“He looked like a terrorist!” How a drive in rural India ended in a mob attack and a lynching

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Senior Police officers receive roses from members of the Chhara community, who are originally listed under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, at Kubernagar Police Chowky on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat on July 29, 2018, following a dispute with policemen on July 27 that turned violent. (AFP)
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Mohammed Salman, who survived a mob lynching attack which killed his friend Mohammed Azam, displays injuries in a hospital in Hyderabad, India, July 18, 2018. (REUTERS)
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Mohammed Salman, who survived a mob lynching attack which killed his friend Mohammed Azam, reacts as he is assisted by his mother in a hospital in Hyderabad, India, July 18, 2018. (REUTERS)
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Mohammed Akram, brother of Mohammed Azam, who was killed in a mob lynching attack, poses with the identity card of his deceased brother inside their house in Hyderabad, India, July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. (REUTERS)
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Noor Mohammed, who survived a mob lynching attack which killed his friend Mohammed Azam, poses for a portrait in Hyderabad, India, July 18, 2018. (REUTERS)
Updated 30 July 2018
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“He looked like a terrorist!” How a drive in rural India ended in a mob attack and a lynching

  • Modi’s administration, which has been facing criticism from opposition parties and the public for failing to do enough to stop the lynchings
  • Police probing the lynchings of Azam and others say they are often triggered by deep-rooted prejudices against minorities in India

MURKI/MUMBAI, India: In the tiny hamlet of Murki in the hinterlands of south India, Inspector V.B. Yadwad surveyed a pile of bricks and stones in a ditch where he and other police officers had been attacked earlier this month while trying to save a group of five men on a road trip from a violent mob.
“We tried hard to stop them,” said Yadwad, pointing to injuries on his back. “They wouldn’t listen to anyone.”
Yadwad was one of eight policemen who rushed to the village on July 13 to try to control a mob of more than 200 that attacked the five friends, wrongly assuming they were child kidnappers.
The vicious assault left one of the five men, Mohammed Azam, a UK-educated IT worker from India’s tech hub in Hyderabad, dead, and at lest two of the others badly beaten. All eight officers were injured, two seriously.
Azam, who was 32 and worked for global consulting services firm Accenture, is one of the latest victims of a wave of lynchings in India, as ill-equipped and outnumbered police struggle to contain mob violence triggered by false messages about child kidnappings spread via platforms like Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service, which is very popular in India.
The Indian government says it is not tracking data for lynchings, but data portal IndiaSpend has tallied more than 30 deaths from nearly 70 such incidents since January 2017.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, which has been facing criticism from opposition parties and the public for failing to do enough to stop the lynchings, has blamed WhatsApp, warning the messaging service of legal action if it did not curb the spread of fake news.
On July 20, WhatsApp said it was limiting the number of people someone can forward messages to simultaneously, and said it was considering more changes to curb the spread of fake messages in its largest market. But it is unclear how much this will restrain mob violence.
Police probing the lynchings of Azam and others say they are often triggered by deep-rooted prejudices against minorities in India. Azam’s own job at Accenture, according to his younger brother Akram, included reviewing the propriety of video content before it was uploaded to Alphabet Inc’s YouTube.
“India is already vulnerable due to religious and caste fault lines,” said Rema Rajeshwari, a superintendent of police in the southern Telangana state, where some recent lynchings took place. “When you add WhatsApp to the mix, things can easily spiral out of control.”

“HIT THESE BASTARDS“
In Murki, messages circulating in a local WhatsApp group, late in the day Azam was killed, simply said: “Child kidnappers found in Murki.” Videos and photos of Azam and his four friends, taken just before, were attached.
The five, who were in a new cherry red SUV, had set out from Hyderabad that day for a drive into the countryside. While passing through a hamlet where they planned to picnic, they tossed chocolates toward a group of children, according to three of the survivors.
What the men thought was a kind gesture in a poor village cost Azam his life, as a mob of angry villagers savagely attacked him and his friends.
The assault began when the group stopped to take selfies amid lush green fields beside a pond, just after driving by the kids, according to interviews with the survivors, police, villagers and other eye witnesses.
Three villagers first walked up and started deflating their tires. “We asked them why are you removing the air? They yelled: you men are child kidnappers,” said retail worker Mohammed Afroz, one of the four survivors.
While the five tried to plead their innocence, dozens of villagers gathered. Some carried pick-axes and sticks. Photos and videos of the five men were posted on a 180-member WhatsApp group named ‘Mother Murki’, according to police.
That video, seen by Reuters, shows the five, most wearing western attire, trying to calm the crowd.
It did not work.
Salham Al Kubassi, a Qatari national, who was friends with Azam, was among the first to be hit. While two of the friends tried to reason with the mob, Kubassi, who is a policeman in Qatar, jumped into the SUV with Azam and their friend Mohammed Salman, who works at a Hyderabad car repair shop, and sped away, according to police and the survivors.
But a makeshift roadblock was set up at a nearby junction. The SUV careened off the road after it hit a tree trunk the villagers had put in the road and ended in a small, dry riverbed, police said.
It was the attack here that claimed Azam’s life.
Many villagers, both men and women, threw bricks and rocks at the toppled SUV, shattering its windows. Some then tied ropes around Azam and Salman and dragged them out of the vehicle as at least 200 others gathered, hurling abuse at them, police said.
“They came here to steal kids. Let’s hit these bastards and kill them!” people in the mob shouted, according to a police report. “Don’t let them go!“

