Ceremonies in Sarajevo are marking 20 years since the start of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, a conflict that saw the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.
The conflict began in April 1992 as part of the break-up of Yugoslavia.
About 100,000 people were killed and nearly half the population forced from their homes in four years of fighting.
Red chairs fill the street in Sarajevo where the conflict began - 11,541, one for each victim in the city.
People have been placing white flowers on some of the chairs as they walk alongside them.
A teddy bear, toys and schoolbooks have been placed on some of the small chairs which symbolise children killed during the four-year long siege by Serb forces.
Sarajevans were asked to stop what they were doing at 12:00 GMT for an hour to mark the start of the conflict.
'They loved Sarajevo'
Many have been walking past the chairs, which stretch for 800m (half a mile) along the central street in Sarajevo named after the founder of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito.
On a stage in front of the chairs, a choir with a small classical orchestra has been performing songs, many of them composed during the siege.
"Those people gave their lives for the freedom of this town. They loved this town. They were killed just because they were citizens of this town, because they were at their homes, at their schools, at their playgrounds," concert organiser Haris Pasovic is quoted as saying.
The Reuters news agency says the autonomous Serb area of the country is ignoring the anniversary of the start of the fighting.
For three years and eight months in the early 1990s, Sarajevo was a city under siege. The mainly Muslim population took cover, as Serb gunners barraged the city from the hills surrounding it.
The worst single atrocity during the war was at Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, in July 1995. Bosnian Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladic, overran what should have been a UN safe haven. About 8,000 Muslim men and boys were taken away and killed.
As a result the UN changed the mandate for its mission and allowed force to be used.
But the war in Bosnia was a three-way mix, involving Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
The European Union's special representative to Bosnia, Peter Sorenson, says that during the war, trust and relations between people were simply destroyed. All of this, he says, can never be forgotten or "wiped away".
The BBC's Genc Lamani says that the aspirations for a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Bosnia have not yet become a reality. Many people in Bosnia believe the war was too high a price to pay for such hopes, our correspondent says.
6 April 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17636640
Friday, 6 April 2012
Nato fuel tanker blaze kills seven in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR: Seven people were burnt to death in southern Afghanistan on Friday when a fuel tanker supplying a Nato base crashed and set their vehicle on fire, officials said.
The security chief of Panjwayi district and the Kandahar police chief said there was no insurgent activity at the time, and residents later pulled back from claims that the Taliban had attacked with rocket-propelled grenades.
A US soldier serving in Nato’s US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was charged this month with 17 counts of murder following a killing spree in the same district of Kandahar province on March 11.
Sardar Mohammad, Panjwayi’s security chief, told AFP: “A fuel tanker supplying fuel for Isaf overturned and caught fire, and simultaneously a civilian minivan was passing nearby also set ablaze.”
Seven people were killed and three others who were injured were taken to hospital, he said.
Abdul Hakim, who lives opposite the crash site, told AFP he heard a loud bang when the tanker overturned, and a passing vehicle was set on fire by the blaze.
Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq confirmed the death toll, telling AFP: “This fuel tanker was coming from the city of Kandahar to Panjwayi district at high speed.
“On its way this tanker overturned and caught fire,” he said. “A civilian minivan was passing on the way and the vehicle was also set ablaze.”
Friday, 06 April 2012
http://www.somoso.com/news/nato-fuel-tanker-blaze-kills-seven-in-afghanistan/
Fiji's flood death toll rises to 7
SUVA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Fiji's flood death toll rose to seven on Friday after the discovery of two more bodies.
Police spokeswoman Ana Naisoro said the police found a middle aged man's body floating in the Waimanu River near Nausori.
At Tunalia Bridge in the western tourist town of Nadi, the body of 61-years-old villager Jolame Vou Sayabo was also found, who was believed to be drowned after he got stuck in a culvert whilst swimming with family members.
Naisoro said the two bodies are now at local hospitals for a post mortem examination.
