Thousands protest mob assault of women who were paraded naked in remote Indian border state

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Women hold placards during a demonstration over sexual violence against women and for peace in the ongoing ethnic violence in India's north-eastern state of Manipur, in Imphal on July 21, 2023. (AFP)
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People participate in a protest against ethnic violence and mob assaults on two women who were paraded naked in Manipur, in Kolkata, India, Saturday, July 22, 2023. (AP)
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Members of tribal communities and All India Students Association (ASIA) hold placards and shout slogans during protest over sexual violence against women and for peace in the ongoing ethnic violence in India's north-eastern state of Manipur, in New Delhi on July 21, 2023. (AFP)
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Activists of Minority Youth Federation participate in a protest against ethnic violence and mob assaults on two women who were paraded naked in Manipur, in Kolkata, India, Saturday, July 22, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 23 July 2023
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Thousands protest mob assault of women who were paraded naked in remote Indian border state

  • The footage shows the two naked women surrounded by scores of young men who grope their genitals and drag them to a field

NEW DELHI: Thousands of people, mostly women, held a massive sit-in in India’s violence-wracked northeastern state of Manipur on Saturday to demand the immediate arrest of anyone who took part in the harrowing May assault of two women who were paraded around naked and molested by a mob in an attack that was caught on video.
The leaders of religious and women’s groups addressed the nearly 15,000 protesters, who also called for the firing of Biren Singh, the top elected official in the state where more than 130 people have been killed since violence between two dominant ethnic groups erupted in early May. The protest was held in Churachandpur, a town 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of Imphal, the state capital.
Manipur has been the scene of a near-civil war that was sparked by Christian Kukis protesting against a demand by the mostly Hindu Meiteis for a special status that would let them buy land in the hills populated by Kukis and other tribal groups, as well as a guaranteed share of government jobs.
A video showing the women being assaulted triggered widespread outrage and has been widely shared on social media despite the government largely blocking the Internet and keeping journalists out of the remote state. The footage shows the two naked women surrounded by scores of young men who grope their genitals and drag them to a field.
The women are from the Kuki-Zo community, according to the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum, a tribal organization in Manipur. One of them told The Associated Press that the men who assaulted them were part of a Meitei mob that had earlier torched their village.
“They forced us to remove our clothes and said we will be killed if we don’t do as told. Then they made us walk naked. They abused us. They touched us everywhere … on our breasts, our genitals,” she said by phone from Manipur.
The woman said the duo was then led into a field where they were both sexually assaulted. The two women are now safe in a refugee camp.
Police said the assault occurred May 4, a day after the violence between the Kukis and Meiteis started. According to a police complaint filed on May 18, the mob attacked the family of the two women and killed its two male members. The complaint alleges rape and murder by “unknown miscreants.”
The emergence and widespread sharing of the video led India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to break his more than two months of public silence over the ethnic clashes in Manipur, saying Thursday that the attack on the women was unforgivable.
The Manipur state government on Saturday announced a fifth arrest in the attack. Rajiv Singh, the state’s director-general of police, said officers were carrying out raids to arrest other suspects.
The deadly clashes have persisted despite the army’s presence in Manipur, a state of 3.2 million people tucked in the mountains on India’s border with Myanmar that is now divided into two ethnic zones. More than 60,000 people have fled to packed relief camps.
Nearly 400 men and women also held a protest in the Indian capital with similar demands. They carried placards reading “We demand action against the perpetrators” and ”Resign, Biren Singh.”
In Manipur state, the protesters assembled at a “Wall of Remembrance” site in an open ground in Churachandpur, a stronghold of the Kuki tribe, where they kept dummy coffins of people from their minority community who have been killed in the violence.
Ngaineikim, the chairperson of the Kuki Women’s Organization for Human Rights, accused Singh, who belongs to the majority Meiti community, of orchestrating atrocities and then expressing sympathy for the victims.
Singh did not immediately comment on the calls to resign, but on Thursday, he said an investigation was underway to ensure “strict action is taken against all the perpetrators, including considering the possibility of capital punishment. Let it be known, there is absolutely no place for such heinous acts in our society.”

