South Africa’s ombudsman listed on Time’s top 100

JOHANNESBURG - Time magazine named South Africa’s hard-hitting ombudsman as one of the world’s 100 most influential people Thursday, providing high-profile recognition of her work investigating President Jacob Zuma as he fights for re-election.
Thuli Madonsela in March found that some of the $23 million of taxpayers’ money spent on “security upgrades” to Zuma’s private home were “unlawful” and she ordered the president to repay part of the sum. Madonsela’s findings have been at the centre of the political debate as South Africans prepare to vote in general elections on May 7, when Zuma will seek a second five-year term.
Time magazine honoured her “extraordinary courage and patriotism” in confronting corruption. “Thuli Madonsela is an inspirational example of what African public officers need to be,” Nigeria’s former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi wrote in the magazine’s commendation. “With her ability to speak truth to power and to address corruption in high places, Madonsela has been outstanding.”
The soft-spoken human rights lawyer joins other powerful and influential world figures like US President Barack Obama, Chilean leader Michelle Bachelet, Pope Francis and whistleblower Edward Snowden on the list. The accolade has made a splash as Zuma attempts to minimise the fallout from Madonsela’s investigation. The 72-year-old president recently called on Madonsela to prove her findings, pointing to a separate probe by his own ministers that absolved him of responsibility.
“It never said the president misused money. It said that there seemed to have been an inflation of prices,” Zuma reportedly told a campaign rally this week. Madonsela has pulled no punches in several other inquiries that have pointed a finger at the head of the country’s electoral commission and the opposition-run Western Cape government. Her methodological findings have restored a measure of trust in the South Africa’s much-maligned public sector.
“She has assured herself a place in the history of modern South Africa and among the tiny but growing band of African public servants giving us hope for the future of our continent,” wrote Sanusi.
 The ombudsman said she was “taken by surprise that the modest efforts of her office were not only being recognised at home but elsewhere in the world too,” according to a statement on Twitter. Madonsela added that she hoped her exposure would “put the public protector or the ombudsman institution on the world map” to increase its potential as guarantor of good governance.

Armenia accuses Turkey of ‘utter denial’ on genocide

YEREVAN : Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian on Thursday accused Turkey of an “utter denial” in failing to recognise World War I mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide, apparently brushing off Ankara’s first ever offer of condelences for the tragedy.
In an unprecedented move described by the United States as a historic gesture, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday offered condolences over the massacres, calling them “our shared pain.”
But in a statement marking the 99th anniversary of the start of the killings and mass deportations, Sarkisian made no acknowledgement of Erdogan’s move and instead accused Turkey of continuing to ignore the facts.
“The Armenian genocide... is alive as far as the successor of the Ottoman Turkey continues its policy of utter denial,” he said.
“The denial of a crime constitutes the direct continuation of that very crime,” he added. “Only recognition and condemnation can prevent the repetition of such crimes in the future.”
He said the looming 100th anniversary offered “Turkey a good chance to repent and to set aside the historical stigma in case if they make efforts to set free their state’s future from this heavy burden.”
He also stressed that the events of 1915 “should not prevent Turks and Armenians from establishing compassion and mutually humane attitudes towards one another.”
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington welcomed Erdogan’s “historic public acknowledgement of the suffering that Armenians experienced in 1915.”
Thursday was a day of national mourning in Armenia and requiem masses were held in churches across the country marking the 99th anniversary of the massacres.
All national television channels ran live broadcast of the annual ceremony which saw thousands of Armenians flocking to a hilltop memorial above Yerevan to lay flowers at the eternal flame.
“I came here for the first time with my father when I was five-year-old, today I came here with my grandson and he knows what we expect from the world and from Turkey,” 58-year-old resident of Yerevan Narine Balayan told AFP.
“I do hope that when he comes here with his grandchildren all problems with Turkey will be resolved,” she said.
In Istanbul, a commemorations also took place but on a far smaller scale, gathering a few hundred people.
A group calling itself “The Platform for the Commemoration of 24 April’s Armenian Genocide” organised the rally on the steps of the Haydarpasa train station, from where the first convoy of Armenians were deported on April 24, 1915 after being rounded up by the authorities.
The group carried black and white photos of deportees and a banner that read: “We commemorate the victims of Armenian genocide: some wounds do not heal with time”.
“Yes, it is true. This is our shared pain. We are here to share the pain of Armenians,” activist Levent Sensever said.
Another demonstration was to be held later in Taksim Square, a traditional rallying point which was the scene of mass anti-government protests in June.
Traditionally, thousands of members of the Armenian diaspora arrive from around the world arrive in Yerevan to take part in the ceremony.
This year saw many Armenians from conflict-ridden Syria - descendants of those who fled Ottoman persecution in 1915 - return to the ancestral homeland.
In his Thursday statement Sarkisian said the fate of Armenians in Syria “is our open wound and the issue of our primary concern.”
On Wednesday, young activists of the nationalist Dashnaktsutyun party burned Turkish flags and led a 15,000-strong torch-lit procession in Yerevan.
They held placards that read “Recognition-Condemnation-Compensation” and “Turkey still hides behind lies.”
One of Dashnaktsutyun leaders, Kiro Manoyan, denounced Erdogan’s statement as an “attempt to deceive us and the world.”
Erdogan acknowledged that the events of 1915 had “inhumane consequences” but also said it was “inadmissable” for them to be used as an excuse today for hostility against Turkey.
Using both diplomatic levers and its influential diaspora abroad, Armenia has long sought to win the massacre’s international recognition as genocide.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million people were killed during World War I as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, a claim supported by several other countries.
Turkey argues 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers siding with invading Russian troops.
Over 20 countries have so far recognised the massacres as genocide.

