Islami News: Dec 22, 2009

Georgian opposition protests against demolition of war memorial in Kutaisi

TBILISI, December 21 (Itar-Tass) -- The leaders and activists of several opposition Georgian parties held a peaceful protest in Kutaisi on Monday against the demolition of a war memorial in this city on December 19 that resulted in the death of two people.

About 2,000 people and the leaders of several parties attended the event, including Zurab Nogaideli (former prime minister and the head of the movement For a Just Georgia), Salome Zourabichvili (former foreign minister and the leader of the Georgia’s Way party), Temur Shashiashviil (former Imereti governor, presidential ex-candidate and leader of the Tetrebi party), Gubaz Sanikidze (leader of the opposition National Forum), and others.

They criticised the authorities for their policy and said “the fight against monuments is unacceptable and criminal”.

The speakers said they would insist on the dynamited war memorial be restored in the same place and an Orthodox church be built nearby in memory of those who died during the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War and the woman and her eight-year-old daughter killed during the demolition last Saturday.

Nogaideli said earlier that the government’s policy with regard to monuments was “cynical”.

“The decision to dismantle the war memorial in Kutaisi was made by the authorities without taking into account the opinion of the public and without any need,” he said.

“There is enough room around the war memorial for the construction of new buildings for the Georgian parliament and there was no need to dismantle the memorial,” Nogaideli said.

He blamed authorities for the death of two people who were killed during the blasting work at the construction site.

Georgia’s Main Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the death of two people during the demolition of the war memorial.

Chief prosecutor Murtas Zodelava told journalists, “Two persons died during the dismantling of a part of the memorial that was carried out by a private company under a contract with the Kutaisi municipal authorities.”

“According to preliminary information, the tragedy occurred because occupational safety rules were not fully compiled with during the operation,” he said.

“All persons responsible for incident will be brought to justice,” the prosecutor said.

Chunks of concrete killed a woman and her eight-year-old daughter who were standing several dozen metres from the war memorial. The site is fenced off, but obviously too close to the place of the work.

Another two local residents received injuries and were hospitalised, local mass media and law enforcement reported.

The investigation of the incident is underway.

President Mikhail Saakashvili has cut short his visit to Copenhagen, where he attended the U.N. Climate Change Summit, and flew back home.

In the evening, Saakashvili held “an urgent meeting with law enforcement leaders, members of the government and the heads of regional administrations and received a comprehensive report on the tragedy”, presidential spokeswoman Manana Mandzhgaladze said.

“The president of Georgia hopes that the investigation started by the Main Prosecutor's Office will determine the details of the tragedy and those responsible,” she said a press briefing.

“The president has been shocked by the tragedy and expressed condolences to the families of those killed. According to Saakashvili's decision, the state will provide financial aid and moral support to the families of those killed and injured,” the spokeswoman said.

Bitter weather continues in Europe

Severe cold weather conditions across Europe are continuing to disrupt travel plans for thousands of people over the Christmas holiday season, with snow and ice forcing air, rail and road closures.

Easyjet cancelled 180 flights on Tuesday, while Ryanair and British Airways warned of delays and cancellations due to heavy snow and freezing temperatures.

Eurostar resumed a partial rail service between Britain and France, after a three-day suspension stranded hundreds of passengers and cancelled the journeys of around 50,000 people.

Weather forecasters are expecting snow to continue falling in the UK, northern France and the Netherlands.

Winter storms across the continent have led to at least 90 deaths in recent days, including 42 mostly homeless people in Poland, where temperatures have plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Long queues

The travel chaos began on Friday and Saturday when five Eurostar trains broke down, trapping more than 2,000 passengers inside.

Rory Challands, Al Jazeera's correspondent at the Eurostar terminal in London's Kings Cross station, said queues for the resumed service on Tuesday were "stretching around the lounges" and appeared to be growing longer.

"Those travelling on Eurostar today are not people with tickets to travel today but those who were supposed to be travelling on Saturday and Sunday."

Ian Nunn, a senior Eurostar executive, told Al Jazeera: "People are bearing with us. We are doing our level best to deal with the backlog.

"We are asking people to only turn up if they have tickets for Saturday or Sunday. The priority is to deal with passengers who are stranded and have been so for two or three days.

"[To our passengers] we say sorry. We are refunding tickets and trying to be practical."

'Big inconvenience'

Warsaw, Poland's capital, has suffered temperatures of -15C below average, while Russia has also been feeling its heaviest snow of the season.

Temperatures are expected to rise on Thursday, with westerly wind chills dropping and central European temperatures increasing by 5 or 6C.

