Monday, November 23, 2015
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
I was wife No. 2 in the King's Harem -Janan Harb
By Elizabeth Sanderson, The Mail on Sunday
Last updated at 08:58 09 July 2006
Janan Harb is the sort of woman who would not look out of place in the Harrods food hall or any of the Bond Street jewellers favoured by London's Arab population.
Always dressed in immaculate Yves Saint Laurent suits, with her fine olive skin and huge kohl-rimmed almond eyes, she has the unmistakable hauteur of a lady who lunches for a living.
Yet such impressions are deceptive. For although she has, for much of her life, lived in unparalleled luxury, Janan is not just another anonymous wife of a multi-millionaire from the Gulf States.
The daughter of a restaurateur, Janan was born into poverty in Palestine but by the age of 21 she had married the man who would become King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, once the richest man in the world. Hers is, by any standards, an extraordinary tale.
Now permanently based in London, Janan is one of the few 'Westernised' women to experience life inside a harem of the Royal House of Saud. She was party to the opulence and extravagance, her every whim catered for by scores of servants.
But as a Christian, she also paid a terribly high price. Trapped like a canary in a cage, she was not allowed out of the palace walls, was forbidden from having children and had to obey the strict customs of her husband, the future guardian of Islam.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that Janan could never fit in to such a regime and she was eventually ordered to leave the country by the Saudi royal family, who disapproved of her marriage. But they couldn't break the lifelong bond that she and her former husband shared. Throughout her years of exile in America and London, he continued to provide for her until he suffered a stroke ten years ago.
It was then, according to Janan, that his relatives failed to honour Fahd's promise that he would always take care of her. Two years ago, Janan made international headlines when she launched a legal action that, if successful, would have led to the world's largest maintenance settlement.
Those proceedings ended with the King's death last July but last month Janan won the right to take her claim for a £400million share of his £32billion estate to the European Court of Human Rights.
Now she has agreed to speak out for the first time about life inside the House of Saud. Rarely, if ever, has anyone dared talk publicly about the kingdom where secrets are kept safe via generous 'gifts' or barely veiled threats. AT 60, Janan retains the striking features that once made her such a sought-after beauty.
Speaking in a considered, determined, tone, her voice husky from Silk Cut cigarettes, Janan says: 'I spent the first 12 years of my life in Nazareth and then moved to Ramallah in the West Bank. I knew what it was to live in poverty and I knew I wanted more in life.
'Ramallah was too conservative for me, too small. At the first opportunity, I left. It was 1967 and I was 20. The Israelis had just occupied the West Bank and I was part of the exodus of Palestinians. I had just $100 in my pocket and there is film footage of me crossing the temporary bridge into Jordan in my miniskirt. My mother was crying because she might never see me again but I wanted to go. 'My intention was to go to Beirut and study nursing at the American university and then go on to America. I never imagined I would end up in Saudi Arabia. At that time, it was a stone-age country, particularly if you were a girl.'
When Janan arrived in Beirut, she discovered there were no longer any scholarships available, nor could she get a work permit. Instead, she arranged to stay with cousins in Saudi Arabia where she got work, first in a travel agency and then at the Venezuelan embassy, translating from Arabic to English.
Janan had saved nearly enough for her ticket to America when she went to the Christmas party of a prominent local businessman and met Prince Fahd.
She says: 'The minute I walked in, I saw one guy in a Saudi robe, just one, and it was Fahd. He was not king then but obviously was a very well-known prince and very popular in the country.
'I had heard stories of parties in Beirut where girls had been raped and I was scared of having anything to do with the royals. He said he wanted to speak to me and I asked him why. Of course I knew who he was but I didn't want to let him know that.
'He said that he was Fahd Abdul Aziz, that he'd heard about me and then he expressed his regret for everything that had happened back in my home country. I was bold and young and I told him that I blamed Saudi and other Arab countries for not doing more to help.
He calmed me down and just handled me in such a way.
'He was a very elegant man, very considered and respectful - an English gentleman. He told me later he loved England because it was so cultured and he had been at Sandhurst for a while.
'He was a nice height and had beautiful style but I did not think of him in that way. I was 21 and he was a 45-year-old man. It certainly wasn't love at first sight. We had one dance but after that I slipped away.'
The following day as Janan arrived at the modest house in the diplomatic district of Jeddah that she shared with her cousins, there was a black limousine waiting outside.
She says: 'The driver got out and said, "Are you Janan Harb?" When I said yes, he handed me an envelope and a jewellery box. The envelope had money in it, a lot. Then I opened the jewellery box and saw a turquoise and diamond necklace and earrings.
I told him to return them to Prince Fahd. 'He said that if he did that he would get into trouble so I asked for the Prince's phone number and I went into the villa and called him. I explained I could not accept his gifts. He said I was a refugee and I should take them which I found insulting and told him so.
'When I refused to accept them, he asked if he could come over to lunch instead. At first I said no but about an hour later a convoy of cars arrived. There were seven butlers all holding silver platters filled with the most amazing food. There was a whole lamb, platters of peaches, grapes and pomegranates.
'The next day, he came round again. This time he brought a roulette wheel with him. He was the croupier while our neighbours came in and joined us for a game. After that he came every day, from 3pm until 6pm when he had Majlis, the nightly open court where people can ask the royals to help them with their problems.
'Afterwards he would return and stay until midnight or 1am, often bringing his official work with him. Sometimes we would sit and drink tea and talk politics, other times we would play roulette or cards. He taught me how to play gin rummy and poker. It was a lot of fun, we laughed a lot. I think he was quite lonely.'
For three months, the friendship continued in this fashion until Fahd flew her father George to Saudi. She says: 'He had tried to get me to be his mistress but it hadn't worked - we still did not have a physical relationship - and so he decided he would marry me. However, he said it had to be conducted in complete secrecy. I had to convert to Islam and there were to be no children.'
'I knew that I pushed his buttons, that I was fun and young and beautiful but I also really wanted children and wanted, still, to go to America. But by then I had grown to admire him for all that he did to help not just me and my family but others. And I admit I liked the power that I had by association.
'Once people realised the Prince was coming to visit me, there were queues of women and children asking if I could help them, maybe with a working visa or a hospital bed. And Fahd did help them.'
Within days of accepting his offer, Janan was moved into the Al Sharafya Palace, originally built as a guest palace for King Hussein of Jordan. The wedding, in March 1968, was a hurried ceremony within the palace walls with just her father and sister as witnesses. She says: 'We had a wedding dinner with close friends and family but otherwise it had to be kept very quiet. Although the royal family knew what had happened, they did not approve and no one outside the palace was to know.'
Fahd already had one official wife, Anoud, who went on to bear him 11 children. Although the two women knew about one another, Fahd decreed that they would never meet.
Janan was kept as a virtual prisoner, albeit in luxury. Her father, who had separated from her mother, lived in a villa inside the palace walls, as did her sister and brother-in-law. There was also a villa for one of her close friends and her husband but beyond these six people and the staff, which included two personal maids, a butler, two drivers, two gardeners, two handymen and two chefs, she rarely saw anyone else.
SHE says: 'Fahd brought in a Turkish designer who was one of the best in the world. There were red velvet walls, red carpets and satin sofas.
There were eight bedroom suites all with the most magnificent bathrooms.
'Fahd loved black Italian marble bathrooms. There were five living rooms, some with fountains inside, and two drawing rooms. There was a swimming pool and I also had my own cinema built so that I could watch all the latest movies.
'Fahd also loved cars. His first present to me was a strawberry-pink Aston Martin. He also had two Rolls-Royces and two Bentleys.'
But the days sound long and frustratingly dull. She says: 'I would get up early with Fahd - he stayed every night in my palace - and while he went to work I would read. Twice a week I would send to Beirut for international papers and magazines and fresh fruit, which was impossible to get in Saudi then.
'I might sit and have tea with my father or my sister and between 1.30pm and 3pm Fahd would return for lunch. In our culture it is important always to have food on the table so there would be plates and plates of different dishes from lamb to rice pilafs and vine leaves. After lunch, I might have a siesta or sit by the pool and then I would wait for Fahd to return for dinner at 10pm.'
The couple also shared a house in London in Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge, and here Janan was allowed a little more freedom. They were able to go out to restaurants together and would socialise at John Aspinall's private gambling club, the Clermont in Mayfair.
She says: 'Lord Lucan would be there and Jimmy Goldsmith. Then it was very different to how it is now. I would always go in long evening dress, with silk gloves.
'I remember one time John threw Fahd a ''barbarians party''. There were 50 midgets running around and we had to eat all the food with our hands. He loved that. He also loved to dine at Le Caprice, his favourite restaurant. Fahd kept a suite at the Dorchester for official business but in reality he was living in Knightsbridge with me.'
