offering no other explanation. A few paces from her house, another resident, Sarfaraz Emmanuel Paul, stands outside his home surrounded by video loggers and journalists who want to film his burned down house and record his interview. His mother was a Sunday School teacher and in one of the rooms that was completely burned down, her Sunday School materials and hymn books were ripped apart and set on fire. As I walk through the streets, a couple sitting outside their home recognise me and call me over. They were members of our church once and had used all their retirement funds to move to Essa Nagri a few years ago to start a small prayer ministry. Their home, to the left of Pastor Saleem Arif’s All Evangelical Covenant Church near Gogera Branch Canal, was looted and burned to the ground. The pastor’s own home, on top of the church, was also looted and burned. The story is the same in every street of Essa Nagri as visitors — journalists, government officials, neighbours, NGO workers and members of the clergy — hug and cry with the residents, most of whom have returned that day and are seemingly apoplectic with shock. ‘Indescribable scenes’ Shahbaz Samuel Francis Masih, an elder (position of authority in church hierarchy) at the Catholic Church, describes how the violence played out in his street. According to him, Father Khalid Mukhtar called him and asked him to tell people to leave. He oversaw the exodus and sent those who couldn’t leave into nearby sugarcane fields. He points at an ‘alam’ (a black flag marking Shia place of residence) erected at a house in the distance. “I ran to my

Saudi Arabia has engaged in a large-scale and brutal killing of African refugees and migrants at its southern borders with Yemen that could constitute crimes against humanity, according to a prominent rights group. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented, in a report made public on Monday, “widespread and systematic” abuses committed by Saudi border guards against mostly Ethiopian refugees who flee armed conflict, economic hardships and droughts in their homelands. The nongovernmental New York-based organisation said hundreds, and likely thousands, have been murdered by Saudi border guards between March 2022 and June 2023, and killings are continuing. Witnesses said they were targeted by firearms, explosives, and artillery and mortar shelling from Saudi border guards when trying to cross. Some saw dozens killed in front of their eyes, while others experienced serious injuries like amputations, or saw refugees arrested. “I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined,” said Hamdiya, a 14-year-old girl who crossed the border in a group of 60 in February but was forced to go back to the Yemeni capital Sanaa after repeated attacks. “I saw 30 killed people on the spot.” A male minor interviewed by HRW said border guards detained their group of five men and two 15-year-old girls after killing many others, and ordered the men to rape the girls. One man refused and was shot and killed on the spot. “I participated in the rape, yes. To survive, I did it,” the boy said. “The girls survived because they didn’t refuse. This happened at the same spot where killings took place.” “Saudi Arabia’s abuses against migrants and asylum seekers, committed historically and detailed more recently in this report, have been perpetrated with absolute impunity. “If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings would be a crime against humanity,” HRW said in its report, for which it interviewed dozens of Ethiopians and analysed videos, photographs and satellite imagery. Rights groups have documented abuses of refugees in Yemen by both the government and the Houthi armed group that took control of parts of the country since the war started in 2014 – and launched one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises – but HRW said the scale and intensity have only increased since. Seeking safety via the ‘Yemeni Route’ East African refugees, predominantly Ethiopians, begin their arduous journey to Saudi Arabia by taking on the Eastern Route, also known as the Yemeni Route, which goes through Djibouti then by boat across the Gulf of Aden. In Yemen, smugglers take them north by land, and the abuse begins. HRW said a network of smugglers, traffickers and authorities have for years kidnapped, detained and beaten Ethiopian refugees in Yemen, and extorted them or their families – mostly displaced women and children in dire straits themselves – for money. Female refugees are often at risk of being sexually assaulted by smugglers or other refugees, and two out of 10 interviewed by HRW said they became pregnant as a result. Refugees are often taken to one of two makeshift “camps” on the Yemeni side of the border, separated by ethnicity, ostensibly for language purposes. “There are no fewer than 50,000 people,” HRW quoted Berhe, an 18-year-old from southern Tigray as saying of al-Raqw camp where Tigrayan Ethiopians were taken. People interviewed by HRW confirmed that there were tens of thousands in the