Some airports, including Frankfurt, are beginning to allow aircraft to take off, but flight disruptions are expected to continue.

Flights have been cancelled in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain and main highways were blocked across Europe where some regions had more than 50cm of snow.

Al Jazeera's Challands said the weather "is not looking to get any better any time soon".

"Mostly people are trying to get back for Christmas to see their families, so it is a big inconveniece for them."

The French government has said that it will investigate the breakdown of Eurostar trains, which they believe may be due to more than the unusually dry snow sucked into train engines the firm has blamed.
Source: Al Jazeera

US recovery on shaky ground

The US economy is growing, but not as much as expected new figures have shown.

Data released on Tuesday showed the US GDP grew 2.2 per cent from July through September, more than half a percentage point down from earlier forecasts.

The revised growth figure follows four successive quarters of decline in the world's largest economy, but prospects for a sustainable recovery remain uncertain.

The expansion was largely driven by massive government spending, including the so-called "cash-for-clunkers" programme to encourage spending on new cars.

Meanwhile, business investment remains well down, as are bank lending figures, and despite the Christmas holiday season, consumer spending has been tepid at best.

At the same time, unemployment stands at around 10 per cent, with warnings that that figure could rise yet further before it starts to improve.

Fear

Speaking to Al Jazeera, New York-based economist Max Fraad Wolff said while the US economy was officially out of recession, most Americans still felt very uneasy.

"The feeling in the gut and hearts and minds of most Americans is still one of fear and a lot of less than convinced sentiment about the future of the economy for them," he said.

Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates, said the report was "a bit disappointing" and suggested "that underlying domestic demand is pretty soft."

Brown said he expected a jump in growth to at least 4.0 per cent in the current fourth quarter, but added that much of that will come from restocking of business inventories drawn down in the recession.

Looking forward to the coming year, Brown said the economy may grow at around 3.0 per cent "which is good by historical standard but not enough to bring the unemployment rate down substantially."

"It's going to take a long time before we're firing on all cylinders," he added.

UK slump deepens

Tuesday's revised US growth figures came as figures from across the Atlantic painted an even bleaker picture, with figures showing the UK economy still stuck in recession.

According to government data GDP shrank by 0.2 per cent in the third quarter, casting further doubt over the country's recovery.

Britain is now the last major economy still in recession, having now contracted for six quarters in a row.

The slump is Britain's longest and deepest recession since the end of the World War Two.
Source: Al Jazeera

Guantanamo ‘Hell on Earth’: Ex-Detainee

HARGEISA, Somalia – After spending eight hellish years in Guantanamo Bay, Mohamed Saleban Bare still can’t believe he is back home from the notorious detention camp.

"Guantanamo Bay is like hell on Earth," Bare told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Tuesday, December 22, in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway state of Somaliland.

"I don't feel normal yet but I thank Allah for keeping me alive and free from the physical and mental sufferings of some of my friends."

The 44-year-old was among a dozen Guantanamo detainees sent by the US at the weekend back home into Somaliland, Afghanistan, Yemen.

Bare and another Somali, 45-year-old Osmail Mohamed Arale, were handed over to their relatives in Hargeisa by the International Representative Committee of the Red Cross.

"I was in prison for about eight years and two months without being guilty,” he said.

The US has been holding hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo, opened in 2002, for years, branding them unlawful enemy combatants to deny them legal rights.

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"Can Obama Bring Back My Mother, Life?"
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Living With Guantanamo Scars

There have been reports of degrading and sadistic treatment of detainees at the infamous detention centre, which has been globally condemned as a stain on America's human rights record.

President Barack Obama ordered has pledged to close Guantanamo by January, with some of the detainees to be moved to a maximum-security prison in the state of Illinois.

Hellish

Still haunted by his hellish experience, Bare can’t forget his lost years behind Guantanamo high walls.

"Some of my colleagues in the prison lost their sight, some lost their limbs and others ended up mentally disturbed,” he said.

“I'm OK compared to them."

The Somali man was arrested in the Pakistani port city of Karachi in December 2001, weeks after the US launched its so-called “war on terror” following the 9/11 attacks.

After four months of interrogation, he was moved to US military prisons in Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan.

"At Bagram and Kandahar, the situation was harsh,” he recalled.

“But when we were transferred to Guantanamo the torture tactics changed.

“They use a kind of psychological torture that kills you mentally," he said.

Bare cites sleep deprivation for at least four nights in a row and feeding detainees once a day with only a biscuit as among the aggressive techniques used by US jailors.

"And in the cold they let you sleep without a blanket,” he said.

“Some of the inmates face harsher torture, including with electricity and beating."

