IGP taken to task for not acting on abduction case

Hindraf and Gerakan are of the opinion that the IGP by ignoring the abduction is condoning lawlessness in the country.

GEORGE TOWN: Hindraf and Gerakan say that the Inspector-General of Police by ignoring the abduction of a six- year- old boy from his mother is encouraging citizens to take the law into their own hands

Hindraf chairman P Waythamoorthy alleged that IGP Khalid Abu Bakar had encouraged citizens to take the law into their own hands by washing his hands off the issue.

He was referring to the abduction of Mithran by his father Izwan Viran Abdullah, 31, from his mother S Deepa, 30, in Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan on Wednesday morning.

“This condones lawlessness in the country,” warned Waythamoorthy in a statement to FMT here today.

Gerakan national human rights and legal bureau chief Baljit Singh slammed Khalid for acting as “investigators, judges and executioners” in the abduction case.

The Seremban High Court had on Monday granted the children’s custody to Deepa.Deepa lodged a police report on the same day at the Jelebu police headquarters.

IGP Khalid has advised Deepa and Izwan to settle their problem privately.

“There are two court orders – civil and syariah. In this case it is best if the two can settle their problem,” said Khalid.

By suggesting for the estranged couple to settle their differences privately, Waythamoorty said the top cop in the country was sending the wrong signals and evading police duty.

He said Khalid should own up to his responsibilities under the Constitution and law as criminal act was against the state.

“Police should investigate and take the correct action on the abductor.

“The mother needs protection from law enforcement officers to enforce her civil rights,” said the human rights leader.

Baljit reminded that the police duty was to immediately investigate into a police report without prejudice and handover their findings to the Attorney-General Chambers for further action.

He said it would be then up to the AG Chambers, not for the police, to decide on whether to charge Iswan or not.

Based on Deepa’s report, he said her ex-husband had illegally taken away the son and caused injuries to her.

He pointed out that the civil court ruling on the custody rights awarded to Deepa came with full knowledge of syariah court order given to Iswan.

Thus, he said the civil court custody order overruled the syariah order.

“Deepa has a case.

“Iswan had allegedly committed crime and defied the superior civil court order.

“Police should probe it and should not wash their hands.Police should remain as investigators only,” insisted Baljit.

Waythamoorty said the IGP had blatantly ignored Article 8 of the Federal Constitution, which stipulated that all citizens were equal before the law and were entitled to equal protection of the law.

He said Article 8 pointed out that clear intention of the country’s forefathers, who drafted the Federal Constitution, was that all citizens were entitled for equality of the law under civil jurisdiction.

“By deliberately playing dumb, the IGP is pro-actively encouraging citizens to take the law into the own hands.

“If the ex-husband is encouraged by the top law enforcement officer, then he condones lawlessness as the ex-wife can do the same thing,” said Wathamoorthy.

Both Waythamoorthy and Baljit however, raised doubts on police impartiality in upholding the law if the Hindu mother was the abductor.

They believe that if scenario was reversed, there would be an immediate arrest of Deepa.

They said she would be detained and remanded, charged for abduction and denied bail.

“The custody rights over the children would be given by default to the Muslim convert husband,” alleged Waythamoorthy and Baljit, both lawyers .

Waythamoorthy pointed out since Deepa’s wedding was a civil marriage, the custody dispute should be determined by the civil courts, which it did in this case.

He stressed non-Muslims were not subjected Muslim laws while all citizens were subjected to civil laws.

“But the IGP allows himself to be a tool of Muslim extreme laws, which do not govern the law of this land,” alleged Waythamoorthy.

He recalled that in 2009, then Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Aziz announced that the government would ban the unilateral child conversion of aged below 18 to Islam.

In 2013, Nazri against spoke out against a proposed law to defeat the decision made by the Cabinet in 2009. He said he would always stand by on the ban on unilateral conversion.

‘Take action against Izwan’

The abduction of S Deepa's son by her ex-husband is a kidnapping case and the police must act on it, says politicians and NGO leader.

PETALING JAYA: Women rights activist, Maria Chin Abdullah took the police to task today for not taking action on the abduction of S Deepa’s son, saying it was a criminal act.

“It is nothing short of kidnapping, especially after the Seremban High Court granted the right of custody to the wife,” she told FMT today, adding that the police should take action on the matter.

On Wednesday, Deepa’s ex-husband Izwan Abdullah forcefully snatched away their son from her workplace after the high court granted custody to the mother.

Izwan had also assaulted Deepa in the scuffle.

Despite a police report lodged on the matter, Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said yesterday that the police would not act against the husband and urged the couple to sort out the matter privately.

He also said that the high court order’s clashed with a Syariah court’s ruling last year that gave Izwan right of custody to both his children.

Deepa has since gone into hiding, fearing that Izwan may abduct their daughter too.

Maria, who heads a community empowerment NGO, Empower, said that action should be taken against Izwan for violating the high court order.

She also said it was irresponsible of the police to say that they can’t act on the matter when they were supposed to protect public safety.

Earlier today, former law minister Nazri Aziz had also criticised the police for their response, saying it was a clear cut case of kidnapping.

He also said the Cabinet had decided in 2009 that the children be raised in the common religion at the time of marriage, should one of their parent convert to Islam.

“This is not a question of Izwan being right under Syariah law.It is a civil law marriage, it is the civil court, we must respect the civil court’s ruling. They have the jurisdiction.

““The high court ruling was correct. The police should not allow him to get away with kidnapping the child,” he told English daily The Star.

DAP MP M Kulasegaran echoed Nazri’s sentiments, saying that Khalid response to the kidnapping was irresponsible and unprofessional.

“The IGP must act on this. If he is not prepared to do his job, Khalid might as well resign from his post.” he said, in a statement.

IGP should resign immediately

The latest court order is needed to uphold the situation but the IGP and police force washed their hands.

Saravanan

We are shocked to see the reaction of the IGP who is not upholding the country’s law. We are urging the current IGP to resign from his post if he cannot or fail to do his duty.

Malaysia is a country which has a Constitution and the police force is supposed to follow the order of the Federal Constitution. When the court decision was made by the civil court judge, the IGP or even the king must obey the law. It is the work of the police to see that the judgement is carried out. It is irresponsible for IGP Khalid Abu Bakar to say, “Settle your problem privately”. If everyone decided to settle the country’s complications privately, where is the need for the police and judiciary systems? The IGP is inefficient; you need to go back to school or go and sell nasi lemak and karipap in your kampung.

1. The Syariah court order was overturned by the civil court this week. So the latest court order is needed to uphold the situation but the IGP and police force washed their hands.

2. The case would have been resolved but the police force and the IGP took the side of the convert father to kidnap his own son without the mother’s permission. A police report has been made but no action taken.

3. The UMNO government needs to make a stand as their double law system is complicating the police. The police are not in a position to take action or speak for either party because the whole mistake was done by UMNO by complicating the system.

4. “Police are not worried about the child’s safety as he is with his father” said the IGP but the son complained to the judge that the father had been beating him and there were times when no food was given. It is a case of child abuse. Why can’t the IGP act on this child abuse case?

5. If Syariah law does not bind Non-Muslims, we strongly suggest the law makers say Deepa and her underage kids are still Hindus and Syariah or forced conversions cannot take place in this civil society.

6. We need immediate action from all parliamentarians to debate this matter. The country is struggling with racism, religious bigotry and double systems. Wake up and save the land which you love before our egos put the country in bad shape.

7. The UMNO government is obliged to amend article 121A for bringing chaos to the country. They are responsible for disunity in the country. MIC and MCA who supported UMNO’s atrocities must play their role to go against their TUAN which is acting against humanity or UN resolutions.

Time to re-look law, say politicians

(The Star) – Parliament has been urged to legislate and resolve the longstanding conflict between the rights of a convert and his former spouse, especially when it encompasses the rights and interest of their children.

MIC’s legal adviser Selva Mookiah said the danger of conflict was real and apparent as the country had two sets of laws.

“These courts of law often give consideration to differing principles.

“We live in a plural society which is multi-religious and often it’s the rights of the affected children which are trampled upon when their parents exercise their rights under the different laws.

“Both parents have legitimate expectations that their rights will be safeguarded. For the sake of the children, Parliament needs to take a non-partisan leadership in resolving this conflict permanently,” he said.

Thus, he said, it is especially pertinent for Parliament to act now, bearing in mind that there are those who are pursuing a parallel criminal hudud system which could further complicate matters.