 


Firecracker ban defiance makes New Delhi the world’s most polluted city

Updated 3 sec ago
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Firecracker ban defiance makes New Delhi the world’s most polluted city

  • The air quality index stood at 348, said Swiss firm IQ Air, taking pollution into the hazardous category
  • Local government officials have banned use of firecrackers during Diwali and the winter over the last few years
NEW DELHI: New Delhi topped charts on Friday as the world’s most polluted city after revelers defying a ban on firecrackers to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, helped drive air quality to hazardous levels.
Thick smog wreathed the Indian capital, shrouding the presidential palace in the central district and the surrounding gardens popular with joggers and cyclists, after Thursday’s celebrations.
The air quality index stood at 348, said Swiss firm IQ Air, taking pollution into the hazardous category, pushing Delhi to the top of a real-time list as the world’s most polluted city.
Local government officials have banned use of firecrackers during Diwali and the winter over the last few years, in line with Supreme Court directives, but have had difficulty enforcing the measure despite the threat of jail.
Some Hindu groups say the ban interferes with observance of the festival, a position the Delhi government has previously countered by saying the ban aims to save lives.
Friday’s smog also coincided with waste burning on farms in northern India that aggravates air quality at the beginning of winter each year as cold, heavy air traps pollutants from a variety of sources.

Four Thais killed in Israel by rocket strike from Lebanon: Thai FM

Updated 4 min 10 sec ago
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Four Thais killed in Israel by rocket strike from Lebanon: Thai FM

  • About 30,000 Thai nationals live in Israel
  • Thai nationals in Israel have been particularly hard hit since the start of the war with Hamas
Bangkok: Four Thais were killed in northern Israel by rocket fire from Lebanon, Thailand’s foreign minister said Friday.
Maris Sangiampongsa, in a post on social media platform X, said he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths close to the town of Metula on Thursday, adding another Thai citizen was injured.
The head of the regional council in Metula said late Thursday that five people had been killed in the rocket strike from Lebanon, one local farmer and four foreign farm workers.
About 30,000 Thai nationals live in Israel, where salaries are much higher than in the Southeast Asian kingdom.
Thai nationals in Israel have been particularly hard hit since the start of the war with Hamas, with at least 39 killed as a result of the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
More than two dozen were believed to have been captured by militants during the attack.
During a brief November truce, 23 Thais were released from captivity.
The Israeli army has said two Thai nationals died in captivity in Gaza in May.
After more than 11 months of cross-border clashes that displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border, the Israeli army intensified air strikes against Hezbollah in mid-September and later launched limited ground operations in southern Lebanon.
Foreign Minister Maris added: “Thailand continues to strongly urge all parties to return to the path of peace, in the name of the innocent civilians gravely impacted by this prolonged and deepening conflict.”

Filipinos brave crowds, flooding for All Saints’ Day cemetery visits

Updated 10 min 59 sec ago
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Filipinos brave crowds, flooding for All Saints’ Day cemetery visits

  • Hundreds of thousands flock to sprawling graveyards to quietly pray and celebrate the lives of departed relatives
  • In the devout Southeast Asian country, the day is a public holiday to allow for travel to far-flung gravesites across the archipelago

MANILA: Devout Filipinos clutching candles and flowers poured into cemeteries across the heavily Catholic Philippines on Friday to pay tribute to loved ones on All Saints’ Day.
Hundreds of thousands flocked to sprawling graveyards in the capital Manila while others waded through floodwaters left by a deadly tropical storm to quietly pray and celebrate the lives of departed relatives.
At Manila North Cemetery, 64-year-old Virginia Flores lit candles in front of her grandmother’s “apartment,” the local term for tombs packed tightly together and stacked meters high.
“This is my way of remembering her life and our shared memories when she was alive, so I visit her every year,” Flores said.
Erlinda Sese, 52, was joined by her sister and grandchildren to offer prayers for their deceased loved ones.
“Even if they are gone, today is a reminder that our love for them will never fade,” Sese said as she gently laid a bouquet of white flowers on a tombstone.
Police Brig. Gen. Arnold Ibay, tasked with handling crowd control in the capital, said he expected almost a million visitors at Manila North Cemetery alone, where people had begun lining up before dawn to enter.
In Pampanga, a low-lying province 80 kilometers north of the capital, AFP reporters on Thursday saw people trudge through murky floodwaters to visit the submerged Masantol municipal cemetery.
The visitors were making the pilgrimage barely a week after Tropical Storm Trami unleashed landslides and flooding that killed at least 150 people and left more than a dozen missing.
“Visiting dead loved ones is very important to Filipinos. This has been our tradition and culture,” 34-year-old Mark Yamat said.
“Even though the cemetery is submerged here, we will continue to visit.”
In the devout Southeast Asian country, the day is a public holiday to allow for travel to far-flung gravesites across the archipelago.
Maria Cayanan, 52, was supposed to light candles in front of her parents’ tombstone in Pampanga, but the floodwaters prevented her from reaching their burial plots.
“We will just light the candles at home,” Cayanan said.
“We have to visit their graves, so they know they are not forgotten.”