makeshift camps, waiting to cross into Saudi Arabia. The crossing is a mountainous border separating Yemen’s Saada governorate and Saudi Arabia’s Jizan province, which is documented to be littered with land mines. Refugees travel in groups that could range from a handful of people to several hundred. On the way, the refugees may be attacked with explosive weapons – including mortar projectiles – at times for hours on end, or days. The people who survive the attacks but do not manage to escape back into Yemen are detained by Saudi border guards. While the exact numbers of people killed were difficult to document, survivors were able to give HRW the number of people who returned to the camps in Yemen, between 4 and 10 percent of those who had set out. One of the people HRW interviewed said he had approached the border guards to retrieve the body of a girl from his village and found “her body was piled up on top of 20 bodies”. The group called on Saudi Arabia to immediately and urgently revoke any policy to deliberately use lethal force on refugees, asked concerned governments to impose sanctions on Saudi and Houthi officials, and said the United Nations should establish an independent investigation into the killings and abuses. Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/21/hrw-report-details-saudi-arabian-guards-killing-refugees-at-yemen-border

Heavy rain has deluged parts of Southern California, with forecasters warning of a “potentially historic amount of rain” and severe flooding in the usually arid part of the United States, as Tropical Storm Hilary raced in from Mexico. One person died in Mexico amid reports of flash flooding in the Baja California peninsula, where some roads were swept away and images on social media showed torrents of water gushing down city streets that had been turned into rivers. California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for much of Southern California, with flash flood warnings in effect throughout a region more accustomed to drought. In a White House statement, US President Joe Biden said the federal government had deployed emergency teams and resources ahead of the storm and his administration “stands ready to provide additional assistance as requested. I urge people to take this storm seriously, and listen to state and local officials”. In Palm Springs, about 160km (100 miles) east of Los Angeles, forecasters said the city could get between six and 10 inches (15-25 cm) of rain from the storm. The city usually gets about 4.6 inches (12 cm) of rain in an entire year. Newsom, on a tour of Southern California, said Palm Springs was dry when he left on Sunday but an hour later it had received “the most significant rainfall over a 60-minute period any time in the history of Palm Springs”. The streets were soon flooded. “That’s how quickly this system is moving. Take nothing for granted,” Newsom told a news briefing in Los Angeles after updating Biden on the situation. Floodwaters raced through the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River, which normally contains barely a trickle. Hundreds of flights in San Diego, Las Vegas and Los Angeles were cancelled, professional sporting matches rescheduled and many schools cancelled Monday’s classes. Amid all the storm preparation, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the city of Ojai, about 129km (80 miles) northwest of Los Angles. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Hilary made landfall on Sunday in the northern part of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, where nearly 1,900 people were evacuated to shelters, according to the country’s army. The storm was especially dangerous in low-income areas where housing is often poorly built. “We’ve always been aware that it’s a risky area. A lot of water runs (nearby) but what are we going to do? It’s the only place we have to live,” said Yolanda Contreras, living in a flood-prone area of Rosarito, south of the US-Mexican border. Officials warned motorists of the dangers of driving through flood waters [Alan Devall/Reuters] Around the coastal town of Mulege, on the eastern side of the Baja California peninsula, one person died after his family was swept away while crossing a stream on Saturday. Phone lines and electricity were cut in several of the surrounding villages after lamp posts fell, the Mexican army said. Hilary was initially designated Category 4 – the second-most powerful on the five-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale – but weakened as it headed towards the densely populated Mexican border city of Tijuana. Nancy Ward, the director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said Hilary could be one of the worst storms to hit the state in more than a decade. “Make no mistake,” she told a press conference on Saturday. “This is a very, very dangerous and significant storm.” Hurricanes hit Mexico every year on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Although the storms sometimes affect California, it is rare for them to strike the state with much intensity. Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as climate change makes the world warmer. Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/21/tropical-storm-hilary-drenches-usually-arid-southern-california

