Afghan Asylum-Seekers Found Near Bali Coast

Kate Lamb | Jakarta

Australian refugee groups have made contact with some 60 asylum-seekers adrift in waters off Bali after concerns their vessel had capsized. While authorities now hope to rescue the group, the refugees, including ethnic Hazaras from Afghanistan, now face detention in Indonesia.

After a distress call was made Thursday evening and all contact with the vessel was lost, authorities reported no sign of the boat Friday morning.

The boat was last reported off Sumbawa, a small island east of Bali. Sixty asylum seekers, including children, are thought to be on board.

Ian Rintoul of the Australian Refugee Action Coalition says hopes of finding survivors were dim until the group received a surprise phone call Friday afternoon.

“No, no, the boat hasn’t gone down," insisted Rintoul, "we just got a call about 10 minutes ago, we got a call from the boat. It's still floating, it is still adrift. I’d given up because we hadn’t heard anything from 2 o’clock, but it was from the same number and the same people… The engine has definitely failed, they are still needing assistance.”

While contact has been established, authorities are searching by land and sea to identify the exact location of the boat.

Thousands of refugees, mostly from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, make the perilous journey through Indonesian waters ever year in the hope they will be granted asylum in Australia.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the U.N. refugee convention and often jails and deports asylum seekers awaiting refugee status.

The Australian government has drawn criticism in recent years for urging Indonesian authorities to pick up asylum seekers so they are processed in Indonesia, rather than Australia.

Ian Rintoul says the refugee coalition is still waiting to see what happens with this latest boat.

“If they are rescued by Indonesian authorities that may well be placed in detention in Indonesia and that is one of our concerns about the whole situation in Indonesia and the pressure from the Australian government pushing people to get on boats that aren’t as well prepared as they could be,” Rintoul said.

Last Sunday a Singapore-registered tanker rescued around 120 Australia-bound asylum seekers, mostly Afghans and some Iranians, from their sinking wooden boat.

They refused to get off the docked tanker for two days, saying they wanted to continue to Australia where their rights are more protected.

In December, a boat carrying around 250 mostly Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers sank in Indonesian waters on its way to Christmas Island. Only 47 survived.

Voice of America

تظاهرات گسترده هزاره‌ها در کویته پاکستان

به روز شده:  16:08 گرينويچ - جمعه 13 آوريل 2012 - 25 فروردین 

هزاره‌های پاکستان می گویند قتل‌های هدفمند گروه های مسلح، آنهارا به ستوه آورده است

هزاران نفر از شهروندان کویته مرکز ایالت بلوچستان پاکستان، در اعتراض به آنچه قتلهای هدفمند هزاره‌ها در این ایالت می خوانند، تظاهرات کردند.

این دومین روزی است که مرکز ایالت بلوچستان پاکستان شاهد تظاهرات گسترده هزاره ها است.

مراکز تجاری تعطیل است و هزاران نفر که به دعوت "حزب دموکراتیک هزاره ها" به خیابانها ریخته اند، می گویند اگر دولت به خواست آنها پاسخ مثبت ندهد، به این اعتراض ادامه خواهند داد.خبرنگاران می گویند تظاهرات دو روز گذشته، شهر کویته مرکز ایالت بلوچستان پاکستان را عملا فلج کرده است.

رهبران حزب دموکراتیک هزاره‌ها در بلوچستان پاکستان می گویند از سال گذشته میلادی تا کنون، بیش از ۱۵۰ تن از هزاره‌های پاکستان کشته شده اند.

قربانیان این حملات غیر نظامی اند، آنها در راه سفر به ایران در پاکستان، در هنگام عبور و مرور در شهر کویته و یا هم هنگام کار در مغازه های خود، در اثر حملات افراد مسلح کشته شده اند.

در یک‌ماه گذشته دست‌کم ۱۵ تن در حملات جداگانه در شهر کویته بلوچستان کشته شده اند که همه هزاره و از اهالی بلوچستان بوده اند.

هزاره های بلوچستان این قتلها را هدفمند می دانند و می گویند آنها از ادامه این وضعیت به ستوه آمده اند.