Fresh safety, violence fears on Mount Everest

KATHMANDU : Three major mountaineering companies joined others in quitting Everest citing fears of violence, safety concerns and tension at base camp, deepening a crisis Thursday on the world’s highest peak sparked by the death of 16 guides last week.
International expeditions said they were shutting down operations on the mountain, as a Nepalese government delegation was set to fly to Everest base camp to try to cool tensions and save this year’s climbing season.
Sherpas distraught over the death of their colleagues and demanding more compensation and other benefits have threatened to boycott the season after the avalanche on Friday, the worst ever on the world’s highest peak.
Leading US mountaineering company International Mountain Guides said the main route through the Khumbu Icefall, where the avalanche struck a team of guides carrying equipment for their clients, was too dangerous.
“The icefall route is currently unsafe for climbing without repairs by the icefall doctors (highly-skilled guides who fix ropes and repair ladders up the mountain), who will not be able to resume their work this season,” IMG said in a statement.
Announcing it was also cancelling its expedition, US company RMI Expeditions said “the risks outweigh the possibility of success”.
Peak Freaks, led by Canadian mountaineer Tim Rippel, said “the route in my professional opinion is NOT safe” saying there was a real threat of further avalanches.
“In addition 300+ sherpas have put their names on an organized protest to not climb in respect of the recent deaths, why wouldn’t we listen to them?” Rippel said in a post online.
Describing a tense environment at base camp, he said sherpas keen to close down the climbing season were threatening violence against those who wanted to continue. Mountaineering companies and officials were also pressuring guides to stay on the mountain, he said.
“It’s gotten too messy...now that we have an army, police and angry sherpas staging at base camp, it’s time to go home,” Rippel wrote.
Three other expeditions have already cancelled their plans to scale the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) peak, and the latest announcements throw the climbing season into further disarray.
Under fire over its handling of the disaster, the Nepal government is desperate to avoid a shutdown of the season that could lead to messy refund claims and a huge loss of revenue for the impoverished country.
A team of government officials was expected to arrive at base camp Thursday and attempt to work out a deal with the sherpas.
Sherpas on Tuesday threatened to abandon the season, after issuing a string of demands to the government, including higher compensation for the dead and injured, an increase in insurance payments and a welfare fund.
The avalanche underlined the huge risks borne by sherpas who carve out the routes and carry gear up the mountain for their foreign clients. The tragedy also reignited debate about whether the government does enough for sherpas who are key to the industry’s success.
The government has offered to set up a relief fund for injured guides using up to five percent of fees paid by climbers, while increasing life insurance payments by 50 percent, both amounts falling short of the sherpas’ demands.
The government, which has earned $3.6 million this year from Everest climbing fees alone, has issued permits to 734 people, including 400 guides, for 32 expeditions this season.

