Sixty feared dead as entire village wiped out in Papua New Guinea landslide

Sixty people are missing and feared dead after an entire village was wiped out in a landslide in the Commonwealth country of Papua New Guinea.

The flimsy village homes made of palm fronds and sticks were crushed by boulders the size of cars as the landslide destroyed an area more than half a mile long and up to 40 yards wide last night.

Former MP Sir Alfred Kaibe, pleading for foreign aid to help survivors, said: 'This is a tragedy of a magnitude the nation hasn't seen before.
Villagers today search the site of a landslide that struck villages in the Southern Highlands mountainous region of central Papua New Guinea

Villagers today search the site of a landslide that struck villages in the Southern Highlands mountainous region of central Papua New Guinea

The aftermath of a landslide, which wiped out an entire village, is seen in this aerial picture taken in Nogoli, Papua New Guinea

The aftermath of a landslide, which wiped out an entire village, is seen in this aerial picture taken in Nogoli, Papua New Guinea

'Those who have been displaced will need food, emergency supplies and tents.'

Rescue workers were today making their way to the remote region in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, which lies to the north of Australia.

Continuing heavy rain has hampered rescued efforts - and added to fears that another landslide will follow.

Local people have blamed blasting from nearby quarries which sent hundreds of tons of earth crashing down on the village of Tumbi.

Last night thousands of people from nearby villages made their way to the disaster zone, many with faces smeared with mud as a sign of mourning.

Andrew Alphonse, a reporter from the Post Courier newspaper, said locals have already named 26 people they believe have been killed but the death toll is expected to rise dramatically to more than double.

He said: 'Rescue workers haven't been able to retrieve the bodies because of the difficult conditions.

'The engineers and the National Emergency teams from Port Moresby, they've moved into the area today and they'll access the site around there.

'And then from there they'll do some studies on how they can go about picking up the bodies..It is such a huge task.'

Local MP Francis Potape, describing the devastation as widespread, told of harrowing scenes.

He said: 'You have a mother crying on the site, a father crying, people crying - those are the ones who are sure that their relatives are buried in there and have died.'

Locals are blaming quarrying work being carried out at the US-owned Exxon-Mobil liquefied natural gas project.

Despite the disaster, a company spokeswoman said work had resumed at the £10 billion project near the landslide disaster.

By Richard Shears
26th January 2012

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091971/Sixty-feared-dead-entire-village-wiped-Papua-New-Guinea-landslide.html#ixzz1kYwig9p3

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High-rise buildings collapse in Rio de Janeiro

Two buildings - one nearly 20 storeys high - have collapsed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, filling streets with masonry and covering cars with debris.

Officials say up to 11 people are believed to be inside the buildings and five people have been rescued.

The cause of the collapse remains unclear, but witnesses spoke of an explosion and a strong smell of gas.

City Mayor Eduardo Paes said that they were focusing on rescue efforts before looking into the incident's cause.

According to the BBC's Paulo Cabral, rescue workers were able to pull a cleaner from inside one of the elevators in the rubble after he managed to call a friend on his mobile phone.

The buildings - located near the Municipal Theatre and the headquarters of oil giant Petrobras - crushed a four-storey construction site on their way down.

The area surrounding the buildings is now covered in rubble, with several cars partially covered by debris.

Dozens of emergency workers are at the scene and police have cordoned off the area, our correspondent adds.

'Like an earthquake'

Electricity to the street has been cut off for safety reasons.

One witness, who identified himself as Gilbert, told Reuters news agency: "It was like an earthquake. First some pieces of the buildings started to fall down. People started to run. And then it all fell down at once."

The incident comes a little over three months after a suspected gas explosion at a restaurant in the city left three people dead.

Concerns have been raised about the state of Rio de Janeiro's infrastructure as Brazil prepares to host football's World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games two years later.

26 January 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16735556

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Batang Kali relatives edge closer to the truth about 'Britain's My Lai massacre'

Lawyers representing relatives of 24 unarmed victims who died at Batang Kali, Malaysia, in December 1948 have finally been provided with key Foreign Office correspondence about past investigations and Cabinet Office guidance on when inquiries should be held.

Even Buckingham Palace has been pulled into the furore surrounding the fate of the villagers, who were rounded up on a large rubber-tapping estate in the colonial government's counter-insurgency operation against communists, known historically as the Malayan Emergency.

A petition to the Queen about the deaths has been handed to the British high commissioner in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and the royal household has replied. The palace, however, has declined to release the text of the letter.

The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have always insisted the villagers were shot while trying to escape detention. The incident has been described by some as the "British My Lai massacre", after the US troop killings in Vietnam.

The Malaysian relatives' hopes have been boosted by a group of Kenyan survivors, mostly now in their 80s, who won the right last summer to sue the British government for damages over claims of torture during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising. A judicial review of the government's repeated refusal to hold a public inquiry into the alleged massacre at Batang Kali is likely to be heard in the spring.

The Foreign Office has refused, so far, to release any additional documents from its still unreleased colonial-era archive. The depository at Hanslope Park, near Milton Keynes, contains thousands of files not yet handed over to the National Archives.

Previously unseen evidence of atrocities from Kenya did eventually emerge from the Foreign Office store, but the Malaysian files have so far remained closed despite repeated requests. The Foreign Office has promised to review the material, although it says it will take time.

Much of what occurred in Batang Kali is agreed. On 11 December 1948, a patrol of Scots Guards surrounded and entered the village, which lies north of the capital. The male villagers were separated. That evening, one of the men was shot by soldiers; the next day a further 23 died. None of the victims were armed and no weapons were found before the killings.

Some of the Scots Guards involved in the incident approached a Sunday newspaper in the 1970s with accounts that disputed the official version of a thwarted escape. Scotland Yard detectives subsequently interviewed the men but were prevented from flying out to Malaysia.

Solicitors have, unusually, been given access to the police files. Soldiers have also been contacted again by the lawyers but none is expected to give evidence unless a public inquiry is ordered.

John Halford, of Bindmans solicitors in London, who is representing the Batang Kali families, said: "We are not asking for anyone to be prosecuted. The surviving soldiers are too old for it to be considered appropriate. But the families want the state to take responsibility for the actions. It's necessary to get to the bottom of what happened. Extrajudicial executions by British troops have not ceased. There are recent examples [Iraq]. These are people who have been wronged and had no remedy at all.

"There should be some resolution. These were extrajudicial killings of civilians that were pre-planned. The Dutch government has now agreed to pay families from Indonesia reparations for a colonial-era massacre that occurred around the same time, in 1947.

"Although [government] solicitors have confirmed that there is material relating to Batang Kali in their secret archives, they say it's not relevant. They won't let us look at it. There was an announcement that it would be publicly accessible, but that commitment hasn't been honoured."

The Foreign Office said: "This event happened over 60 years ago. Accounts of what happened conflict and virtually all the witnesses are dead. In these circumstances it is very unlikely a public inquiry could come up with recommendations which would help to prevent any recurrence."

The FO added: "The families of those who died have chosen to take legal action to challenge this decision and so it would be inappropriate to comment further now that legal proceedings are under way."

On the question of making public the relevant files at the Hanslope Park archives, it said: "The Foreign Office … holds 8,800 files from 37 former British administrations, including Malaya. The government plans to make as much of this material as possible available to the wider public, and has confirmed that the files will be reviewed. This review process may take some time."

Owen Bowcott
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/25/malaysia-military

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