Bare said the US authorities had never told him why he was arrested.

"They used to ask many questions, most of them relating to my background like what I was doing in Somalia and about the people I know.

“It was all about suspicions and not a clear case," he said.

Bare hopes that one day he will be able to lead a normal life after his hellish experience.

“Praise be to Allah, I'm free now and back home, wishing to overcome the ordeal."

China Rewards Cambodia For Uighurs

BEIJING – China approved a 1.2 billion-dollar aid package to Cambodia only two days after Phnom Penh deported Uighur Muslims who were seeking refugee status back to Beijing despite international criticism, including from the US.

"China thanked the government of Cambodia for assistance in sending back those people to China," Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said in a statement cited by Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, December 22.

"This represents cooperation by the two sides."

China and Cambodia signed 1.2 billion-dollar aid package on Monday, two days after Phnom Penh deported at least 20 Uighur Muslims seeking asylum back to Beijing.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said denied any link between the Uighurs' deportation and the massive aid package.

"This aid has no strings attached. The relevant accusations against us are groundless," he said.

"China and Cambodia have maintained a comprehensive partnership of cooperation. And we have provided aid to Cambodia within our capacity."

The Uighurs fled China into Cambodia following deadly ethnic violence in the north-western province of Xinjiang in July, which left at least 197 people dead and 1,600 wounded.

Xinjiang and its Uighur Muslims, a Turkish-speaking minority of more than eight million, continue to be the subject of massive security crackdowns.

Muslims accuses the government of settling millions of ethnic Han in their territory with the ultimate goal of obliterating its identity and culture.

Beijing views the vast region as an invaluable asset because of its crucial strategic location near Central Asia and its large oil and gas reserves.

Criticism

The deportation of the Uighurs to China, where they are likely to face torture, continued to drew international flak.

"I am dismayed by the deportation from Cambodia of Uighur asylum seekers to China," Christophe Peschoux, representative of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote in The Phnom Penh Post on Tuesday.

He said Cambodia was "obviously under pressure" when they overturned initially strong assurances that they considered the Uighurs asylum seekers.

"This deportation is all the more disturbing in a country that has known massive persecution during the wars and the Khmer rouge regime, and which knows all too well the price and value of refugee protection."

Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer said Cambodia's decision was "no doubt influenced by enormous Chinese pressure, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in aid".

"Governments of countries neighboring China are reluctant to take any action that would displease Chinese authorities, leaving Uighurs nowhere to flee."

Years On, Tsunami Still Haunts Aceh

LAMPUK – Going to bed every night, 10-year-old Ikra Alfila can’t close her eyes, fearing nightmares of giant waves washing away her fellow Acehnese.

"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't forget,” the Acehnese child told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in a broken voice on Tuesday, December 22.

“It's the same for my friends who survived."

The little girl is haunted by the memory of tsunami waves that smashed into Aceh five years ago.

"I was with my grandmother but the wave separated us,” the young Acehnese recalled.

“I was carried away and then some people saved me. My grandmother drowned," said Ikra, who also lost her baby brother, mother and grandfather in the catastrophe.

Around 169,000 people were killed and 600,000 driven homeless in Aceh when walls of water smashed into the Indonesian province in 2004.

More than 40,000 others died elsewhere, mostly in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka.

The disaster destroyed 141,000 houses in Aceh, caused $4.5 billion damage and left a quarter of the province's population jobless.

Images of the devastation around Lampuk, where the mosque was the only building left standing in a landscape of flattened trees and rubble, were flashed around the world in the days after the disaster.

Houses, schools, businesses and markets were washed away as far as seven kilometres (four miles) inland, and more than one in five villagers lost their lives.

Missing

A massive operation has been launched to rebuild the devastated province after the tsunami disaster.

"The village was totally rebuilt thanks to the aid which we received from all over the world," Khairiah, a 43-year-old teacher, said.

Billions of dollars have been outpoured to rebuild the devastated province after tsunami.

Indonesia's tsunami reconstruction agency wound up its work in April, having built 140,000 new homes, 1,759 school buildings, 363 bridges and 13 airports.

Despite the massive reconstruction operation, many Acehnese still miss their normal life.

"It looks like life is normal here,” Khairiah said, referring to the brightly coloured homes.

“But the trauma remains."

Concerns are running high in the province that with the Indo-Australian tectonic plates in relentless motion, another catastrophe of the scale of 2004 tsunami is almost certain to hit the area again.

However, Khairiah, a devout Muslim, is unfazed, saying she will never consider leaving her seaside home.

“(A new disaster) hits us, that's our destiny."