Sweden’s government is mulling wider powers to police under some changes to its Public Order Act, to restrict acts of hate against religions, such as the burning of the Holy Quran, after recent Islamophobic incidents in the Scandinavian country stirred anger among Muslims, Reuters reported. However, the legal amendments will be done only if such incidents threaten national security, the government said on Friday. The Nordic country on Thursday heightened its terror alert level to four on a scale of five, after the Quran burnings drew angry reactions from the Muslim world, saying it had averted attacks triggered by the acts against Islam’s holiest text. Sweden’s far-reaching freedom of speech laws provides protection to the insults towards public figures or against religions. Though the government maintains a rigid stance against changing these laws, Minister of Justice Gunnar Strommer has said that a commission would be appointed to look into giving police wider powers to deny acts such as desecration of Quran. “Of course, general international dissatisfaction or vague threat should not be enough — it must be about serious and qualified threats,” Strommer told a news conference on Friday. He said that the move could allow the police to shift the protest to a different location or dissolve it. An Iraqi resident of Sweden has damaged several copies of the Quran in recent months that sparked an international response. Sweden was on the extremist group’s radar before the recent Quran burnings, with a media outlet linked to the militant group al Qaeda urging violent retribution against the country. Last week, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Swedish embassy in Beirut though it did not explode, and at the weekend al Qaeda called for attacks against the Scandinavian nation. The decision to appoint a panel was met with immediate distrust from numerous political parties, including the government’s support party, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats. Sweden Democrats’ party leader Jimmie Akesson said Sweden Democrats “will never accept that we adapt to threats and pressure” from extremists and dictatorships, even if different values always need to be weighed against each other. Earlier on Friday, the government said it had tightened security at embassies and other missions due to an increase in threats against Swedish interests abroad. Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1101706-sweden-considering-wider-powers-for-police-to-disallow-quran-burning

A senior political affairs officer at the United Nations has described how the sacrifice of colleagues who died in the attack on the UN offices at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003, has been acknowledged by the UN’s continued presence in the country. The then New York-based Elpida Rouka had accompanied the Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq Programme on a mission to Baghdad and survived the deadly explosion which killed 22 of her UN colleagues. The 19 August attack is commemorated annually by World Humanitarian Day. “A young 25-year-old barely two years into the UN at the time, I was in equal measure bright-eyed and bushy tailed practically cajoling the Executive Director of the Iraq programme to take me along on that August mission to Baghdad. I was naive about the workings of the world, not always a pretty sight, and the organization’s role therein. UN Photo/Violaine Martin Elpida Rouka, survivor of the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad on 19 August 2003 holds her damaged UN Laissez-Passer. Other than the personal cost, I suffered latent PTSD that manifested years later, and the personal cost to so many, I had not yet realized the cost to the organization. Baghdad changed everything for the UN. How we do things. Who we are. What the world thinks of us. What we think of us. I could not fathom why late Secretary-General Kofi Annan did not order the UN out of Iraq; years later, when I worked in his Cabinet, we made our peace. And yet I myself returned to Iraq four years on, not as an aid worker but as part of a political mission, a continuation of sorts of what Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative in Iraq, who died in the attack, and his team had started that fateful summer. I had at last “consciously” embraced the UN blue. UN terrorist target Canal will always serve as a reminder, albeit a tragic one, of what the UN blue flag, for the first time a direct target of a terrorist attack, represents or must represent. I am now about the age many of those we lost on that day would have been. They embodied the spirit of the UN flag, defying risk, rising above politics, speaking up for those whose voices were silenced, talking truth to power, challenging more powerful groups when those are wrong, pushing against