MCA Youth chief Chong Sin Woon also urged lawmakers to “take the issue to Parliament and get a solution once and for all.”

“This two-law system is a serious problem, especially in a secular country.”

MCA Syariah Law and Policy Implementation special task force deputy chairman Datuk Koo Chin Nam said civil law had to prevail in legal disputes.

“The marriage was contracted by civil law and hence may only be dissolved by civil law. All matters related to the dissolution of marriage like matrimony, assets, and in particular, custody must be decided by civil law.”

MCA Religious Harmony Bureau chief and lawyer Datuk Ti Lian Ker also said parliamentarians had an obligation to clarify conversion issues.

“Lawmakers must stand up together above politics and do what is right by rectifying or remedying any conflict of laws. As far as the Constitution is concerned, it has never placed Syariah above civil law, especially when it involves non-Muslims.”

PAS legal bureau chief Hanifah Maidin said it was also time to re-look laws governing the conversion of married people with children as the conflict between Syariah and civil courts was a longstanding problem.

“When non-Muslims get married, they will register under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976.

“If the husband or wife converts to Islam, he or she cannot go to civil court pertaining to family matters,” he said.

He added that the converted partner would have to go to Syariah court, thus leading to jurisdictional conflict between two courts.

Hanifah called for the law to be amended with just the civil court having jurisdiction.

“However, there should be a caveat, where the presiding judge should be assisted by an advisory council, which will look into Islamic matters.

“Such a solution may not solve the problem altogether, but it could minimise it,” he said.

Shariah court has no say over civil marriages, lawyers say

A Muslim convert who lost a custody battle in the Seremban High Court recently must abide by the decision that prevails over an earlier Shariah court ruling in his favour, lawyers said.

The Shariah court lacks jurisdiction over custody cases in a civil marriage even if one party later converts to Islam, they added.

“If the Shariah court pronounces Islamic divorce on an Islamic marriage, then it can make orders on custody. But it has no jurisdiction over a civil marriage,” prominent lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar told The Malay Mail Online.

“Under the civil law which is the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act, the court that has the jurisdiction to make the determination on the civil marriage is the civil high court, that would include any orders pertaining to custody and so on,” he added.

In the Seremban case, Viran Nagapan married Deepa Subramaniam (pic above) in a civil marriage in 2004. Viran later converted to Islam in 2012 and took on the name Izwan Abdullah.

A Shariah court granted Izwan custody of the couple’s children last year.

On Monday, the Seremban High Court’s Justice Datuk Zabariah Mohd Yusof granted Deepa full custody of the couple’s two children as their marriage was a civil union and did not come under Shariah law.

The court also allowed Deepa to divorce her husband.

Just two days after losing the custody battle, Viran allegedly abducted his son from Deepa.

Viran’s action on Wednesday had since been backed by the Negri Sembilan chapter of Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysian (Isma), with its state deputy chief Omar Kassim claiming that Viran was “desperate” and was not in contempt of the court.

But citing the Federal Constitution’s Ninth Schedule, lawyer Nizam Bashir said that a Shariah court only has jurisdiction over Muslims.

A non-Muslim parent would not be given a chance to defend his or her rights in a Shariah court, he added.

Nizam explained that a civil court would be a more appropriate venue for both Muslim and non-Muslim parents to decide on child custody, as it safeguards the interests of both parties.

“If you have the matter heard in the civil court, both parties have the right to be heard. Both parties have the right to impart religious instruction to the child,” the experienced syarie lawyer told The Malay Mail Online.

Constitutional lawyer Edmund Bon also added that the Seremban HIgh Court ruling was made after taking into account the custody order by the Shariah court.

“The High Court, being a civil court, has a jurisdiction applicable to all parties. The High Court has the power to review or ignore the previous Shariah court order,” Bon said in a telephone interview.

On Wednesday, Bon, representing the Bar Council, was an expert witness in a high-profile child custody battle of a similar nature in the Ipoh High Court.

In the case, M. Indira Gandhi’s estranged husband who had converted to Islam ran away with the couple’s child.

According to Bon, the Bar Council’s stand is that the High Court could quash the Shariah Court’s custody order, as the latter is an “inferior tribunal”.

Bon also insisted that the civil court’s order should have been enforced accordingly, and Viran could not have used the Shariah court’s order as an excuse to abduct the child.

“In any event, from the reported incident, it appears to be a case of kidnapping or abduction,” said Bon.

Malik said that a parent who knowingly flouts a custody order could be in contempt of court, saying: “In general, if the court has made an order granting custody to one parent, if the other parent takes the child and breaches the order, it’s in violation.”

Deepa is expected to file for committal soon, which may allow the civil court to issue a warrant to arrest Izwan for contempt of court.

It is understood that Viran, who currently works for an Islamic NGO called Kasih Sayang, had converted both their children in April last year without Deepa’s consent.

Deepa, who filed for divorce and custody of the children in December last year, has been estranged from her husband since 2011.

Why no action on mass conversions into Islam, ask Sabah Christians

Desmond Davidson, The Malaysian Insider

Sabah religious authorities have been asked to “nullify without further delay” all the mass conversions of natives into Islam that had taken place in the state, which Christian leaders said were performed fraudulently.

President of the Protestant Church in Sabah, Reverend Jensey Mojuin, addressing the monthly ethnic Kadazan-Dusun Christians’ gathering in Pitas this morning to sound their latest mamangkis, said no action had been taken despite police reports lodged on the matter.

“Three months had passed since the ‘shameful’ conversion of about 64 people, including children, from three villages – namely Kampung Layung Maliau, Dowokon and Sosop.

“Despite lodging police reports, no concrete action has been taken,” Mojuin said.

He said the inaction could only mean that the “extremist group” which performed the conversion “are enjoying the support and protection of some powerful people”.

He did not say who the powerful people were but the group reportedly was a Selangor-based Islamic non-governmental organisation known for its extremist religious views.

Mojuin said the mass conversion in Pitas, a majority of whom were followers of his church, was unjust and fraudulent and had threatened the peace and religious harmony enjoyed for so long in Sabah.

Pitas, up one of the “dog ears” of Sabah, is reportedly one of the poorest district in the state.

To get to Kampung Layung Maliau, one of the remotest villages in the district, is a three-hour walk from the suspension bridge across Sungai Penipak.

Villagers here are largely subsistence farmers planting tapioca, vegetables and maize. The village has neither electricity nor running water.

The 33 “converted” villagers there claimed on New Year’s Day, they were deceived into converting by the group, saying their presence in the Pitas town mosque where they were asked to go to was only to receive financial assistance.

They claimed they were promised RM800 per head but in the envelope they were given after signing some documents contained only RM100.

They said they were illiterate and no one explained what the form was about.

“This so-called mass conversion is, therefore, illegal,” said Mojuin, adding that it was done with deception.

“These extremists took advantage of those who are illiterate and extremely poor to trick them into thinking that they were bringing welfare aid from the government.

“Some accepted the so-called welfare aid and were asked to sign a document.

“This document is now used as proof that they have agreed to become Muslims,” he said.

Mojuin also slammed the government policy where Sabah Bumiputeras with a “bin” or “binti” in their names were automatically listed as Muslims in their MyKad.

That, he said, was “Putrajaya’s MyKad Islamisation of Bumiputera Christians in Sabah”.

On the use of the word “Allah”, Mojuin said “regardless of what Putrajaya or any earthly courts may say or do”, Bumiputera Christians in Sabah would continue to use the word “Allah” as their forefathers had done so.

“Let us make it very clear about that.

“Further, both the Sabah and Sarawak governments have assured us that we can continue to use the word as this has been used for generations.”
READ MORE HERE

India’s Grain Drain

Written by Neeta Lal 


Millions of children starve while up to 30 percent of the harvest is wasted

At a time when UNICEF says 43 percent of Indian children under five are underweight and over 3,000 die every day from malnutrition-related illnesses, the country stands out for its glaring lack of food storage facilities, leading to colossal wastage.

Stories are rife of millions of tonnes of farmers’ grains stored in outdoor depots across the country, vulnerable to rodents, moisture, birds and pests. Added to that is the fact that the country’s distribution system is so deficient that widespread malnutrition can exist side by side with bulging grain depots.