While she loved her husband, the restrictions of their marriage were becoming increasingly difficult to bear. Desperate for a child, she tried to become pregnant, succeeded three times and was forced, on every occasion, to have an abortion.
Then. in 1970, after two years of marriage, Janan was suddenly ordered to leave the kingdom by Fahd's brother. She was given two hours to go and her belongings were forwarded to the Saudi embassy in Beirut. Janan was 23.
She says: 'I did not see Fahd before I left but I did speak to him on the phone. He asked me to go to America - I was not allowed even to stay in the Middle East - it was the worst time of my life. I was devastated and virtually suicidal. I didn't know anyone and had lost my husband.'
The family told her that Fahd had divorced her. She lived in Chicago, where she entered into a disastrous four-month marriage with an American she now refuses to name, and Los Angeles. At this time she also became a model for the department stores Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller. She says: 'I was still going back to Saudi twice a year and would be smuggled into one of the palaces and we would spend four or five days together. After three years, I phoned and begged Fahd to let me come home. He said yes and I moved back to Beirut.'
It was in Beirut that she married her third husband, a lawyer, Sami Buez. She says: 'I had become Prince Fahd's mistress. I didn't want that and so when I returned to Beirut I married Sami.'
The couple had two daughters, Rania, now 30, and 27-year-old Rawan, but the marriage ended after five years and Janan moved to London. She set up two exercise schools, in London and Beirut, and now studies scientology and markets various anti-ageing products. Until his stroke, she and Fahd spoke on the telephone twice a week.
J ANAN says: 'Once he had become King in 1982, it became more difficult but we always made sure to speak to each other. I realised that the circumstances realistically prevented us from staying together but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a genuine love story.
'I had always supported him in our marriage and obeyed all the rules and in return he always supported me and my family. He educated both girls in Switzerland and made sure we were looked after. He wanted to meet the girls and he asked me to go to Marbella in 1995. But two weeks before we were due to go out, he became ill and never really recovered properly.'
That was the last time Janan Harb spoke to him. It is, for her, a very personal tragedy but one that she is not frightened of making public. She has set up a campaigning website and will take the case to court, either in Europe or America. For her, this fight is not just about the money but about the memory of her former husband.
'It's about justice, about what he would have wanted,' she says.
'My husband was a kind and fair man and this is a betrayal of everything he stood for. I think his family believe I am going to just sit back and be a victim of this injustice but I do not operate on a victim level. I will take this all the way if I have to.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-394769/I-wife-No2-Kings-Harem.html#ixzz3qUc2sl3D
Last updated at 08:58 09 July 2006
Janan Harb is the sort of woman who would not look out of place in the Harrods food hall or any of the Bond Street jewellers favoured by London's Arab population.
Always dressed in immaculate Yves Saint Laurent suits, with her fine olive skin and huge kohl-rimmed almond eyes, she has the unmistakable hauteur of a lady who lunches for a living.
Yet such impressions are deceptive. For although she has, for much of her life, lived in unparalleled luxury, Janan is not just another anonymous wife of a multi-millionaire from the Gulf States.
The daughter of a restaurateur, Janan was born into poverty in Palestine but by the age of 21 she had married the man who would become King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, once the richest man in the world. Hers is, by any standards, an extraordinary tale.
Now permanently based in London, Janan is one of the few 'Westernised' women to experience life inside a harem of the Royal House of Saud. She was party to the opulence and extravagance, her every whim catered for by scores of servants.
But as a Christian, she also paid a terribly high price. Trapped like a canary in a cage, she was not allowed out of the palace walls, was forbidden from having children and had to obey the strict customs of her husband, the future guardian of Islam.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that Janan could never fit in to such a regime and she was eventually ordered to leave the country by the Saudi royal family, who disapproved of her marriage. But they couldn't break the lifelong bond that she and her former husband shared. Throughout her years of exile in America and London, he continued to provide for her until he suffered a stroke ten years ago.
It was then, according to Janan, that his relatives failed to honour Fahd's promise that he would always take care of her. Two years ago, Janan made international headlines when she launched a legal action that, if successful, would have led to the world's largest maintenance settlement.
Those proceedings ended with the King's death last July but last month Janan won the right to take her claim for a £400million share of his £32billion estate to the European Court of Human Rights.
Now she has agreed to speak out for the first time about life inside the House of Saud. Rarely, if ever, has anyone dared talk publicly about the kingdom where secrets are kept safe via generous 'gifts' or barely veiled threats. AT 60, Janan retains the striking features that once made her such a sought-after beauty.
Speaking in a considered, determined, tone, her voice husky from Silk Cut cigarettes, Janan says: 'I spent the first 12 years of my life in Nazareth and then moved to Ramallah in the West Bank. I knew what it was to live in poverty and I knew I wanted more in life.
'Ramallah was too conservative for me, too small. At the first opportunity, I left. It was 1967 and I was 20. The Israelis had just occupied the West Bank and I was part of the exodus of Palestinians. I had just $100 in my pocket and there is film footage of me crossing the temporary bridge into Jordan in my miniskirt. My mother was crying because she might never see me again but I wanted to go. 'My intention was to go to Beirut and study nursing at the American university and then go on to America. I never imagined I would end up in Saudi Arabia. At that time, it was a stone-age country, particularly if you were a girl.'
When Janan arrived in Beirut, she discovered there were no longer any scholarships available, nor could she get a work permit. Instead, she arranged to stay with cousins in Saudi Arabia where she got work, first in a travel agency and then at the Venezuelan embassy, translating from Arabic to English.
Janan had saved nearly enough for her ticket to America when she went to the Christmas party of a prominent local businessman and met Prince Fahd.
She says: 'The minute I walked in, I saw one guy in a Saudi robe, just one, and it was Fahd. He was not king then but obviously was a very well-known prince and very popular in the country.
'I had heard stories of parties in Beirut where girls had been raped and I was scared of having anything to do with the royals. He said he wanted to speak to me and I asked him why. Of course I knew who he was but I didn't want to let him know that.
'He said that he was Fahd Abdul Aziz, that he'd heard about me and then he expressed his regret for everything that had happened back in my home country. I was bold and young and I told him that I blamed Saudi and other Arab countries for not doing more to help.
He calmed me down and just handled me in such a way.
'He was a very elegant man, very considered and respectful - an English gentleman. He told me later he loved England because it was so cultured and he had been at Sandhurst for a while.
'He was a nice height and had beautiful style but I did not think of him in that way. I was 21 and he was a 45-year-old man. It certainly wasn't love at first sight. We had one dance but after that I slipped away.'
The following day as Janan arrived at the modest house in the diplomatic district of Jeddah that she shared with her cousins, there was a black limousine waiting outside.
She says: 'The driver got out and said, "Are you Janan Harb?" When I said yes, he handed me an envelope and a jewellery box. The envelope had money in it, a lot. Then I opened the jewellery box and saw a turquoise and diamond necklace and earrings.
I told him to return them to Prince Fahd. 'He said that if he did that he would get into trouble so I asked for the Prince's phone number and I went into the villa and called him. I explained I could not accept his gifts. He said I was a refugee and I should take them which I found insulting and told him so.
'When I refused to accept them, he asked if he could come over to lunch instead. At first I said no but about an hour later a convoy of cars arrived. There were seven butlers all holding silver platters filled with the most amazing food. There was a whole lamb, platters of peaches, grapes and pomegranates.
'The next day, he came round again. This time he brought a roulette wheel with him. He was the croupier while our neighbours came in and joined us for a game. After that he came every day, from 3pm until 6pm when he had Majlis, the nightly open court where people can ask the royals to help them with their problems.
'Afterwards he would return and stay until midnight or 1am, often bringing his official work with him. Sometimes we would sit and drink tea and talk politics, other times we would play roulette or cards. He taught me how to play gin rummy and poker. It was a lot of fun, we laughed a lot. I think he was quite lonely.'
For three months, the friendship continued in this fashion until Fahd flew her father George to Saudi. She says: 'He had tried to get me to be his mistress but it hadn't worked - we still did not have a physical relationship - and so he decided he would marry me. However, he said it had to be conducted in complete secrecy. I had to convert to Islam and there were to be no children.'
'I knew that I pushed his buttons, that I was fun and young and beautiful but I also really wanted children and wanted, still, to go to America. But by then I had grown to admire him for all that he did to help not just me and my family but others. And I admit I liked the power that I had by association.
'Once people realised the Prince was coming to visit me, there were queues of women and children asking if I could help them, maybe with a working visa or a hospital bed. And Fahd did help them.'
Within days of accepting his offer, Janan was moved into the Al Sharafya Palace, originally built as a guest palace for King Hussein of Jordan. The wedding, in March 1968, was a hurried ceremony within the palace walls with just her father and sister as witnesses. She says: 'We had a wedding dinner with close friends and family but otherwise it had to be kept very quiet. Although the royal family knew what had happened, they did not approve and no one outside the palace was to know.'