all odds and going back. They and everyone else we have lost and keep on losing since in too many conflicts where we have failed to bring about peace will continue to serve as a compass to course-correct, lest we forget that the oath of office encompassed the preamble of the UN Charter: “We, the peoples…” Several missions – Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria – and physical and emotional scars later, I continue to carry my scorched and shrapnelled UN laissez-passer from that August 2003 to remind me exactly of that. Changing nature of conflicts MINUSMA/Harandane Dicko Personal protective equipment (PPE) is widely used by UN staff for example in Mali (pictured). It is hard to tell whether 20 years on Canal has any meaning to the outside world or even to the younger generations of international civil servants, other than to the survivors. In many ways the nature of conflicts and UN engagement therein has changed significantly in two decades, with modern peace operations set in increasingly complex, constantly shifting, high-risk multipolar settings with involvement of non-State actors and violent extremists, asymmetry of use of force, spillover of conflict beyond borders, great power fallouts and ensuing deepening of global mistrust. Operating behind T-walls [protective concrete barriers that surround UN compounds in conflict-affected countries], out of sandbagged fortified compounds, in armoured vehicles, clad in PPEs [personal protective equipment] and wary of extended exposure to the locals is often considered the norm. © UNICEF/Diego Ibarra Sánchez In Iraq, children run with kites in Domiz Camp in Dohuk. At the same time, the organization is challenged to be accountable to its own and to those they serve. We still have many lessons to learn from Canal when it comes to the latter, for our missions to be fully prepared for the worst, for our staff to be conscious of the complexities of the places we are deployed in, and for our leadership to be able to clearly communicate what it is we are doing there. The same goes for the Member States which at times present us with impossible mandates. Yet the UN’s response to Canal was right in one major aspect: the UN did not abandon the Iraqis on that day, and in doing so it acknowledged the sacrifice of those who lost their lives in the pursuit of truth; those who remain a moral compass.” Source:https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/08/1139597

A state of emergency has been declared in Canada’s western British Columbia province, as a fast-moving wildfire threatens to destroy more homes in the area around the city of West Kelowna. Premier David Eby warned that “the situation has evolved rapidly and we are in for an extremely challenging situation in the days ahead”. The McDougall Creek wildfire has grown from 64 to 6,800 hectares in 24 hours. Some 4,800 people are now under evacuation orders. Separately, about 22,000 people – or roughly half the population – have been displaced in Canada’s Northwest Territories because of another huge wildfire. An official deadline to evacuate Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s federal territory, has now lapsed. Residents have been scrambling to leave by air and road, in an effort to escape a wildfire moving towards the outskirts of the city. The numbers behind Canada’s worst wildfires season “This year, we’re facing the worst #BCWildfire season ever,” Mr Eby wrote on Friday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Given these fast-moving conditions, we are declaring a provincial state of emergency.” The premier said this would ensure “that we’re in a position to rapidly access any tools we need to support communities”. He said that more and more people were being evacuated, warning that “emergency orders could include travel restrictions to specific areas if people do not respect our calls to avoid non-essential travel”. Earlier, West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund described the wildfire as “devastating”. “We fought hard last night to protect our community. We fought 100 years worth of fires all in one night,” he added. Local officials have already reported “significant structural loss” in the area, including in Trader’s Cove, just north of West Kelowna. No deaths have been reported so far. Juliana Loewen lives in Kelowna – a larger twin city of West Kelowna on the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake. She told the BBC how locals had watched a plume of smoke coming over the mountainside like an “ominous cloud of destruction” and how some on the Trader’s Cove side jumped into the lake as the fire spread and exit routes were blocked. Her brother and grandmother fled to her house after “the fire jumped very quickly from one tree to an entire area, threatening an entire residential community”. Local residents are used to the fires because of a “California-style climate” in the area – but the heat, dryness and wind seen in recent days had created the “perfect conditions for a firestorm”, Ms Loewen added. The airspace around Kelowna International Airport has now been closed to everything other than aerial firefighters. Socures:https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66551480

