EWB in Burkina Faso Noémie Paradis African Program Staff Burkina Faso
Photos capture life after rape - arabtimesonline.com · World News Roundup INTERNATIONAL ARAB...
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World News Roundup INTERNATIONAL ARAB TIMES, TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2016 16 Burkina Faso Mali, Faso join MOSCOW, Jan 18, (Agencies): Four members of a Ukrainian fam- ily, including a 9-year-old child, were among those killed when al- Qaeda fighters attacked a popular cafe and hotel in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou, Ukraine’s foreign minister said Sunday. The dead in- cluded a Ukrai- nian woman who together with her Italian husband owned the cafe, and their child, Foreign Minis- try spokesman Yevgeny Ignato- vsky told 112 Ukraina television. He gave no further details. Nor did Foreign Minister Pavlo Klim- kin, who used Twitter to report the deaths of four family members, in- cluding a 9-year-old child. The Italian foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday the 9-year- old son of Gaetano Santomenna, the Italian owner of Cafe Cappuc- cino, was inside the cafe with his mother when the attack took place, but it had no confirmation that the boy had been killed. Ukrainian websites identified the other two Ukrainian victims as the sister and mother of the cafe own- er’s wife. This information could not immediately be confirmed. Friday’s attacks left 28 people dead from at least nine different countries including Burkina Faso, Canada, France, Libya, the Neth- erlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Ukraine and the US. Burkina Faso and Mali have agreed to work together to counter the growing threat of Islamic mili- tants in West Africa by sharing in- telligence and conducting joint se- curity patrols following two deadly and well-coordinated attacks in the region. Their prime ministers met on Sunday, two days after al-Qaeda militants seized the Splendid Hotel in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouaga- dougou, opened fire on a restaurant and attacked another hotel nearby, killing at least 28 people from at least seven countries, and wound- ing 50 other people. The assault, claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), follows a similar raid in November on a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, which killed 20 people, including citizens of Russia, China and the United States. In a statement on the Burkina Faso assault that was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, AQIM said: “This blessed operation is but a drop in the sea of global jihad.” The militant group identified three attackers and called the tar- geted hotel and surrounding areas “one of the most dangerous dens of global espionage in the west of the African continent.” The exact details of the coop- eration between Burkina Faso and Mali were not immediately clear, but the patrols and intelligence sharing mark an intent by the two countries to prevent the spread of militancy as AQIM and others ex- pand operations in the region be- yond their usual reach. For years, Islamic militants have used northern Mali as a base, but over the past year they have staged a number of attacks in other parts of the country. Burkina Faso’s au- thorities are now concerned that its long desert border with Mali could become a transit point for militants. “There is a very strong political will on the part of the two states to combine our efforts to fight terror- ism,” said Burkina Faso’s prime minister, Paul Kaba Thieba. Thieba and his Malian coun- terpart Modibo Keita visited the outside of the Splendid Hotel on Sunday, where bullet holes and a charred exterior offered reminders of Friday evening’s attack. Tight security was in place around the hotel. Inside, Burkinabe and French security officials were conducting an investigation. Also: PERTH: An Australian couple re- portedly kidnapped and held by militants in Burkina Faso have dedicated their lives to providing medical services to people in the re- mote north of the country, a family spokesperson said on Sunday. Dr. Ken Elliott and his wife Jocelyn, were kidnapped overnight in northern Burkina Faso near the border with Mali, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said in a televised address to the nation on Saturday after al-Qaeda fight- ers staged an attack on the capital Ouagadougou. It is not known if the Elliott’s abduction was related to the attack. The doctor and his wife are in their 80s. Hamadou Ag Khallini, a spokesperson for Malian militant group Ansar Dine, told the Austra- lian Broadcasting Corporation that jihadists from the al-Qaeda-linked “Emirate of the Sahara” group, which operates in northern Mali, are holding the couple. Four ‘killed’ in Ukraine family Bangladesh militants ‘jailed’ for ’05 blasts NEW DELHI, Jan 18, (AP): A court in Bangladesh sentenced five alleged radical Islamists to 10 years in jail on Monday after finding them guilty of car- rying out a series of explosions in 2005 to demand Shariah law in the Muslim- majority nation. Police Inspector Mominul Islam said the court in Rangamati district in southeastern Bangladesh delivered the sentences to the members of the banned Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh group. One defendant was acquitted because the charges