Fahd already had one official wife, Anoud, who went on to bear him 11 children. Although the two women knew about one another, Fahd decreed that they would never meet.
Janan was kept as a virtual prisoner, albeit in luxury. Her father, who had separated from her mother, lived in a villa inside the palace walls, as did her sister and brother-in-law. There was also a villa for one of her close friends and her husband but beyond these six people and the staff, which included two personal maids, a butler, two drivers, two gardeners, two handymen and two chefs, she rarely saw anyone else.
SHE says: 'Fahd brought in a Turkish designer who was one of the best in the world. There were red velvet walls, red carpets and satin sofas.
There were eight bedroom suites all with the most magnificent bathrooms.
'Fahd loved black Italian marble bathrooms. There were five living rooms, some with fountains inside, and two drawing rooms. There was a swimming pool and I also had my own cinema built so that I could watch all the latest movies.
'Fahd also loved cars. His first present to me was a strawberry-pink Aston Martin. He also had two Rolls-Royces and two Bentleys.'
But the days sound long and frustratingly dull. She says: 'I would get up early with Fahd - he stayed every night in my palace - and while he went to work I would read. Twice a week I would send to Beirut for international papers and magazines and fresh fruit, which was impossible to get in Saudi then.
'I might sit and have tea with my father or my sister and between 1.30pm and 3pm Fahd would return for lunch. In our culture it is important always to have food on the table so there would be plates and plates of different dishes from lamb to rice pilafs and vine leaves. After lunch, I might have a siesta or sit by the pool and then I would wait for Fahd to return for dinner at 10pm.'
The couple also shared a house in London in Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge, and here Janan was allowed a little more freedom. They were able to go out to restaurants together and would socialise at John Aspinall's private gambling club, the Clermont in Mayfair.
She says: 'Lord Lucan would be there and Jimmy Goldsmith. Then it was very different to how it is now. I would always go in long evening dress, with silk gloves.
'I remember one time John threw Fahd a ''barbarians party''. There were 50 midgets running around and we had to eat all the food with our hands. He loved that. He also loved to dine at Le Caprice, his favourite restaurant. Fahd kept a suite at the Dorchester for official business but in reality he was living in Knightsbridge with me.'
While she loved her husband, the restrictions of their marriage were becoming increasingly difficult to bear. Desperate for a child, she tried to become pregnant, succeeded three times and was forced, on every occasion, to have an abortion.
Then. in 1970, after two years of marriage, Janan was suddenly ordered to leave the kingdom by Fahd's brother. She was given two hours to go and her belongings were forwarded to the Saudi embassy in Beirut. Janan was 23.
She says: 'I did not see Fahd before I left but I did speak to him on the phone. He asked me to go to America - I was not allowed even to stay in the Middle East - it was the worst time of my life. I was devastated and virtually suicidal. I didn't know anyone and had lost my husband.'
The family told her that Fahd had divorced her. She lived in Chicago, where she entered into a disastrous four-month marriage with an American she now refuses to name, and Los Angeles. At this time she also became a model for the department stores Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller. She says: 'I was still going back to Saudi twice a year and would be smuggled into one of the palaces and we would spend four or five days together. After three years, I phoned and begged Fahd to let me come home. He said yes and I moved back to Beirut.'
It was in Beirut that she married her third husband, a lawyer, Sami Buez. She says: 'I had become Prince Fahd's mistress. I didn't want that and so when I returned to Beirut I married Sami.'
The couple had two daughters, Rania, now 30, and 27-year-old Rawan, but the marriage ended after five years and Janan moved to London. She set up two exercise schools, in London and Beirut, and now studies scientology and markets various anti-ageing products. Until his stroke, she and Fahd spoke on the telephone twice a week.
J ANAN says: 'Once he had become King in 1982, it became more difficult but we always made sure to speak to each other. I realised that the circumstances realistically prevented us from staying together but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a genuine love story.
'I had always supported him in our marriage and obeyed all the rules and in return he always supported me and my family. He educated both girls in Switzerland and made sure we were looked after. He wanted to meet the girls and he asked me to go to Marbella in 1995. But two weeks before we were due to go out, he became ill and never really recovered properly.'
That was the last time Janan Harb spoke to him. It is, for her, a very personal tragedy but one that she is not frightened of making public. She has set up a campaigning website and will take the case to court, either in Europe or America. For her, this fight is not just about the money but about the memory of her former husband.
'It's about justice, about what he would have wanted,' she says.
'My husband was a kind and fair man and this is a betrayal of everything he stood for. I think his family believe I am going to just sit back and be a victim of this injustice but I do not operate on a victim level. I will take this all the way if I have to.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-394769/I-wife-No2-Kings-Harem.html#ixzz3qUc2sl3D
Friday, October 9, 2015
How often do you think that occurs?
Oh, this is rich: a defence of the veil as feminist prerogative. What next — promotion of the chastity belt as post-feminist birth control?
Events thousands of miles away, in England, are resonating here in Canada, in yet another round of politicized and polarizing debate over the alleged “otherness” of pious Muslims, the purported unwillingness of some to accept the secular status quo of the Western societies in which they reside.
In this case, a young teaching assistant’s refusal to remove her niqab — the piece of cloth that some Muslim women wear to cover their faces, hiding everything below the eyes — has triggered anew fierce suspicions of multiculturalism accommodation run amok, demonstrating again how damnably difficult it has become to separate isolated cases from the larger context of political and ideological agendas.
What some frame as a religious obligation or simply esthetic choice has been taken up by others as evidence of bigotry, on one side, and self-imposed segregation on the other, an in-your-face rejection of values held most dear by the dominant culture.
One value: We are our faces.
Individuals — not just part of various collectives as defined by gender or faith, but each of us distinguishable by features that express what’s going on inside.
Identities — the openness of a society that’s revealed in every single countenance, reinforcing the central fact of diversity and pluralism, our shared humanity.
In Western societies, indeed in most Islamic societies, too, we relate to one another at least initially by what we can see: the smile, the frown, what’s crossing our minds crossing our faces, too. The niqab, whatever its other messages may be, says: You can’t see and you must not see.What I have under here is so sacred, so untouchable, that just your glance is contaminating. You are not to be entrusted with the privilege of knowing me even so much as this.
I can think of no more insulating a statement than the veil. That one small rectangle of fabric speaks volumes about separateness and exclusion. It carries both an intrinsic sense of superiority (my faith, which sets me apart) and inferiority (my gender, which renders me de facto prey, thus requiring this protection, which just happens to be the invention of males).
Humbleness versus arrogance.
From this hard knot of contradictions has unravelled a further thread, a substrata string, and the most preposterous rationalization of all, particularly coming out of the mouths of men — that the niqab is a feminist declaration. This is so duplicitous a construct as to be almost comical, if it weren’t being seriously posed in some quarters, and helpfully parroted by a small number of women who apparently have no confidence in either their own character or the ability of the opposite sex to control their beastly tendencies.
Really, we can be our own worst enemies sometimes. And, more unforgivably, the enemy of other women.
There are, perhaps, legitimate reasons for asserting a woman’s right not to show anything other than her eyes to the world, and barely that. In a free country, one would like to believe that women — including Muslim women, in conservative communities — are making independent choices, based on their own needs and wishes and comfort zone.
But let’s not be disingenuous here. There is ample evidence, overwhelming evidence, of religious and cultural pressures, those steeped in a firmly patriarchal code of conduct, for the marginalizing of adult females, practices that are fundamentally at odds with basic concepts of gender equality.
Ontario came alarmingly close to permitting the application of sharia law in family arbitration matters — when multicultural sensitivities almost trumped women’s rights — before Premier Dalton McGuinty stepped in and said “no,” that’s just not acceptable, however cloaked in the disguise of ethnic and ethic reasoning.Sharia law works, is made to work, by coercive imposition in Islamist countries where women are chattels, and largely illegitimate governments rely on the support of religious authorities for even the slimmest of mutually satisfying endorsement.
In some Islamic jurisdictions — just as an example — rape cases can only pass the trial test if four people come forward as witnesses to the crime. How often do you think that occurs?
What was most disheartening to many of us about the barely averted sharia threat here is that the proposal had been studied and advanced by a woman, no less than the province’s previous attorney general, in an NDP government.This provided threadbare cover, deeply dishonest on its merits, for an alliance of reactionaries and fundamentalists (whether born-again or always-were) to justify treating Muslim women as lesser beings. Sharia law would have exposed a palpably vulnerable constituency to the paternalistic mercies of religious tribunals.
I do not trust the sophistry inherent in a pedantically twisted intellectualization of the veil, as if it were something other than what it demonstrably is: segregation of women by other means.
We have long progressed beyond the point where the Bible could be used to justify misogyny.No sane person would quote from Scripture — or be permitted to do so, in a mass-market general newspaper — those anachronistic texts that sanction unequal treatment of women up to and including the beating of a disobedient spouse or child. Bible-thumping is repellent, whether applied to women or children or homosexuals or any other group whose behaviour is construed as sinful.
