Tag: InternationalNews

{Police file complaint after widespread outcry over mass molestation of women on New Year’s Eve in southern city.}

At least five people have been detained in connection with complaints of widespread sexual assaults on women during New Year’s eve celebrations in the Indian city of Bengaluru, police said on Wednesday.

The detentions came amid widespread outrage as female revelers complained they were groped and assaulted by a mob of men on MG Road in Bengaluru’s city centre.

The police, who initially dismissed the incidents saying it had not received complaints, took up the matter two days after the incident as videos of men assaulting women went viral on social media.

On Wednesday, television channels aired fresh footage from the same day, said to be from the closed circuit security camera of a private house, that showed two men on a scooter assaulting a young woman while some bystanders lurked at a distance.

The video is being taken as evidence by the police as they investigate complaints. “We have taken action by registering an FIR (first information report). Investigation is in progress, the city’s police chief Praveen Sood told DPA news agency.

Criminal action

Sood said the police had found “credible evidence in a case of wrongful confinement, molestation and attempt to rob” in relation to the MG Road complaints.

Five men had been detained and were being questioned, an officer at the police control room said.

Regarding the attack caught on CCTV footage, Sood said: “Criminal action is in motion. We are sure of arresting the accused.”

“Two things really stand out here. One is that India has a lot of laws dealing with such things, but policing is still not efficient – there is not enough fear for the law and for legal repercussions,” Dhanya Rajendran, the Editor-in-Chief of thenewsminute.com, said.

“The second is the patriarchal mindset that people have which reflects when the minister says that the woman should be blamed for the clothes that she wears,” Rajendran said from Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka state.

Sexual harassment of women in India has been in the limelight since the brutal gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in the Indian capital in December 2012.

Despite stricter laws and measures to increase security of women, a high number of crimes against women continue to be reported every year.

Women’s activists say the number of incidents is likely much higher as women most often tend not to report such incidents to the police.

Outrage over the New Year’s Eve reports has grown in recent days, especially on social media after the home minister of Karnataka state, G Parameshwara, was seen saying: “These kind of things happen.” Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka.

Parameshwara, who made the comments on local news channel on Tuesday, later said they were misinterpreted.

Regional Samajwadi Party lawmaker Abu Azmi invited even more outrage when he said: “It was bound to happen. Women call nudity a fashion. They were wearing short dresses.”

“The minister’s statement is as usual blaming women for the clothes they wear and women for going out in the night, women for not taking precautions,” Rajendran said.

“It’s now time for us to see this as not only a women’s issue but as a clear law and order issue, as a problem with our mindset and deal with it like that.”

{Officials say men with suspected links to rebels attack a prison, killing a guard and freeing prisoners.}

Armed men with links to the Philippines’ largest Muslim rebel group have stormed a prison in the south of the country, killing a guard and freeing more than a 150 inmates, police said.

Initial reports suggested that the gunmen responsible for Wednesday’s jailbreak were linked to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), officials said.

The attackers opened fire at guards at the North Cotabato District Jail in Kidapawan city around 1am, prison warden Peter Bongat told a local radio station.

Of the jail’s 1,511 inmates, 158 managed to escape and four were recaptured, he said.

“It’s well planned. Escapees used blanket as their getaway…We have a manhunt operation,” said Bongat.

Unconfirmed reports by Filipino officials suggested that the raid was carried out by Satar Mandalondong, a MILF commander.

“What we know at the moment is that the army had to send reinforcements to mitigate the forces of the Philippine National Police that have been pursuing the armed group that led the jailbreak,” said Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan, reporting from Manila.

“We have reports that there have been fatalities [as a result of the operation],” she said.

“We have spoken to forces on the ground, they said they had body counts but until now the Philippine government has not released official statistics but we know that shelling is still ongoing.”

The MILF group has not claimed responsibility for the jailbreak.

The predominantly Catholic Southeast Asian nation has for four decades been fighting rebels in its southern islands.

Wednesday’s incident was the latest of several mass escapes from poorly secured Philippine jails, with the incidents often involving southern rebels.

In August, another rebel group called Maute staged a jailbreak in the southern Philippines, freeing 23 detainees.

About 50 heavily armed members of the group raided the local jail in the southern city of Marawi on Mindanao island and freed eight of their members who were arrested a week earlier, police said.

In 2009 more than 100 armed men raided a jail in the strife-torn southern island of Basilan, freeing 31 prisoners including several guerrillas.

The conflict between the rebels and the state in southern Philippines has left more than 120,000 people dead in the last four decades.

President Rodrigo Duterte is pursuing peace talks with the largest armed Muslim groups, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the MILF.