against were not proven, he said. The group is accused of exploding hundreds of homemade bombs across the country almost simultaneously in August 2005 to press their campaign for Shariah law in a country where the legal system is based on British common law. Klimkin Indian army tanks roll out during rehearsals for the upcoming Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India on Jan 18. A contingent of French soldiers will march down the Rajpath on Republic Day along with Indian troops in the presence of President Francois Hollande who is the chief guest for this year’s celebrations. India marks Republic Day on Jan 26 with military parades across the country. (Inset): A French contingent rehearses for the upcoming Indian Republic Day parade. (AP/AFP) Pakistani former interior minister Aftab Sherpao, (center), leaves the court after a hearing in Quetta on Jan 18. (AFP) India ‘They want to go back to school’ LONDON, Jan 18, (RTRS): When Smita Sharma began photograph- ing survivors of rape in India in December 2014, the experience was so intense that she developed post traumatic stress disorder. The condition worsened when Sharma’s cousin killed herself after being abused by a boyfriend. “For months I would get night- mares and I would feel this anxi- ety, constant burning sensation in the stomach, which wouldn’t go,” Sharma said. “It’s heartbreaking, it’s disturb- ing, sometimes I feel I can’t breathe, it’s suffocating.” The 35-year-old Indian photogra- pher said the idea to make portraits of women and girls who were raped was born in part out of frustration about the way the media reported the crime, and in part out of curios- ity about the lives of the survivors. “It was all about ‘who, why, when, why’ but it was not about people who were actually affected by it the most,” Sharma told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from India. “Especially after the incident and the media craziness was over I used to wonder ‘do people go back to them to ask how they are they do- ing?’” Sharma, who is a survivor of abuse herself, said the intention be- hind the project was to start a dis- cussion about life after rape and to put faces to the stories. “My idea was to show them as just you and me, as a normal human being,” Sharma said. But sometimes the victims cannot be photographed - because they are dead. Extremely “(One of them) was a 23-year-old girl, extremely good looking, work- ing in an office,” Sharma said. “Her mother took me to the place where her body was found, half- naked. It was found two days later and there were ants coming out of her mouth and eyes.” Sharma said rape survivors and their families often face shame and ostracism which makes it difficult to forget about the crime and move on. “It’s a crime, it’s a trauma that they go through, but they want to be invited to weddings, they want to go back to school, they want to get a job,” Sharma said. “They don’t want to be reminded again and again that they were raped.” Sharma, who so far has photo- graphed more than 20 women and girls in four Indian states aged from five years old to 80, said she wanted to reach survivors across India, which she said was an expensive challenge. In December she launched an online fundraising campaign to fi- nance the project which she has been funding mainly with her own money. She hope the money raised would also help to finance a short documentary about the survivors. “I feel I have to do something for these girls, I owe it to them,” she said. “If they’re sharing their pain with me I do have a responsibility to bring some change in some way.” In 2014, 36,735 rapes were com- mitted and nearly 338,000 crimes against women were reported, ac- cording to data from India’s Nation- al Crime Records Bureau. But women’s rights groups say the figures are still gross underesti- mates, as many victims remain re- luctant to report crimes such as rape or domestic violence for fear their families and communities will shun them. Photos capture life after rape Pervez Sharif Musharraf acquitted Pakistan General Pervez Mushar- raf, who came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup against current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was acquitted on Monday of the murder of a sepa- ratist leader in 2006, removing one of several cases against him. Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti led a tribal campaign to win political autonomy for Baluchistan, Pakistan’s biggest prov- ince and the richest in mineral resourc- es. He was killed in a battle between tribal militants and government forces in the restive province in 2006. Musharraf, who also faces treason charges, was charged with the murder in January last year on the grounds he ordered the killing. But on Monday, an anti-terrorism court in the provincial capital, Quetta, acquitted him. “We aren’t satisfied with the judg- ment and will challenge it in court,” So- hail Rajput, the lawyer for Bugti’s fam- ily, told reporters outside the court. For decades, Baluchistan nation- alists have accused Punjab, Paki- stan’s most populated province, of exploiting their natural resources. Militants have targeted government installations, security forces, gas pipelines, railway tracks and elec- tricity pylons. Musharraf ordered a military crack- down in Baluchistan in late 2005 af- ter being targeted