NEW DELHI: This month marks 70 years since British India split into two nations — Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan — and millions were uprooted in one of the largest mass migrations in history.
An untold number of people — some estimates say up two million — died in the savage violence that followed, as Hindus and Muslims fleeing for their new homelands turned on one another, raping and butchering in genocidal retribution.
Five people who witnessed that bloody division told AFP of their fear, losses and attempts to rebuild their lives.
Nisar Akhtar, now a retired statistician in Karachi, was six years old when the smoke began to rise every night from the villages surrounding his family’s home in Hoshiarpur district in Punjab state — Sikhs, his father said, burning the surrounding areas.
Every day from that moment on they “faced the fear of being or not being.”
Eventually, after one failed escape attempt which saw his father separated from his family, they managed to flee to a refugee camp before beginning a 21-day walk into Pakistan, which was when the real nightmare began.
Sikhs attacked their caravan of several thousand people repeatedly. “They would toss the children in the air with their spears.
“I saw infants, children, and elders with spears pierced in their bodies. They were moaning with pain and I passed, skipping them.
“What could I have done? People were reeling in pain and shouting for water and we were too insensitive to help them. Everybody was concerned with his own life.”
He clung to his mother’s shirt so as not to lose her. She was also carrying his newborn sister. “At one stage, I am not sure whether knowingly or inadvertently, she left the baby lying on the ground. I asked her, ‘Where is my sister?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she flatly replied... I went back and I saw her (the baby) lying on the ground and picked her up. Today she is alive with the grace of Allah.”
Madhu Sondhi was five years old and living in Lahore when partition came and the Indian railway company offered her engineer father a choice of moving to India or staying in what is now Pakistan. The family ended up in a house near New Delhi’s central railway station that became a refuge for relatives streaming across the new border bringing horror stories.
“Opposite our house was a mosque where they were slaughtering Muslims. The bullets often fell in our garden so I was not allowed to play there.
“I wasn’t directly affected as I was very young. My mother’s sister, however, saw people being killed at the railway station, they were shoving pencils up their nostrils and into their eyes. She was never the same. One day she had one of her fits and picked me up, swung me around and threw me on the floor. My parents never left me alone with her again.”
“My mother’s brother stayed behind on his farm. As the rioters came looking for Hindus to kill, his Muslim servants hid him in a small shed and covered him with cow dung cakes. They loaded him onto a horse cart and set off to the refugee camp. On his way out he gave them his house keys — it’s yours, you saved my life, he told them.”
Raj Khanna was 14 years old, the third of seven children of a government accountant, living in a Hindu district of Lahore in 1947 when the killings mounted.
By summer of that year, an occasional stabbing had turned into a spree of killings and mobs attacks. “Rioters set fire to some of the houses in our lane,” he said.
“My friends and I had gone to see, and to help in any way. We were on the rooftop of the building next door, throwing water to douse the flames when someone pulled me back. That saved my life. There was a police wallah on the street firing at us. The bullet just missed me.”
“When our neighborhood went up in flames, that’s when the parents got scared and the exodus started.” The Khanna family went to Shimla, now the capital of India’s Himachal Pradesh state.
Raj Khanna eventually moved to Delhi. “I still had the refugee tag. The refugee tag stays with us. The wounds never heal.”
Saleem Hasan Siddiqui, now 76, vividly remembers the bloodied streets of old Delhi where the stench of chopped bodies wafted through the streets and frenzied mobs dumped corpses.
“The general atmosphere had become one of distrust, of fear. No one was ready to place their faith in one another,” said Siddiqui, who was first interviewed by the 1947 Partition Archive, an Indian organization that finds witnesses from that time and records their stories.
“We didn’t know who they were going to come for next.”
He recalled that as a six-year-old, he was frightened and fascinated by the violence.
“We weren’t allowed to go out much. But we would race out every opportunity we got because everyday it was ‘oh, that guy’s chopped head was found on the road’ or ‘oh, that guy was found murdered in the alley’. We were naturally excited.”
“They chopped people up and tossed them into the dry canal. Everyone was in a frenzy, killed whoever they saw... Hindu, Muslim, anyone. No one was really spared.”
Siddiqui recalled that he would run home “with chills.”
“The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve heard, they have stuck. They have forever been etched into my mind.”
Saeed Hasan Khan was 17 years old, trapped in east Punjab in September of 1947 as the killing continued. He managed to hitch a ride with a friend on a special train carrying the Pakistan army over the border.