Smaller bands like the Maute group and the Abu Sayyaf group are not covered by the ceasefires and are not part of the peace process.

{Brazilian government to relocate drug gang leaders involved in deadliest prison riot since 1992 that left 56 dead.}

The Brazilian government will relocate the inmates responsible for a bloody riot in a prison in the northern Amazon city of Manaus to high security federal institutions, and will prosecute them.

Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said on Tuesday that authorities would move quickly to identify and transfer the gang bosses out of the crowded jail in the remote jungle state of Amazonas where the fighting between rival drug gangs left 56 dead on Sunday.

The riot lasted for 17 hours in the Anisio Jobim Complex in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. Many of those slain were beheaded or dismembered in the worst bloodshed at a Brazilian prison since 1992.

The killings occurred over a feud between rival criminal factions, the Sao Paulo-based First Capital Command (PCC) and a local Amazonian crime group Family of the North (FDN) who are engaged in a long-term dispute over controlling prisons, drug trafficking routes, and territory in the region reeling from drug violence.

Machete-wielding gangs decapitated inmates and threw their bodies over a wall of the prison, which houses more than three times as many prisoners as it was built for in 1982.

Police hunted for more than 100 inmates who escaped from the prison during the riot.

“One group is trying to eliminate the other so they can dominate the prison system,” said Marluce da Costa Sousa, coordinator of the Amazonas state branch of Pastoral Carceraria – a prisoner advocate group linked to the Catholic church.

“It’s about profit,” she told Al Jazeera on Monday.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, dozens of people stood outside the coroner’s office in Manaus to find if their relatives were among the dead.

Sara Santos, 36, said she was seeking news of her 23-year-old brother, who had been in prison for drug trafficking.

“Nobody knows who is alive or dead,” Santos told the Associated Press news agency.

Amazonas authorities said families would be paid a compensation for the killings of their relatives in prison.

Public Security Secretary Sergio Fontes said the first bodies of the victims will be handed to their families starting Tuesday evening.

With more than 600,000 inmates, Brazil has the fourth largest prison population in the world after the United States, China, and Russia, and its prisons have long been denounced by human rights groups for violence and serious overcrowding.

The riot led to the biggest number of prison deaths in Brazil since the 1992 Carandiru massacre in Sao Paulo when 111 prisoners, many unarmed, were killed – almost all by military police – when they stormed the prison following a riot.

Four inmates were found dead in another prison in the rural area of Manaus on Monday. State officials were not able to say whether there had been a riot there.

{ISIL claims responsibility for suicide car bombing that kills day labourers in Sadr City, a mainly Shia suburb.}

A suicide car bombing has killed at least 39 Iraqis in a busy market in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, the interior ministry said.

The attack in the mainly Shia suburb on Monday was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

The bomber lured poor labourers close to the bomb site, promising them work, before blowing himself up.

Bodies were scattered across the bloody pavement alongside fruit, vegetables and the labourers’ shovels and axes.

An official from the interior ministry said another 62 people were injured.

Asaad Hashim, an owner of a mobile phone store nearby, told the AP news agency that the labourers had been jostling around the bomber’s vehicle trying to get work for the day.

“Then a big boom came, sending them up into the air,” said the 28-year old, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his right hand. He blamed “the most ineffective security forces in the world” for failing to prevent the attack.

An angry crowd cursed the government, even after a representative of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr tried to calm them.

Late last month, Iraqi authorities started removing some of the security checkpoints in Baghdad in a bid to ease traffic for the capital’s six million residents.

ISIL has carried out frequent bomb attacks on Shia areas in Baghdad, often targeting markets, restaurants and other crowded areas to maximise casualties.

Several smaller bombings elsewhere in the city on Monday killed another 20 civilians and wounded at least 70, medics and police officials said.

Gunmen wearing suicide vests also attacked two police stations in the central Iraqi city of Samarra on Monday, killing at least seven policemen, security sources said.

The attacks overshadowed a visit by French President Francois Hollande who has offered to step up support for the country’s campaign against ISIL.

Speaking after a meeting Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Hollande said that he thought Iraqi forces would recapture the northern city of Mosul from ISIL within weeks.

US-backed Iraqi forces are currently fighting to push ISIL fighters from Mosul, the armed group’s last major stronghold in the country, but are facing fierce resistance.

Since the offensive began on October 17, Iraqi forces have retaken a quarter of the city in the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

As clashes continued in and around Mosul on Monday , ISIL also targeted on Monday military positions away from the main battlefield.

Fighters attacked an army barracks near Baiji, 180km north of Baghdad, killing four soldiers and wounding 12 people, including Sunni tribal fighters, army and police sources said.