India is one of the world’s top producers of food grains and a formidable exporter of rice – the world’s biggest – but paradoxically it also leads the tally of nations with the maximum number of starvation-related deaths. A new industry study states that 20-30 percent of India’s food grain harvest is wasted annually due to poor storage facilities.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India points to inadequate storage capacity, regional imbalance in warehouses, lack of adequate scientific storage and inefficient logistical management as the leading causes. The warehousing capacity for major food grains available in India, in public, co-operative and private sector, say agriculture analysts, is more than 112 million tonnes.

However, there is an extreme dearth of about 35 million tons of warehousing capacity and a massive food grain storage shortfall of about 8 million tons in the country to be filled by 2017.

“India needs to recalibrate its strategy to mitigate the challenges of high food grain wastage due to lack of scientific storage facilities,” according to the associated chambers.

While recent advances in agricultural technology have facilitated higher grain yields, the lack of commensurate attention to storage facilities nixes farmers’ efforts, leading to a snowballing effect on food prices and starvation.

Ironically, while the Indian government keeps buying food grains from the farmers, it doesn’t have space to store it. The state-owned food buying agency – the Food Corporation of India – is plagued by deficient modern grain storage facilities.

In 2013, officials estimated that 6 million tonnes of India’s grain worth US $1.5 billion were rendered inedible due to spoilage.

"For the last 30 years, the storage capacity for grains has not been upgraded at all in India," says Dr. Subbu Rao, an agriculture economist, formerly with the United Nations.

Entrenched corruption only makes things worse. Stories of distributors mixing rotting grain with fresh grain and selling it on the market are legion. Hundreds of government officials are also known to redirect billions of dollars worth of grain away from the poor and into local and global markets.

Bureaucratic apathy is hard to miss. In 2010, when the Supreme Court directed the government to give grain to the hungry for free rather than let it rot, state governments ignored the request or only distributed grain with low, subsidized prices to people with ration cards.

A senior official of the federal government’s Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority told Asia Sentinel that 13 percent of gross domestic product is wasted each year because of the wastage of food grains in the supply chain.

“We waste the amount equivalent to what Australia produces annually. Wastage of fruits and vegetables is even higher than grains,” he added.

To reduce the spoilage, the Food Corporation opted to export wheat. But India also needs to store grains for the starving, literally for a rainy day as it is a monsoon-dependent agrarian economy.

Total foodgrain production in India stands at around 255 million tonnes which includes around 105 million tonnes of rice (milled basis). In 2012, the government claimed that the state FCI, has reduced wastage of foodgrains from 2.5 percent five years ago to 0.006 percent in 2012 despite 150 percent growth in foodgrain stocks during the period.

The Food Minister had called the reduction in wastage a major achievement of the FCI. According to ASSOCHAM, about 70 percent of warehousing space in India is owned by government agencies.

Food grain wastage is also detrimental for environmental, ethical and economical reasons. According to the UNEP, global food production occupies 25 percent of all habitable land and is responsible for 70 percent of fresh water consumption, 80 percent of deforestation and 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. When food is wasted, so are the resources and the efforts in producing it. Hence, controlling food wastage will organically reduce food requirements and the inputs that go into its production.

The UPA-led government fought tooth and nail last year to push through a controversial food security bill despite strident criticism that it would give two-third of Indians a legal right to affordable food. However, experts rubbish the move as political gimmickry, a ploy to harvest votes for the general elections.

“The scheme is mined with the same usual pitfalls of corrupt officials diverting food grains for money,” said Vibha Sharma, an activist who works with a Delhi-based NGO. Besides, the government can ill-afford a plan costing as much as US$12 billion in additional subsidies a year when the economy is sputtering, she adds.

Studies point out that at least 12.5 million people could have been fed if India had better food storage facilities. A dilapidated food storage infrastructure continues to result in high wastage of food grains in a country which, by one count, has 200 million food-insecure people.

Agriculturists say food wastage can occur anywhere in the food supply chain—production, processing, storage, transportation and consumption. Bad post-harvest management and insufficient infrastructural facilities further compound the problem. As opposed to China, which has a grain storage capacity of 150 million tonnes, India can boast of warehouses only a third that amount. The country is thus in dire need of upgraded food storage and transportation facilities as well as measures to plug its leak-prone food supply chain.

Though the per capita food wastage by consumers is low in India compared to developed economies, 70 percent of Indians live on less than US$ 2 a day and don’t contribute to this wastage.

The real reason for food waste, as pointed out by the Indian Institute of Public Administration in a report, are social gatherings where rising economic affluence makes people indulge in ostentatious behavior. Also, celebrations of a plethora of festivals in India, coupled with lavish weddings, inevitably lead to humungous food wastage.

However, some sporadic measures have been taken to curb food wastage and spoilage of grains. Under the Private Entrepreneurs Guarantee (PEG) Scheme, covered storage facilities will be provided to farmers store the grains. Help of the private sector is also being sought.

Warehouses constructed under this scheme will be hired by the Food Corporation of India, which will provide return on investment to the private businesses. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has also stepped in for help; a modern warehouse with storage capacity to store 50,000 tonnes has also been constructed and will be operated by a private company.

Be that as it may, analysts recommend more sustainable measures to plug the supply leakage and deterrents to wastage of food at festivals and weddings.

Out-of-the-box crop production methods also need to be pushed along with diversifying farmers’ grain basket. To grow 1 kg of rice, over 2,500 liters of water is needed. But millet can get by with only five to 10 liters. Campaigns to consume indigenous and fresh produce – rather than imported produce (an increasing trend in Indian homes and restaurants) -- would support local farmers as well as whittle down food miles, say experts.

Khalid Abu Bakar should step down as IGP if he is not prepared to uphold the law in the Seremban child abduction case and enforce High Court order giving custody to the mother

Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar should step down as Inspector-General of Police if he is not prepared to uphold the law in the Seremban child abduction case and enforce the High Court order giving custody to the mother.

The failure and refusal of the Inspector-General of Police to uphold the law and to ignore the Seremban child abduction case is the height of irresponsibility for the top policeman in the country, despite the fact that a police report has been lodged by the mother S Deepa that her son was snatched by her estranged Muslim convert husband although she had won a custody through the civil court.

It is reported that her husband Izwan Abdullah has also obtained a similar order from the Syariah Court.

I agree with the former de facto law minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz that the IGP was mistaken in thinking syariah law allowed a Muslim convert to abduct his child after losing custody to the mother and that the father was clearly wrong to have taken his son without his estranged wife’s permission as the High Court has given her custody of their two children.

On Monday, the Seremban High Court granted S. Deepa full custody of her two children ― a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son ― as her marriage to N. Viran in 2004 was a civil union and did not come under Shariah law.
Justice Datuk Zabariah Mohd Yusof also permitted her to divorce Viran who converted to Islam in 2012, and had taken the Muslim name of Izwan Abdullah.

The IGP should remember his sworn oath to uphold the law and the Constitution and should take immediate action to ensure that the “abducted” son is immediately returned to her mother who has lawful custody under following their civil union.

(Media Conference Statement2 in Batu Pahat on Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 11.30 am)

MH370 and the black box of the mind

Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen on the flight recorder as a potent image of our helpless relationship to the world and to ourselves

By Josh Cohen, The Guardian,

Occasionally, perhaps when you feel most inured to the traumatic images that assail us daily on the TV screen or in the papers, you see something that tears you out of your glassy indifference. That, at least, was the effect on me of the pictures of the families of the flight MH370 passengers, eyes knitted in prayer, mouths flung open in rage.

Imagine howling. The phrase, spoken by Claudio in Measure for Measure, came to mind as my eyes fell on their faces and shut tightly, as though reflexively shamed by the indecency of looking at them. But why, when we stare with such casual composure at all manner of grief and suffering, should these images induce such particular and intense aversion?

"Imagine howling": the phrase is the culmination of Claudio's febrile vision of death, with its "fiery floods" and "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice". But the speech is describing less his impending death, than the current torment of trying, and not being able to imagine it: "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where." In other words, it is the living who suffer the torments of death, the irremediable ignorance of not knowing where we will be going.

It is this ignorance that makes the plight of the MH370 families so unbearable to contemplate. The confirmed knowledge that a loved one is dead enables the bereaved to begin what Freud called the work of mourning: the slow and painful acknowledgment that the person lost has been removed irrevocably from our world. We cannot know where they have gone, but we can at least know they are not here and that they won't be coming back.