احمد کهزاد، رهبر حزب دموکراتیک هزاره‌ها از دولت پاکستان خواست بساط عاملان قتل هزاره‌ها را برچیند

مقام های دولتی در ایالت بلوچستان پاکستان نیز از ادامه این وضعیت نگرانند. آنها نیز پذیرفته‌اند که دولت تلاش لازم را برای جلوگیری از کشتار هزاره‌ها نکرده است.

نواب ذوالفقار مگسی فرماندار ایالت بلوچستان در دیدار باگروه هشت نفری حزب دموکراتیک هزاره گفته است حوادثی مانند قتل های هدفمند و تروریسم قابل تاسف است.

نواب مگسی از حکومت ایالتی و مرکزی خواست تا علیه گروه هایی که عامل این قتلها هستند اقدام کند. او هشدار داد که ادامه این وضعیت می تواند پاکستان را درگیر یک جنگ داخلی کند.

سال گذشته نیز اعتراض‌های مشابهی نسبت به آنچه قتل های سیستماتیک هزاره های خوانده شد، در کشورهای مختلف جهان در برابر نمایندگی های سیاسی پاکستان به راه افتاد.

احمد کهزاد، دبیرکل حزب دموکراتیک هزاره ها در گفتگو با نصیره محب، خبرنگار بی بی سی، گفت آنها از حکومت، نیروهای امنیتی و اطلاعاتی پاکستان می‌خواهند با راه اندازی عملیات فوری و وسیع بساط گروه ها و افرادی را که عامل قتل‌های زنجیره ای هزاره ها هستند، برچیند.

BBC URDU

Magsi vows to end target killing within Balochistan

By: Zuhaeb Nazir, Uploaded: 13th April 2012

QUETTA: Zulfiqar Magsi, Governor Balochistan, raised high concern for his province saying that he suspected a civil war to erupt if the bloodshed continued within the province as a result of target killings.

Convening a meeting with his provincial members and the Hazara democratic members, the governor, threw vast questions upon his cabinet members by blatantly expressing that there was no need for such a large cabinet when the security position within the province can not be improved.

The Governor was really stressed with the current law and order situation as he stated that Balochistan’s law enforcement officials had failed to control the security condition within the province. He further elaborated this by stating that individuals were killed on a regular basis within the province and not a single alleged person was arrested with respect to such horrendous acts.

Magsi was of the view that if the military was to be summoned to control the security condition within the province, it would create problems for the civil administration.

The Governor issued strict orders for Balochistan Home Secretary Naseebullah Bazai, instructing him to instigate an onslaught against the offenders.

AJ TV

Balochistan governor fears civil war in province

Members of the Ethnic Hazara Shia community mourn the killing of their relatives at a hospital in Quetta on April 9, 2012, following a targeted attack by gunmen.—AFP Photo

QUETTA: Governor Balochistan Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi on Friday said he feared a civil war would erupt in the province if target killings continued unabated, DawnNews reported.

Speaking to provincial ministers and members of the Hazara Democratic Party, the governor questioned the strength of the cabinet, saying there was no need for a cabinet this large if the provincial government was unable to curtail the deteriorating law and order situation in the province.

“Time and again, more and more people are becoming victims of target killings, and not a single suspect has been taken into custody as yet. This is a proof of our government and law enforcement authorities’ failure,” said Magsi.

“If the military was summoned to restore the law and order in the province, then it will be problematic for the civilian government and the administration,” he added.

Magsi ordered the Provincial Home Secretary Naseebullah Bazai to immediately take notice of target killings and initiate a crackdown on the purported miscreants.

DAWN

Indonesia finds no sign of missing boat

Indonesian authorities say there has been no sign of a missing boat which was reported to be carrying dozens of Afghan refugees and had sent a distress signal.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had been contacted on Thursday afternoon by a refugee advocacy group which had spoken to people on the boat who said it was in distress.

AMSA said it had passed that message on to Indonesian authorities.