While the Jaranwala attack escalated rapidly under the watch of the police, spreading across multiple Christian settlements in the city, the script of allegations, recording of evidence and reaction of the mob appears to be from a standard blasphemy playbook On August 16, 2023, dozens of Christian families had to flee violent Muslim mobs that were after the blood of two young Christian brothers. Some locals had alleged that several desecrated pages of the Holy Quran had been found near a house at Cinema Chowk in Jaranwala, Punjab. On Wednesday morning, thousands of angry men from the Faisalabad tehsil went to the Christian Colony, one of the three settlements in the area, to lynch blasphemy accused who allegedly desecrated Islamic scripture – and burnt the first church of the day. The mob then attacked churches and houses in the Christian Colony. Loudspeakers of mosques were used to incite people, and the bloodthirsty mob demanded the arrest and handover of the accused over to them to avenge alleged blasphemy. Within hours, the Salvation Army church, one of the oldest Christian-owned properties of the district, was targeted. Countless Bibles were burnt in the city, and at least eight churches were ransacked by the afternoon. The local Christian activists claim the number of churches vandalised is higher. They accused the courts and governments of acquitting blasphemers and demanded the main accused be handed over to them Social media videos, local cable and digital news outlets also spread the vile message of hate. On Facebook, terms such as Jaranwala behurmati (desecration) and Jaranwala QuranPak ki behurmati are still trending. Speaking to a local digital outlet in Jaranwala 92 News, Muslim residents of the area demanded a public execution of the accused on camera while narrating the bizarre story of alleged blasphemy as facts, in which a woman found pages of the Islamic scripture spread out in two streets of the Christian Colony after Fajr prayers. The video has 10,000 shares. As per the raging Muslims, the accused even placed their photos on the scripture to establish their identity. Jaranwala Incident: No Space For Such Intolerance, Extreme Behaviour, Says Army Chief Based on accounts narrated by participants of the mob to television channels and on social media, they caught the “evidence” early in the morning and handed it over to a cleric, Younas Chisti of the “ahl-e-sunna” group. The aggrieved majority repeatedly shouted that “Christians” keep committing blasphemy – in Nankana Sahib in February 2023 – thus, they deserve public executions. They accused the courts and governments of acquitting blasphemers and demanded the main accused be handed over to the mob that would set a precedent by hanging the violators. This was a repeated call made by angry men who had collected on the streets and Mehtab mosque in Jaranwala – and has been recorded in videos widely circulated on social media. Even before facts could be established, the assistant commissioner of the tehsil, who happens to be of the Christian faith, has been transferred. The police have registered an FIR for an offense under sections 295-B and 295-C of the blasphemy laws. The sense of relief over the lack of fatalities is relative, as hundreds have been impacted While the Jaranwala attack escalated rapidly under the police watch, spreading across multiple Christian settlements in the city, the script of the allegations, recording of evidence and reaction of the mob appears to be from a standard blasphemy playbook. Even the video interview of the aggrieved majoritarian lot reminds one of the perpetrators who lynched Priyantha Kumara while chanting slogans weaponised by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). In the videos from Jaranwala, Labbaik slogans and chants about Khatm-e-Nabuwat (finality of the prophethood) could be heard by minors and young men. But we do not need to go back to Sialkot in 2021 to trace religiously motivated violence in Pakistan. In February this year, a brutal lynching by a blasphemy mob took place in Warburton, Nankana Sahib, when the police failed to protect the accused. The same month, an Ahmadi man was killed for his faith. In April, the police rescued a Chinese national before the mob got to him near Dassu Dam, Kohistan. In May, a political worker of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was lynched in Mardan. In August, a teacher was killed for alleged blasphemy in Turbat. Main Suspects In Jaranwala Incident Apprehended: Mohsin Naqvi In Jaranwala, thankfully, “koi jani nuqsaan nahi hua,” (there were no casualties) said a Christian man working for a NGO that no lives were lost. The sense of relief over the lack of fatalities is relative, as hundreds have been impacted in the August 16 incident – just like they were in Gojra, Joseph Colony, Shahdarra, Sheikhupura, and Youhanabad. The damage