Earlier this week, a three-year-old boy of Komave village in Sigatoka died while playing near a creek, and the body of a 31- year-old man was also found at Johnson Road in Lautoka.
On Sunday the body of a man was retrieved from the Nadi River, while a 20-year-old male's body and an unidentified man's body were retrieved on Friday in different areas in the country's west.
Meanwhile, three boys are still believed to be missing, who were on a fishing boat last Tuesday but failed to return as expected on Friday.
According to Nadi's Special Administrator Aisea Tuidraki, damages to businesses in the tourist town are estimated to cost around 200 million Fiji dollars (about 115 million U.S. dollars) .
Meanwhile, it is a bleak Easter weekend for about 13,300 flood- affected people still at the 200 evacuation centres in Fiji's Western and Central divisions.
Friday, 06 April 2012
http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-04/06/c_131511456.htm
Police spokeswoman Ana Naisoro said the police found a middle aged man's body floating in the Waimanu River near Nausori.
At Tunalia Bridge in the western tourist town of Nadi, the body of 61-years-old villager Jolame Vou Sayabo was also found, who was believed to be drowned after he got stuck in a culvert whilst swimming with family members.
Naisoro said the two bodies are now at local hospitals for a post mortem examination.
Earlier this week, a three-year-old boy of Komave village in Sigatoka died while playing near a creek, and the body of a 31- year-old man was also found at Johnson Road in Lautoka.
On Sunday the body of a man was retrieved from the Nadi River, while a 20-year-old male's body and an unidentified man's body were retrieved on Friday in different areas in the country's west.
Meanwhile, three boys are still believed to be missing, who were on a fishing boat last Tuesday but failed to return as expected on Friday.
According to Nadi's Special Administrator Aisea Tuidraki, damages to businesses in the tourist town are estimated to cost around 200 million Fiji dollars (about 115 million U.S. dollars) .
Meanwhile, it is a bleak Easter weekend for about 13,300 flood- affected people still at the 200 evacuation centres in Fiji's Western and Central divisions.
Friday, 06 April 2012
http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-04/06/c_131511456.htm
Suicide bombers in Pakistan receive no death rituals
Suicide bombers who believe they will go to paradise are mistaken, Pakistani religious scholars say.
"Suicide bombers are the most unfortunate people on the surface of the earth, as they are neither bathed nor buried," as ordinary Muslims are when they die, said Maulana Aminullah Shah in Par Hoti Mardan.
Shah, a prayer leader in Mohallah New Islamabad, Par Hoti, Mardan, said he felt sorry for Rehmanullah, a 17-year-old suicide bomber who attacked Afghan and coalition forces last September and was buried without a funeral prayer.
Rehmanullah's father, Ghufran Khan, a day labourer, continues to grieve over his son's death, saying the Taliban kidnapped and brainwashed him. He never got to see his son's body or to bury it, and remains uncertain of his son's fate.
Some escape militant clutches
Saifullah, another boy from the same area, had to flee for his life when the Taliban accused him of informing intelligence agencies after senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Faraj Al-Libbi was captured in Mardan in May 2005.
"The Taliban failed to abduct Saifullah, and finally he landed in Germany," said his father. "I know the Taliban would have used my son as suicide bomber ... he would have missed a bath, funeral and burial, which are important rituals for Muslims."
Ajmal Shah, a prayer leader in Daudzai, Peshawar, is blunt about the importance of those rituals.
"The act of suicide bombing is condemnable. All those blowing themselves up and killing innocent Muslims will not find a place in paradise as they had been promised by their trainers," he said of the promises the Taliban use to lure teenage boys into becoming suicide bombers.
Taliban brainwashing tools
Taliban recruiters kidnap or lure under-educated, jobless youth, using literature and videos to brainwash them into committing terrorism. They never tell the youths that they lose their birthright to a Muslim burial and funeral rituals.
They also misinterpret the Qur'anic description of paradise.