Qu’ran-thumping should be no less unsavoury.
So spare me what that holy book has to say about veiling women, especially when even Islamic scholars are divided on it. Like Britain, ours is a secular society trying to cope with conflicting demands; we protect the rights of people to be religious, as they see fit, and not religious, as they see fit. What we’ve not done a very good job of is protecting the dignity, sometimes the very lives, of wives and daughters and sisters who are very much under the thumb of fathers, husbands and brothers, viewed as property, a reflection on their own paramount authority in the household.
It is not patronizing to acknowledge that many Muslim women who wear the niqab — and they are themselves in a small minority — do so not out of personal choice but because they are bullied, tacitly or overtly, into doing so. They must hide their faces so that their men don’t lose face.
And I care a great deal more about their predicament than I do their Islamist sisters who choose to veil under the rubric of feminism.
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Events thousands of miles away, in England, are resonating here in Canada, in yet another round of politicized and polarizing debate over the alleged “otherness” of pious Muslims, the purported unwillingness of some to accept the secular status quo of the Western societies in which they reside.
In this case, a young teaching assistant’s refusal to remove her niqab — the piece of cloth that some Muslim women wear to cover their faces, hiding everything below the eyes — has triggered anew fierce suspicions of multiculturalism accommodation run amok, demonstrating again how damnably difficult it has become to separate isolated cases from the larger context of political and ideological agendas.
What some frame as a religious obligation or simply esthetic choice has been taken up by others as evidence of bigotry, on one side, and self-imposed segregation on the other, an in-your-face rejection of values held most dear by the dominant culture.
One value: We are our faces.
Individuals — not just part of various collectives as defined by gender or faith, but each of us distinguishable by features that express what’s going on inside.
Identities — the openness of a society that’s revealed in every single countenance, reinforcing the central fact of diversity and pluralism, our shared humanity.
In Western societies, indeed in most Islamic societies, too, we relate to one another at least initially by what we can see: the smile, the frown, what’s crossing our minds crossing our faces, too. The niqab, whatever its other messages may be, says: You can’t see and you must not see.What I have under here is so sacred, so untouchable, that just your glance is contaminating. You are not to be entrusted with the privilege of knowing me even so much as this.
I can think of no more insulating a statement than the veil. That one small rectangle of fabric speaks volumes about separateness and exclusion. It carries both an intrinsic sense of superiority (my faith, which sets me apart) and inferiority (my gender, which renders me de facto prey, thus requiring this protection, which just happens to be the invention of males).
Humbleness versus arrogance.
From this hard knot of contradictions has unravelled a further thread, a substrata string, and the most preposterous rationalization of all, particularly coming out of the mouths of men — that the niqab is a feminist declaration. This is so duplicitous a construct as to be almost comical, if it weren’t being seriously posed in some quarters, and helpfully parroted by a small number of women who apparently have no confidence in either their own character or the ability of the opposite sex to control their beastly tendencies.
Really, we can be our own worst enemies sometimes. And, more unforgivably, the enemy of other women.
There are, perhaps, legitimate reasons for asserting a woman’s right not to show anything other than her eyes to the world, and barely that. In a free country, one would like to believe that women — including Muslim women, in conservative communities — are making independent choices, based on their own needs and wishes and comfort zone.
But let’s not be disingenuous here. There is ample evidence, overwhelming evidence, of religious and cultural pressures, those steeped in a firmly patriarchal code of conduct, for the marginalizing of adult females, practices that are fundamentally at odds with basic concepts of gender equality.
Ontario came alarmingly close to permitting the application of sharia law in family arbitration matters — when multicultural sensitivities almost trumped women’s rights — before Premier Dalton McGuinty stepped in and said “no,” that’s just not acceptable, however cloaked in the disguise of ethnic and ethic reasoning.Sharia law works, is made to work, by coercive imposition in Islamist countries where women are chattels, and largely illegitimate governments rely on the support of religious authorities for even the slimmest of mutually satisfying endorsement.
In some Islamic jurisdictions — just as an example — rape cases can only pass the trial test if four people come forward as witnesses to the crime. How often do you think that occurs?
What was most disheartening to many of us about the barely averted sharia threat here is that the proposal had been studied and advanced by a woman, no less than the province’s previous attorney general, in an NDP government.This provided threadbare cover, deeply dishonest on its merits, for an alliance of reactionaries and fundamentalists (whether born-again or always-were) to justify treating Muslim women as lesser beings. Sharia law would have exposed a palpably vulnerable constituency to the paternalistic mercies of religious tribunals.
I do not trust the sophistry inherent in a pedantically twisted intellectualization of the veil, as if it were something other than what it demonstrably is: segregation of women by other means.
We have long progressed beyond the point where the Bible could be used to justify misogyny.No sane person would quote from Scripture — or be permitted to do so, in a mass-market general newspaper — those anachronistic texts that sanction unequal treatment of women up to and including the beating of a disobedient spouse or child. Bible-thumping is repellent, whether applied to women or children or homosexuals or any other group whose behaviour is construed as sinful.
Qu’ran-thumping should be no less unsavoury.
So spare me what that holy book has to say about veiling women, especially when even Islamic scholars are divided on it. Like Britain, ours is a secular society trying to cope with conflicting demands; we protect the rights of people to be religious, as they see fit, and not religious, as they see fit. What we’ve not done a very good job of is protecting the dignity, sometimes the very lives, of wives and daughters and sisters who are very much under the thumb of fathers, husbands and brothers, viewed as property, a reflection on their own paramount authority in the household.
It is not patronizing to acknowledge that many Muslim women who wear the niqab — and they are themselves in a small minority — do so not out of personal choice but because they are bullied, tacitly or overtly, into doing so. They must hide their faces so that their men don’t lose face.
And I care a great deal more about their predicament than I do their Islamist sisters who choose to veil under the rubric of feminism.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
News on Sumi Khan 2001-2005 -The Daily Star
The Daily Star, 2006
Justice, Bangladesh style
In an in-depth investigative report, Tasneem Khalil uncovers the shocking truth about RAB operations that have tortured and killed more than 900 to dateAhmedul Haq Chowdhury Ahmudya was one of the most feared Jamaat-e-Islam cadres in Chitagong. For him, leaving the party and joining the BNP with 1,000 Jamaat members on July, 2004 signed his death warrant. On September 10, 2004, Ahmudya and his deputy, Minhaz, died in "crossfire" in Satkania, Chitagong.
"Jamaat is a one-way ticket, you may join but never leave," award-winning investigative reporter Sumi Khan, best known for her fearless reporting on Jamaat and Islamic militancy in Chittagong, told me. Sumi believed herself to be somewhat responsible for Ahmudya's death: he had given her an exclusive interview that disclosed the name of his godfather, Jamaat MP Shahjahan Chowdhury. "By disclosing sensitive information about Shahjahan Chowdhury and Jamaat's terror network in Chittagong, Ahmudya invited death," Sumi told me. "It is very interesting, how BNP and AL cadres get killed in crossfire while Jamaat cadres roam around free." According to one of Sumi's sources, Jamaat bribed a top RAB official 10 lakh taka to get rid of Ahmudya.
In August, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) appealed to Jean-Marie Guehenno, Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations, to expel Bangladeshi peacekeepers from UN peacekeeping missions until the Bangladesh government disbands RAB.
"We intend to begin a campaign on the role of Bangladesh in UN peacekeeping operations vis-a-vis atrocities committed by its security personnel at home, notably the RAB, until such a time as the RAB is disbanded and conditions in the country enable effective redress for victims of abuses there," read the AHRC appeal.
International pressure on Bangladesh to bring an end to extra-judicial executions has been mounting in the past few months. Back home, human rights advocates and the media are fiercely critical of the regime of terror the state has unleashed on its populace, but, to their chagrin, RAB to this day patrols the streets of Bangladesh with unchallenged and unabated impunity. We are yet to see a single case where a RAB member has faced trial for his involvement in extra-judicial murders, though time and again the government promised justice for any human rights violations by RAB.
More than 900 are dead, and their families still waiting for a proper investigation of their murders. Awaiting justice where the state itself has turned into a monster -- life, liberty, and fundamental human rights became the first casualties of "crossfire." To quote Jahanara Begum Rubi, sister of the slain BCL leader Mohimuddin: "I am still waiting for the answer that I never received."
Photos: Star
Tasneem Khalil is a writer and editor, Forum. For more information on his investigation, please go to: www.tasneemkhalil.com
http://archive.thedailystar.net/forum/2006/december/justice.htm
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18309.htm
Friday, July 3, 2015
The plan to assassinate Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina Wajed:
The plan to assassinate Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina Wajed:
How LTTE deal was blocked, suicide bombers failed to explode
It was the arrest of Nepal-based Manoj Srivastav at the Kolkata airport that exploded the veil off a sinister plot to assassinate Hasina Wajed.