to Christian lives remains irreversible. Since yesterday, local clerics of the TLP stood with police, where officers pacified the mob. Even though, in addition to actually carrying out the attacks on Ahmadi worship sites this year alone, the party members have been announcing the planned attacks in advance. And to this day, the party violently mourns Aasia Bibi’s acquittal by the Supreme Court. Tahir Ashrafi, who campaigned for the exclusion of Ahmadis from the minorities commission and whose brother is the staunch anti-Ahmadi zealot in the country, tweeted his condemnation. Senator Mushtaq of Jamat-e-Islami took time out from his hate campaign against transgender rights and demanded action against bigotry in Sweden to issue his condemnation. Shehbaz Sharif tweeted first about Sweden and then Jaranwala. Selective condemnations of violence in the name of Islam, not just by the Islamists and clergy but also by the ruling elite, are as always, for the optics alone. Meanwhile, the government have called in Rangers and thousands of law enforcers to safeguard the city. In a country where angry mobs have become a reality, there is no network of intelligence or law enforcement to preempt and intervene in time to counter attempts – like in Jaranwala or Nankana Sahib. With the rate at which minarets

A decade after hundreds of Egyptians were killed in a single day when security forces dispersed a sit-in protest in Cairo, a new report released by a human rights group to coincide with the anniversary of the massacre has claimed that authorities debated but ultimately rejected potentially less lethal options to break up the demonstration. Egypt witnessed one of its bloodiest days on August 14, 2013, when security forces used automatic weapons, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers to crush a sit-in demonstration in Cairo’s Rabaa Al-Adawya Square, where thousands of Egyptians had gathered for weeks to protest the military’s removal of democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsy. Official accounts put the death toll at around 600 people, including several members of the security forces. Human rights groups believe the true toll was even higher. Protesters accused the state of carrying out a mass slaughter; authorities claimed heavily armed demonstrators had attacked police. In the wake of the bloodshed, a national committee was established to investigate the protests, including the dispersal of protesters and its deadly outcomes. The panel published a 57-page executive summary of their findings in 2014, of which only seven pages addressed the Rabaa dispersal. The full report was handed to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former general who ousted Morsy before becoming president himself. Since then, Sisi’s government has not released the file. In a report published Monday, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a prominent human rights group, said it had obtained the full text of the investigation, which it says runs to more than 700 pages, and released what it said are key details omitted in the summary published nine years ago. EIPR said in its report that it had obtained the text “from a reliable source on condition of anonymity.” An Egyptian woman tries to stop a military bulldozer from hurting a wounded youth during clashes that broke out as Egyptian security forces moved in to disperse supporters of Egypt’s deposed president Mohamed Morsi in a huge protest camp near Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in eastern Cairo on August 14, 2013. The operation began shortly after dawn when security forces surrounded the sprawling Rabaa al-Adawiya camp in east Cairo and a similar one at Al-Nahda square, in the centre of the capital, launching a long-threatened crackdown that left dozens dead. The fate of the young man is not certain, but at the time of taking these photos he was seriously injured having been shot by birdshot. Among the details is that the security forces considered multiple options on how to clear the sit-in, before ultimately opting for the use of deadly force, according to EIPR. While the 2014 summary included one line saying the government had “alternatives before it,” it did not specify what those alternatives were or elaborate on debate among security forces about what to do. The significance of the full text of the investigation, said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of EIPR, is that it includes “transcripts of witness testimonies” that show how officials decided to disperse the protest. “This is the first time that we have official evidence… that the ministry considered two options in detail, and the reason for why they were dismissed or abandoned before the operation,” Bahgat told CNN. EIPR’s report cites testimony it says was given to the investigative committee by Maj. Gen. Medhat Al-Minshawi, who headed the dispersal operation and later became Assistant Minister of Interior for Central Security Forces. Al-Minshawi told the committee that authorities had discussed less lethal options