4 U.S. troops hurt in South Sudan gunfire, thwarting evacuation

(CNN) -- Four U.S. service members who were about to help evacuate Americans from violence-hit South Sudan were injured when gunfire hit their aircraft as they prepared to land in Bor on Saturday, the Pentagon said.

The attack thwarted the evacuation attempt, and the three CV-22 Osprey were diverted to Uganda, where a different aircraft received the wounded troops for transfer to Kenya for medical treatment, a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity.

Details about their injuries weren't immediately available; the official described their conditions as stable.

After the incident, the Pentagon was trying to determine how to retry the evacuations of roughly three dozen Americans from South Sudan, where they were working for the United Nations, a senior U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

The evacuation attempt came after days of deadly clashes in South Sudan, including a reported coup attempt in the capital, Juba, last weekend. Bor also has been the site of heavy fighting, the U.S. official said.

The violence prompted the United States and other nations to take steps to protect their citizens. U.S. President Barack Obama had sent 45 service members to South Sudan to support U.S. personnel and the American Embassy; the government of neighboring Kenya said it would send troops to help evacuate 1,600 Kenyan citizens.

Up to 100,000 people have been displaced by the fighting so far. Many of the displaced people have crossed the Nile River, he said, adding that he feared a humanitarian disaster was unfolding.

Details of attack

The U.S. troops were getting ready to land in Bor when gunfire from the ground hit the aircraft, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

The Osprey that was most severely damaged was believed to have been hit in the fuel line, according to the military official who was speaking on condition of anonymity.

All three aircraft were diverted to Entebbe, Uganda, which is not where their flights originated, the official said. Another aircraft then flew the wounded to Nairobi, Kenya, where they were treated, according to the official.

Tensions rose after president sacked Cabinet in July

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir blamed soldiers loyal to his former vice president, Riek Machar, for starting this month's violence.

Tensions have been high in South Sudan -- which became the world's newest country when it split from Sudan two years ago -- since Kiir dismissed Machar and the rest of the Cabinet in July. The move inflamed deep tensions between Kiir's Dinka community and Machar's Nuer community.

Casualties are in the hundreds, including soldiers, the government said.

U.S. said Friday it was sending envoy

A day before Saturday's aborted evacuation attempt, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was sending a special envoy -- Ambassador Donald Booth -- to South Sudan.

"Now is the time for South Sudan's leaders to rein in armed groups under their control, immediately cease attacks on civilians, and end the chain of retributive violence between different ethnic and political groups," Kerry said in a statement. "The violence must stop, the dialogue must intensify."

Also on Friday, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice recorded an audio message to the South Sudanese people.

"I ask each of you to make the choice for peace -- make the choice for a unified and cohesive South Sudan," she said. "Make this choice for yourselves and your children."

Indian peacekeepers, civilians killed in Thursday attack at U.N. base

Saturday's violence wasn't the first to harm foreign troops in South Sudan this week. Attackers killed two Indian army peacekeepers, wounded a third in the chest, and killed at least two refuge-seeking civilians in an assault on the United Nations' Akobo base Thursday, the U.N. said.

As many as 20 of the 30 civilians seeking refuge there might have been killed, U.N. officials estimated.

South Sudan became the world's newest country in July 2011 when it gained independence from Sudan.

The split happened after a 2005 peace agreement ended years of civil war between the largely Animist and Christian south and the Muslim-dominated north. The deal led to a January 2011 referendum in which people of the south voted to secede from Sudan.

Salman Khan, Bigg Boss producers booked for hurting sentiments

Following a court order, police on Friday registered a first information report (FIR) against
Bollywood actor Salman Khan and producers of reality TV show Big Boss 7 for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments.

Mohammed Fasihuddin, a businessman, had moved the magistrate's court
seeking a direction to the police to register a criminal case, on the ground that the show hurt the religious sentiments of the Muslim community, said his lawyerM A Qawi Abbasim.

"We registered an FIR on December 13. We will have to investigate the case. We need to question the complainant and gather evidence before proceeding further," said a senior police official when asked whether the actor would be summoned for probe.

The FIR has been lodged under section 295 (A) of Indian Penal Code (`acts intended to outrage religious feelings').

According to the complainant, certain expressions used by Salman for describing elimination and promotion of participants were offensive.