(@THE NEWSPAPER TODAY)
When 34-year-old Nepal-based Manoj Srivastav, an agent of the Pakistani secret service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was arrested en route Kathmandu from Mumbai at the Kolkata airport on May 18, the police did not even know what it had in its net.
Only after Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers started interrogating Srivastav following a lead from the executive diary confiscated from the ISI agent suggested a security disaster in India and the plot to assassinate then Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed.
In what RAW officials believe to be the third plot in three years to eliminate Prime Minister Hasina, the diary seized from Srivastav features in its "Done" column that the "residence and office site maps of BDPM (Bangladesh Prime Minister) delivered."
Officials also seized an "undelivered" site map of the Saharanpur military air base in Uttar Pradesh, one of the few air bases in India that store the most modern surface-to-surface missiles.
Srivastav also said the ISI "formed a task force consisting of Pakistani military officers and absconding killers of Hasina’s father (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) to assassinate Hasina prior to the polls in Bangladesh in October this year," a senior RAW official told TheNewspaperToday.
He said Srivastav was placed under surveillance after his mobile phone conversation with his Karachi-based ISI instructor, Ziauddin, was tapped.
Meanwhile, Jawadul Karim, press secretary to Sheikh Hasina, told TheNewspaperToday over the phone from Dhaka that "there has been a growing impetus to the conspiracy to kill the Bangladesh Prime Minister after the killers of Bangabandhu were convicted in court. We have been alerted about this recent discovery by the Indian government and the security cover around our Prime Minister has been tightened after that." Sheikh Hasina's father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was popularly known as Bangabandhu.
Over and above the alleged plot to assassinate Hasina, what has sent Indian intelligence officials and the home ministry into a tizzy is the revelation that Srivastav has "already delivered to ISI the site maps of 17 Indian military air bases from Ambala to Bagdogra."
Srivastav told his interrogators that the recent fire at the Indian Army's ammunition dump at Birdhwal, 20 km from Suratgarh town near the Pakistan border in Rajasthan, is the handiwork of the ISI. "He has also confessed that the ISI was instrumental in the destruction of nearly 900 tonne of ammunition worth Rs 1,200 crore at the Central Ammunition Depot in Bharatpur in April 2000 and almost 427 tonne of armament in a military depot near Pathankot in April this year," a senior interrogating officer told TheNewspaperToday.
"Nepal is gradually becoming a hot place for anti-India and anti-Bangladesh activities by the ISI. Srivastav's interrogation has revealed this yet again. His interrogation has further revealed that the plan of killing the Bangladesh Prime Minister was originally hatched at a place called Breda in Holland," the RAW officer said. "There, the ISI arranged a meeting of some absconding convicts in the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman murder case and hatched this new conspiracy to eliminate her. In 1999, we had passed on to the Bangladesh government reports of a similar conspiracy by the same set of people to assassinate her," he told TheNewspaperToday.
Originally from Motihari in Bihar, Srivastav, a diploma-holder from NIIT, first set his foot in Nepal in 1993 to work as an instructor at the School of Vocational Guidance in Kathmandu. Then on the advice of Ashraf, an ISI recruiter based in Nepal, Srivastav launched his own computer peripherals export company called Ziptech in 1995. Ziptech was registered in Patna. Ashraf, who runs a travel agency on Durbar Marg in Kathmandu, later guided him into exporting computer software to Pakistan and arranged his payment in what is commonly called in intelligence parlance as "over-invoicing."
He was then assigned by Ziauddin to "infiltrate" the Indian Military Engineering Service (MES) contractors and get contracts to supply computer peripherals to the MES.
"Zuber, an officer of the ISI’s operation cell, used to brief him in Nepal through the help of Qasim, an officer of the Pakistani High Commission in Kathmandu, who used to set up their meetings. We are now trying to ascertain the real name of Qasim, who seems to have worked with his pseudonym," a senior RAW officer said
The arrest of ISI agent Manoj Srivastav has blown the lid off a fresh plot to eliminate Sheikh Hasina in the Netherlands after one meticulously drawn-up plan involving the LTTE, the militant outfit operating in Sri Lanka, failed last year.
The new strategy evolved at a meeting at Breda (see map), a small town in southern Holland on March 7 at a restaurant owned by A.K.M. Mohiuddin (see Rogues' Gallery), an Army officer-turned-diplomat, who left his job in the Bangladesh embassy in the Hague to escape arrest on the charge of taking part in the killing of Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.
Senior Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence officials told TheNewspaperToday that a number of former Bangladesh Army officers accused of killing Bangladesh's founder President Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in a coup in 1975 were present at the Breda meeting to finalise the plot to kill Hasina before the parliamentary elections in Bangladesh in October this year.
A representative of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, Colonel Shoaib Nasir, attended the meeting and gave final touches to the plot that reportedly planned to get a Palestinian hitman, Abu Hamid, to do the job.
The new strategy became necessary after a more devious murder plot, which involved the use of LTTE suicide bombers to kill Hasina, fell through last year just before the "hit" was supposed to take place.
THE KILLERS REGROUP
The ISI's allies in this operation were the former Army officers (see Rogues' Gallery) responsible for assassinating Sheikh Mujib and his entire family--18 family members, including his 10-year-old son Sheikh Russel, except for his two daughters who were abroad at that time.
Hasina, after taking over as Prime Minister of Bangladesh, reopened the case files some years back and a Bangladesh court convicted most of them for life.
Indian intelligence agencies say the failure to secure the release of those arrested and jailed like Lt. Col. Syed Farook Rahman and Maj. Bazlul Huda prompted those who are still absconding to plan the "hit" on Hasina.
But Western intelligence agencies, including the Dutch and Israeli outfits, kept a watch on Mohiuddin's restaurant at Breda and picked up details of a secret meeting at the restaurant on March 7 earlier this year. Later, they passed on the information to the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India.
Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid and some of his other associates who had participated in the 1975 coup that led to Sheikh Mujib's assassination were present at the meeting.
Also present was the colonel of ISI -- Shoaib Nasir. The Dutch intelligence and Mossad officers tapped his conversation with the ISI chief of operations, Brigadier Riaz, on March 9.
The intercept suggests that Nasir attended the Breda meeting where the plan to "hit" Sheikh Hasina was finalised. Riaz is keen on finding out whether a mercenary based in Central Europe, apparently commissioned for the "hit," is happy with the advance payment offered. To this, Nasir says, "More money would be required
soon."
Riaz says, "Money will not be a problem, but the task must be fulfilled." Nasir has been instructed to return to Pakistan and another ISI operative, Jansher Malik, has been sent to Bangladesh under cover to do a 'recce'."
THE HASINA OFFENSIVE
Investigations by TheNewspaperToday revealed that the "Netherlands plot" followed another abortive plan triggered Hasina's crackdown--within four months of assuming power in 1996--on those responsible for killing her father.
Hasina's party, the Awami League, had for the first time won the elections in the country since the Army coup of 1975. During this 21-year-long rule of the Army and the Islamic fundamentalists, the coup leaders of 1975 roamed around freely in Bangladesh and floated a political party - the Freedom Party -- which even participated in elections.
Once in power, Hasina reopened the Sheikh Mujib assassination files and Parliament repealed the Unconstitutional and Illegal Indemnity Ordinance of 1975, which was a martial law fiat created by Khondakar Mushtaque Ahmed--who replaced Shiekh Mujib as President of Bangladesh--to protect the coup leaders. The
decision was welcomed by the Amnesty International.
After a thorough investigation, the Bangladesh police chargesheeted 38 former Army officers and arrested six conspirators of the 1975 coup, including Lt. Col. Syed Farook Rahman, Lt. Col. Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan and Lt.Col. Mohiuddin Ahmad. Another key conspirator Maj. Bazlul Huda was later arrested from Bangkok.
In a landmark judgment on December 12, 2000, the high court awarded death sentences to 15 Armymen and different terms of imprisonment, including life sentences, to many others. Prof. Abu Sayeed, Bangladesh Minister of State for Information, told TheNewspaperToday over the telephone that "the Bangladesh government is aware of the recent conspiracy."
"This was a conspiracy which has happened because the killers of Bangabandhu failed to kill his daughter twice in the year 2000. Our Prime Minister has been informed and our intelligence officers are doing their best to track down the links of the Bangabandhu killers with Islamic fundamentalist groups in our country," Sayeed said.
Since most of the Mujib killers (see Rogues' Gallery)were absconding, including the prime accused, Lt.Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid, Lt. Col. Shariful Haque (alias Dalim), Lt.Col. S.H.M.B. Noor Chowdhury, Major A.K.M. Mohiuddin Ahmed and Risaldar Moslehuddin Khan, the Bangladesh government tried to extradite these accused from the different countries where they took shelter in 1997. And sensing a tough time, the killers started regrouping.