Kashmiris wary as Modi challenges for power in India

Douglas Busvine and Fayaz Bukhari - Mohammad Amin Pandith, a smallholder and father-of-three from Indian-Hel Kashmir, was lured from his home at night by a man in army uniform, dragged along a potholed lane and shot in the back of the head.
His execution, one of three deadly attacks on village elders in the last week blamed on freedom fighters allegedly determined to derail elections, spread fear through the hamlet of Gulzarpora and made locals wary of voting when polls open on Thursday.
It also underlined how hard it will be for India’s next prime minister to reach a lasting political settlement Held Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region that has been largely pacified by a huge security presence, yet is not at peace. “People are very afraid,” Pandith’s brother Abdul Rahim told Reuters. He said Pandith’s ‘crime’ had been to act as village headman for a regional party now in opposition. The 45-year-old did the job, which paid 2,000 rupees ($30) a month, not out of conviction, but to pay for his children’s education.
India’s election, staggered over several weeks and ending on May 12, may well propel Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi to power, a prospect that has Held Kashmir’s 12.5 million people scrabbling to determine what it would mean for them.
India’s sizeable Muslim minority of 150 million is wary of the 63-year-old, whom many blame for failing to prevent communal riots in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in Gujarat, where he is still chief minister.
Modi denies the charges, and says they are repeated by allies of the ruling Congress party to tarnish his reputation at a time when opinion polls make his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) favourite to lead the next government.
In its election manifesto, the BJP vows to uphold India’s territorial integrity and abrogate a clause in the constitution that grants Held Kashmir a degree of autonomy. That puts Modi at odds with locals in Gulzarpora and many beyond who have long favoured independence from India. Of more than 30 men gathered at a neighbour’s house to discuss Pandith’s murder, not one expressed allegiance to a mainstream political party. Asked if they preferred independence to staying with India, given the choice, all raised their hands.
In another sign of a more assertive policy should Modi come to power, during a recent campaign speech in Kashmir’s Hindu-majority district of Udhampur he criticised the ruling Congress party for being soft on Pakistan, which also claims the region. Udhampur has already voted - elections to the region’s six seats are staggered for security reasons. The BJP candidate there, Jitendra Singh, came to support a colleague in Anantnag, which lies in the broad Kashmir valley. “We do not wish to enter into a dialogue with Pakistan from a position of weakness,” Singh said at the BJP’s heavily-guarded office in Srinagar, the state’s summer capital. “We cannot allow attacks and a dialogue to continue at the same time.”
Pakistan is playing a waiting game on Kashmir until India’s new government shows its hand on the issue. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised to revive Kashmir talks and made this a focal point of his own election campaign last year, but the efforts stalled after a spate of violence on the disputed border in August.
The Kashmir conflict dates back to independence in 1947, when its Hindu ruler dithered over whether to join India or Pakistan. A war broke out between the newly independent states. India and Pakistan fought a second war in 1965, and another war in 1999, after both became nuclear powers. The 1948 ceasefire line still divides the territory. Since 1990s 70,000 people had died and 8,000 were disappeared in Indian Held Kashmir, human rights activists estimate. “This is democracy at gunpoint,” said Khurram Parvez, convener of Held Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society.
CHANGE OR NO CHANGE?
Talk of a “wave” of support for Modi across India brings a wry smile to the lips of Mehboob Beg, who is seeking re-election in Anantnag on a joint ticket of Congress and its regional ally, the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference, that runs the state.
“The more the wave is in favour of Narendra Modi, the more it will help us,” Beg told Reuters before addressing a crowd of 3,000 in Kokernag, a township that hosts a large police base. Playing up the secular ideology of Congress, Beg said: “Congress understands Kashmir better than the BJP and Modi. This is a Muslim-majority state, for God’s sake!”
At 39 percent, Held Kashmir had the lowest turnout of any Indian state in 2009 elections, due to widespread rejection of the political choices on offer.
“Elections cannot be a substitute for self-determination,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a Kashmiri religious and political leader who declares the election illegitimate but still views himself as a “pro-freedom” moderate.
Even Syed Ali Shah Geelani does not rule out talks if New Delhi meets conditions including recognising Kashmir’s disputed status and cutting back troops. “We are not against dialogue, but we want meaningful, results-oriented dialogue,” the 84-year-old told Reuters at his home, where he has been under house arrest for most of the last four years.–Reuters