Police Commissioner Anurag Sharma told reporters that police had also sought legal opinion as to city police's jurisdiction to register and probe the case.

Indonesian Muslims protest Christmas in the wake of warning against sharing Christmas wishes

BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA: A group of Muslims on Friday protested against Christmas and New Year celebrations in Indonesia's conservative Aceh province.

About 70 protesters took part in the protest at the governor's office and at a hotel in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.

The protest came days after an influential Islamic clerics' organization, the Ulema Consultative Assembly, issued an edict prohibiting Muslims in the city from offering Christmas wishes or celebrating on New Year's Eve.

The protesters called on authorities to ban the celebrations, claiming they are prohibited by Islam.

The edict, known as a fatwa, and the protesters did not oppose celebrations by non-Muslims in the city, which has four Christian churches, three Buddhist temples and a Hindu temple. Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra, is the only province in predominantly Muslim Indonesia that is allowed to implement a version of Islamic Shariah law.

Read more at: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000100568&story_title=indonesian-muslims-protest-christmas

MIC, MCA reject new BN decision-making system

MIC has voiced opposition to a proposal to change BN’s consensus -based decision making system, warning that it would stifle out minority views.

Its deputy president Dr S Subramaniam said BN is a ‘showcase to the world’ on how decisions are arrived at by consensus which should be preserved.

“If we go on majority, then minority communities’ views will not be taken and the majority’s views - even if it is against the wishes of the minority - will be totally disregarded.

“I think we will stick to our principle that all decisions in BN should be made by consensus. That is what has given unity and political stability to the country.

“The day you remove the element of political decisions by consensus, that will give rise to a state of unhappiness particularly among the minority groups,” he told reporters today at the sidelines of the MCA’s annual general meeting.

He was asked to comment on BN secretary-general Tengku Adnan Mansor’s statement on Dec 15 that he will propose amending the coalition’s constitution so that the consensus-bases system will be abandoned in favour of a simple majority vote.

The proposal would be put forward at a BN Supreme Council meeting next year.

National news agency Bernama quoted him saying this in response to a request from All Malaysian Indian Progressive Front Party (IPF) president M Sambanthan. IPF is a pro-BN party, still seeking membership to be part of the ruling coalition.

To a question, Subramaniam said MIC has yet to voice opposition to the proposal because it has yet to be raised in any BN meeting, but will definitely do so at the appropriate time.

Liow: MCA will reject proposal

Meanwhile, MCA outgoing deputy president Liow Tiong Lai (below, far right) told reporters that the party has opposed such a proposal before.

“Our founding fathers (of BN) have set up this formula and BN’s spirit of power-sharing has lasted all this while instead of being dominated by a single (party), so we should appreciate it.

"Therefore, MCA will fully oppose the new proposal,” he said.

However, he said he does not rule out adopting a majority-based decision-making system as part of wider reforms in BN that would make it a multi-racial party, as long as the principle of power-sharing is maintained.

Liow is currently in the running for party presidency in today’s MCA election, and the results are expected this evening.

Uthaya denied last chance to see mother alive - Malaysiakini

The family of jailed Hindraf leader P Uthayakumar said Kajang Prison has denied him his final chance to see his mother alive, despite requests.

Unfortunately, his mother Kalaivani, 69, passed away at 3pm yesterday.

According to the family, they had applied to the Kajang Prison Authorities for Uthaya to visit his ailing mother but it was turned down

"We asked for permission three weeks ago," said Uthaya's wife S Indra Devi
when contacted.

She added that while the prison has confirmed Uthaya is being escorted to pay his final respects today, they have been unsuccessful in negotiating the logistics with the officers in charge.

"They have been very difficult," she added, saying the officers claim he will be brought to the crematorium despite the funeral being held at home.

At press time, she was still in the dark whether Uthaya would make it to the funeral, which is taking place at Taman Desa Rasah, Seremban this afternoon.

Utayakumar is serving a two-and-a-half years jail term after being convicted of sedition last June over remarks concerning the plight of the Indian community.

Residents of Ipoh's last village to appeal eviction - Malaysiakini

The 75 families residing in Kampung Tai Lee in Ipoh, which is probably the only village still existing in a major city in Malaysia, have decided to appeal a High Court decision that they vacate their homes by April next year in return for compensation of RM10,000.