THE HIJACK BID
In 1997, the Mujib killers tried to get their accomplices, Lt. Col. Syed Farook Rahman and Maj. Bazlul Huda, freed by hijacking a Bangladesh Biman aircraft, with ISI support. But India's RAW got to know about the plan after they tapped a conversation between an ISI operative and Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid. RAW sent an emergency note to the Bangladesh aviation ministry and the Bangladesh Biman chief in Kolkata after they found out that the plotters were planning a hijack from Kolkata.
In early 1998, 11 Arabs were arrested from the Kolkata airport on their way to Bangladesh. These Arabs were suspected to be accomplices of the Mujib killers, but were later found to be operatives of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, which was trying to infiltrate Bagladesh fundamentalist groups lending support to their counterparts in Palestine and West Asia. This alerted the plotters and they dropped their hijack plan.
In early 1999, the first plan to "hit" Hasina was drawn up. Investigations by TheNewspaperToday reveal that this happened on a much broader scale in a joint effort by the Mujib killers, the ISI, some serving Bangladeshi diplomats, the Islamic fundamentalist groups like the Jamait-e-Islami of Bangladesh and some leaders of the
Opposition Bangladesh National Party.
The first meeting to chalk out the plan to assassinate Shiekh Hasina Wajed was held at the posh Bonani Apartments in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on February 23, 1999. It took place at the house of a former Army officer, Major Najmul Alam. And at this meeting, the seeds of a conspiracy germinated, which eventually made Kolkata the hotbed of undercover activities.
The plotters ruled out another military coup -- the usual route taken in Bangladesh for attaining political goals -- since they felt that the Bangladesh Army was not divided sharply enough and the response to a call to revolt against the political establishment may fail to evoke much interest, investigations by TheNewspaperToday revealed.
But Major Alam's brother Najml Amin came up with an idea which was immediately taken note of. Amin is married to a Tamil Muslim from Jaffna in Sri Lanka. And his mother-in-law is an active member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) women's wing. Amin proposed that LTTE suicide bombers be hired through his mother-in-law.
Meanwhile, Col. Munirul Islam Chowdhury Munna, son-in-law of Tajuddin Ahmed -- one of Shiekh Mujib's closest political aides and Prime Minister who was slain during the 1975 coup -- and Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid went to Europe and got in touch with a French contract killer, Alain Deloin, who demanded $5 million for the job.
THE DEAL WITH TAMIL TIGERS
At a meeting on June 6, 1999 at St. James Court Hotel in London, the group finally gave shape to the assassination plan. They decided to pay $10 million for LTTE suicide bombers rather than assign the French for half the amount.
The logic was that the LTTE was more dependable and it hardly leaves any trace. What's more, Najmul Amin argued, the LTTE would be a better option because of "the sub-continental features" of its suicide bombers. They could easily pass off as Bangladeshis and, hence, could mix with the local populace.
According to a senior official of Bangladesh's National Security Intelligence (NSI), the LTTE had also "demanded some islands in Bangladesh for use as a safe haven if the plotters came to power after overpowering the Awami League government." The LTTE has, in past, used Bangladeshi islands it had got through its Bangla and Pakistani intelligence contacts. In late 1994, when Begum Khaleda Zia was Prime Minister, LTTE had used safe houses and godowns on two islands - Qutubdia and Sonadia -- for receiving consignment of weapons from Thailand and Cambodia.
The weapons would be stored on these islands for a few days and then be packed off to Sri Lanka in smaller boats, whenever it was safe. There is evidence of the LTTE selling some of these arms to the Northeast rebels.
The NSI official also informed that the meeting was attended, among others, by a famous London-based radio broadcaster of Bangladeshi origin who had taken part in the 1975 coup as an Army officer. The meeting was also attended by a former Pakistani Army officer and now a frontman for the Inter Services Intelligence, Col. R.M. Ahsan, who owns Ahsan TradEx, a Karachi-based export-import firm, and Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid and Lt. Col. S.H.M.B. Noor Chowdhury.
The conspirators decided to use Kolkata as a transit point to reach the LTTE suicide bombers into Bangladesh and also to transfer the money to LTTE. They roped in a Kolkata-based computer firm owner as the middleman. The modus operandi was the same as used in Manoj Srivastav's case: over-invoicing. The Plotters would buy software packages from the computer firm at "very high rates" and the "extra payment" would be routed to the LTTE.
The meeting took another crucial decision. A back-up plan was formed lest the LTTE bombers failed. It decided that a huge RDX blast would be triggered in one of Hasina's public meetings. The job was assigned to Harkat-ul-Jehad, an Islamic funadamentalist organisation based in Bangladesh.
THE KOLKATA CONNECTION
To set up their Kolkata activities, according to the NSI source in Dhaka, the ISI employed a top Bangladeshi diplomat in India, who was later "called back" to Bangladesh as an inquiry against him found him "taking part in anti-national activities."
"During July-August 2000, a discrete order was passed at the Bangladesh High Commission in Calcutta to issue visas on a 'within-the-day' basis. The diplomat who ordered it cited numerous complaints of delay in issuing visas as the reason," according to Bangladeshi intelligence officials.
But the rulebook says only residents of West Bengal and the Northeast can get their visas from the Bangladesh High Commission offices in Calcutta and Agartala, while applicants from other parts of the country would have to apply to the High Commission offices in New Delhi.
The rules were manipulated to issue visas to two woman suicide bombers of the LTTE. They applied for visa as Shiekh Thaslim -- claiming to be a 22-year-old married Tamil girl with Khozikode as her permanent address -- and Subhalakshmi, also claiming to be from South India.
The third LTTE member entered into Bangladesh through the porous Northeast borders without any visa with a Bengali pseudonym -- Mahua -- for carrying out a "recce." "Explosive jackets had already reached Mahua by that time," the NSI official said.
The payment to the LTTE was routed by a former military officer, Col. Munirul Islam Chowdhury "Munna", who now runs a software company in North Virginia in the US. The deal was simple: Munna would "buy" software from the Kolkata-based computer major and pay in dollars. The owner of the Indian firm would be paid well in excess of the value of the purchase with clear instructions to pass on $10 million to the LTTE contacts through another "over-invoicing deal."
THE COUNTERMOVE
But Munna's movements were closely monitored by the Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence agencies in Kolkata where he stayed in Hotel Rutt Deen and Hotel Hindustan International (Room no. 615). When RAW discovered the plot, they had three days to decide on how to stop the money from reaching the LTTE.
Two days later, the owner of the Kolkata-based computer firm died in a road accident. The money, instead of lining the LTTE coffers, still remains frozen in Indian Bank, since no one else is authorised to withdraw it. According to Indian intelligence sources, this is the reason for the LTTE's decision to back off from the operation.
The "top" Bangladeshi diplomat, who the NSI says had given support to the plotters in Kolkata, was later summoned to Bangladesh where he was interrogated by the NSI between July and October 2000 "for maintaining links with the assassins of Sheikh Mujib" and was kept under "virtual house arrest." His role was found particularly dubious in issuing visas to highly suspicious people.
Meanwhile, Subhalakshmi was arrested at the Kolkata airport by intelligence officials. Sheikh Thaslim was caught in Khagracheri in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and Mahua was nabbed in Bangladesh's Khulna district.
When the plan failed, the ISI put the back-up plan into action. The Harkat-ul-Jehad was activated and 76 kg of RDX was planted 100 yards from a dais from which Sheikh Hasina was supposed to address a public meeting at Kotalipara in Gopalgunj district in August.
But the bomb was discovered by the public one-and-a-half hours before the meeting.
Sheikh Hasina survives. Subhalakshmi and Thaslim are both in Bangladesh jails. Mahua is off the hook.
@WWW Virtual Library Sri Lanka http://www.lankalibrary.com/
Thursday, May 14, 2015
The hijab woman- Brigitte Buchinger
I just came home from my Physiotherapist. He is an expert in shiatsu and is good for my health.
He told me a true story that made me laugh. A story that happened to him a few years ago.
He was a teacher for physiotherapy at a University. Also taught water showers by Sebastian Kneipp. Of course, the students must exercise it all and demonstrated with eachother to learn it better and in practice.
One day a Muslim woman (Turkish) applied for a training course and to learn this profession. With a scarf, a hijab and her husband standing beside her. Of Course!
You need a good school education to learn this profession in Germany.
This lady, educated, was wearing the headscarf provocative and demonstratively and the director of the Institute already told the teacher: " But please be particularly sensitive to deal with this Muslima", since he knew the sensitivities of Muslims and want to have any trouble. Just for the sake of peace. Still wondering why she wants to learn exactly this profession.
Sure, sooner said than done.
