The Indian government banned an Islamist group and its affiliates for five years for its alleged links with terrorism, on Wednesday.
The authorities have accused the Popular Front of India commonly called PFI, of engaging in violent acts, including “chopping off the limb of a college professor, cold-blooded killings of persons associated with organizations espousing other faiths, obtaining explosives to target prominent people and places and destruction of public property.”
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party supporters take part in a protest demanding a ban on the Popular Front of India (PFI) in capital New Delhi on Feb. 28, 2021. (Photo: AFP)
The ban came after countrywide raids on PFI offices and houses of its leaders for over a week and arrests of over 200 of its leaders and associates. The group gained national infamy in 2010 when its members chopped off the hand of Catholic professor T.J. Joseph in the southern state of Kerala.
He was attacked after setting a question paper for his students that allegedly included derogatory remarks about Prophet Mohammed. In 2015, a court jailed 13 people for the crime.
Catholic leaders in Pakistan have called for police reforms and a law to criminalize police brutality while pointing to a disproportionately high number of Christians who died in police custody.
The appeal came after 52-year-old Catholic Basir Masih died in police custody on September 17. He was arrested after being accused of stealing. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, he is the 17th Christian killed in police stations and jails since 2010.
Pakistani police stand guard ahead of a Muharram procession in Peshawar on Aug. 7. The police are notorious for inhuman torture and custodial deaths are common in the nation. (Photo: AFP)
Police in Pakistan are accused of various forms of torture beatings with batons and leather straps, stretching and crushing legs with metal rods, sexual violence, prolonged sleep deprivation, and causing severe mental anguish by forcing detainees to watch other people being tortured.
The parliament passed the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Act in August this year, which seeks to criminalize torture by security forces. The law has yet to be enacted.
Sri Lankan activists including Catholics have urged the country’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe to reveal the truth about the deadly Easter Sunday attack of 2019 after the Supreme Court removed his name as a respondent from the fundamental rights petitions filed in the matter. The court removed his name as the Constitution provides legal immunity to the president.
Activists have repeatedly blamed former President Maithripala Sirisena and Wickremesinghe, who was then the prime minister, for their lack of communication and coordination, which apparently caused the failure to prevent the bombings despite intelligence inputs.
The heavily damaged interior of St. Sebastian’s Church after the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka in 2019. (Photo: Facebook/ UCA files)
Oblate priest Father Rohan Silva, a petitioner, said as the former prime minister, Wickremesinghe should reveal whatever he knows and how he failed to prevent the attack, or he has “no moral right to remain in the position as a president.”
President Wickremesinghe had recently said he will seek assistance from the Scotland Yard Police for the investigations into the attack. Meanwhile, ex-president Sirisena is expected to appear in court in October.
At least 61 Hindus died and dozens were missing after a boat packed with devotees capsized in a river in northern Bangladesh. The tragedy occurred when the overcrowded boat carrying about 100 passengers sank on the Karatoya river in Panchgarh district last Sunday.
The devotees were heading to a temple to join a worship to start off the Durga Puja, a major Hindu festival in Bangladesh and India. Local villagers said that in absence of a bridge over the river people were to take boats to cross the river. Family members of the victims too lamented that a bridge could have prevented the tragedy.
People gather as rescuers pull bodies after a boat packed with Hindu devotees sank in northern Bangladesh, leaving at least 61 dead. (Photo: Firoz Al Sabah/AFP)
The government has announced a compensation package for the victims and formed a committee to investigate the accident.
In low-lying riverine Bangladesh, waterways provide cheap mode of transport for millions. However, due to lax rules, poor safety standards and overcrowding hundreds die in frequent ferry accidents every year.
Church leaders and family members in the Philippines have welcomed a ruling from the International Criminal Court that rejected the government’s bid to stop an investigation into the deadly anti-drug war under former president, Rodrigo Duterte.
Credit: Source link