DAP MP for Ipoh Barat M Kulasegaran, long-time counsel to the eviction-threatened residents who inhabit six acres of land, said the court-ordered compensation quantum was "manifestly inadequate."

"These villagers have been staying in the kampung for decades and in 1995 renovated their houses and on those grounds were granted a 30-year lease on the land by operation of the National Land Code," said the DAP national vice-chairperson.


But Kulasegaran (left) said that in 1997, the land owner wanted the land for commercial development and began to serve eviction notices to the residents on the grounds that the residents were illegal occupiers.

But this was denied by the villagers who said they have been paying RM5 to RM10 as ground rental.

A long battle ensued with some sign of a satisfactory resolution when the Pakatan Rakyat took control of the Perak state government after the March 2008 general election.

Kulasegaran said Pakatan moved to allocate four acres of vacant land adjoining Kg Tai Lee for the building of low-cost flats or alternatively, to subdivide the land and hand the lots to the villagers.

But the Pakatan government was deposed after a 11-month tenure and with that the possible resolution of the matter through development or subdivision of the adjoining four acres withered on the vine.

A deal that's far from satisfactory

Kulasegaran said that in early January 2010, BN Menteri Besar Zambry Abdul Kadir attended a gotong royong organised by the residents during which the MB urged the Ipoh Town Council to find a solution to the villagers' problem.

"But the matter has not moved beyond earnest expressions of a desire to help but no real movement towards a solution of the problem," said Kulasegaran.

"Now with the court having ruled that the villagers must vacate the land by next April in return for compensation of RM10,000 for each family, the villagers have wound up with a deal that's far from satisfactory," he asserted.

He said he and another lawyer, N Selvam, will act for the villagers in their appeal of the High Court decision.

"The compensation is manifestly inadequate. The villagers are at the bottom of the ladder and have nowhere to go. Compensation of only RM10,000 will see them reduced from their present state of abject poverty to grinding penury," opined Kulasegaran.

Subra: Maintain the consensus system

MIC deputy president wants the consensus system to be maintained in Barisan Nasional decision making.

KUALA LUMPUR: MIC deputy president S Subramaniam believes that all decision within Barisan Nasional (BN) should be by consensus .

Speaking to reporters after attending the 60th MCA General Assembly in absence of MIC party president G Palanivel, he states that the consensus system have given unity and political stability to the country.

“The day you remove the element of political discussion and decision by consensus then it will give rise to a state of unhappiness particularly among minority groups.

“The view has not been put in BN meeting yet and it’s worth if we can show to the world how we do decision by consensus,” said Subramaniam.

On Monday, BN secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said the BN constitution should be amended so that all decisions can be made using a majority vote against the consensus system practiced now.

BN chairman Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has been informed of the matter and the proposal will be submitted at the BN Supreme Council meeting, next year.

Leaders from MCA also want the existing system to be maintained while one from People’s Progressive Party (PPP) stresses that the coalition needs to change its system to a workable one.

Subramaniam also added that the poor of any community should be helped and it will be the basis of intervention effects to bring back good support for BN.

‘Govt trades away rights for money’

NGO Tenaganita claims the government believes the lives of domestic workers should not be placed in the hands of recruitment companies who are key culprits in violating domestic workers' rights.

PETALING JAYA: The government has been chided by Tenaganita for remaining complicit on violence against domestic workers.

Its executive director Irene Fernandez said that both the Malaysian and Indonesian governments have demonstrated that they believe the lives of Indonesian women should be placed in the hands of agents and recruitment companies.

This was illustrated when both governments agreed for recruitment agents to be given the power to resolve deep-rooted issues surrounding the recruitment of domestic workers.

According to recent newspaper reports, both governments maintain that market forces should determine the recruitment and wages of domestic workers.

“How can money be the deciding factor when this entire process affects the rights and lives of women?

“Are domestic workers now on sale to be traded as commodities to the highest bidder sanctioned and approved by the Indonesian and Malaysian governments?” said Fernandez in a statement.

She added it was important to realise how recruitment agents have been key culprits in violating the rights of domestic workers.

“They have falsified the age of young girls so that they can work as domestic workers, they have stripped and searched domestic workers upon arrival in Malaysia to ensure they do not have information of support services or organisations, among other atrocities.