"It is a great (tragedy), those teenagers who think they invite the pleasure of Almighty Allah after committing suicide attacks," Shah told Central Asia Online. "In reality, they will face the wrath of Allah."
Ajmal Shah, (above) a prayer leader, said suicide bombers do not enter paradise, despite their handlers' promises, said. [Ashfaq Yusufzai]
"There is no disputing that suicide attacks are not allowed in Islam," he said. "Those disobeying divine commandments and opting to become suicide bombers ... land in hell."
Playing on the youths' religious sentiments, the recruiters call those targeted 'infidels' and issue decrees sentencing them to death. Families who grieve for their missing boys are told by trainers they have become "martyrs".
An ignoble end for bombers
Authorities treat the remains of bombing victims with care, said Dr. Shiraq Qayum, head of the Lady Reading Hospital Accidents and Emergency Department, observing that workers will exhume and re-bury initially unidentified victims when DNA techniques yield their names.
The remains of suicide bombers, however, are treated differently.
"… We never bury the remains of suicide bombers ... [we] just use them for forensic purposes," he said of Pakistan as a whole.
Suicide bombers do not merit a funeral because the public despises their acts, Qayum said. The contempt for bombers' remains is even more striking when compared to how Pakistanis' hold funerals in absentia for relatives who died abroad and whose bodies cannot be repatriated, he added.
"Assaying the role of suicide bomber means abandoning Islam, which clearly states that killing one person amounts to killing the entire humanity," said Rahimullah, a resident of Shabqadar and father of Qari Naqibullah, a 19-year-old Pakistani suicide bomber who killed 10 coalition soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in March, 2011.
A resident of Surkh Dheri Charsadda, Wahidullah, disappeared in January 2008. Two months later, a group of Taliban militants informed his elderly father, Juma Gul, that his son the "martyr" had gone to paradise.
"First, I did not believe it when the Taliban walked into the mosque early one morning," the father told centralasiaonline.com. "To my displeasure, they kept congratulating me, but I am still cursing them for my son's act."
Wahidullah's father had to mourn his son alone. "Offering condolences ... is an important act of kindness, displayed by the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and his followers, but I am very unlucky that I did not receive a single mourner over the death of my lone son," he said. "The people disapprove of suicide attacks; therefore, nobody offered me condolences."
Such deaths cause agony for parents, who have no hope Allah will extend mercy to their sons who blew themselves up and violated Islamic injunctions, he said.
Nobody ever says anything merciful like "May God bless him" or "God rest his soul" for suicide attackers, adding to their families' pain, Juma Gul added.
While suicide is forbidden by Islam, those who kill only themselves often receive the ritual washing, prayer and burial from their relatives. But the bodies of suicide bombers who kill others, go unclaimed and are denied the rituals in accordance with Islamic teachings, Shah and others said.
Another slight that suicide bombers suffer haunts their families forever. Since nobody will bury them, relatives and friends have no grave to visit for the purpose of seeking advice and contemplating the hereafter.
Thurs, 05 April 2012
http://mawtani.com/cocoon/iii/xhtml/en_GB/features/iii/features/iraqtoday/2012/04/05/feature-02
"Suicide bombers are the most unfortunate people on the surface of the earth, as they are neither bathed nor buried," as ordinary Muslims are when they die, said Maulana Aminullah Shah in Par Hoti Mardan.
Shah, a prayer leader in Mohallah New Islamabad, Par Hoti, Mardan, said he felt sorry for Rehmanullah, a 17-year-old suicide bomber who attacked Afghan and coalition forces last September and was buried without a funeral prayer.
Rehmanullah's father, Ghufran Khan, a day labourer, continues to grieve over his son's death, saying the Taliban kidnapped and brainwashed him. He never got to see his son's body or to bury it, and remains uncertain of his son's fate.
Some escape militant clutches
Saifullah, another boy from the same area, had to flee for his life when the Taliban accused him of informing intelligence agencies after senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Faraj Al-Libbi was captured in Mardan in May 2005.