by a rocket attack while visiting the province. (RTRS) hundreds of thousands of the stimulant from traffickers attempting the journey by land and sea. “The Myanmar-Teknaf border was the main trafficking route when the drug cartel introduced yaba in Bangladesh. But now they are mostly using sea routes after many of their consignments were seized Bomb kills 5 soldiers: Five Pakistani soldiers were killed on Monday when a bomb exploded next to their vehicle in Baluchistan province, officials said, the latest attack in a region that will be home to the planned route of the $46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor. The bomb, planted in a coal-mining district 50 kms (30 miles) east of the provincial capital, Quetta, was detonated remotely as members of the Frontier Corps patrolled the area, said Khan Wasey, a spokesman for the paramilitary force. At least two members of the Frontier Corps, the main state security force in restive Baluchistan, were wounded in the attack, Wasey said. No one has claimed responsibility. Rich in resources and vast, Baluchistan is at the heart of the multi-billion-dollar energy and infrastructure projects China and Pakistan hope to build along a cor- ridor stretching from the Arabian sea to China’s Xinjiang region. The planned route will run through the Quetta. But the region is also home to several separatist groups that have waged war against the state for years, as well as the Pakistani Taleban, raising concerns about security. Two Pakistani coast guards were killed this month when a bomb exploded under their vehicle in the Gwadar district of Baluchistan, whose port is at one end of the proposed corridor. (RTRS) ❑ ❑ ❑ PM on trip to mediate dispute: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif have flown to Riyadh to try and mediate the ongoing dispute between archrivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Pakistani state television showed foot- age Monday of the two men boarding a plane for Riyadh. Sharif, the prime minister, is scheduled to meet with Saudi King Salman before heading to Tehran Tuesday to meet Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry says that Islamabad is deeply concerned at the recent escalation of tensions between the two countries. The two nations have been rivals for years but the current tensions erupted after Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric and op- position leader on Jan 2. Angry crowds in Iran stormed the Saudi embassy, and Riyadh severed diplomatic relations with Tehran in protest. (AP) ❑ ❑ ❑ Police make record ‘drug bust’: Bangladesh has seized 2.8 million meth- amphetamine tablets worth an estimated $10.5 million in the country’s biggest ever seizure of the drug, as it struggles to stem its surging popularity, officers said Monday. Police confiscated the drugs in night- long raids on Sunday at a railway station in Dhaka and at an anchorage in the port city of Chittagong, elite Rapid Action Battalion spokesman Major Rumman Mahmud said. “This is the biggest seizure of yaba tablets in Bangladesh. We’ve arrested three traf- fickers including a ring leader in connection with the seizure,” Mahmud told AFP of their investigation, adding that the drugs were made in neighbouring Myanmar. Yaba, a Thai word for “crazy medi- cine”, is made of methamphetamine and caffeine and has become a popular drug among young people in the nation of 160 million. Police in the southern town of Teknaf, which borders Myanmar, and the Bangla- desh Navy have in recent months seized Subcontinent Pigeons fly around the dome of Bishwarop temple in Kathmandu, Nepal on Jan 18. Nepal officially launched the much-delayed reconstruction of about one million homes and buildings Saturday nearly nine months after they were damaged by devastating earthquake which killed 9,000 people. (AP) on land,” Teknaf police chief Ataur Rah- man Khan said. “It seems Bangladesh has become a big target of the international drug cartels,” Khan told AFP. The seizure comes just months after Chittagong customs officials seized a ship- ment of cocaine mixed in sunflower oil weighing more than 60 kilogrammes (132 pounds) and worth $14 million. A Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) official said Bangladesh was strug- gling to shut down trafficking from Myan- mar, in part because of a river running along their long border which is difficult to patrol. (AFP) ❑ ❑ ❑ Maldives ‘disappointed’: The Maldives government said Monday it was “disappointed” that jailed former leader Mohamed Nasheed would not travel to Britain for surgery after he rejected a de- mand for a relative to guarantee his return. The government had said Nasheed, whose conviction last year on terror- related charges has been widely criticised, could travel to Britain for 30 days to receive urgent spinal cord surgery. He was due to leave late Sunday under a deal brokered by diplomats from India, Sri Lanka and Britain, but his lawyer ac- cused the government of introducing the “illegal” last-minute condition. “The government reneged on the agreed deal at the last minute, demanding a close family member of Nasheed remain in Male, effectively as a hostage, until he returns from the UK,” Hassan Latheef told AFP. (AFP)
Transcript of Photos capture life after rape - arabtimesonline.com · World News Roundup INTERNATIONAL ARAB...