The families of the Malaysian Airlines flight have, at time of writing, no such grim consolation. Until wreckage is found, their relatives seem suspended between life and death, even long after the last scrap of hope has been abandoned. Claudio's vision seems to describe more the plight of the families than of the passengers. Hence the slogan emblazoned on the banners carried in protest to Kuala Lumpur by the relatives of the Chinese passengers: "You must return the relatives of MH370, no strings attached." We can bear even the worst knowledge, the banner seems to imply, but we cannot bear what Claudio calls "worse than worst".

No wonder then that in the midst of this terrifying uncertainty, the families' and the world's attention comes to be focused on the whereabouts of the so‑called "black box" containing the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders.

As is well known, the black box is, in fact, bright orange. But here symbolism trumps fact. The box is black whatever colour it happens to be, because it is a repository of obscure mysteries, as well as of their solution. The knowledge it contains is so desperately sought, not because it can return the lost passengers, but because it can rescue them and their families from the horror of we know not where, from the unrelieved darkness of nowhere.

In a brilliant and little-known essay of 1913, "The Theme of the Three Caskets", Freud shows just how venerable the symbolism of the black box is, finding some version of it running through the history of folk and fairytales. It is also a recurring motif in (who else?) Shakespeare. Bassanio opens the lead casket that wins Portia's heart. Lear calls on his third daughter to speak only to be told "Nothing" – Cordelia is another kind of leaden box, refusing the treacherous "golden" eloquence of her sisters. The black box, Freud suggests, is a container of the opaque, silent mysteries of love and death, of the enigmas of life itself. It represents both our helplessness in the face of forces beyond our understanding, and our desperate wish to bring them under our control and alleviate the pain of not knowing. In this sense, it is an eloquent emblem of our time, of the enforced ignorance that is our condition.

Perhaps this claim seems counterintuitive or just downright wrong in an age characterised by the ceaseless progress of scientific and technical knowledge. And yet ignorance is in so many ways a corollary of this accumulating knowledge. Our increasingly intricate understanding of the infinitesimal neural networks that form the brain, for example, far from bringing our inner lives under our command, shows us how very little we can do so. "The conscious you," writes neuroscientist David Eagleman in his tellingly titled Incognito, "the you that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning – is the smallest bit of what's transpiring in your brain."

The conscious ego, Freud suggested a century before Eagleman, is only a tiny pocket of coherence in the psyche, helplessly buffeted by the conflicting demands of the voracious id and the unforgiving superego.

These images of the conscious self's ignorance of what is happening below its surface mirrors the pervasive sense of dispossession so many of us feel as we are carried along the unnavigable networks of contemporary life. Our economic security is mortgaged to financial institutions and instruments whose complexity overwhelms our attempts to understand them, and which are liable, as recent years have so explosively shown, to turn us into hapless victims of their unravelling. Our private data disappears into virtual networks, to be sold and bought by corporate and state agencies without our knowledge or consent. The more inexorably science and technology advance, the more the self seems to regress to its original, infantile state of helpless incomprehension.

The black box is a potently concentrated image of this helpless relationship to the world and to ourselves. We are at the mercy of what it says and does, yet we have almost no understanding of its internal workings, and no means of influencing or modifying it.

It may be that our culture of surveillance – by which I mean not only the persecutory monitoring of the totalitarian state envisioned by Orwell, but the more tacitly imposed, pseudo-benign mutual monitoring of social media culture, as well as tabloid media intrusion – can only be understood in relation to this feeling of helplessness.

For the likes of Paul McMullan, the tabloid journalist who told the Leveson inquiry that "privacy is for paedos", every closed room, and every life lived inside it, is an invitation to break into them with a telephoto lens or a hacking device. And perhaps the willing surrender of our own private lives to the eyes of Facebook "friends", Twitter followers and webcams can be read as a more tacit protest against the black boxes of the self and the world, a fantasy of making ourselves and everyone around us fully transparent. "SECRETS ARE LIES / SHARING IS CARING / PRIVACY IS THEFT" run the slogans of the corporate behemoth imagined in Dave Eggers's recent satirical novel, The Circle. Flood the world with light, and the darkness will be magically eliminated.

The suffering of the MH370 families reminds us of the very real terrors ignorance can induce in us. And yet if the darkness of the self induces feelings of helplessness and dispossession, psychoanalysis reminds us that it is also the basis of our creativity. Without the black box of the unconscious, we would have nothing – neither terrors nor pleasures – to imagine.

Attorney-General, public servants can be sued, High Court rules

he Star
BY M. MAGESWARI

KUALA LUMPUR: Absolute immunity for public servants has no place in a progressive democratic society, the High Court here ruled Friday.

Judicial Commissioner Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera said this in dismissing an application by the public prosecutor and 11 others to strike out a civil suit filed by former Commercial Crimes Investigation Department (CCID) director Datuk Ramli Yusuff against them and another similar application over a suit by lawyer Rosli Dahlan against the Attorney-General and 10 others.

The defence team for Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail and two deputy public prosecutors had submitted that the claim against them could not be sustained as they enjoyed absolute immunity from prosecution.

"I am afraid that the notion of absolute immunity for a public servant, even if mala fide or abuse of power in the exercise of their prosecutorial power is alleged in the pleadings, is anathema to the modern day notions of accountability," he said.

JC Vazeer Alam said he agreed that the deliberate abuse of power by a person holding public office was wrongful and referred to as misfeasance in public office.

"Such a tortious (wrongful) act can arise when an officer, actuated by malice, for example, by personal spite or a desire to injure for improper reasons, abuses his power.

"This is in keeping with developments in modern jurisprudence that absolute immunity for public servants has no place in a progressive democratic society," he said.

He said the court was only concerned with whether facts were included in the claim and if it would have to go to trial for the plaintiff to establish his case.

"Even judicial immunity granted to judges or persons acting in a judicial capacity under Section 14 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964 is not absolute and is subject to the requirement of good faith in the exercise of their judicial powers," he said.

Therefore, he said he was unable to accept defendants' contention that the claim against three of them was unsustainable by reason of immunity.

He also ruled that although the acts allegedly attributed to some of the defendants were committed in their capacity as officers of the then Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA), the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) was the proper party to be brought in as a defendant in the civil dispute.

"I find that by virtue of Section 74 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009, any act done or action taken by the ACA or an officer of the ACA shall be deemed to have been continued by the MACC (as its successor)," he said.

He also held that action would have to be brought in against the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and not the Royal Malaysian Police, (PDRM) named as a defendant in both suits, as it is not a legal entity. He allowed for proper amendment in the claim.

JC Vazeer Alam set June 18 for case management.

In the RM128.5mil suit filed on Nov 1 last year, Ramli is suing Abdul Gani, former IGP Tan Sri Musa Hassan and 10 others for wrongfully charging him.

In his statement of claim, Ramli said he was appointed as the CCID director on May 2, 2006 and was indicted on Nov 1, 2007 on charges under the Penal Code and Anti-Corruption Act 1997.

He is claiming for conspiracy, false and malicious investigation, abuse of power, abuse of prosecutorial discretion, malicious prosecution and prosecutorial misconduct and public misfeasance to injure him.

In the similar suit filed by Rosli against the MACC, the Government and nine others, he is seeking for RM47mil in damages.

Counsel Chetan Jethwani and Parvinder Kaur Cheema acted for Rosli, while Harvinderjit Singh appeared for Ramli. Senior federal counsel Amarjeet Singh, lawyer Tan Sri Cecil Abraham and counsel Rishwant Singh appeared for the defendants.

MH370: Najib Once Again Thanks Nations For Relentless Effort

KUALA LUMPUR, April 12 (Bernama) -- Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has once again expressed his gratitude to all countries involved in the search for the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that has entered the 36th day today.

The prime minister said the Malaysian government would not forget the assistance and cooperation extended by every individual, organisation, military and country since the search and rescue operation began after the jetliner was reported missing on March 8.

"Once again I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all governments involved in the search for MH370 aircraft.

"The assistance and cooperation of every individual, organisation, military and government involved we will not be forgotten," he said in his Facebook post tonight.

Last Thursday, Najib visited the Australia Royal Air Force (RAAF) base in Pearce, Perth to thank Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and others for their relentless effort to locate MH370 that reportedly ended its flight path in the southern Indian Ocean.

Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while over the South China Sea. It was to have landed in Beijing at 6.30 am on the same day.

A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia.

The prime minister then announced on March 24, seventeen days after the disappearance of Boeing 777-200 aircraft, that Flight MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean". The search continues there.