The "hijab aunt" came to the conversation, of course, with her husband. Also very unusual for an educated, enlightened and adult German. Confident, already arrogant to call and said that during the interview: "I hope you have no animosities against my head scarf."
The German teacher said very friendly: " No, not at all! It is your decision and you can wear it whenever you want. Of course you can wear your headscarf at any time in theoretical and in practical teaching. Hm, but are you sure it will not disturb you when the scarf is getting wet? However, if it does not interfere with your scarf in the water treatments, that are naturally performed without clothing and naked. Your scarf will become wet when you standing naked there and someone treated you with water gushes! But of course you can keep on the headscarf when you are naked and don't mind that your headscarf will be wet! "
"Naked?" she asked blushing and left speechless the school and was never seen again!
Copyright© Brigitte Buchinger 2015 Germany
Copyright© Brigitte Buchinger 2015 Germany
He told me a true story that made me laugh. A story that happened to him a few years ago.
He was a teacher for physiotherapy at a University. Also taught water showers by Sebastian Kneipp. Of course, the students must exercise it all and demonstrated with eachother to learn it better and in practice.
One day a Muslim woman (Turkish) applied for a training course and to learn this profession. With a scarf, a hijab and her husband standing beside her. Of Course!
You need a good school education to learn this profession in Germany.
This lady, educated, was wearing the headscarf provocative and demonstratively and the director of the Institute already told the teacher: " But please be particularly sensitive to deal with this Muslima", since he knew the sensitivities of Muslims and want to have any trouble. Just for the sake of peace. Still wondering why she wants to learn exactly this profession.
Sure, sooner said than done.
The "hijab aunt" came to the conversation, of course, with her husband. Also very unusual for an educated, enlightened and adult German. Confident, already arrogant to call and said that during the interview: "I hope you have no animosities against my head scarf."
The German teacher said very friendly: " No, not at all! It is your decision and you can wear it whenever you want. Of course you can wear your headscarf at any time in theoretical and in practical teaching. Hm, but are you sure it will not disturb you when the scarf is getting wet? However, if it does not interfere with your scarf in the water treatments, that are naturally performed without clothing and naked. Your scarf will become wet when you standing naked there and someone treated you with water gushes! But of course you can keep on the headscarf when you are naked and don't mind that your headscarf will be wet! "
"Naked?" she asked blushing and left speechless the school and was never seen again!
Copyright© Brigitte Buchinger 2015 Germany
Copyright© Brigitte Buchinger 2015 Germany
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
“Fear is just a line in your head ”- The Life and Death of Sabeen Mahmud-Sumi Khan
“Fear is just a line in your head,” Mahmud says. “You can choose what side of that line you want to be on.”
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| After her murder, the Pakistani activist Sabeen Mahmud is being remembered for her fearlessness. Her friends say that her bravery was motivated by love. Credit Photograph by Sabir Mazhar/Anadolu/Getty |
Last Friday 24th April evening in Karachi, Sabeen Mahmud, a forty-year-old Pakistani activist with close-cropped hair, a loud belly laugh, and an interest in human rights, held court at the café she owned. Mahmud opened The Second Floor, a coffee shop and community space, eight years ago, and it became both a staging ground for her activism work and a popular gathering place.
It was tucked next to an empty lot on a narrow street, and the moment you entered the skinny front door, you felt you were in a different world. “You’d forget you were in Pakistan,” Mahmud’s friend Sheba Najmi wrote in an e-mail. “It turned strangers into friends.” Bookshelves lined the brick walls of a cozy room, which was dotted with murals.
The staircase was painted with blue skies, black crows on telephone lines, and questions such as “Mama, should I trust the government?”
That evening, Mahmud was hosting a panel discussion about the situation in Balochistan, working with several social activists from the embattled province.
Balochistan is largely undeveloped and one of Pakistan’s poorest regions, but it’s also the biggest and rich in natural resources. For the last decade, it’s been home to a separatist uprising, the third the province has seen since the nineteen-sixties, and Baloch nationalists have been going missing. Although the numbers are difficult to confirm, as many as twenty-one thousand people may have disappeared.
In October of 2013, Mama Qadeer, an activist in his seventies and one of the participants in Mahmud’s event, began marching from Quetta to Islamabad, a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, in order to draw attention to the victims, many of whom, Qadeer alleges, have been “killed and dumped.” His own son’s corpse was found in 2011, two years after he vanished.
But what’s happening in Balochistan is a controversial subject, and one that many Pakistanis don’t feel safe talking about. Earlier this month, Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s most prestigious universities, cancelled an event called “Unsilencing Balochistan,” citing government pressure. Mahmud named her event “Unsilencing Balochistan (Take 2)” and invited several of the same speakers. An online announcement asked, “What makes it dangerous for us to talk about Pakistan’s largest province at one of our most celebrated universities?” Mahmud knew she was taking a risk by holding the event and discussed the possibility of “blowback” with a friend on Facebook. But she wrote to another friend, “I just want to leave everything and join the Baloch march for the rights of their missing. What else is life for?”
The evening began with Mahmud asking the audience to maintain a polite exchange of views, even if there was strong disagreement. She then played a short documentary on Balochistan’s missing. After several panelists spoke, there was a question-and-answer session. When the event ended around 9 P.M., Mahmud left The Second Floor with her mother, Mahenaz Mahmud. They got into a white Suzuki; Mahmud drove, her mother sat in the passenger seat, and her driver sat in the back. According to a friend, Nosheen Ali, Mahmud liked to drive, often riding a motorcycle to work even though Karachi is a city where women don’t drive motorcycles. “She did what she wanted,” Zaheer Alam Kidvai, a friend who attended the event on Friday, said.
Shortly after Mahmud pulled away, as she approached the traffic signal near the Defense Central Library, armed motorcyclists surrounded the car and opened fire. Mahmud was hit twice in her chest and once in her neck. One round went through her cheek and came out the other side, striking her mother. As Mahmud slumped over, the shooters took off.
Mahmud’s mother called out to her, but there was no response. Mahmud was likely killed instantly. Bystanders helped move her body to the back seat, and her mother was rushed to a hospital. According to the Express Tribune, police officers responding to the scene described it as a “targeted” or “seemingly targeted” killing. Mahmud had been getting threatening phone calls and e-mails, and intelligence agencies reported that her name was on a hit list that they released in January.
The first time I met Mahmud, in April of 2013, she had also recently received death threats, for staging a protest of a campaign against Valentine’s Day that was being carried out by religious political parties. She described being stuck at home, fearing for her life, when the doorbell suddenly rang four times. It turned out to be just a deliveryman. We were picking at honeyed hors d’oeuvres in the Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi, at a conference on female leaders in Asia, and we both felt a little out of place in our gilded surroundings. As she recounted the story, she laughed. “Fear is a state of mind,” she said. “You can make it much bigger than it actually is.”
At the time, Mahmud had just put together Pakistan’s first hackathon, to address the lack of online civic resources, hosting the event with Sheba Najmi at The Second Floor. As we spoke, she told me the story of how she decided to open the café. “I wasn’t a member of any clubs growing up. I was wondering how to meet new people around shared interests, to give space to people who wouldn’t ordinarily get it otherwise,” she said. The problem was that she had no money to fund a new public space, until a London-based uncle sent $9,400 for her grandmother’s future health care. “So I told my grandmother what I was planning to do,” Mahmud later wrote, “and assured her that if she fell ill, we’d give her a triple shot of espresso that would either cure her or kill her.” With her grandmother’s blessing, she opened The Second Floor.
News of Mahmud’s death spread quickly, appearing on the Internet that same evening. A hastily organized event in her honor at the Islamabad Literature Festival on Saturday was packed with more than two hundred people. Zehra Nigah, an acclaimed Urdu poet, started by saying, “It’s hard for me to speak in the past tense about someone who I have seen as my own child.” After Nigah’s eulogy, Dr. Framji Minwalla of the Institute of Business Adminstration, told me, “I kept catching all of us switching from present to past, catching ourselves, stopping, breathing.” Mahmud’s death has already had a huge impact, Minwalla said. “It has galvanized some, others it has sent scurrying back to the shadows.” A sense of unfinished business is shared by many of her friends. “We need justice for her and for all those she was helping to un-silence,” Mahmud’s friend Nosheen Ali wrote.
Mahmud’s activism, however, may have received more international attention in the past few days than during her lifetime. Her death has been reported, and her work commemorated, in the Times, NPR, CNN, and the Guardian. . The problem with these eulogies is that they often obscure the thankless tasks that kept The Second Floor open, the small acts of kindness. “They talk about what The Second Floor has done” and call for more spaces like it, her friend Zaheer Alam Kidvai said, but he thinks that the community Mahmud made is unlikely to be replicated. “Who wants to run a non-governmental organization and not make tons of money, other than Sabeen?” he said. Mahmud is being remembered for her fearlessness, but her friends say that what motivated her daily bravery was love.
