Bangladesh court defers Hindu leader’s bail hearing as tensions with India spike

Bangladesh court defers Hindu leader’s bail hearing as tensions with India spike
Bangladeshi Hindu leader Krishna Das Prabhu shows a victory sign as he is taken in a police van after court ordered him detained pending further proceedings in Chattogram in southeastern Bangladesh, on November 26, 2024. (AP/File)
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Updated 03 December 2024
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Bangladesh court defers Hindu leader’s bail hearing as tensions with India spike

Bangladesh court defers Hindu leader’s bail hearing as tensions with India spike
  • Krishna Das Prabhu, who was arrested in Bangladesh’s capital last week, faces charges of sedition after he led rallies in Chattogram
  • Hindu groups say there have been thousands of attacks against them since August, when secular government of PM Hasina was overthrown

DHAKA: A court in southeastern Bangladesh on Tuesday rescheduled a bail hearing for a jailed prominent Hindu leader who led large rallies in the Muslim-majority country demanding better security for minority groups.
Krishna Das Prabhu, who was arrested in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, last week, faces charges of sedition after he led huge rallies in the southeastern city of Chattogram. Hindu groups say there have been thousands of attacks against Hindus since early August, when the secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was overthrown.
Prabhu’s arrest comes as tensions spiked following reports of the desecration of the Indian flag across Bangladesh, with some burning it and others laying it on the floor for people to step on.
Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned India’s envoy, Pranay Verma, a day after a group of Hindus in Agartala, the capital of the northeastern Indian state of Tripura, stormed a consulate office of Bangladesh in protest over Prabhu’s arrest.
Anti-India protests were held in Dhaka, where security at the Indian High Commission was increased, and elsewhere over the incident in Agartala.
Relations between India and Bangladesh deteriorated after Hasina fled to India in the wake of mass protests which left hundreds of protesters dead and thousands wounded. India has since stopped issuing visas for Bangladeshi nationals, except for medical treatment.
India, which sheltered 10 million refugees and helped Bangladesh gain independence through a nine-month bloody war against Pakistan in 1971, considers Hasina as a trusted friend. Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the independence leader of Bangladesh, then the eastern part of present day Pakistan.
The detention of Prabhu sparked violent protests by his supporters. A Muslim lawyer was hacked to death near the court in Chattogram hours after the news of his jailing surfaced and his supporters clashed with security forces. The situation caused concern in Hindu-majority India and the Bangladesh interim government, led by Nobel peace laurate Muhammad Yunus.
No reason was given why Prabhu, also known as Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, did not attend Tuesday’s court hearing.
Public Prosecutor Mofizul Haque Bhuiyan told The Associated Press by phone that Chattogram Metropolitan Session Judge Saiful Islam ordered a bail hearing be held on Jan. 2 after the prosecution petitioned for more time to study the case. He also said no defense lawyer represented Prabhu in court.
Two Hindu leaders who are close to Prabhu said that they were afraid to attend the court as many of the lawyers who represented Prabhu had faced cases after last week’s violence.
“A group of lawyers stood last time for him (Prabhu). Cases have been filed against at least 70 of them and many others willing to take part in the hearing today have been threatened,” one Hindu leader in Chattogram told the AP on condition of anonymity.
“Why was he (Prabhu) not brought to the court today? He is in police custody. He could have spoken for himself before the court if he was taken to the court. It’s a ploy to delay his release from prison, this is not justice,” the leader said.
In Dhaka, a group of Islamists under the banner of Islamic Movement Bangladesh rallied in front of the country’s main Baitul Mukarram Mosque in protest at Monday’s incident in Agartala. Another group, under the banner of Bangladesh Citizens’ Society, separately marched through the streets.
Protests were also organized by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, headed by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, in Barishal and Khulna cities. Hasina and Zia are arch rivals.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs said Monday that the attack on the Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in Agartala was “deeply regrettable.”
“Diplomatic and consular properties should not be targeted under any circumstances,” a ministry statement said.
It added that India was stepping up security arrangements at the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi and other diplomatic offices in the country.
Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack in Agartala and demanded security to prevent any further acts of violence against its diplomatic missions in India.
“The accounts received conclusively attest that the protesters were allowed to aggress into the premises by breaking down the main gate of Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in a pre-planned manner,” the foreign ministry said.
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, an umbrella organization of the country’s minority groups, has denounced the arrest of Prabhu and called for his release.
Prabhu is a spokesman for the Bangladesh Sammilito Sanatan Jagaran Jote group. He was also associated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, widely known as the Hare Krishna movement.
Hindus and members of other minority groups say they have faced attacks since the ouster of Hasina. Yunus has said the threat to Hindus has been exaggerated.
Around 91 percent of Bangladesh’s population is Muslim, with Hindus making up almost all of the rest.
Bangladesh has faced political and social tensions since Hasina’s fall after a mass uprising ended her 15-year rule. Her critics had accused her of becoming autocratic.
The interim government has been struggling to establish order amid a background of mob justice, street protests, police administration issues and political uncertainty, with Yunus repeatedly urging for calm.


Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo
Updated 38 min 14 sec ago
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Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo
  • 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima when the United States detonated an atomic bomb in 1945
  • Another 74,000 were killed by a US nuclear bomb in the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later

OSLO: This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be presented Tuesday to Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo, which lobbies against the weapons now resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
The three co-chairs of Nihon Hidankyo will accept the prestigious award during a ceremony starting at 1:00 p.m. (1200 GMT) in Oslo’s City Hall, at a time when states like Russia increasingly threaten to break the international taboo on the use of nuclear arms.
“Nuclear weapons and humanity cannot co-exist,” one of the three co-chairs, Terumi Tanaka, told a press conference on Monday in the Norwegian capital.
“Humanity may come to its end even before climate change brings its devastating impacts,” the 92-year-old said.
Nihon Hidankyo works tirelessly to rid the planet of the weapons of mass destruction, with testimonies from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as “hibakusha.”
Around 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima when the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city on August 6, 1945.
A further 74,000 were killed by a US nuclear bomb in Nagasaki three days later.
Survivors suffered from radiation sickness and longer-term effects, including elevated risks of cancer.
The bombings, the only times nuclear weapons have been used in history, were the final blow to imperial Japan and its brutal rampage across Asia. It surrendered on August 15, 1945.
Tanaka was 13 when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing five members of his family.
On Monday, he expressed alarm at the resurgence of nuclear threats and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop brandishing the threat to prevail in the war in Ukraine.
“President Putin, I don’t think he truly understands what nuclear weapons are for human beings,” he said.
“I don’t think he has even thought about this.”
Putin began making nuclear threats shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He signed a decree in late November lowering the threshold for using atomic weapons.
Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
On November 21, Moscow fired its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in an escalation of the almost three-year war.
The missile is designed to be equipped with a nuclear warhead, but was not in this case.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow was ready to use “any means” to defend itself.
“It is crucial for humanity to uphold the nuclear taboo, to stigmatize these weapons as morally unacceptable,” the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, said on Monday.
“To threaten with them is one way of reducing the significance of the taboo, and it should not be done,” he added.
“And of course, to use them should never be done ever again by any nation on Earth.”
North Korea, which has increased its ballistic missile tests, and Iran, which is suspected of developing nuclear weapons though it denies this, are also seen as posing a threat to the West.
Nine countries now have nuclear weapons: Britain, China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United States, and, unofficially, Israel.
In 2017, 122 governments negotiated and adopted the historic UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), but the text is considered largely symbolic as no nuclear power has signed it.
This year’s Nobel prizes in the other disciplines — medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics — will be awarded at a separate ceremony in Stockholm.


Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say
Updated 10 December 2024
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Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

MAIDUGURI: A gang of gunmen kidnapped more than 50 women and children in a raid on Kakin Dawa village in Nigeria’s northwest Zamfara state, police and residents said.
Kidnapping for ransom by gunmen, known by locals as bandits, is rife in northwest Nigeria due to high levels of poverty, unemployment and the proliferation of illegal firearms.
Zamfara police said the incident took place on Sunday and that additional security forces were being deployed to the area.


France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt
Updated 10 December 2024
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France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

PARIS: French party leaders will gather at President Emmanuel Macron’s Elysee Palace office Tuesday afternoon in a bid to chart a route toward a new government, days after Prime Minister Michel Barnier was toppled in a confidence vote.
Shutting out the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), the effort to find a way forward comes as caretaker ministers scramble to clarify France’s 2025 finances, after the previous administration fell over its cost-cutting budget plans.
“The aim is to move forward with a deal about a method” to build a new government on the unstable foundations of a hung parliament, people close to Macron said late Monday.
Barnier had been supported by conservative Republicans and Macron’s centrist camp, but the shaky alliance was far short of an overall majority in a National Assembly split three ways with the NFP left alliance and the RN.
It is unclear how leaders could build a broader base of support for any new government.
Most are unwilling to compromise on pet issues such as last year’s unpopular pension reform, or to tarnish their image with voters by compromising ahead of potential new elections next year.
“We will not participate in a government of ‘national interest’ with the Republicans or Macronists or whoever,” Greens party leader Marine Tondelier said Monday — a position mirrored by Republicans chief Laurent Wauqiez.
In a letter late Sunday, Socialist leaders told Macron they were open to “dialogue and pitting points of view against one another” to “find an exit from this deadlock situation that’s harmful to the French public.”
But they added that they would not join a technocratic government or one run by a prime minister from the right, and called for “a true change of political course” on “pensions, purchasing power and tax justice.”