’HIGH ALERT, PLEASE SHARE’
While police say there were no child kidnappings recorded in or around Murki, child trafficking is a problem in India, and many children are sold into slavery, especially forced labor.
About 250,000 children were registered as missing on the government’s Track Child portal between January 2012 and March 2017.
Villagers in Murki said they had been hearing about child kidnapping gangs for months.
Photos and videos of the bodies of children being mutilated by alleged child abductors have been circulating via WhatsApp in many parts of India. Police showed Reuters some of the material they have gathered.
One video purports to show the bloodied body of a boy with his mouth gagged, as a man leans in and repeatedly stabs his heart. The messages exhort viewers to share them, “High Alert. Please Share As Much as Possible,” one said.
In all the areas where the recent lynching cases occurred, there were no such gangs, and the messages and reports were all false, police said.
The problem is that people “may not be able to read or write, but everyone understands photos and videos,” said Telangana Superintendent Rajeshwari.

“PEOPLE MADE A MISTAKE“
In many recent lynchings, police say minority groups such as those from lower castes, have been targets. Hindu vigilantes have also killed over two dozen Muslim people for transporting cows in the past year, accusing them of slaughtering the animals considered sacred in Hinduism.
India’s home ministry issued a notice to police nationwide on July 4, calling lynchings over child kidnapping rumors “a serious concern,” according to a copy reviewed by Reuters. The government also issued a statement on Wednesday urging action against “cow vigilantes.”
Azam’s killing has sent a chill through Murki, where many fear discussing the attack following the arrest of more than 30 men and women from the area in the police investigation. No one has yet been charged.
When asked why villagers attacked the men, Vijay Biradar, a village elder, said “people made a mistake.”
“Did you see the Qatari’s face? His big beard?” he said.
“He looked like a terrorist.”


Uruguay votes for next president in closely fought runoff race

Updated 8 sec ago
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Uruguay votes for next president in closely fought runoff race

  • Final opinion polls suggest the Nov. 24 runoff promises to be razor tight
  • Fewer than 25,000 votes potentially separating the frontrunners
MONTEVIDEO: Voters in South America’s laid-back Uruguay, known for its beaches, legalized marijuana and stability, will head to the polls on Sunday in a second-round presidential race between moderates that closes out a bumper year of elections.
The vote in the small nation of 3.4 million people sees opposition center-left candidate Yamandu Orsi take on continuity conservative runner, Alvaro Delgado, who has the backing of a third-placed ally.
Final opinion polls suggest the Nov. 24 runoff promises to be razor tight, with fewer than 25,000 votes potentially separating the frontrunners.
Unlike sharp right-left divides in recent elections in Argentina, Brazil or Mexico, Uruguay’s political arena is relatively tension-free, with significant overlap between the conservative and liberal coalitions vying for office, taking some of the sting out of Sunday’s final result.
Ballot stations open at 8 a.m. (1100 GMT) and close at 7:30 p.m. local time, with first results expected two hours later.
Orsi, who has pledged a “modern left” policy approach, won 43.9 percent of the October vote for the Broad Front and will face Delgado, who secured 26.8 percent but also has the backing of the conservative Colorado Party that together with his National Party made up almost 42 percent of votes. The two parties did the same in 2019, winning the election.
Orsi has sought to reassure Uruguayans that he does not plan a sharp policy shift in the traditionally moderate and relatively wealthy nation.
Delgado meanwhile has asked voters to “re-elect a good government,” seeking to capitalize on the popularity of President Lacalle Pou, who constitutionally cannot run for immediate re-election.
Neither coalition has an absolute majority in the lower house following October’s elections. But Orsi’s Broad Front won 16 of 30 Senate seats. He argues his senate majority places him in a better position to lead the next government.
Both contenders on Sunday are hoping to attract the roughly 8 percent of first-round voters who went for smaller, unaligned parties, as well as those who failed to turn out in October.
But neither has made new pledges in the final weeks to appeal to them, and pollsters say a televised debate on Nov. 17 appears to have had little effect.
“I don’t know who I’m voting for,” said Rosario Gusque, 42, from the region of Canelones where Orsi was previously mayor. “Even less so after seeing the debate.”
One question as the biggest year for elections in history comes to an end is whether Uruguay will buck a global trend of incumbent parties losing vote share compared with the previous election. Voters hurt by inflation and high living costs have punished parties in power, including in Britain, Japan and the United States.
A robust Uruguayan economy though could help Delgado on Sunday: “There are few indications that voters are clamoring for significant political change,” said Uruguayan analyst Nicolas Saldias of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