Polis takkan bertindak pada mualaf ambil anak

French Teenagers Hate Each Other, and It's All Kim Kardashian's Fault

Kim Kardashian is considered the ultimate role model for French Muslim girls who like dating black boys.

Paris is burning, and it's all Kim Kardashian's fault. OK, that's an overstatement, but the city's suburbs have been torn apart lately because of Arab French girls who happen to date black guys and the Arab French bigots who slut-shame them for doing so.
Since we are dealing with teenagers, the full extent of the issue is displayed on social media: Scrolling through Facemook—a sort of Facebook within Facebook, with more than 70,000 members—I stumbled upon countless offensive posts by groups with names such as "Anti beurette à khel" ("No to Arab girls dating black guys") and "Les beurettes utilisent l’Islam pour justifier leurs débauches" (Arab girls use Islam to justify their debauchery).
Clicking through the groups' pages, I realized this has evolved into a sort of modern-day witch hunt: Girls' photos, names, and even phone numbers are posted on the groups' "Timelines," often with humiliating captions. These girls are criticized for drifting away from Muslim traditions and for using something called the "Bilal excuse"—Bilal was the only black companion of the Prophet Muhammad.

Girl on the left: "Bilal was black, you racists." Girl on the right: "As long as he’s Muslim, we can suck his dick."

I called up my 32-year-old friend Haissam (whose name was changed to protect his identity), who works for a youth organization located in the northeastern suburbs of Paris. Naturally, he is quite upset to see young people fighting over such insanely inane matters.
VICE: Is this anger directed against Arab girls who are dating black guys a new phenomenon?
Haissam: I don’t think I've ever come across anything like this. There has always been a rivalry between North African teenagers and black teenagers, but it was more like banter. We knew it wasn’t serious. Today, I see a lot of people insulting these girls.
What is their problem?
They are accusing those girls of wearing too much makeup, staying out late at night, drinking, smoking, and using Islam as an excuse to redeem themselves. They say that these girls go out with young black guys because they think North African boys are too narrow-minded and bossy. When Muslim girls are criticized by their older brothers for their behavior, they'll say things like "He may be black, but he is Muslim, so you can not judge us. Only Allah can judge us," and that makes the bigots even angrier.
Has celebrity culture affected that phenomenon in any way?
Yes. I often hear that these girls want mixed-race children because of celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. It’s trendy to have a mixed-race family. I also hear that these girls are huge fans of Kim Kardashian, because she’s dating Kanye West, and black men are popular in France thanks to rap and hip-hop. Once, a girl told me she thought they were “more stylish.”

Caption reads: "This is now the favorite spot of Arab girls. I don’t know how their brothers and their parents can accept this."

What is the situation like on a daily basis?
If an Arab girl walks with a black boy, they will be pointed at and called names. Some Arab teenage boys see this as a betrayal. A few years back, the problem was Arab girls who dated French boys; they were accused of doing that only to Westernize themselves. Now it’s even worse, though. As this phenomenon is growing, you get black guys fighting back and going around saying stuff like ”We’ll make all your sisters pregnant, and tomorrow Arab boys won’t exist any more.” You can read this all over internet.
I feel that these Facebook groups make the situation even worse.
Yes, social networks exacerbate this phenomenon. It's obvious that it's reached the point of obsession for some, when you see all those pictures of "girls who have betrayed their people" splattered on feeds and Timelines. In real life, where I work, I come across a lot of young people who are completely OK with this situation.
It also appears that at the moment this is a French phenomenon. I don't think it has reached the rest of the world yet. But I’m afraid this will change.

Caption reads: "Arab girls think it’s OK to smoke hookah with black guys because Bilal was black."

How did it get this bad?
Because of these Facebook groups. At the beginning it was a bunch of angry, misinformed kids or insane people. But as time passes, they are joined by more and more people, including girls who have a grudge against "these Arab girls who do not respect themselves and bring shame to the community."
I also see people advising guys not to fall into the trap of Arab girls who say they want to settle down.
Yeah, because they think that black guys leave the girls once they’re pregnant. The girls become single moms and are accused of hiding their bad reputation to attract Arab boys as if nothing had happened. Again, this is pretty much a fantasy. But it's a fantasy that fuels a lot of hatred.
And as suburban teenagers are divided, inequality persists and nobody wins. It's a shitty situation. I keep trying to make the young people I work with understand that, but they ignore me. "You don’t understand, this is super serious," they tell me.

Child Bride Forced to Marry Poisons Groom

KANO, Nigeria (AP) — Police say a child bride forced into marriage in Nigeria prepared a poisoned meal that has killed her groom and three of his friends.

They quote 14-year-old Wasila Umaru as saying she used rat poison in the food because she was forced to marry a man she did not love.

The couple was married last week. The 35-year-old groom had invited a dozen friends to celebrate at his village 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the north Nigerian city of Kano over the weekend.

Child marriage is common in Nigeria and especially in the mainly Muslim north.

Assistant police superintendent Musa Magaji Majia said Thursday that the teenage suspect is cooperating with police and probably will be charged with culpable homicide.

Gaji Samy Vellu lebih tinggi daripada jumlah pelancong India, kata MB Selangor

Menteri Besar Selangor, Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim mempertahankan kedudukan Ketua Umum
PKR, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim sebagai Penasihat Ekonomi Negeri dengan hanya bergajikan RM1.

Katanya, dibandingkan dengan bekas Presiden MIC Datuk Seri S Samy Vellu (gambar) yang dilantik Putrajaya menjadi duta khas ke India dan menerima gaji serta elaun lebih tinggi daripada jumlah pendapatan yang diperoleh melalui tarikan pelancong India ke Malaysia.

"Kalau saudara lihat Samy Vellu, bekas menteri pelancongan, begitu ramai yang bukan dapat seringgit tapi beratus ribu ringgit untuk dijadikan penasihat kerajaan persekutuan.

"Ini bukan perkara baru. Dia pergi ke India sepatutnya tarik pelancong tapi pendapatan dia boleh jadi kurang daripada pendapatan yang kita dapat daripada pelancong India," katanya ketika sesi penggulungan ucapan titah Diraja di Dewan Undangan Negeri (DUN) hari ini.

Samy Vellu dilantik menjadi Duta Khas ke India dan Asia Selatan sejak tahun 2010 dengan menerima pendapatan bulanan serta elaun berjumlah RM27,227.20.

Jelas Khalid, beliau menerima Anwar kerana pengalamannya sebagai Menteri Kewangan selain pernah menerima pengiktirafan daripada European Institute of Bankers.

"Sepandai-pandai saya pun belum diiktiraf European Institute of Bankers.

"Bila berjumpa berbincang dengan dia, saya boleh tahu 10 minit pandangannya bererti 10 tahun pengalaman beliau," katanya dalam respons kepada Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri (Adun) Barisan Nasional (BN) sebeum ini yang mahu Khalid mencari pengganti lain sebagai penasihat ekonomi.

Adun BN-Permatang, Sulaiman Abdul Razak kemudiannya bangun dan mengulangi semula kenyataan Anwar sebelum ini bahawa beliau akan membawa masuk berbilion pelaburan daripada negara Timur Tengah kerana hubungan baiknya dengan negara terbabit.

"Tapi menurut jawapan Exco dalam Selangor paling banyak pelabur dari China, tiada satu pun daripada Timur Tengah. Kita terkilan," katanya.

Khalid bagaimanapun menafikan dakwaan tersebut sebaliknya mempertahankan Anwar mahu menggunakan pengalamannya sebelum ini sebagai penasihat bank pelaburan di Arab Saudi, Dallah Albaraka.

Beliau juga mengakui enggan bekerjasama dengan pelabur Timur Tengah kerana beberapa masalah tertentu.

Sementara itu, Khalid mengumumkan perlantikan Adun Kajang Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail sebagai Pengerusi Yayasan Pemansuhan Akta Keselamatan Dalam Negeri (ISA) bagi membantu keluarga yang pernah menerima kesan buruk semasa di bawah tahanan.

Katanya, peruntukan RM500,000 melalui geran Selangorku akan diberi bagi membuka jalan membantu menjaga kebajikan mereka yang menerima kesan daripada ISA. – 11 April, 2014.

MIC, MCA slam cops for inaction in Deepa's case - Malaysiakini

An MIC leader has taken Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar to task for saying the report lodged by S Deepa against her estranged Muslim convert husband for snatching away their son will not be investigated.