"The Taliban failed to abduct Saifullah, and finally he landed in Germany," said his father. "I know the Taliban would have used my son as suicide bomber ... he would have missed a bath, funeral and burial, which are important rituals for Muslims."
Ajmal Shah, a prayer leader in Daudzai, Peshawar, is blunt about the importance of those rituals.
"The act of suicide bombing is condemnable. All those blowing themselves up and killing innocent Muslims will not find a place in paradise as they had been promised by their trainers," he said of the promises the Taliban use to lure teenage boys into becoming suicide bombers.
Taliban brainwashing tools
Taliban recruiters kidnap or lure under-educated, jobless youth, using literature and videos to brainwash them into committing terrorism. They never tell the youths that they lose their birthright to a Muslim burial and funeral rituals.
They also misinterpret the Qur'anic description of paradise.
"It is a great (tragedy), those teenagers who think they invite the pleasure of Almighty Allah after committing suicide attacks," Shah told Central Asia Online. "In reality, they will face the wrath of Allah."
Ajmal Shah, (above) a prayer leader, said suicide bombers do not enter paradise, despite their handlers' promises, said. [Ashfaq Yusufzai]
"There is no disputing that suicide attacks are not allowed in Islam," he said. "Those disobeying divine commandments and opting to become suicide bombers ... land in hell."
Playing on the youths' religious sentiments, the recruiters call those targeted 'infidels' and issue decrees sentencing them to death. Families who grieve for their missing boys are told by trainers they have become "martyrs".
An ignoble end for bombers
Authorities treat the remains of bombing victims with care, said Dr. Shiraq Qayum, head of the Lady Reading Hospital Accidents and Emergency Department, observing that workers will exhume and re-bury initially unidentified victims when DNA techniques yield their names.
The remains of suicide bombers, however, are treated differently.
"… We never bury the remains of suicide bombers ... [we] just use them for forensic purposes," he said of Pakistan as a whole.
Suicide bombers do not merit a funeral because the public despises their acts, Qayum said. The contempt for bombers' remains is even more striking when compared to how Pakistanis' hold funerals in absentia for relatives who died abroad and whose bodies cannot be repatriated, he added.
"Assaying the role of suicide bomber means abandoning Islam, which clearly states that killing one person amounts to killing the entire humanity," said Rahimullah, a resident of Shabqadar and father of Qari Naqibullah, a 19-year-old Pakistani suicide bomber who killed 10 coalition soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in March, 2011.
A resident of Surkh Dheri Charsadda, Wahidullah, disappeared in January 2008. Two months later, a group of Taliban militants informed his elderly father, Juma Gul, that his son the "martyr" had gone to paradise.
"First, I did not believe it when the Taliban walked into the mosque early one morning," the father told centralasiaonline.com. "To my displeasure, they kept congratulating me, but I am still cursing them for my son's act."
Wahidullah's father had to mourn his son alone. "Offering condolences ... is an important act of kindness, displayed by the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and his followers, but I am very unlucky that I did not receive a single mourner over the death of my lone son," he said. "The people disapprove of suicide attacks; therefore, nobody offered me condolences."
Such deaths cause agony for parents, who have no hope Allah will extend mercy to their sons who blew themselves up and violated Islamic injunctions, he said.
Nobody ever says anything merciful like "May God bless him" or "God rest his soul" for suicide attackers, adding to their families' pain, Juma Gul added.
While suicide is forbidden by Islam, those who kill only themselves often receive the ritual washing, prayer and burial from their relatives. But the bodies of suicide bombers who kill others, go unclaimed and are denied the rituals in accordance with Islamic teachings, Shah and others said.
Another slight that suicide bombers suffer haunts their families forever. Since nobody will bury them, relatives and friends have no grave to visit for the purpose of seeking advice and contemplating the hereafter.
Thurs, 05 April 2012
http://mawtani.com/cocoon/iii/xhtml/en_GB/features/iii/features/iraqtoday/2012/04/05/feature-02