Israel mulls reprisals for Palestinian unity deal

JERUSALEM : Israel’s security cabinet met on Thursday to weigh its retaliation to a unity deal struck between the Palestinian leadership and the Hamas rulers of Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted angrily to Wednesday’s agreement between the rival factions accusing Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas of choosing “Hamas, not peace”.
Public radio said ministers were likely to announce fresh retaliatory measures on top of a raft of financial sanctions unveiled this month when the Palestinians applied to join 15 international treaties.
They were not expected to order a complete halt to US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians, however, despite the announcement by a Netanyahu aide of the cancellation of a scheduled meeting on Wednesday evening, the broadcaster said.
Netanyahu’s office described the deal between Abbas and Hamas, which opposes all peace talks with Israel, as “very serious”.
But it said it was for ministers to decide whether to announce any new measures after Thursday’s meeting.
“By tying itself to Hamas, the Palestinian leadership is turning its back on peace,” a Netanyahu aide said.
A close aide of Netanyahu, MP Tzahi Hanegbi, said Israel was unlikely to halt the US-brokered peace talks launched in July.
“Israel has no interest in pronouncing dead the dialogue with the Palestinians. It is better that they announce the end of the political dialogue,” Hanegbi told public radio.
But Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that in his opinion an agreement was “impossible” while there is an alliance involving Hamas.
Israel already announced on April 10 that it was freezing the transfer of some 80 million euros ($111 million) in taxes it collects on behalf of Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which account for some two-thirds of its revenues.
The deal between the Palestinian leadership and Hamas came as the US-led peace talks teetered on the brink of collapse just days before their scheduled April 29 conclusion.
US envoy Martin Indyk has held repeated meetings with the two sides in a last-ditch bid to salvage the negotiations.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat denied any three-way meeting has been planned for Wednesday but acknowledged he would meet Indyk on Thursday without the Israelis.
Abbas says he will not extend the negotiations unless Israel agrees to a freeze on all settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, and frees a group of Arab prisoners who had been earmarked for release this month.
He has also demanded the two sides launch straight into negotiations on the future borders of the Palestinians’ promised state.
Israel has dismissed all three conditions as unacceptable.
Jibril Rajub, a Fatah leader, told AFP that “the next national consensus government will proclaim loud and clear that it accepts the Quartet’s conditions”.
The Middle East Quartet demands that Hamas recognise Israel and existing agreements between it and the PLO, and renounce armed struggle.
Washington warned Wednesday that the deal between the Palestinian leadership and Hamas threatened to scupper any chance of rescuing the talks.
“It’s hard to see how Israel can be expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Abbas’s writ has effectively been confined to autonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank since Hamas evicted his loyalists from Gaza in 2007.
Hamas agreed on Wednesday to the formation of a joint administration under his leadership within five weeks.
Similar agreements have been reached in the past, but the latest deal sparked celebration on the streets of Gaza.
When Hamas swept Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, the European Union and the United States said they would deal with a government in which it participated only if it renounced violence and recognised Israel and past peace deals.
Washington reaffirmed that position on Wednesday.
Alex Fishman, analyst at Yediot Aharonot newspaper, said “the ball is now in the court of the United States,” and called on it to respond firmly to the Palestinian deal.