82 killed in three days of Pakistan sectarian violence: official

Updated 3 min 46 sec ago
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82 killed in three days of Pakistan sectarian violence: official

Peshawar: Three days of bitter sectarian gunfights in northwestern Pakistan have killed at least 82 people and wounded 156 more, a local official said Sunday.
“Among the deceased, 16 were Sunni, while 66 belonged to the Shia community,” said a local administration official in Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country but Kurram district — near the border with Afghanistan — has a large Shiite population and the communities have clashed for decades.
The latest bout of violence began on Thursday when two separate convoys of Shiite Muslims traveling under police escort were ambushed, killing at least 43 and sparking two days of gunbattles.
“Our priority today is to broker a ceasefire between both sides. Once that is achieved, we can begin addressing the underlying issues,” provincial Law Minister Aftab Alam Afridi said Sunday.

Pakistan partially stops mobile and Internet services ahead of pro-Imran Khan protest

Updated 10 min 7 sec ago
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Pakistan partially stops mobile and Internet services ahead of pro-Imran Khan protest

  • Sunday’s protest is to demand Khan’s release
  • The government is imposing social media platform bans and targeting VPN services, according to monitoring service Netblocks

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Sunday suspended mobile and Internet services “in areas with security concerns” as supporters of imprisoned former premier Imran Khan geared up for a protest in the capital.
The government and Interior Ministry posted the announcement on social media platform X, which is banned in Pakistan. They did not specify the areas, nor did they say how long the suspension would be in place.
“Internet and mobile services will continue to operate as usual in the rest of the country,” the posts said. A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Khan has been in prison for more than a year and has over 150 criminal cases against him. But he remains popular and his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI, says the cases are politically motivated.
His supporters rely heavily on social media to demand his release and use messaging platforms like WhatsApp to share information, including details of events.
Pakistan has already sealed off the capital Islamabad with shipping containers and shut down major roads and highways connecting the city with PTI strongholds in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The government is imposing social media platform bans and targeting VPN services, according to monitoring service Netblocks. On Sunday, Internet-access advocacy group, Netblocks said live metrics showed WhatsApp backends are restricted in Pakistan, affecting media sharing on the app.
Last month, authorities suspended the cellphone service in Islamabad and Rawalpindi to thwart a pro-Khan rally. The shutdown disrupted communications and affected everyday services such as banking, ride-hailing and food delivery.


Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital

Updated 47 min 28 sec ago
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Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital

  • Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were destroyed in the blaze
  • The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department

MANILA: Raging orange flames and thick black smoke billowed into the sky Sunday as fire ripped through hundreds of houses in a closely built slum area of the Philippine capital Manila.
Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were burned in the blaze that is thought to have started on the second floor of one of the homes.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Drone footage shared online by the city’s disaster agency showed houses in Isla Puting Bato village of Manila razed to the ground.
The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department.
Village resident Leonila Abiertas, 65, lost almost all her possessions, but managed to save her late husband’s ashes.
“I only got the urn with the ashes of my husband,” a crying Abiertas said.
“I really don’t know how I can start my life again after this fire.”
Fire and disaster services deployed 36 trucks and four fire boats while the country’s airforce sent in two helicopters to help extinguish the fire.
“That area is fire-prone since most of the houses there are made of light materials,” firefighter Geanelli Nunez said.


Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief

Updated 24 November 2024
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Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will discuss the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday during his visit to Ankara, a Turkish official said on Sunday.
Russia struck Ukraine with a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile on Thursday in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British missiles against Russia, marking an escalation in the war that began when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
NATO member Turkiye, which has condemned the Russian invasion, says it supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity and it has provided Kyiv with military support.
But Turkiye, a Black Sea neighbor of both Russia and Ukraine, also opposes Western sanctions against Moscow, with which it shares important defense, energy and tourism ties.
On Wednesday, Erdogan opposed a US decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, saying it would further inflame the conflict, according to a readout shared by his office.
Moscow says that by giving the green light for Ukraine to fire Western missiles deep inside Russia, the US and its allies are entering into direct conflict with Russia. On Tuesday, Putin approved policy changes that lowered the threshold for Russia to use nuclear weapons in response to an attack with conventional weapons.
During their talks on Monday, Erdogan and Rutte will also discuss the removal of defense procurement obstacles between NATO allies and the military alliance’s joint fight against terrorism, the Turkish official said.