Calling it an “irresponsible” stand, party director of strategy S Vell Paari said the police should not hide behind the excuse that Izwan Abdullah has a Syariah Court order granting him custody.

“If that is the case, he should have first gone to the police station, and then to his ex-wife’s house with a police officer. Or his lawyer should have contacted Deepa’s lawyer.

“But he did not do this. He snatched the boy and fled. Deepa also claimed that she was dragged and kicked. This is not the behaviour of someone with a court order, but rather of someone who has utter disrespect for the law,” he said.

Vell Paari (centre in photo) also asked if the police are not going to probe Deepa’s claim that she was assaulted by Izwan during the incident, as stated in her police report.

“Does her husband have immunity because he works with an Islamic movement? Where is the fairness? The IGP should not use this excuse and must act against the man,” he added.

Vell Paari also noted that Deepa’s lawyers plan to cite Izwan for contempt of court.

What if the roles had been reversed?

“So if the court rules that he acted in contempt, will the IGP maintain the same stand and thus act in contempt of court himself?” he asked.

Another pertinent question, he added, is what would have the police done if the roles had been reversed and Deepa had snatched the child instead.

“So going by what the IGP says, Deepa has all the right to go in a 4WD with some friends and snatch the boy and drag Izwan for a few metres on the road and the police can’t act because there are two court orders.

“I am sure a lot of Malaysians would like to accompany Deepa to get the child back because police said clearly that they can’t act,” he said.

Vell Paari said he would get MIC Youth leader S Sivaraajh to take a delegation to meet Khalid over this matter and to press for action.

Former Malaysia Hindu Sangam president A Vaithilingam also criticised Khalid for his position, stressing that only the civil court can serve justice in cases such as Deepa’s.

“Proper justice can only be served in a court where all parties have fair and equal opportunities,” Vaithilingam said in a statement today.

Police must enforce secular laws

MCA also weighed in with its own criticism, with its Syariah Law and Policy Implementation Special Task Force deputy chairperson Koo Chin Nam saying that the police’s role is to “enforce secular laws”.

“Not only are Izwan’s actions in total contempt of the custody order awarded to S Deepa by the Seremban High Court, he also endangered her life when she was dragged by the four-wheel drive vehicle when she tried to rescue her son,” Koo said.

“Besides abduction, Izwan has also violated the restraining order served on him under the Domestic Violence Act.

“Izwan should be also charged with child endangerment and assault on Deepa,” Koo added, urging the police to take action against the driver of the vehicle used by Izwan to take his son away from his ex-wife.

Deepa filed 20 reports on ex-husband's 'abuse'

 

S Deepa has a valid Interim Protection Order (IPO) under the Domestic Violence Act against her ex-husband Izwan Abdullah, said the Women's Aid Organisation (WAO) today.

According to the organisation, the 30-year-old clerk had filed 20 police reports on the alleged abuse she endured at the hands of her ex-husband.

WAO was responding to Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar, who said that police would not act against Deepa's report that Izwan snatched their son.

The police chief said this is because apart from the Seremban High Court granting Deepa custody of her two children, there was also a syariah court order that granted the father custody instead.

Commenting on Khalid's suggestion that the parties involved "talk this over", WAO said: "Did the ex-husband give Deepa the chance to talk things over before he converted their children to Islam? He didn't."

"Should Deepa be forced to talk things over with an abusive ex-husband? We don't think so. Did the ex-husband want to talk when he violently snatched the son from Deepa? He didn't.

"Yes, talking is possible. But only when both parties are willing to do so, and when there is an equal playing field," it added in a statement.

WAO said the protection order and the Seremban High Court custody order must be enforced without further delay, and family laws should be amended to prevent future injustice.

On Wednesday, two days after Deepa was granted custody, Izwan had gone to her house in Jelebu and allegedly snatched the boy.

When Deepa attempted to stop him and his accomplice from driving away, her clothes got caught in the car door and she was dragged.

In her police report, the clerk also claimed that Izwan, who works with an Islamic foundation, had kicked her.

Khalid's remarks also drew flak from other quarters, including MIC and MCA.

‘Police must abide by Syariah and Civil law’

Ex-president of the Syariah Lawyers Association Mohamad Buruk says two parallel legal systems have put the police in a dilemma.

PETALING JAYA: The Syariah court and the respective religious authority were urged to give non-Muslims an avenue to get equal justice in Syariah courts.

Former Syariah Lawyers Association of Malaysia president, Mohamad Buruk, said this in reference to custody battle involving S Deepa, 30, and Izwan Viran Abdullah, 31, from Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan.

Deepa alleged Izwan abducted her son Mithran, six, on Wednesday morning although the Seremban High Court had on Monday granted the children’s custody to her.

Deepa lodged a police report on the same day at the Jelebu police headquarters.

“Currently any dispute between a Muslim spouse, especially involving marriage and child custody, both parties (husband and wife) must be present in court. We call it as ‘inter-parte’.

“However in a case where only one of the spouse is Muslim, only the Muslim spouse needs to be present at the court, which is ‘ex-parte’.

“That’s why I feel the court and religious authority must give room for a non-Muslim spouse to be present in court and give her a chance to present her case or arguments or points she wants to raise.

“And the court should give due consideration to the mother even though she is a non-Muslim,” said Mohamad.

“Before giving custody of the children to a Muslim spouse, the court must examine and investigate if the Muslim convert is really sincere or just using the Islam to achieve his personal agenda.

“If I was helming the religious department, I will make sure a convert is a quality Muslim and not admit a person who wants to abuse the religion for a personal hidden agenda,” added Mohamad.

Children must follow father’s religion

Mohamad who is still practicing law, both as Syarie and civil lawyer said, according to Islam, when the father converts to Islam, the children must follow the path of the father.

“Yes, it’s true according to Islam’s teaching, when the father converts to Islam, the children must follow suit. But in multiracial country like our, we must consider the compassion factor as well.

“It’s really unfair when the father converted the children to Islam without the knowledge and consent of the mother. So there is crisis between Islamic teachings and the constitution.

“Islam is fair to everybody, so it must be practiced fairly,” said Mohamad.

However, he said he has no sympathy for Izwan, who violated the Interim Protection Order that Deepa obtained against him from the Seremban Magistrate’s Court on Aug 30 last year for domestic violence.

“Izwan is not supposed to go to Deepa’s home or get near her,” said Mohamad.

Mohamad also defended the police as the they are bound to both civil and Syariah court orders.

“People have criticised the police and alleged they didn’t abide by the ruling of the Seremban High Court. However, all must realise the Syariah court is also an authority that police must respect.

“It’s unfair to blame them for not taking action as the police force is stuck between two law systems in the country,” said Mohamad.

Settle problem privately, IGP tells Deepa

Khalid Abu Bakar says that he is not worried about the safety of the six-year-old boy as he is with his father.

KUALA LUMPUR: Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar has advised S. Deepa and her Muslim convert husband Izwan Viran Abdullah to settle their problem privately.

Khalid said the police were not worried about the safety of the six-year-old boy who was taken away from the mother yesterday because he was with the father.

Yesterday, FMT reported that the mother, who won custody of her two children four days ago, wanted the police to arrest her ex-husband for violating a court order by abducting their son.

“There are two court orders – civil and syariah. In this case it is best if the two can settle their problem,” said Khalid.

However, he said police were monitoring the situation and had not received any warrant.

Deepa told FMT in Seremban yesterday that she was worried that Izwan might take her son overseas.

“Why are the police still unable to nab my ex-husband?” she asked.

“Police must take action soon because he has violated the court order by abducting my son,” said Deepa.

Deepa alleged that the Green Mitshubishi Pajero used in the abduction yesterday belonged to Yayasan Kasih Sayang where Izwan was working.

When contacted, the female staff of Yayasan Kasih Sayang said she would relay the message on the Pajero to her superior who was in Kuala Lumpur.

However, no one from Yayasan Kasih Sayang called FMT to verify the matter.

Jelebu police chief Deputy Supt Setapa Yusoff could not be reached for comments.

Meanwhile, Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) was not too delighted by Khalid’s attitude towards the case.

Defending Deepa, the women rights NGO said talking things out between affected parties could only happen when both are willing to do so, on a level playing field.

“But did the ex-husband give Deepa the chance to talk things over before he converted their children to Islam? He didn’t. Should Deepa be forced to talk things over with an abusive ex-husband? We don’t think so.