This winter, Mahmud enrolled in Peggy Mason’s online neurobiology course at the University of Chicago. Mahmud visited Chicago in February and asked to meet Mason to learn more about her research on empathy. Mahmud was intrigued by the idea that we have a biological urge toward caring. “It fit with her politics,” Mason said. “My work shows we are naturally inclined to help each other.”
It’s a hopeful message and one that was at the root of all Mahmud’s efforts. Her close friend Nosheen Ali wrote, “Sabeen defied categorization. Arts patron and N.G.O, worker are so bland. She was a dil phaink”—an open-hearted person. “She was a heartist like that.”
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
No tumor, no obvious signs of Cancer;I was Full of Happiness:Angelina Jolie Pitt
If you remember a couple of years back, actress and director Angelina Jolie Pitt wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about her decision to get a double mastectomy to reduce her risks of cancer. Jolie said, because of a mutation in her BRCA1 gene, she had an 87% chance of breast cancer and a 50% chance of ovarian cancer. She’s also lost her mother, grandmother, and aunt to cancer.
Jolie has now written another op-ed for the paper, this time about her choice to remover her ovaries and get her fallopian tubes tied.
Entitled Diary Of A Surgery, Jolie chronicles her test results and decisions to do this to her body, along with the expected changes and hardships she will face. You can read the full op-ed here, but some highlights are below.
She first details her phone call with her doctor, alerting her of her levels and chances of cancer.
“I got a call from my doctor with blood-test results. “Your CA-125 is normal,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief. That test measures the amount of the protein CA-125 in the blood, and is used to monitor ovarian cancer…He went on. “There are a number of inflammatory markers that are elevated, and taken together they could be a sign of early cancer.” I took a pause. “CA-125 has a 50 to 75 percent chance of missing ovarian cancer at early stages,” he said. He wanted me to see the surgeon immediately to check my ovaries.
After much more testing, everything came back negative. No tumor, no obvious signs of cancer.
I was full of happiness, although the radioactive tracer meant I couldn’t hug my children. There was still a chance of early stage cancer, but that was minor compared with a full-blown tumor. To my relief, I still had the option of removing my ovaries and fallopian tubes and I chose to do it.
The surgery is now, of course, done, and Jolie feels good about it. She also wants her fellow women and humans to know it’s a tough decision, but sometimes a necessary one.
It is not possible to remove all risk, and the fact is I remain prone to cancer…I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say, “Mom died of ovarian cancer.”
Regardless of the hormone replacements I’m taking, I am now in menopause. I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes.
But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared…I inquired and found out that there are options for women to remove their fallopian tubes but keep their ovaries, and so retain the ability to bear children and not go into menopause. I hope they can be aware of that.
It is not easy to make these decisions. But it is possible to take control and tackle head-on any health issue. You can seek advice, learn about the options and make choices that are right for you. Knowledge is power.
For me, one of the more powerful parts of the piece was where she talked about love and importance, with husband Brad Pitt flying to her side.
"I called my husband in France, who was on a plane within hours. The beautiful thing about such moments in life is that there is so much clarity. You know what you live for and what matters. It is polarizing, and it is Peaceful. "
It takes a lot to write something so personal and so powerful, let alone publish it in a widely read resource. Our hats go off to Angelina Jolie Pitt, and hopefully her words are read by the people who need to see what she had to say.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
'My father has raped me every night since I was eight'- Amina
First published Tuesday 24 February 2015 in News
Last updated 20:46 Tuesday 24 February 2015
Last updated 20:46 Tuesday 24 February 2015
“I am numb each time he rapes me.
“It’s like it’s not me. I have no feelings. He uses my body but I don’t feel like I am in my body anymore. I have lost all sensation, all feeling.
“His hands touch me, he penetrates me, his smell is left all over my body.
“I wash and it’s like nothing has happened.
“I would have carried on letting him rape me, but since he said he will do the same to my younger sister I know I can’t let it happen.
“But if I tell anyone, my biggest fear is no one will believe me.” “He comes to my bedroom each night to help me with my homework but that’s just an excuse. He closes the door behind me and rapes me. He has been doing this since I was 8.”
Fourteen-year-old Amina contacted the Mental Health Speak UP Speak OUT Facebook page after being repeatedly sexually abused by her father.
Speak UP Speak OUT was developed following a piece of research by Manchester University and John Moores University in which the study looked at mental issues in the South Asian Communities.
The results highlighted a greater need for awareness and openness to talk about issues affecting this community and have a platform in which people could share their personal stories and access information.
The development of Speak Up Speak Out has resulted in a high percentage of people putting forward complex and frightening experiences which otherwise are not shared.
It allows people to share and inform people that these issues do exist and there is support and help out there.
Amina wrote,“It took a while for me to actually make contact with Speak UP Speak OUT because I was scared. I still am but I need help. I cannot cope with this anymore.
“He comes to my bedroom each night. To help me with my homework and Islamic lessons but that’s just an excuse. He closes the door behind me and rapes me. He has been doing this since I was 8.”
“I am now 14 and still being raped by my father. Nobody knows at home, not even a friend. He threatens he will kill me or take me to Pakistan and leave me there.
“I am so scared. Not for myself but for my younger sister. He is threatening to rape her too which I cannot deal with. I don’t want her to go through what I have and am doing.
“My father hurts me so bad that sometimes I bleed for days from my vagina. I became pregnant once and he gave me something to eat which aborted the baby.”
“My father hurts me so bad that sometimes I bleed for days from my vagina. I became pregnant once and he gave me something to eat which aborted the baby.”
She had reported that she wanted to tell her mum so many times but she thought no-one would believe her.
“We have a large family here and my father is well respected in the family. People look up to him and I know if I said anything I would be portrayed as a liar.”
Amina admitted that after contacting Speak UP Speak Out, she was informed that she could report her father to the police and have him prosecuted, and that several support networks were available to help her.
She was afraid to take the next step. “I found it too hard to report him. Why am I letting him do this to me again and again?
“Shall I be totally honest with you? I have kind of become used to it.
Jawad Ahmed from Speak UP Speak OUT said, “Speak UP Speak OUT is a space for people to share, discuss and look at ways to address hidden issues and tackle a history of stigma and taboo. For some it is a lifeline and the first step to recovery.
“Following Amina's sharing her experience we worked with her and since then she has reported her father and she is now in a safe place with support from several local agencies.
“We strive to actively work with these agencies by delivering training on culture and religious stigma and discrimination.
“It will be long and lengthy road to recovery for her, as you can understand highlighting such issues is never easy especially when you are from a south Asian family.
“However she built the courage to stand up to the abuse and understand how wrong it was. She is on her way to rebuilding her life and is happy she could share her story with us and subsequently seek help.”
http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/11814203._My_father_has_raped_me_every_night_since_I_was_eight_/
http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/11814203._My_father_has_raped_me_every_night_since_I_was_eight_/
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Finding mooonlighting proteins from genomes
Posted on February 17, 2015 by Amanda Jenkins, BIONEWS
Moonlighting proteins, proteins which have two or more independent functions, have drawn an increasing attention as more and more such examples have been discovered in recent years. However, the number of known moonlighting proteins is still not large enough to elucidate the overall landscape of their functional diversity. In this work, published on Biology Direct, Dr. Daisuke Kihara and his co-authors have developed a computational framework for finding moonlighting proteins in a genome scale.
Since the systematic study of moonlighting proteins is still in an early stage, in most of the cases they are not explicitly labeled in public databases with “moonlighting”, “dual function”, or related words, which make it difficult to collect and reuse existing knowledge of moonlighting proteins. Therefore, the researchers first analyzed the Gene Ontology (GO) terms (vocabulary for describing function of genes) assigned to known moonlighting proteins and found that GO terms can be clearly clustered into separate groups reflecting diverse functions of these proteins. The researchers further analyzed the GO term annotations of all protein genes in the Escherichia coli K-12 genome and found 33 novel moonlighting proteins by identifying genes with clear GO term separations followed by literature survey. Next, Dr. Kihara and colleagues analyzed moonlighting proteins based on protein-protein interaction, gene expression, phylogenetic profile, and genetic interaction networks and found that they have a higher number of interacting partners of distinct functions than non-moonlighting proteins in these networks.
The characteristics of known moonlighting proteins found in this work form foundation for identifying new moonlighting proteins in a genome-scale and open up a new opportunity to investigate the multi-functional nature of proteins at a systems level.
Four undergraduate students were involved in this research.
Reference:
1. Ishita K. Khan, Yuqian Chen, Tiange Dong, Xioawei Hong, Rikiya Takeuchi, Hirotada Mori, and Daisuke Kihara “Genome-scale Identification and Characterization of Moonlighting Proteins” Biology Direct 9(1): 30 (Dec. 2014).
https://www.bio.purdue.edu/bionews/?p=2588
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