King bids to reassure Saudis as MERS deaths hit 85

RIYADH : King Abdullah was in the Saudi commercial hub of Jeddah on Thursday in a bid to reassure a worried public as the death toll from the MERS virus hit 85.
The Red Sea city has seen a spate of cases among health staff in recent weeks that have sparked fears that the virus has mutated to make it more transmissible from person to person.
The World Health Organisation announced on Wednesday that it had offered to send international experts to Saudi Arabia to investigate “any evolving risk” resulting from the apparent change in transmission pattern.
Public concern has been fuelled by the reported resignation last week of at least four doctors at Jeddah’s King Fahd Hospital after they refused to treat MERS patients for fear of infection with the deadly coronavirus.
In its latest bulletin on Wednesday, the health ministry said that it had recorded a total of 287 cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the kingdom so far, of whom a full 85 had died.
Despite the figures, the royal family insisted there was no cause for public alarm.
National Guard Minister Prince Mitab said his father King Abdullah was in Jeddah “to reassure the public and to prove that the exaggerated and false rumours about coronavirus are not true.”
“The MERS situation is reassuring and it has not reached the level of an epidemic,” he told students in Jeddah according to the Saudi Gazette.
But that did not stop the king from dismissing health minister Abdullah al-Rabiah on Monday without an official explanation.
Labour Minister Adel Fakieh, who has taken over as acting health minister, said on Twitter late Tuesday that he had visited the King Fahd Hospital.
He promised “transparency and to promptly provide the media and society with the information needed.”
The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday that the recent cluster of cases among health workers was a cause of concern as the virus had clearly been contracted from a human patient and not directly from an animal host.
“WHO is unaware at this point in time of the specific types of exposure in the health care facilities that have resulted in transmission of these infections, but this remains a concern,” the UN agency said.
“Therefore, WHO has offered its assistance to mobilise international expertise to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to investigate the current outbreaks in order to determine the transmission chain of this recent cluster and whether there is any evolving risk that may be associated with the current transmissibility pattern of the virus.”
Experts are still struggling to understand MERS, for which there is no known vaccine.
A recent study said the virus has been “extraordinarily common” in camels for at least 20 years, and it may have been passed from the animals to humans and now evolved.
Since the emergence of MERS in April 2012, a total of 253 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infections with MERS have been reported to the WHO worldwide. Of those 93 have died.
The virus is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

Internet a CIA project, says Putin

MOSCOW : Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called the Internet a “CIA project” and warned Russians against making Google searches.
Putin assured a group of young journalists that the Internet was controlled from the start by the CIA and its surveillance continues today. “That’s life. That’s how it’s organised by Americans. You know all of this started during the dawn of the Internet as a special project of the CIA. And it keeps on developing,” Putin said in televised comments.
Responding to questions from a young pro-Kremlin blogger, Putin warned that information entered on Google “all goes through servers that are in the States, everything is monitored there”. He also made ominous comments on Russia’s most popular search engine Yandex, suggesting it could become more tightly controlled. Yandex is “partly registered abroad and not just for tax reasons, but for other reasons too”, Putin said, mentioning it is partly owned by international investors and reiterating his fear of foreign control of the Internet.
When Yandex was starting out, Putin said, they were “pressured” to have “that many Americans and this many Europeans among the executives”. “We must fight determinedly for our own interests. This process is happening. And we will support it from the government side, of course,” he said without explaining what he means in detail. Yandex handles some 60 percent of search queries in Russia and has a presence in several other countries. It allows users to search blogs and rates the most popular entries. Yandex’s shares fell over 4.3 percent on the NASDAQ after Putin’s comments.
The company said in a statement quoted by news agencies that registration abroad is not done to dodge taxes but due to issues of corporate law, while foreign investment is a common feature of any Internet startup. “Since our main business is in Russia, we pay almost all taxes in Russia,” Yandex said. While the Internet remains the main sphere for political discussion, Russia has recently cracked down on debate, with a new law allowing the government to block blacklisted sites without a court order.