“To say that there are good recruitment agents is to deflect from the violence embedded in the system, the tacit approval granted to agents and employers to do as they wish with the women working in their homes,” she said.

According to Fernandez, Tenaganita received 313 cases involving domestic workers between 2012 and 2013, with over 1200 forms of rights violations including non-payment of wages.

Other cases such as withholding of passports, isolation, denied the right to communicate with anyone out of the home, physical, verbal and sexual violence, food deprivation and forced extension of contract were also reported.

“This information has been consistently shared with the Malaysian and Indonesian governments for the past five years, yet it is still money that drives their decisions,” she said.

She added that the end to forms of slavery and violence against domestic workers can only be realised when governance of recruitment and placement of domestic workers is determined by recognising domestic work as work.

“Fundamental rights of domestic workers must also be protected and the government must ensure a system of employment where there is decent wage and decent work.

“Women’s bodies are not commodities to be traded. The work of domestic workers needs to be valued and respected. Governments who fail in doing that must face the severest consequences of their actions,” she said.

India’s Crocodile Tears over a Diplomatic Slight

India in a snit

Fury over the arrest of a diplomat in the US masks the fact that she appears to have been underpaying and exploiting the help

The nationalist uproar in India over the arrest and search of a female member of its consular staff in New York shows India in a worse light than the US. Indeed it hints at the widespread abuse of poor South Asians at the hands of their own nationals, an issue familiar to those concerned with the welfare of migrant domestic servants.

The outcry over the arrest and search of fashionably dressed consular official Devyani Khobragade, which has elicited condemnation from none other than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, forced an apology from Secretary of State John Kerry, and caused the outraged Indians to reduce security around the US embassy in Delhi. But it also suggests that Indian officials expect to be above the law when they are in the US.

India’s outraged officials have yet to address the issue of the visa fraud of which Khobragade has been accused. Khobragade is a consular official and thus only entitled to diplomatic immunity when carrying out consular duties. Hiring of domestic employees clearly does not come under this immunity. Yet almost the whole Indian media and political class, the same media which ignore the gross abuses of power which take place under their very noses every day,are up in arms against supposed US infringement of a diplomat’s supposed rights.

They are silent on the rights of the maid alleged to have been exploited by Khobragade. Who cares about a lower-caste, little-educated Indian maid? Certainly not the Delhi elite.

Khobragade’s rights are, we are told, superior to those of ordinary American citizens. The procedures followed by New York police may be viewed as rough and insulting to those arrested. But they are standard procedure – as former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn found when he was arrested on suspicion of rape in 2011.

The fact is that they are normal and Khobragade was body searched by a female officer. The initiator of the charges, Preetinder Singh (Preet) Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is himself of Indian origin, born in Firozpur, Punjab.

Whether or not Khobragade is guilty of lying by pretending to have paid the maid she sponsored the minimum legal wage, instead of less than US$3 an hour, which is claimed by the NY authorities, or the $4,500 a month that Khobragade is said to have claimed, remains to be seen.

But abuse of diplomatic privileges is widespread and diplomats from South Asia are notorious almost the world over for their eager exploitation of the system. What was supposed to be a means to protect diplomats has become a license to profit from the likes of duty-free liquor import, as well as more specifically illegal activities involving drug and people smuggling.

India in fact has developed a vast caste of VVIPs – “Very Very Important Persons” who are exempted from all of the normal procedures that the average suffering businessman or tourist must endure, not only abroad but in India itself. In July 2009, when officials of the US Continental Airlines frisked former President APJ Abdul Kalam, requiring him to remove his shoes and belt, as millions of people at that point had to do, it kicked off a huge international fuss. Politicians demanded that that Continental be barred from flying into the country and that then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton be put through security checks as well.

In the succeeding years, the list of VVIPs has continued to expand. In the 1980s, only five officials -- president, vice president, prime minister, Supreme Court chief justice, speaker of the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament) and state governors were exempted from security procedures. Today, however, the list has been expanded to include cabinet ministers, ministers of state, bureaucrats and sundry others with access to the powers-that-be. A private businessman, Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and husband of Priyanka Gandhi, was exempt, as were senior bureaucrats outranked by the service chiefs, who were required to go through the procedures.
The way the Indian foreign policy establishment has leapt not just to Khobragade’s defense but to protect the immunity system is disturbing. Surely law-abiding officials should let the law take its course. The gross underpayment of imported domestic servants by diplomats, and sometimes too by businessmen and others temporarily residing in developed countries, is a very real  issue. At home, whether in India or countries with a similar abundance of low wage labor, as middle class households they are used to having one or more servants to clean and cook.