TikTok bandits terrorize, transfix Pakistan riverlands

Updated 18 min 17 sec ago
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TikTok bandits terrorize, transfix Pakistan riverlands

  • Police have proposed countering bandits by downgrading mobile phone towers to 2G in the Katcha lands, preventing social media apps from loading
  • That has not yet happened and would risk cutting communities off further still

RAHIM YAR KHAN, Pakistan: With a showman’s flair and an outlaw’s moustache, the Pakistani gangster dials the hotline on his own most wanted notice — taunting the authorities who put a bounty on his head.
Staring down the lens in a social media clip, Shahid Lund Baloch challenges the official on the phone and his thousands of viewers: “Do you know my circumstances or my reasons for taking up arms?”
The 28-year-old is hiding out in riverine terrain in central Punjab which has long offered refuge to bandits — using the Internet to enthrall citizens even as he preys on them, police say.
On TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram he fascinates tens of thousands with messages delivered gun-in-hand, romanticizing his rural lifestyle and cultivating a reputation as a champion of the people.
But he is wanted for 28 cases including murder, abduction and attacks on police — with a 10 million rupee ($36,000) price on his head.
“People who are sitting on the outside think he is a hero, but the people here know he is no hero,” said Javed Dhillon, a former lawmaker for Rahim Yar Khan district close to the hideouts of Baloch, and other bandits like him.
“They have been at the receiving end of his cruelty and violence.”
Baloch is said to dwell on a sandy island in the “Katcha lands” — roughly translating as “backwaters” — on the Indus River which skewers Pakistan from top to bottom.
High-standing crops provide cover for ambushes and the region is riven by shifting seasonal waterways that complicate pursuit over crimes ranging from kidnapping to highway robbery and smuggling.
At the intersection of three of Pakistan’s four provinces, gangs with hundreds of members have for decades capitalized on poor coordination between police forces by flitting across jurisdictions.
“The natural features of these lands support the criminals,” said senior police officer Naveed Wahla. “They’ll hide out in a water turbine, move in boats, or through sugarcane crops.”
Sweeping police operations and even an army incursion in 2016 failed to impose law and order. This August, a rocket attack on a police convoy killed 12 officers.
“In the current state of affairs here there is only fear and terror,” said Haq Nawaz, whose adult son was abducted late September for a five million rupee ransom he cannot afford.
“There is no one to look after our wellbeing,” he complains.
But the gangs are increasingly online.
Some use the web to lay “honey-traps” luring kidnap victims by impersonating romantic suitors, business partners and advertising cheap sales of tractors or cars.
Some parade hostages in clips for ransom or exhibit arsenals of heavy weapons in musical TikToks.
Baloch has by far the largest online profile — irking police with a combined 200,000 followers.
Rizwan Gondal, the head police officer of Rahim Yar Khan district, says that his detectives have a dossier proving his “heinous criminal activities.”
“Police have made multiple efforts to capture him however he escapes,” he added.
“He’s a very media savvy guy. Let him say, ‘I am going to surrender before the state to prove that I am innocent’ and let the media cover it.”
In his clips Baloch protests his innocence whilst casting himself as a vigilante in a lawless land, claiming he chose to fight only after family members were slain in tribal clashes.
“We couldn’t get justice from the courts so I decided to pick up arms and started fighting with my enemies,” Baloch said. “They killed our people, we killed theirs.”
But he also plays off the cycle of state neglect which breeds banditry and in turn relegates the destitute farming communities further to society’s fringes.
“The villagers here are not viewed as human but as animals,” Baloch said. “If they gave us schools, electricity, government hospitals and justice, why would anyone even think of taking up arms?”
In comments sections his viewers call him “beloved brother bandit” and a “real hero.” “You have won my heart,” claims another.
“He is popular in the mainstream because he is giving the police authorities a tough time,” said former lawmaker Dhillon.
“People like that he says the things they can’t say out loud against people they can’t speak out against.”
Police have proposed countering bandits by downgrading mobile phone towers to 2G in the Katcha lands, preventing social media apps from loading.
That has not yet happened and would risk cutting communities off further still.
But more low tech solutions have had some success.
An anti-honey trap police cell cautions citizens against the gangs with the help of billboards and loudspeakers at checkpoints entering the area, preventing 531 people from falling prey since last August, according to their data.
Baloch scoffs at police. But one problem plaguing his bid for online stardom has his attention.
Copycat social media accounts pretend to be him and share duplicates of his videos — earning thousands more followers and views than his legitimate accounts.
He feels robbed. “I don’t know what they are trying to achieve,” he complains.
But for police, his Internet hero status is at odds with the toll of his crimes.
“People will idealize Shahid Lund Baloch but when they ultimately get kidnapped by him, then they will realize who Shahid Lund Baloch really is,” said senior officer Wahla.