to clear the sit-in, including cutting off water and electricity and “opening the sewage,” as well as besieging the square to prevent food supplies from reaching protesters, according to the report. But the authorities decided that these options would have taken longer to end the protests and would have “inconvenienced residents in the area,” Al-Minshawi said, according to the report. Al-Minshawi told local media in 2020 that the plan had been to peacefully disperse the demonstration until the protesters began attacking security forces, but made no mention of the debate within the security forces about other options that are detailed in the EIPR report. “The government was torn between dispersing the gathering at any cost in a short period of time, or dispersing it at a lower cost but over a longer period of time,” the investigation report said, according to EIPR. Egyptian security forces’ bulldozers moved in to disperse a protest camp held by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, on August 14, 2013 near Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said at least 250 people were killed and over 5,000 injured in a police crackdown. Egypt on edge after at least 278 killed in bloodiest day since revolution “The government has opted for the first option, as the leaders in the sit-in had gone beyond that which is fathomable or appropriate,” the report added. According to EIPR’s report, investigators at the time also said that the “Egyptian administration was also wrong in its policy of dispersing the gathering.” CNN has reached out to the interior ministry for comment about the EIPR report. The details in the EIPR report also contradict the 2014 summary, which said that the sit-in was “not peaceful neither before nor during the dispersal,” even if “it started as such.” “The larger number of Rabaa victims were innocent civilians who were most likely peaceful demonstrators,” the EIPR report said, quoting the investigation. “Those who took up arms and terrorized the citizens managed to escape from Rabaa Square.” According to EIPR, the report also says security forces used live ammunition in an “indiscriminate and inappropriate” manner, and that there was “no safe corridor” allowing the exit of those who wished to safely leave the square amid the dispersal. The executive summary released in 2014 said that when security forces arrived at the square on August 14 at 6 a.m. local time, protesters began firing live ammunition and throwing Molotov cocktails and stones, injuring members of its

A California couple became stranded in Maui after a scammer impersonating a Southwest Airlines representative cancelled their flights and utilised the credits to book a different trip. The family suffered a financial loss of $3,400 (Rs 282,620) as a result of this fraud. Megan and Kevin Morgan, who had travelled to the island to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary along with their 8-month-old baby, faced a difficult situation after the wildfires started raging on the island. They opted to cancel their planned celebratory dinner and depart for the Sacramento area just before the restaurant they had reservations at was completely destroyed by the horrific fire. The fire was expanding massively, engulfing trees and torching cars. Then the couple decides to check their options for an early exit from the island. After searching online for the Southwest Airlines contact number, they dialled the number they found. But unfortunately, the number they got was not of the airline but of a con artist. The scammer managed to acquire their confirmation numbers on the call and also requested their credit card details, which they refused to provide. However, they did disclose the specifics of their tickets. Unfortunately, the information they shared was enough to fall victim to the financial scam. “And then [the person who answered the phone] says, it’s going to be like $200 or something to change,” Megan said. “And I’m like, ‘No, no, no, there shouldn’t be change fees. This is Southwest.’ And he says, on the phone, ‘I’ve told you four times now, this is how much it costs if you want to change it.’” Megan said she didn’t give a credit card number and hung up immediately. Using the family’s names and confirmation numbers, the con artist proceeded to cancel their return flights. Subsequently, the scammer exploited the flight credit to arrange a flight for someone on the East Coast. “I’ve never heard of this scam,” Ms Morgan told the news outlet. The couple explained that they had no choice but to extend their stay on the island by an additional two days and incur a cost of $3,400 for a Hawaiian Airlines flight back home. Meanwhile, the Maui wildfires in Hawaii have killed at least 110, making it the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century, with hundreds of people unaccounted for nearly a week after the disaster. Soucre:https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hawaii-wildfires-she-requested-flight-change-lost-lakhs-without-giving-credit-card-details-4308425