Bringing so many parties together around one table marked progress from Macron’s first attempt to reach consensus after July’s snap election, commentator Guillaume Tabard wrote in conservative daily Le Figaro.
“But if even a minimal deal is to be found ranging from the Republicans to the Communists, it will require an enormous labor of negotiation that will take days or weeks,” he added.
“The promise to quickly replace Barnier, yet again issued with confidence, will once again be betrayed.”
In an apparent acknowledgement that progress will be slow, Macron’s office said that a special budget law to allow the French state to keep functioning would be presented to caretaker ministers Wednesday on its way to parliament.
Its three measures include authorizing the government to continue raising existing taxes until a new budget is passed by MPs, a ministerial source told AFP.
The state and the social security system will also be allowed to continue borrowing on financial markets to avoid any interruption of payments, the source added.


Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster

Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster
Updated 10 December 2024
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Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster

Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster
  • The statement came as governments worldwide are scrambling to forge new links with Syria’s leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham

BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emannuel Macron are prepared to work with the Syrian rebel groups who ousted President Bashar Assad on certain conditions, a German government statement after a phone call between the two leaders.
The leaders of the European Union’s two largest powers welcomed the departure of Assad who had caused “terrible suffering to the Syrian people and great damage to his country.” The Syrian leader fled Damascus for Moscow on Sunday, ending more than 50 years of brutal rule by his family.
“(Scholz and Macron) agreed that they were prepared to work together with the new rulers on the basis of fundamental human rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities,” according to the German government statement published late on Monday.
The statement came as governments worldwide are scrambling to forge new links with Syria’s leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a group formerly allied with Al Qaeda and which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, European Union, Turkiye and the UN
Scholz and Macron agreed to work together to strengthen EU engagement in Syria, including support for an inclusive political process in Syria, and would discuss the way forward in close coordination with partners in the Middle East, the statement read.


Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption

Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption
Updated 10 December 2024
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Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption

Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption
  • Volcanic ash fell over a wide area, nine flights were canceled or diverted, schools were closed and a nighttime curfew was imposed in the most vulnerable area

MANILA: About 87,000 people were being evacuated in a central Philippine region Tuesday a day after a volcano briefly erupted with a towering ash plume and superhot streams of gas and debris hurtling down its western slopes.
The latest eruption of Mount Kanlaon on central Negros island did not cause any immediate casualties, but the alert level was raised one level, indicating further and more explosive eruptions may occur.
Volcanic ash fell on a wide area, including Antique province, more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) across seawaters west of the volcano, obscuring visibility and posing health risks, Philippine chief volcanologist Teresito Bacolcol and other officials said by telephone.
At least six domestic flights and a flight bound for Singapore were canceled and two local flights were diverted in the region Monday and Tuesday due to Kanlaon’s eruption, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.
The mass evacuations were being carried out urgently in towns and villages nearest the western and southern slopes of Kanlaon which were blanketed by its ash, including in La Castellana town in Negros Occidental where nearly 47,000 people have to be evacuated out of a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) danger zone, the Office of Civil Defense said.
More than 6,000 have moved to evacuation centers aside from those who have temporarily transferred to the homes of relatives in La Castellana by Tuesday morning, the town’s mayor, Rhumyla Mangilimutan, told The Associated Press by telephone.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said authorities were ready to provide support to large numbers of displaced villagers and that his social welfare secretary flew early Tuesday to the affected region.
“We are ready to support the families who have been evacuated outside the 6-kilometer danger zone,” Marcos told reporters.
Government scientists were monitoring the air quality due to the risk of contamination from toxic volcanic gases that may require more people to be evacuated from areas affected by Monday’s eruption.
Disaster-response contingents were rapidly establishing evacuation centers and seeking supplies of face masks, food and hygiene packs ahead of the Christmas season, traditionally a peak time for holiday travel and family celebrations in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
Authorities also shut schools and imposed a nighttime curfew in the most vulnerable areas.
The Philippines’ Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the nearly four-minute eruption of Kanlaon volcano on Monday afternoon had caused a pyroclastic density current — a superhot stream of gas, ash, debris and rocks that can incinerate anything in its path.
“It’s a one-time but major eruption,” Bacolcol told the AP, adding that volcanologists were assessing if Monday’s eruption spewed old volcanic debris and rocks clogged in and near the summit crater or was caused by rising magma from underneath.
Few volcanic earthquakes were detected ahead of Monday’s explosion, Bacolcol said.
The alert level around Kanlaon was placed on Monday to the third-highest of a five-step warning system, indicating “magmatic eruption” may have begun and may progress to further explosive eruptions.
The 2,435-meter (7,988-foot) volcano, one of the country’s 24 most-active volcanoes, last erupted in June sending hundreds of villagers to emergency shelters.
In 1996, three hikers were killed near the peak and several others were later rescued when Kanlaon erupted without warning, officials said.
Located in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Philippines is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year and is among the countries most prone to natural disasters.