The scenery outside the window was grotesque: “Corpses all around... We saw bodies at Jalandhar Station, Amritsar we saw the bodies, and we saw them at Ambala... There was nothing in my mind except being shocked.”
He made it over the border safely, attending college in Lahore before moving to Europe for 50 years and making several documentaries with the BBC, then ending up in Karachi.
But what stood out for him was when Pakistan played India in a Test match in 1954, just seven or so years after Partition.
Pakistan threw open the floodgates, allowing fans from Amritsar and Jalandhar to attend without visas.
In Lahore, he said, every other household had suffered some tragedy or horror during Partition. “But they all forgot all those miseries. When they saw Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs here, the sweetmeat shop owner refused to take money from them... They showed immense hospitality.
“And when they (Pakistanis) went to Jalandhar and Amritsar, the people there reciprocated.
“It means that a common man is ready to forget and forgive, despite that all the things were quite recent and alive in the memories of the people.”
India-Pakistan: Voices of the Partition
India-Pakistan: Voices of the Partition
German president urges unity after ‘dark shadow’ of Christmas market attack
- Steinmeier recognized that there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction about politics” in Germany but insisted that “our democracy is and remains strong”
BERLIN: Germany’s president said Tuesday that a deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market had cast a “dark shadow” over this year’s celebrations but urged the nation not to be driven apart by extremists.
In his traditional Christmas address, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sought to issue a message of healing four days after the brutal attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg killed five people and left over 200 wounded.
“A dark shadow hangs over this Christmas,” said the head of state, pointing to the “pain, horror and bewilderment over what happened in Magdeburg just a few days before Christmas.”
He made a call for national unity as a debate about security and immigration is flaring again: “Hatred and violence must not have the final word. Let’s not allow ourselves to be driven apart. Let’s stand together.”
His words came a day after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) held what it called a memorial rally for the victims in Magdeburg, where one speaker demanded that Germany “must close the borders.”
Nearby an anti-extremist initiative was held under the motto “Don’t Give Hate a Chance.”
Steinmeier recognized that there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction about politics” in Germany but insisted that “our democracy is and remains strong.”
A Saudi doctor, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, 50, was arrested Friday at the scene of the attack in which a rented SUV plowed at high speed through the crowd of revellers, bringing death and chaos to the festive event.
His motive still remains unclear, days after Germany’s deadliest attack in years.
Abdulmohsen has in his many online posts voiced strongly anti-Islam views, anger at German authorities and support for far-right conspiracy narratives on the “Islamization” of Europe.
News outlet Der Spiegel reported he wrote on social media platform X in May that he expected to die “this year” and was seeking “justice” at any cost.
Investigators found his will in the BMW that he used in the attack, the outlet said — he stated that everything he owned was to go to the German Red Cross, and it contained no political messages.
Die Welt daily, citing unnamed security sources, said that Abdulmohsen had been treated for a mental illness in the past, thought this was not immediately confirmed by authorities.
The attack has fueled an already bitter debate on migration and security in Germany, two months before national elections and with the far-right AfD party riding high in opinion polls.
The government is facing mounting questions about possible errors and missed warnings about Abdulmohsen, who was arrested next to the battered BMW sports utility vehicle.
Saudi Arabia said it had repeatedly warned Germany about its citizen, who came to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status 10 years later.
A source close to the Saudi government told AFP that the kingdom had sought his extradition.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government has pledged to fully investigate whether there were security lapses before the attack.
The Saudi suspect has been remanded in custody in a top-security facility on five counts of murder and 205 of attempted murder, prosecutors said, but not so far on terrorism-related charges.
German Christmas markets have been specially secured since a jihadist attacker rammed a truck through a Berlin Christmas market in 2016, killing 13 people.
The Magdeburg event too had been shielded by barricades, but the attacker managed to exploit a five-meter gap when he steered the car into the site and then raced into the unsuspecting crowd.
Steinmeier offered his condolences for relatives of those injured and killed “in such a terrible way” — when the attack killed a nine-year-old boy and four women aged 45 to 75.
“You are not alone in your pain,” he told the hundreds of affected families. “The people throughout our country feel for you and mourn with you.”
Legendary drug lord Fabio Ochoa is deported to Colombia after spending two decades in US prisons
- Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade
BOGOTÁ, Colombia: One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported back to the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the United States.
Fabio Ochoa arrived in Bogota’s El Dorado airport on a deportation flight on Monday, wearing a grey sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag.