World News Roundup
INTERNATIONAL ARAB TIMES, TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2016
16
Burkina Faso
Mali, Faso join
MOSCOW, Jan 18, (Agencies): Four members of a Ukrainian fam-ily, including a 9-year-old child, were among those killed when al-Qaeda fighters attacked a popular cafe and hotel in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou, Ukraine’s foreign minister said Sunday.
The dead in-cluded a Ukrai-nian woman who together with her Italian husband owned the cafe, and their child, Foreign Minis-try spokesman Yevgeny Ignato-vsky told 112 Ukraina television.
He gave no further details. Nor did Foreign Minister Pavlo Klim-kin, who used Twitter to report the deaths of four family members, in-cluding a 9-year-old child.
The Italian foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday the 9-year-old son of Gaetano Santomenna, the Italian owner of Cafe Cappuc-cino, was inside the cafe with his mother when the attack took place, but it had no confirmation that the boy had been killed.
Ukrainian websites identified the other two Ukrainian victims as the sister and mother of the cafe own-er’s wife. This information could not immediately be confirmed.
Friday’s attacks left 28 people dead from at least nine different countries including Burkina Faso, Canada, France, Libya, the Neth-erlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Ukraine and the US.
Burkina Faso and Mali have agreed to work together to counter the growing threat of Islamic mili-tants in West Africa by sharing in-telligence and conducting joint se-curity patrols following two deadly and well-coordinated attacks in the region.
Their prime ministers met on Sunday, two days after al-Qaeda militants seized the Splendid Hotel in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouaga-dougou, opened fire on a restaurant and attacked another hotel nearby, killing at least 28 people from at least seven countries, and wound-ing 50 other people.
The assault, claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), follows a similar raid in November on a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, which killed 20 people, including citizens of Russia, China and the United States.
In a statement on the Burkina Faso assault that was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, AQIM said: “This blessed operation is but a drop in the sea of global jihad.”
The militant group identified three attackers and called the tar-geted hotel and surrounding areas “one of the most dangerous dens of global espionage in the west of the African continent.”
The exact details of the coop-eration between Burkina Faso and Mali were not immediately clear, but the patrols and intelligence sharing mark an intent by the two countries to prevent the spread of militancy as AQIM and others ex-pand operations in the region be-yond their usual reach.
For years, Islamic militants have used northern Mali as a base, but over the past year they have staged a number of attacks in other parts of the country. Burkina Faso’s au-thorities are now concerned that its long desert border with Mali could become a transit point for militants.
“There is a very strong political will on the part of the two states to combine our efforts to fight terror-ism,” said Burkina Faso’s prime minister, Paul Kaba Thieba.
Thieba and his Malian coun-terpart Modibo Keita visited the outside of the Splendid Hotel on Sunday, where bullet holes and a charred exterior offered reminders of Friday evening’s attack.
Tight security was in place around the hotel. Inside, Burkinabe and French security officials were conducting an investigation.
Also:PERTH: An Australian couple re-portedly kidnapped and held by militants in Burkina Faso have dedicated their lives to providing medical services to people in the re-mote north of the country, a family spokesperson said on Sunday.
Dr. Ken Elliott and his wife Jocelyn, were kidnapped overnight in northern Burkina Faso near the border with Mali, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said in a televised address to the nation on Saturday after al-Qaeda fight-ers staged an attack on the capital Ouagadougou.
It is not known if the Elliott’s abduction was related to the attack. The doctor and his wife are in their 80s.
Hamadou Ag Khallini, a spokesperson for Malian militant group Ansar Dine, told the Austra-lian Broadcasting Corporation that jihadists from the al-Qaeda-linked “Emirate of the Sahara” group, which operates in northern Mali, are holding the couple.
Four ‘killed’ inUkraine family
Bangladesh militants‘jailed’ for ’05 blastsNEW DELHI, Jan 18, (AP): A court in Bangladesh sentenced five alleged radical Islamists to 10 years in jail on Monday after finding them guilty of car-rying out a series of explosions in 2005 to demand Shariah law in the Muslim-majority nation.
Police Inspector Mominul Islam said the court in Rangamati district in southeastern Bangladesh delivered the sentences to the members of the banned Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh group. One defendant was acquitted because the charges against were not proven, he said.
The group is accused of exploding hundreds of homemade bombs across the country almost simultaneously in August 2005 to press their campaign for Shariah law in a country where the legal system is based on British common law.