“Did the ex-husband want to talk when he violently snatched the son from Deepa? He didn’t,” said WAO via a Facebook post, adding that the police must immediately enforce the high court order.

No Pakatan consensus but PAS says will proceed with hudud plan

(The Malay Mail) - A PAS leader has insisted the Islamist party will not back down from pushing for hudud enforcement in Kelantan despite failing to convince its Pakatan Rakyat (PR) allies.

Dr Mohd Zuhdi Marzuki, who is a member of the party’s central working committee, said the party will seek support from wherever it can to realise the implementation of the controversial Islamic penal code — even if it came from political foe, Umno.

“The agenda to implement Allah’s laws including the hudud law is part of PAS’ struggle since a long time ago, and not an agenda of PR.

“Therefore, the motion which will be proposed by PAS in the Parliament will come from PAS, not PR,” said Zuhdi in a statement on his Facebook page.

According to Zuhdi, the party has spent close to 50 years explaining the concept of hudud to rival nationalist party Umno, and around a decade doing the same to its partners in the opposition coalition.

Therefore, he said, PAS will leave those on both sides of the political divide to decide whether they support or reject the motion when it is tabled in the lower house.

“If the motion fails, PAS will continue to preach until it would be accepted one day,” added Zuhdi.

Regardless of the result, however, the PAS member affirmed that the party will continue its tahaluf siyasi — an Arabic term roughly meaning “political consensus” — with its PR partners.

In a separate statement, another PAS central working committee member insisted today that the political consensus does not mean other component parties in PR can stop PAS from carrying out its struggle, especially to implement hudud.

“Tahaluf siyasi is political co-operation. Therefore, it only covers political matters without once involving the policies and principles fought by a party,” Nasruddin Hassan said on the PAS ulama wing’s Facebook page.

“Each party which becomes a component of tahaluf siyasi cannot intervene, coerce or even stop the struggle of the other component parties.”

DAP and PKR leaders had this week issued stern reminders to their political ally that the controversial Islamic penal code was never a part of the consensus among the three parties, either at state or federal level.

This comes as Kelantan prepares to propose two private bills in Parliament in its bid to remove any obstacles to its implementation of hudud by 2015.

In Islamic jurisprudence, hudud covers crimes such as theft, robbery, adultery, rape, sodomy, making unproven accusations of adultery, causing physical hurt, drinking intoxicants, apostasy, and acts contrary to Islamic belief.

The law is generally confined to Muslims, but can extend to non-Muslims if they are involved in aiding or abetting an offence committed by a Muslim.

At its annual congress in November last year, PAS revisited its bid to revise federal law to enable the nationwide enforcement of the strict Islamic penal code, which it had buried previously in the run-up to Election 2013.

The Islamist party introduced hudud in Kelantan and Terengganu, but has not been able to enforce them due to the conflict with the federal constitution.

Political rival Umno has capitalised on PAS’ failure to enforce hudud in a bid to shore up support among the country’s dominant Malay-Muslim voters, claiming the party had strayed from its plan to form an Islamic state.

But both Umno and PAS face strong resistance from their coalition partners over the enforcement of hudud, which argued it will turn Malaysia into an Islamic theocracy and dilute the country’s image as a multi-religious nation.

Why ban Noah in Islamic countries?

By Azly Rahman

A good philosophical movie ‘Noah’ is; classic arguments between Fate and Free Will, juxtaposed with the Epic of Gilgamesh I am currently discussing. Now I know how Noah looks like. Like Russell Crowe! Good to see how the nephilim, the fallen angles, and the animals in Noah’s ark looked like.

Thank you Hollywood.

I suppose I am done imagining what all these looked like via readings/oral literacy. Now there is George-Lucas-Pixar-standard visual literacy. There is a nice element of fantasy in it, especially in the Transformer-looking fallen angels. I thought those were ugly-looking creations with some good thoughts.

Too bad many Muslims countries have banned ‘Noah’ for flimsy reasons when the value of the movie is a thousand times more. I would lift the ban and even use the movie in all classes in those countries. Can talk about cosmological doctrines, Creation myths, the philosophy of Good vs Evil, Love vs Duty/Dharma, and many more themes of human existence.

I think we should replace those in the Censorship Board and put in more Humanities and Philosophy scholars in them who understand not only deeply engaging English dialogues but comparative scriptures, pragmatism, and the value of cinema in teaching Cross-Cultural Perspectives.

The younger generation will benefit from these approaches. It is their future. Because they are millennial children (of the 21st century) and have mastered Visual Literacy.

Above all, the old have to give way to the young of which we cannot underestimate their natural urge to ask questions and philosophise. They will be the ones inheriting this troubling world. A world awaiting another deluge.

But then again that’s what the Islamic society of today is about – devoid of educational philosophers, cosmopolitan thinkers, and deconstructionists.

I shall not worship Russell Crowe as Noah after watching the movie, now that the Babylonian mythical figure has been represented by Hollywood. As a matter of fact, I have never been keen in worshipping anybody – not even Al Pacino as the Godfather.

Now why the ban? Isn’t this already the 21st century, the Neo-Frankenstein Era and not the Dark Ages?

Copycat banning?

Malaysia need not follow the eagerness of banning good movies such as ‘Noah’ just because other ‘Islamic countries’ decided to ban it. I thought Malaysia is more progressive than Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, and even Indonesia in matters of dealing with liberal ideas related to the advancement of thinking in society.

What is there to emulate in countries that ban women from driving, labelling atheists as terrorists, giving light sentence to a father who raped and murdered his five-year old daughter, or to look up to a country whose people shoot little girls in the face just for the crime of going to school to get an education?

What good reason to share fatwas with those countries whose citizens are kept at a low level of literacy enough to just memorise the scriptures but not to think, and enough to be controlled by the cleric and the monarchs?

Malaysia is blessed with a multicultural mix of peoples and a good social environment wherein people of different faiths, be they of the monotheistic or polytheistic systems, not only can learn to respect each other’s traditions but even, a mature society, engage in good philosophical discussions stimulated by good movies such a ‘Noah’ or even ‘The Passion of the Christ’ and ‘The Mahabharata’ created by Peter Brooks.

This dialogical nature of being members of a civil society always in the lifelong-learning mode and in deep respect for knowledge and new interpretations of old ideas ought to be what Malaysia is – not the book and movie banning and jailing-of-citizens-without-trial kind of Malaysia we deplore. Not the fork-tongued confusion-generating officials in an MH370 global media conference – kind of Malaysia we are seeing.

But this Malaysia is controlled by groups that are anti-knowledge, anti-new interpretations, and always afraid of the shadow of their own ignorance.

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Putrajaya starts investigating confused initial response to disappearance of flight MH370

The government has begun investigating civil aviation and military authorities to determine why opportunities to identify and track Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 were missed in the chaotic hours after it vanished, two officials said.

The preliminary internal enquiries come as tensions mount between civilian and military authorities over who bears most responsibility for the initial confusion and any mistakes that led to a week-long search in the wrong ocean.

"What happened at that time is being investigated and I can't say any more than that because it involves the military and the government," a senior government official told Reuters.

In an interview with Reuters last weekend, Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said internal enquiries were under way, although he declined to give details.

A government spokesman did not respond to Reuters questions over whether an investigation had been launched. The senior government source said it was aimed at getting a detailed picture of the initial response.

It was unclear which government department was in charge or whether a formal probe had been opened.

Malaysia's opposition coalition has demanded a parliamentary inquiry into what happened on the ground in those first few hours. Government officials have said any formal inquiry should not begin until the flight's black box recorders are found.

The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it disappeared on March 8. Malaysia says it believes the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean after being deliberately diverted from its Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing route.

A search effort is taking place well out to sea off the Australian city of Perth to try to locate any wreckage as well as the recorders which may provide answers to what happened onboard.

Mechanical problem assumed

Interviews with the senior government source and four other civilian and military officials show that air traffic controllers and military officials assumed the plane had turned back to an airport in Malaysia because of mechanical trouble when it disappeared off civilian radar screens at 1.21am local time.

That assumption took hold despite no distress call or other communication coming from the cockpit, which could have been a clue that the plane had been hijacked or deliberately diverted.

The five sources together gave Reuters the most detailed account yet of events in the hour after the plane vanished. All declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue and because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

"The initial assumption was that the aircraft could have diverted due to mechanical issues or, in the worst case scenario, crashed," said a senior Malaysian civilian source. "That is what we were working on."