After stepping out of the plane, the former cartel boss was met by immigration officials in bullet proof vests. There were no police on site to detain him — an indication he may not have any pending cases in Colombian courts.
In a brief statement, Colombia’s national immigration agency said Ochoa should be able to enter Colombia “without any problems,” once he is cleared by immigration officers who will check for any outstanding cases against the former drug trafficker.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to US authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in the Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires.
Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellin in 1993.
Ochoa was first indicted in the US for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel, but became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal in which they avoided being extradited to the US
The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again three years later for drug trafficking and was extradited to the US in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy.
He was the only suspect in that group who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.
Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade.
But the former member of the Medellin cartel was recently depicted in the Netflix series Griselda, where he first fights the plucky businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market, and then makes an alliance with the drug trafficker, played by Sofia Vergara.
Ochoa is also depicted in the Netflix series Narcos, as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family that is into ranching and horse breeding and cuts a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.
Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant US attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that the former mafia boss will have a welcome return home.
“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press earlier this month.
Bill Clinton is hospitalized with a fever but in good spirits, spokesperson says
- “He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said
WASHINGTON: Former President Bill Clinton was admitted Monday to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington after developing a fever.
The 78-year-old was admitted in the “afternoon for testing and observation,” Angel Urena, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement.
“He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said.
Clinton, a Democrat who served two terms as president from January 1993 until January 2001, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer and campaigned ahead of November’s election for the unsuccessful White House bid of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Greek lawyers call for further investigation into 2023 deadly shipwreck
- “The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them
ATHENS: Greek lawyers representing the survivors and victims of a deadly 2023 shipwreck said on Monday a naval court needed to examine more evidence after a preliminary investigation failed to shed light on the case.
Hundreds died on June 14, 2023, when an overcrowded fishing trawler, monitored by the Greek coast guard for several hours, capsized and sank in international waters off the southwestern Greek coastal town of Pylos.
A local naval court, which opened a criminal investigation last year, has concluded a preliminary investigation and referred the case to a chief prosecutor, the lawyers said on Monday, adding they had reviewed the evidence examined by the court so far.
“The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them.
Evidence, including the record of communications between the officials involved in the operation, was not included in the case file, they added.
“The absence of any investigation into the responsibilities of the competent search and rescue bodies and the leadership of the Greek coast guard is deafening,” they said.
The chief prosecutor will decide if and how the probe will progress.
Under Greek law, prosecutors are not allowed to comment on ongoing investigations.
The vessel, which had set off from Libya, was carrying up to 700 Pakistani, Syrian and Egyptian migrants bound for Italy. Only 104 people were rescued and 82 bodies found.
Greece’s coast guard has denied any role in the sinking, which was one of the deadliest boat disasters in the Mediterranean Sea.
Mozambique death toll from Cyclone Chido rises to 120
- The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population
MUPATO: The death toll from Cyclone Chido in Mozambique rose by 26 to at least 120, the southern African country’s disaster risk body said on Monday.
The number of those injured also rose to nearly 900 after the cyclone hit the country on December 15, a day after it had devastated the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte.
The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population.
Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago. Authorities in Mayotte, France’s poorest territory, said many avoided emergency shelters out of fear of deportation, leaving them, and the shantytowns they live in, even more vulnerable to the cyclone’s devastation.
Still, some frustrated legal residents have accused the government of channeling scarce resources to migrants at their expense.
“I can’t take it anymore. Just to have water is complicated,” said Fatima on Saturday, a 46-year-old mother of five whose family has struggled to find clean water since the storm.
Fatima, who only gave her first name because her family is known locally, added that “the island can’t support the people living in it, let alone allow more to come.”
Mayotte, a French department located between Madagascar and mainland Africa, has a population of 320,000, including an estimated 100,000 migrants, most of whom have arrived from the nearby Comoros Islands, just 70 kilometers away.
The archipelago’s fragile public services, designed for a much smaller population, have been overwhelmed.
“The problems of Mayotte cannot be solved without addressing illegal immigration,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during his visit this week, acknowledging the challenges posed by the island’s rapid population growth,
“Despite the state’s investments, migratory pressure has made everything explode,” he added.
The cyclone further exacerbated the island’s issues after destroying homes, schools, and infrastructure.
Though the official death toll remains 35, authorities say that any estimates are likely major undercounts, with hundreds and possibly thousands feared dead. Meanwhile, the number of seriously injured has risen to 78.