"There's no sign of the boat yet. Five rescue boats from police and the national search and rescue agency are near the area, and a helicopter is on its way," said Murtadi, a search and rescue official in Indonesia's West Nusa Tenggara province, on Friday.

He said they were searching off the coast of Sumbawa island, near the resort island of Bali.

A refugee advocacy group based in Brisbane said it had received a distress phone call from someone on the boat on Thursday, and alerted AMSA.

"Given the message was the vessel was actually sinking, we acted pretty quickly to contact the Indonesians," an AMSA spokesman told AFP.

He said Australian authorities had been told the boat was carrying about 60 people and was off Sumbawa island.

Ian Rintoul, the Australian refugee advocate who alerted AMSA, spoke to some of the people on the boat on Thursday.

"They could see Sumbawa but the boat was starting to drift to sea. The boat was starting to take water. The seas were pretty rough," he told AFP.

They were "extremely, extremely distressed - verging on hysterical at times," he said.

The refugees on board were mostly ethnic Hazaras from Afghanistan, with some children on board, according to Rintoul's information.

On Sunday a Singapore-registered tanker rescued about 120 Australia-bound asylum seekers - all males and mostly Afghans and some Iranians - from their sinking wooden boat.

They disembarked in Indonesia after two days of refusing to get off the docked tanker and insisting they be allowed to continue their journey to Australia.

Thousands of asylum seekers head through South-East Asian countries on their way to Australia every year and many link up with people smugglers in Indonesia for the dangerous voyage, often on rickety, overloaded boats.

In December, a boat carrying about 250 mostly Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers sank in Indonesian waters on its way to Christmas Island. Only 47 people survived.

MSN

VIEW: When the state becomes ideological —Shahab Usto

Pakistan, like a multi-ethnic, multi-sect and autocratic Sudan, has failed to evolve such a democratic or societal consensus on its ‘ideological identity’

Ideological states or entities being inherently schismatic, unleash countervailing forces, and more so when they grow weaker. ‘Ideological’ Pakistan is coming to grips with the countervailing forces in the form of increasing nationalist, ethnic and sectarian challenges.

Ironically, Pakistan stands closer to Sudan than Israel or Iran. Israeli Zionist identity has faced internal and external threats, which it has met using a democratically-evolved consensus on retaining the state’s identity. The enormous support of the US-led west has also come to the aid of Israel, if not its identity, as a quid pro quo for protecting the former’s interests in the region.

Iran’s Islamist identity, with its attendant anti-US-Israel and anti-Salafi-Arab overtones, has remained threatened by internal, regional and global adversaries. Iran has legitimised this identity through a proto-democratic polity and a popularly recognised institution of the Wilayat-al-Faqih (the guardianship of the jurists), which ‘lead and govern Islamic society’. As a result, Iran’s Islamist identity has faced little threat from inside. It is the US-led west, Israel and the neighbouring Arab states that perceive it as a game changer in the regional balance of power. Hence, efforts are afoot to deny it nuclear capability.

Pakistan, like a multi-ethnic, multi-sect and autocratic Sudan, has failed to evolve such a democratic or societal consensus on its ‘ideological identity’. Islam has been used as a larger banner overarching the state. But under it lies many a sect. True, the constitution and laws must comply with the Quran and Sunnah, but where is the machinery required to interpret and rationalise Quran and Sunnah to remove scholastic disharmony? The Council of Islamic Ideology that was meant to perform this very important function has long fallen victim to the ills that it should have treated — religio-political schisms — in the first place.

As a result, the state has become a sectarian battlefield. A violent and partisan version of Islam has emerged and crowded out the moderate and inclusive narrative of Islam. The state has lost the ‘ideological’ legitimacy in the wake of all-round religious and sectarian divisions. The powerful and violent sectarian forces are now challenging its writ and internal and external policies.

The state also used the ‘ideology’ to negate the multiplicity of ethno-cultural reality, the identities of the sub-national groups that pre-existed the state of Pakistan. They had put faith and credit in the 1940 resolution, which envisaged a confederation of ‘states’ among the Muslim majority provinces of united India. The prospects of regaining autonomy from a socio-politically dominant Hindu majority and the resulting political rewards for the local feudal elites and the nascent Muslim bureaucracy belonging to the UP, CP and Bihar, had galvanised the three major nationalities — Sindhi, Punjabi, Bengali — to opt for Pakistan. However, the Pashtuns and the Baloch had resisted joining the new state until the last moment, and even after the creation of the state.