Klimkin
Indian army tanks roll out during rehearsals for the upcoming Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India on Jan 18. A contingent of French soldiers will march down the Rajpath on Republic Day along with Indian troops in the presence of President Francois Hollande who is the chief guest for this year’s celebrations. India marks Republic Day on Jan 26 with military parades across the country. (Inset): A
French contingent rehearses for the upcoming Indian Republic Day parade. (AP/AFP)
Pakistani former interior minister Aftab Sherpao, (center), leaves the court after a hearing in Quetta on Jan
18. (AFP)
India
‘They want to go back to school’
LONDON, Jan 18, (RTRS): When Smita Sharma began photograph-ing survivors of rape in India in December 2014, the experience was so intense that she developed post traumatic stress disorder.
The condition worsened when Sharma’s cousin killed herself after being abused by a boyfriend.
“For months I would get night-mares and I would feel this anxi-ety, constant burning sensation in the stomach, which wouldn’t go,” Sharma said.
“It’s heartbreaking, it’s disturb-ing, sometimes I feel I can’t breathe, it’s suffocating.”
The 35-year-old Indian photogra-pher said the idea to make portraits of women and girls who were raped was born in part out of frustration about the way the media reported the crime, and in part out of curios-ity about the lives of the survivors.
“It was all about ‘who, why, when, why’ but it was not about people who were actually affected by it the most,” Sharma told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from India.
“Especially after the incident and the media craziness was over I used to wonder ‘do people go back to
them to ask how they are they do-ing?’”
Sharma, who is a survivor of abuse herself, said the intention be-hind the project was to start a dis-cussion about life after rape and to put faces to the stories.
“My idea was to show them as just you and me, as a normal human being,” Sharma said.
But sometimes the victims cannot be photographed - because they are dead.
Extremely“(One of them) was a 23-year-old
girl, extremely good looking, work-ing in an office,” Sharma said.
“Her mother took me to the place where her body was found, half-naked. It was found two days later and there were ants coming out of her mouth and eyes.”
Sharma said rape survivors and their families often face shame and ostracism which makes it difficult to forget about the crime and move on.
“It’s a crime, it’s a trauma that they go through, but they want to be invited to weddings, they want to go back to school, they want to get a job,” Sharma said.
“They don’t want to be reminded again and again that they were raped.”
Sharma, who so far has photo-graphed more than 20 women and girls in four Indian states aged from five years old to 80, said she wanted to reach survivors across India, which she said was an expensive challenge.
In December she launched an online fundraising campaign to fi-nance the project which she has been funding mainly with her own money. She hope the money raised would also help to finance a short documentary about the survivors.
“I feel I have to do something for these girls, I owe it to them,” she said. “If they’re sharing their pain with me I do have a responsibility to bring some change in some way.”
In 2014, 36,735 rapes were com-mitted and nearly 338,000 crimes against women were reported, ac-cording to data from India’s Nation-al Crime Records Bureau.
But women’s rights groups say the figures are still gross underesti-mates, as many victims remain re-luctant to report crimes such as rape or domestic violence for fear their families and communities will shun them.
Photos capture life after rape
Pervez Sharif
Musharraf acquittedPakistan General Pervez Mushar-raf, who came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup against current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was acquitted on Monday of the murder of a sepa-ratist leader in 2006, removing one of several cases against him.
Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti led a tribal campaign to win political autonomy for Baluchistan, Pakistan’s biggest prov-ince and the richest in mineral resourc-es. He was killed in a battle between tribal militants and government forces in the restive province in 2006.
Musharraf, who also faces treason charges, was charged with the murder in January last year on the grounds he ordered the killing. But on Monday, an anti-terrorism court in the provincial capital, Quetta, acquitted him.
“We aren’t satisfied with the judg-ment and will challenge it in court,” So-hail Rajput, the lawyer for Bugti’s fam-ily, told reporters outside the court.
For decades, Baluchistan nation-alists have accused Punjab, Paki-stan’s most populated province, of exploiting their natural resources. Militants have targeted government installations, security forces, gas pipelines, railway tracks and elec-tricity pylons.
Musharraf ordered a military crack-down in Baluchistan in late 2005 af-ter being targeted by a rocket attack while visiting the province. (RTRS)
hundreds of thousands of the stimulant from traffickers attempting the journey by land and sea.