They seized weapons there and launched mortars at nearby Shirqat, forcing security forces to impose a curfew and close schools and offices in the town, according to local officials and security sources.

In a separate incident, gunmen broke into a village near Udhaim, 90km north of Baghdad, where they killed nine Sunni tribal fighters with shots to the head, police and medical sources said.

{About 2.2 million children suffer from malnutrition across Yemen, making them vulnerable to illnesses such as diarrhoea.}

As the first light of dawn trickles in through the hospital window, 19-year-old Mohammed Ali learns that his two-year-old cousin has died of hunger. But he has to remain strong for his little brother, Mohannad, who could be next.

He holds his brother’s hand as the five-year-old struggles to breathe, his skin stretched tight over tiny ribs.

“I have already lost a cousin to malnutrition today, I can’t lose my little brother,” he says.

They are among countless Yemenis who are struggling to feed themselves amid a grinding civil war that has pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.

The family lives in a mud hut in northern Yemen, territory controlled by the Houthi rebels, who are at war with government forces and a Saudi-led and US-backed coalition.

The coalition has been waging a fierce air campaign against the rebels since March 2015, trying unsuccessfully to dislodge them from the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north.

At least 25 people, including 14 Houthi rebels were killed in the past two days in a conflict that has claimed more than 7,000 lives in the nearly two years.

A coalition blockade aimed at preventing the Houthis from re-arming has contributed to a 60 percent spike in food prices, according to an estimate used by international aid groups.

During the best of times, many Yemenis struggled to make ends meet. Now they can barely feed themselves.

Mohammed’s father works seasonal farming jobs that pay only a few dollars a day.

Mohammed dropped out of school after the war began nearly two years ago and scrapes by on occasional construction and farming work.

Before the war, they could afford to eat beef or chicken once a week, but now they are lucky to have some fish with lunch. Their diet mainly consists of bread, rice and tea.

Earlier this month, Mohammed and his brother made the hour-long journey, over a bumpy and unsafe road, to the nearest hospital, in the town of Abs. Mohannad’s condition, which began with diarrhoea, had been worsening for the past two years, but they couldn’t afford treatment.

Some 2.2 million children suffer from malnutrition across Yemen, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF. That includes 462,000 who, like Mohannad, are afflicted with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), which makes them especially vulnerable to otherwise preventable illnesses like diarrhea and pneumonia.

UNICEF is supporting the treatment of 215,000 children suffering from SAM and has provided vitamin supplements to millions more, said Rajat Madhok, the agency’s spokesman in Yemen. But “this lifesaving work remains hindered by the shortage of funding and limited access to areas caught in the fighting”, he said.

The war has taken a heavy toll on the country’s health facilities. A number of hospitals and clinics have been bombed, while others have had to close their doors because of the fighting.

Less than one-third of Yemen’s 24 million people have access to health facilities, according to UNICEF, which says at least 1,000 Yemeni children die every week from preventable diseases.

Mohammed hopes his brother won’t be next.

“I can see that my brother’s condition is worsening day after day,” he says. “There’s nothing I can do.”

{Politician says vote likely to be held in 2018 in order to pass election laws for democratic transition from junta rule.}

Thailand will delay a general election planned for 2017 until next year for more time to pass new voting laws as the country transitions from military to civilian rule, a member of the National Legislative Assembly says.

Somjet Boonthanom told reporters on Monday the vote would likely be held in March or April of 2018, instead of this year.

“This is not a postponement but because of the intricacies involved in drafting election laws, elections will not happen this year,” Somjet said.

Although the military government has regularly expressed commitment to a “roadmap” for restoring democracy, the date has been pushed back every year since its May 2014 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra.

However, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office said the military government was sticking to plans to hold the election in 2017.

“As far as the government is concerned, we are on track with the roadmap. The NLA’s opinions are their own,” said Sansern Kaewkamnerd.

The military said it toppled Yingluck’s government to enforce calm in a country divided by more than a decade of conflict between a military-backed royalist establishment and populist political forces.

The next step in the transition back to democracy is for new King Maha Vajiralongkorn to endorse a constitution, which was approved in a referendum last year.

Critics argue that provisions in the constitution will entrench the hold of the military even after elections.

Politicians told Anadolu news agency – on the condition of anonymity – they would accept a delay in elections because of the timing of the royal cremation ceremony of recently passed King Bhumibol Adulyadej .

“There are some royal prerogatives like the cremation and coronation of King Rama X [Vajiralongkorn], which would clash with the election campaign,” said one former MP. “If this is the case, we can accept a short postponement of elections.”

King Vajiralongkorn recently ascended to the Thai throne following the October death of his father.