These nationalities turned ‘hostile’ when an autocratic and centrist state used ‘Islamist identity’ to override the ‘national question’ that had arisen when the Bengali, Sindhi, Pashtun and Baloch leadership challenged the validity of this identity. They also resisted the ‘machinations’ of the Punjabi military and feudal leadership and the muhajir (immigrants) bureaucracy and intelligentsia to create One Unit. The ‘identity’ politics of the state continued until its spinoff, Bengali identity politics, broke away the eastern limb of the state.

Even then, the state refused to give up on its identity politics. The dissolution of One Unit gave way to multi-ethnic provinces. Thus, large chunks of the Seraikis were included in Punjab; Balochistan contained swathes of Pushtun areas; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa received the Hazaras, which previously made part of Punjab, though they were ethnically distinct from both Pashtuns and Punjabis, and Sindh, where many mohajirs had settled, divided along a rural-urban divide. Today, every province has both sectarian and ethnic conflicts. The state, bound by its identity, is increasingly failing to resolve these conflicts using constitutional and democratic tools.

Instead, socio-economic crises are fanning these conflicts. The federal kitty is in the red. The provinces are now burdened with running the social sector that has been devolved to them in the wake of constitutional reforms. Therefore, ethnic and sectarian frictions are more likely to increase in the coming years.

Already, provincial politics is increasingly resonating with ethnic sentiments. The devolution of administrative and financial powers from the Centre to the provinces will further reinforce a tug of war among the various ethnic groups for the allocation of resources and utilisation of powers. South Punjab is clamouring against injustices, as does Hazara, and Quetta is an even more dangerous trajectory. But Sindh is the real prism of the emergence of nationalist politics. Many a sociological and demographic factor favours this trend. On the one hand, the Urdu-speaking political leadership is facing the crunch of the Pashtun influx in Karachi, forcing it to launch a violent ‘resistance’ against the ANP, the Pashtun representative. On the other, an increasing number of Sindhi-speaking middle class are taking to the urban areas, particularly Karachi. They are forced to leave their rural haunts by a combination of factors — lack of economic opportunities, decrepit social and physical infrastructures, tribal feuds, worsening law and order, and a search for better education. But they lack political support, let alone an ethnic militia of their own to protect them from an array of organised ethnic militias blocking their way in Karachi.

Sindh is faced with a touch-and-go situation. The PPP government has failed to contain both the feudal-tribal oppression in rural society and the ethnic killings in the metropolis. No wonder, obituaries are being written on the PPP’s future in Sindh. As the outpouring of nationalist sentiments on the sudden and ‘unusual’ death of a Sindhi nationalist Bashir Qureshi show, Sindh may also turn into another Balochistan.

The writer is a lawyer and academic. He can be reached at shahabusto@hotmail.com

Daily Times

From the wreckage of sectarianism

From the Newspaper | Aasim Sajjad Akhtar | 

DESPITE the virtual media blackout of Gilgit-Baltistan it is becoming increasingly clear that sectarian violence in the entire region is spiralling out of control.

Meanwhile, the systematic attacks on the Hazaras of Quetta continue unabated. It is hardly surprising then that Shias everywhere are talking conspiracy even as militant Sunnis of all varieties are doing everything in their power to prove the conspiracy theorists right.

A conspiracy is that which is hidden from the public eye, a plan hatched by unknown elements hell-bent on causing maximum possible harm to the adversary. By this definition, organised attacks such as those that have been carried out in recent times are a conspiracy only in the sense that immeasurable harm has been caused to the community being targeted. Who is doing the killing is hardly a secret.

In Quetta, a couple of ‘banned’ and ‘defunct’ organisations have taken responsibility for most of the attacks. It scarcely matters that the killers have not been as forthcoming in Gilgit-Baltistan (or the media willing to break with the ‘greater national interest’ in its adhering to the terms of the blackout).