“The Myanmar-Teknaf border was the main trafficking route when the drug cartel introduced yaba in Bangladesh. But now they are mostly using sea routes after many of their consignments were seized
Bomb kills 5 soldiers: Five Pakistani soldiers were killed on Monday when a bomb exploded next to their vehicle in Baluchistan province, officials said, the latest attack in a region that will be home to the planned route of the $46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor.
The bomb, planted in a coal-mining district 50 kms (30 miles) east of the provincial capital, Quetta, was detonated remotely as members of the Frontier Corps patrolled the area, said Khan Wasey, a spokesman for the paramilitary force.
At least two members of the Frontier Corps, the main state security force in restive Baluchistan, were wounded in the attack, Wasey said.
No one has claimed responsibility.Rich in resources and vast, Baluchistan
is at the heart of the multi-billion-dollar energy and infrastructure projects China and Pakistan hope to build along a cor-ridor stretching from the Arabian sea to China’s Xinjiang region. The planned route will run through the Quetta.
But the region is also home to several separatist groups that have waged war against the state for years, as well as the Pakistani Taleban, raising concerns about security.
Two Pakistani coast guards were killed this month when a bomb exploded under their vehicle in the Gwadar district of Baluchistan, whose port is at one end of the proposed corridor. (RTRS)
❑ ❑ ❑
PM on trip to mediate dispute: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif have flown to Riyadh to try and mediate the ongoing dispute between archrivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Pakistani state television showed foot-age Monday of the two men boarding a plane for Riyadh.
Sharif, the prime minister, is scheduled to meet with Saudi King Salman before heading to Tehran Tuesday to meet Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry says that Islamabad is deeply concerned at the recent escalation of tensions between the two countries. The two nations have been rivals for years but the current tensions erupted after Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric and op-position leader on Jan 2. Angry crowds in Iran stormed the Saudi embassy, and Riyadh severed diplomatic relations with Tehran in protest. (AP)
❑ ❑ ❑
Police make record ‘drug bust’: Bangladesh has seized 2.8 million meth-amphetamine tablets worth an estimated $10.5 million in the country’s biggest ever seizure of the drug, as it struggles to stem its surging popularity, officers said Monday.
Police confiscated the drugs in night-long raids on Sunday at a railway station in Dhaka and at an anchorage in the port city of Chittagong, elite Rapid Action Battalion spokesman Major Rumman Mahmud said.
“This is the biggest seizure of yaba tablets in Bangladesh. We’ve arrested three traf-fickers including a ring leader in connection with the seizure,” Mahmud told AFP of their investigation, adding that the drugs were made in neighbouring Myanmar.
Yaba, a Thai word for “crazy medi-cine”, is made of methamphetamine and caffeine and has become a popular drug among young people in the nation of 160 million.
Police in the southern town of Teknaf, which borders Myanmar, and the Bangla-desh Navy have in recent months seized
Subcontinent
Pigeons fly around the dome of Bishwarop temple in Kathmandu, Nepal on Jan 18. Nepal officially launched the much-delayed reconstruction of about one million homes and buildings Saturday nearly nine months after they were
damaged by devastating earthquake which killed 9,000 people. (AP)
on land,” Teknaf police chief Ataur Rah-man Khan said.
“It seems Bangladesh has become a big target of the international drug cartels,” Khan told AFP.
The seizure comes just months after Chittagong customs officials seized a ship-ment of cocaine mixed in sunflower oil weighing more than 60 kilogrammes (132 pounds) and worth $14 million.
A Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) official said Bangladesh was strug-gling to shut down trafficking from Myan-
mar, in part because of a river running along their long border which is difficult to patrol. (AFP)
❑ ❑ ❑
Maldives ‘disappointed’: The Maldives government said Monday it was “disappointed” that jailed former leader Mohamed Nasheed would not travel to Britain for surgery after he rejected a de-mand for a relative to guarantee his return.
The government had said Nasheed, whose conviction last year on terror-related charges has been widely criticised,
could travel to Britain for 30 days to receive urgent spinal cord surgery.
He was due to leave late Sunday under a deal brokered by diplomats from India, Sri Lanka and Britain, but his lawyer ac-cused the government of introducing the “illegal” last-minute condition.
“The government reneged on the agreed deal at the last minute, demanding a close family member of Nasheed remain in Male, effectively as a hostage, until he returns from the UK,” Hassan Latheef told AFP. (AFP)