Officials at Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, which oversees air traffic controllers, the Defence Ministry and the air force directed requests for comment to the prime minister's office, which did not respond.

One senior military official said air traffic control had informed the military at around 2am that a plane was missing. The standard operating procedure was to do so within 15 minutes, he said. Another military source said the notification was slow in coming, but did not give a time.

Civil aviation officials told Reuters their response was in line with guidelines, but they did not give a specific time for when the military was informed.

Once alerted, military radar picked up an unidentified plane heading west across peninsular Malaysia, the senior military official said. The air force has said a plane that could have been MH370 was last plotted on military radar at 2.15am, 320km northwest of the west coast state of Penang.

Plane tracked in real time?

Top military officials have publicly said Malaysia's US and Russian-made fighter jets stationed at air force bases in Penang and the east coast state of Kuantan were not scrambled to intercept the plane because it was not viewed as "hostile".

"When we were alerted, we got our boys to check the military radar. We noticed that there was an unmarked plane flying back but (we) could not confirm (its identity)," said the senior military source. "Based on the information we had from ATC (Air Traffic Control) and DCA (Department of Civil Aviation), we did not send up any jets because it was possibly mechanical problems and the plane might have been going back to Penang."

The military has not publicly acknowledged it tracked the plane in real time as it crossed back over the peninsula.

While fighter jets would not have had enough fuel to track a Boeing 777 for long and darkness would have complicated the operation, they could have spotted MH370 flying across peninsular Malaysia and possibly beyond, aviation experts said.

That could have enabled Malaysia to get a better fix on where it was headed and thus possibly ruled out the need to search off its east coast in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, around where MH370 was last seen on civilian radar.

Fighter pilots should be able to scramble within minutes, aviation experts said, although the time can vary widely from country to country. In Europe and North America, radar experts said controllers were trained to coordinate across civil and military lines and across borders.

They said military jets would have been scrambled, as they were from a Greek air force base in 2005 when a Helios Airways jet with 121 people on board lost contact over the Aegean Sea after suffering a decompression that knocked out the pilots.

Two F-16 jets could see the captain's seat empty and the first officer slumped over the controls. The plane crashed in Greece after running out of fuel.

"This raises questions of coordination between military and civil controllers," former pilot Hugh Dibley, a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, said of Malaysia's response.

Bureaucratic delays

Another contentious issue has been whether the military was slow in passing on its radar data that showed an unidentified plane had re-crossed the Malay peninsula.

Two civilian aviation officials said military bureaucracy delayed the sharing of this information, although they gave no precise timeframe for when it was handed over.

"The armed forces knew much earlier that the aircraft could have turned back. That is why the search was expanded to include the Strait of Malacca within a day or two," said a second senior civilian source, who was familiar with the initial search, referring to the narrow stretch of water between Indonesia and Malaysia, on the western side of the peninsula.

"But the military did not confirm this until much later due to resistance from senior officers, and the government needed to step in. We wasted our time in the South China Sea."

Government sources have said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had to force the military to turn over its raw radar data to investigators during the first week after the flight's disappearance.

Military officials have said they did not want to risk causing confusion by sharing the data before it had been verified, adding this was why Air Force chief Rodzali Daud went to the air base in Penang on March 9, where the plane's final radar plot was recorded.

On the same day, Rodzali said the search was being expanded to the west coast, although Reuters has not been able to determine if that meant the data was being shared with other Malaysian officials.

On March 12, four days after Flight MH370 disappeared, Rodzali told reporters there was still no confirmation the unidentified plane had been Flight MH370, but added Malaysia was sharing the radar data with international civilian and military authorities, including those from the United States.

Authorities called off the search in the South China Sea on March 15 after Razak said satellite data showed the plane could have taken a course anywhere from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Fears of losing jobs

A sixth source, a senior official in the civil aviation sector, said the plane's disappearance had exposed bureaucratic dysfunction in Malaysia, which has rarely been subject to such international demands for transparency.

"There was never the need for these silos to speak to one another. It's not because of ill intent, it's just the way the system was set up," the official said.

The accounts given to Reuters reveal growing tensions between civilian officials, the military and Malaysia Airlines over whether more could have been done in those initial hours.

One of the Reuters sources said military officials in particular were concerned they could lose their jobs.

Tensions have also emerged between the government and state-controlled Malaysia Airlines.

Defence Minister and acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, said in an interview with China's CCTV that the airline would have to "answer" for its mistakes in dealing with the relatives of the some 150 Chinese passengers on board.

In his interview with Reuters, Malaysia Airlines chief Ahmad Jauhari played down talk of tension, saying there were "slight differences of opinion." – Reuters, April 11, 2014.

Police must effect High Court order, declares Bar

The Star
BY RAHIMY RAHIM

PETALING JAYA: The police are duty bound to uphold secular laws and give effect to the orders granted by the secular judiciary, said Malaysian Bar president Christopher Leong.

“The Muslim convert father must obey the order of the High Court and the police are duty bound to assist the non-Muslim mother,” he said in response to the police stand that they cannot investigate a man who allegedly took his six-year-son from his ex-wife’s house despite a High Court order granting her custody of their two children.

Syariah Lawyers Association of Malaysia president Musa Awang also said the mother could apply for a contempt of court order against her ex-husband.

“Similar problems over the settlement of a child’s custody between non-Muslim and Muslim parents have persisted for quite some time. This is because parents can file custody orders separately at both the civil and the Syariah court.

“The children’s needs, interest and well-being must be prioritised and custody is usually granted to the mother,” he said.

Leong added that all Malaysians, without exception, were subject to and bound by the secular courts.

“The father and the mother are both bound by the custody order of the High Court, whereas the Syariah court order does not apply to the mother,” he said.

On Monday, the High Court here awarded custody of both children to S. Deepa, 31, after deciding that the law that had jurisdiction over matters pertaining to a civil marriage was the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act.

Justice Zabariah Mohd Yusof said that her verdict was based on the fact that the same law also had jurisdiction in child custody matters.

The court also granted an application by Deepa to annul their marriage because Izwan, who is now working with Yayasan Kasih Sayang, had embraced Islam.

Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) said that action should be taken against the suspect involved in the alleged abduction of the child.

“By abducting the son, the ex-husband has breached the High Court custody order. The mother also obtained an interim protection order (IPO) to protect herself from further abuse. Two court orders have been breached, which warrant his immediate arrest,” said WAO.

The WAO also called for the amendment of the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act to spell out that the consent of both parents are needed to convert the religion of their children, and that when a spouse converts, the non-converting spouse must be notified about the conversion and its legal implications.

“None of this should have happened in the first place. When the ex-husband unilaterally converted his children to Islam, he was gaming the system. He created an unfair advantage for himself, and obtained custody of the children in the Syariah courts, where Deepa had no chance to tell her side of the story,” said WAO.

Signal Detected By Aussie Aircraft Thursday Not From Aircraft Black Box - JACC

Angus Houston From Mohd Razman Abdullah

PERTH, April 11 (Bernama) -- The Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC) has confirmed that a signal picked up by an Australian AP-3C Orion aircraft on Thursday in the Indian ocean search area is not related to an aircraft underwater locator beacon.

JACC chief coordinator Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) Angus Houston said an initial assessment determined that the signal did not come from an aircraft underwater locator beacon.

"The Australian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre has analysed the acoustic data and confirmed that the signal reported in the vicinity of the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield is unlikely to be related to an aircraft black box.

"Further analysis continues to be undertaken by the Australian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre," he said in a statement here Friday.

The search team has so far detected six pings, two of which were picked up by a Chinese vessel, Haixun 01, on April 4 and 5, while Ocean Shield, equipped with a US Navy towed pinger locater, traced four signals on April 5 and 8.

"Today (Friday), Ocean Shield is continuing more focused sweeps with the towed pinger locator to try and locate further signals that may be related to an aircraft black box," said Houston.

He said it was to glean as much information as possible while the batteries on the underwater locator beacon might still be active.

"The AP-3C Orion continues its acoustic search, working in conjunction with Ocean Shield, with three more missions planned for today.

"A decision as to when to deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle will be made on advice from experts on board the Ocean Shield and could be some days away," he said.

He said that so far there had been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370 and he would provide an update if further information became available.

Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later, while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30 am on the same day.

A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.

Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak then announced on March 24, seventeen days after the disappearance of the aircraft, that Flight MH370 "ended in the southern Indian ocean".