Will Take Up Dadri Mob Killing With UN

Uttar Pradesh minister Mohammad Azam Khan today sought intervention of United Nations to look into the "miseries" of minorities in India.

Citing the lynching of a Muslim man following rumours that he ate beef in Uttar Pradesh's Dadri area, Mr Khan said he was disturbed by a series of incidents against minorities and would urge the UN to take up the matter with the Indian government.

In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Mr Khan also attacked RSS accusing it of working to turn secular and pluralistic India into a majoritarian theocratic nation as 'Hindu Rashtra'.

"Facist forces are attempting to create a divide in the society by launching a hate campaign against Muslims and Dadri incident is an example of this," the Uttar Pardesh minister told reporters in Lucknow.

In his letter, the minister said there had been sporadic incidents of ethnic or communal clashes, but the real essence of freedom and secularism has never been under question or threat as it was for last one and half years.

"The new government took oath in the name of Constitution of India, but its motivation, inspiration and guiding light also comes from some other fundamentalist and extra constitutional authority named RSS," he said.

"The government provides tacit support to those campaign or programmes that create fear among minorities and intimidate them," he alleged.

Azam Khan said that to form government in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and other states, RSS certainly needed an issue on which two communities come face to face.

"After Babri Masjid incident, Dadri was held as it is close to Delhi and the BJP-ruled central government found it easy to use its influence and create tension," he alleged.

"I humbly request to the highest international body to look into our miseries and take care of us and impress upon the Indian government to stick to international agreements and allow to flourish secularism and plurality in the country and not to push the agenda of extra constitutional authorities to turn India into theocratic majority Hindu nation," Mr Khan said.

The minister also said he wanted President Pranab Mukhrjee and PM Modi to call a round table conference and discuss campaign against Muslims in the name of beef and attempts to turn India into a Hindu nation.

Accusing the NDA government of keeping double standard, he said, "They talk something before the world leaders and the UNGA, but do opposite and provide tacit support to RSS and its affiliates to intimidate minorities in the country to convert India into majority Hindu nation."

To a question, he said that narrating his pain before the UN should not be taken as a statement against India. "The UN was constituted to ensure that human rights were not violated in the world and it is viewed equally, therefore I have narrated my pain before it (through the letter)," he said.

A week ago, Mohammad Akhlaq, a resident of Greater Noida, was dragged out of his house after a mob alleged he had killed a cow in his house.

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/will-take-up-dadri-mob-killing-with-un-says-minister-azam-khan-1226291?utm_source=taboola

Death toll in Syria rises to 2,900: UN

GENEVA: The death toll in Syria has risen to more than 2,900 since pro-democracy protests began in March, the United Nations human rights office said on Thursday as activists warned that the country could descend into armed conflict.

“Based on our detailed list of individual names that we have been keeping, the total number of people killed in Syria since protests began now stands at more than 2,900,” Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, told Reuters.

The United Nations’ previous death toll was 2,700 from the bloody crackdown by the government of President Bashar Assad, which generally denies reports of human rights abuses and says it has no choice but to restore law and order.

Colville noted that the latest figure did not include those who have disappeared and whose fate is unknown.

On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council is to review Syria’s record, part of its regular examination of all UN member states. The United States and other Western countries are expected to denounce what they say are atrocities by Syria.

The Geneva forum last month launched an international commission of inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity which a preliminary UN investigation said were being perpetrated by Syrian security forces.

Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian heading the new three-member investigation, was to meet a high-level Syrian delegation in Geneva this week to seek permission to enter the country. The team, which plans to gather testimony in the region, is due to issue a report by the end of November.

'Detention centers a nightmare'

Radwan Ziadeh, an exiled Syrian activist, said on Thursday that more than 30,000 Syrians had been imprisoned since protests began, many in schools or soccer fields converted into detention centers.

“Mass killings continue,” he told a discussion on torture in Syria. “Detention centers are a nightmare for Syrians now.”

His businessman brother Yassin and four other members of his family are among those being detained, Ziadeh said.

His Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies had documented the deaths of 183 children at the hands of Syrian forces, many under torture, as well as 18 cases of rape in Homs, he said.

“Child of Syria,” a film produced by the center and shown for the first time in Geneva, told the tale of Thamer al Sharei, a 15-year-old boy from the southern city of Daraa who disappeared during demonstrations on April 29.

His parents, interviewed after fleeing to Jordan, said they retrieved his battered body from a morgue, riddled with 11 bullet holes and a drill hole in his cheek, two months later.

“If it were not for the childhood scar on his forehead, I never would have recognized him,” his father Mohammed says in the film. “They have taken torture to a new level.”

“If they are doing this to children, what are they doing to grown-ups?” he asks.

Ibrahim Al-Jahaman, identified as a former detainee at Bab Touma prison near Damascus at the time, says in the film: “I think he was in a semi-conscious state, I’m not sure he felt the blows he was getting.”

Ziadeh said Syrian forces felt immune from any accountability. He voiced dismay at the UN Security Council’s failure to condemn Syria, after China and Russia vetoed a European-drafted resolution on Tuesday.

It was important for the Security Council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes by Syrian forces, he said.

“Unfortunately this will encourage more people to radicalize as they see no hope of action by the international community,” Ziadeh said.

Jeremie D. Smith, of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, also warned of the situation deteriorating further in Syria if world powers failed to act.

“Syria is bound to become more destabilized, more radicalized, if there isn’t any form of hope for these people.”

http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article512718.ece