Posted to the US – or Japan, Hong Kong Malaysia or UK etc – they expect to continue to have help in the house. But their salaries are simply insufficient to pay the locally prescribed minimums. Hence they bring in maids from their own countries and pay them what sounds a huge wage in India but is a fraction of that to which the law entitles them in, for example, New York.

Justice in New York may be rough but mostly honest – which is why a self-serving Indian elite is so disturbed by it.

No graduate in Kota Marudu village – DAP

Kit Siang (second right) with other DAP leaders, from right, Bosi, Jimmy, Kasthuriraani and Junz.

KOTA KINABALU: Likas assemblyman, Junz Wong has urged Deputy Education Minister Datuk Mary Yap to explain why more than 50 per cent of federal scholarships allocated to Sarawak and Sabah students to pursue their education in local universities allegedly had no takers and as such given to students in Peninsular Malaysia.

He said it is impossible for Sabah not to have students who qualified to receive federal scholarships, especially when the government is very proud to have one of the best education systems in the world.

“The ‘loss’ is not the latest story for Sabah and Sarawak, as Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Joseph Entulu has revealed that it has been going on since 2008.

“According to Entulu, only 499 out of 1,000 scholarships allocated for both states were successful in their application in 2008, while in 2009 only 402 successful. He also said the situation was the same for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012,” said Junz in a press conference at Bandaran Berjaya Shangri-la Hotel, yesterday.

Also present were DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang, DAP Sabah chief Jimmy Wong, Kepayan assemblyman Dr Edwin Bosi and Batu Kawan MP Kasthuriraani Patto.

Junz made the call after Kit Siang called on the government to set up a Parliament Select Committee for the amazing performance in the recent Penilaian Menangah Rendah (PMR) examinations.

He said the achievement of the 30,988 students out of over 462,940 PMR candidates nationwide who scored Grade A in all subjects were a joy to parents and students but it is a different story when it comes to international standards of education.

Junz believed that Yap will be able to bring the Sabah education issues to parliament, and hoped that she can answer for the level of education in Malaysia, as reported in the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and 2012 Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA).

Meanwhile, Kit Siang said his recent visit to Kampung Samparita Laut in Kota Marudu was another shocking experience when the villagers admitted no one from the village had ever entered university.

“After 50 years of independence in Sabah, I cannot believe there is still a kampung without any university graduates. I am also calling Mary Yap as a minister from Sabah to look at this matter seriously. Every Sabahan has the right to a higher level of education,” he said.

Kasthuriraani, who also went to Samparita Laut to join the launching of DAP Impian Sabah’s water gravity inaugural project, said it is not fair for Sabahans and Sarawakians to be rejected in their federal scholarship applications.

“I am not sure if this is Barisan Nasional (BN) plans to ensure Sabahans and Sarawakians are left behind in education, so that they will be more dependent on the government.

“If Sabahans and Sarawakians are dependent on the government, it will give more benefit to BN because both states will be forever BN fixed deposit in terms of votes in the General Election,” she added.

Ministry Mulls Over Expanding Malay Literature Study To Lower Secondary Students

GEORGE TOWN, Dec 21 (Bernama) -- The education ministry is mulling over a move to make Malay Literature a single subject for lower secondary school students, in line with the launch of the Secondary School Standard Curriculum by 2017.

Its deputy director-general (education operation sector), Datuk Sufaat Tumin said the department was currently gathering input and feedback before the proposal could be implemented.

"The proposal to uplift the dignity of literature has been passionately discussed lately. Some quarters suggested that it be made a compulsory subject and also taught at the lower secondary level.

"However, this needs detailed study and evaluation from every angle," he told reporters at a seminar, 'National Seminar On Literature in National Education' here Saturday.

Six working papers were tabled by 15 lecturers from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Malaya, including teachers from secondary schools in the northern zone.