The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), after all, is just another name for a nexus of social forces and state institutions that has unapologetically transformed Pakistan’s social and political landscape since the dark years of Ziaul Haq.

Madressahs, a retrogressive public educational curriculum, a pro-jihadi media discourse — these and many other dimensions of Pakistan’s love affair with millenarianism have been in and out of the news for years, in the English press at least.

Commentators, myself included, have emphasised the continuing refusal of our holy guardians to give up on hare-brained schemes such as strategic depth that have shredded the innards of this society.

But there has been, till now, not enough focus on arguably the most dangerous trend of all: that otherwise forward-thinking people spread out across the length and breadth of this country, almost despite themselves, are starting to conform to the exclusivist discourse that the militants on all sides are championing.

Beyond the alarmism that afflicts the chattering classes the objective evidence is relatively conclusive; most Pakistanis are not bigots, even if many are cowed into silence by the issuers of the proverbial fatwas.

At best most of us are hypocrites who have imbibed the Ziaist imperative of demonstrating religiosity in public and otherwise engaging in distinctly ‘un-Islamic’ practices — as far as the mullahs are concerned — in the comfort of our own homes.

Minority communities that have been victimised consistently over a period of time — some even before the 1980s — have understandably looked within themselves to cope with the tyranny of the majority. This tendency has, however, not necessarily given rise to reaction. In fact, there have been many notable progressive outcomes, including a marked desire of more affluent members of the community to look after those endowed with much less.

Where some form of reaction has come to light, as in the case of Shia militancy in the 1990s, a significant part of the community has rejected it. Many young, educated Shia who have, for one reason or the other, been taken in by the appeal of Shia militancy, subsequently recanted and generally espouse a principled politics of non-violence and promote inter-faith harmony.

But it is now important to ask whether or not there may be countervailing trends emerging. Individuals hailing from minority communities active in the social media are starting to evince more alienation than might have been the case even a few years ago. Anger and resentment are becoming more common as the perception of perennial victimhood becomes more pronounced.

Balochistan is the best example of how systematic brutalisation can precipitate extremely dangerous social conflicts between relatively disempowered communities. Ethnic Baloch have long felt victimised by the Pakistani state, but xenophobic trends within the Baloch nationalist movement have historically remained relatively muted.

The Shia Hazara community settled mostly in Quetta has, for the most part, coexisted with Baloch and Pakhtuns and integrated itself into the wider society. Pakhtuns are probably the most upwardly mobile of the three major communities, but this is not to suggest that they constitute a dominant ethnic group per se.

It is impossible to ignore the fact that tensions between all three communities have intensified greatly in recent times. Hazaras and Baloch in particular have become less likely to express any measure of empathy for one another, and it is noticeable that otherwise eloquent progressives on both sides are now in the business of competing over which community faces more systematic and structural violence.

The situation in Gilgit-Baltistan has been on knife-edge for much longer. Sectarian clashes which were a minor speck on the social landscape before the Zia years erupt in all their fury at almost regular intervals, radicalising otherwise ordinary people and arousing suspicions that persist long after the particular phase of violence has passed.

Of course, it matters that those charged with protecting the public peace are heavily implicated in destroying it, and that our holy guardians and their sycophants jealously guard the ideological apparatuses that produce hate and violence.

But simply reiterating that the state is culpable will not force it to change its historical posture. The fact of the matter is that too many people in society are starting to believe they have to take sides in a manner that makes it more difficult in the long-term to build an alternative consensus. It is necessary to face up to this growing polarisation and then do something about it.

In particular, as many of us as possible need to speak up not only for our own but for all those who are victims of wanton violence and systematic exclusion. The biggest burden must be owned by majorities, especially religious and ethnic ones. But the sane voices within minority communities have a role to play too, as they have in the past.

If all those who believe that there is still something to be salvaged from the wreckage of sectarian and all other forms of organised violence do come together and say what needs to be said, there is hope yet that all the blood that has been spilt will not have been in vain.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

DAWN