Russia’s torture of Ukrainian civilians, prisoners is a crime against humanity, UN expert panel says

Updated 01 November 2024
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Russia’s torture of Ukrainian civilians, prisoners is a crime against humanity, UN expert panel says

UN: Russia’s torture of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war is a crime against humanity, UN-backed human rights experts said Thursday.
Erik Møse, chair of the independent commission investigating human rights violations in Ukraine, told reporters that the panel previously described Russia’s widespread and systematic use of torture in Ukraine and Russia against civilians and prisoners, both men and women, as a war crime.
“Our recent findings demonstrate that Russian authorities have committed torture in all provinces of Ukraine that came under their control, as well as in the detention facilities that the commission has investigated in the Russian Federation,” he said.
Russia’s UN Mission said it had no comment on the press conference or the report by the commission, which is appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.
Møse said the commission is an investigative body. He noted that Ukraine’s prosecutor general and the International Criminal Court are investigating possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine and the commission may be asked for evidence.
The commissioners examined reports from 41 different detention centers, from makeshift centers to well-established facilities, in nine occupied regions of Ukraine and eight areas in Russia, Møse said.
He said the commission identified further evidence that violent practices common in Russian detention facilities were also practiced in similar facilities in Russian-occupied areas in eastern Ukraine, he said.
The commission also found additional evidence of the recurrent use of sexual violence as a form of torture, Møse said.
Detainees were subjected to rape, long periods of forced nudity, body searches and more, commission member Vrinda Gover said. She said most prisoners of war reported being subjected to sexual violence and suffering long-lasting psychological trauma.
Ukrainians in detention facilities in Ukraine and in Russia also reported “a brutal so-called admission procedure,” Gover said.
“Harsh practices designed to scare, break, humiliate, coerce and punish detainees were used routinely,” she said.
Surveillance cameras were used to watch detainees and severe collective punishment of detainees was imposed for every breach of rules, while “interrogations were accompanied by some of the most violent treatment documented,” Gover said.
Commission member Pablo de Greiff told reporters it now has evidence of the Russian organizational structure that coordinated and enabled torture in the detention facilities.
“Moreover, the Commission now has evidence that the leadership of detention facilities or other higher ranking Russian authorities ordered, encouraged, tolerated or took no action to stop torture or ill treatment,” de Grieff said.
Møse said the commission’s investigation also found that the violent practices against detainees in Russia were transferred by Russian security forces and staff to detention facilities run by Russia in areas it occupied in Ukraine.
“Based on this body of evidence, we have concluded that the Russian authorities acted pursuant to a coordinated state policy of torturing Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war,” he said. “Therefore, in addition to torture as a war crime, they also committed torture as a crime against humanity.”