[Kabar-indonesia] WP: Mass Graves Reported in Philippines [+NKorea accuses US; 14 Pilgrims slain]

Sat Sep 2 06:13:32 MDT 2006

6 articles:: 

- WP: Mass Graves Reported in Philippines

- NKorea accuses US of threatening war after  
  anti-missile test

- Fourteen south Asian pilgrims killed in Iraq

- Two Pakistani soldiers killed, links to Baluch  
  leader's death probed

- Tonnes of pilgrimage trash threaten Indian Kashmir

- Cambodia's ailing former king leaves for China for  
    medical treatment

-------------------------------

The Washington Post
Friday, September 1, 2006

Mass Graves Reported in Philippines

By Jim Gomez
Associated Press

MANILA, Aug. 31 -- Soldiers have found mass graves
believed to hold the remains of up to 300 people who
were allegedly killed by communist guerrillas in the
1980s during a purge of suspected spies in the
Philippines' remote east, officials said Thursday.

Former New People's Army rebels and relatives are
willing to testify against leaders of the Communist
Party of the Philippines who allegedly ordered the
purge, including one alleged former leader who is now
a lawmaker, said Maj. Felix Mangyao, a regional army
spokesman.

The New People's Army is the armed wing of the
Communist Party of the Philippines.

Troops and relatives have dug up at least 67 bodies
since the graves were recently discovered in an area
called "Garden," a hilly jungle in Southern Leyte
province, about 385 miles southeast of Manila, said a
military spokesman, Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro.

The shallow graves could contain the remains of as
many as 300 people, based on information from former
rebels and victims' relatives, Bacarro said. The
military chief of staff, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon,
visited the site, accompanied by police forensic
experts and victims' relatives, who wept as the
remains were unearthed.

Skulls were placed beside graves marked by bamboo
crucifixes and numbers. One villager, Domingo Eras,
said he recognized the remains of his brother, who was
abducted by the rebels, by his clothes.

Opposition Rep. Satur Ocampo, a former rebel leader
linked by the army to the deadly purges, has denied
any involvement in the killings.

Ocampo said he suspected the army may have announced
the alleged existence of the graves to bolster police
claims that communist guerrillas were behind numerous
recent killings of left-wing activists.

Leaders of the Communist Party and the New People's
Army have acknowledged that a number of rebel
commanders killed 600 to 900 suspected spies and
government informers in the southern Mindanao region
during the 1980s.

After learning of the purges, top rebel leaders
ordered them stopped. The guerrillas later
acknowledged the killings as among the most horrible
blunders in the Marxist insurgency, which has raged
for 37 years.

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Agence France-Presse
Saturday September 2, 2006

NKorea accuses US of threatening war after
anti-missile test

North Korea has accused the United States of
threatening war by carrying out a test of its missile
defense system and conducting joint military exercises
with the South.

The North's semi-official Committee for Peaceful
Reunification of the Fatherland also attacked South
Korea for taking part in the annual war games and said
it would only drive Pyongyang to build up its
self-defence capability.

"The US staged not only a large-scale north-targeted
naval and air combined maneuver in the waters around
the Korean Peninsula with troops of its allies
involved but carried out a missile test-fire to strike
the DPRK and intercept its missiles," the committee
said in a statement carried by state media.

It called the "Ulchi Focus Lens" military drills,
which ended on Friday, "little short of a declaration
of war against the DPRK (North Korea)", saying the
exercises had been "of a more provocative nature" than
previous war games.

Some 9,000 US troops and an undisclosed number of
South Korean soldiers took part in the 10-day
exercises.

The United States also successfully tested its
controversial ballistic missile defense system over
the Pacific on Friday, almost two months after North
Korea stoked international tensions with its
long-range missile tests.

The US Missile Defense Agency said a ground-based
interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force
Base in California hit a dummy armed missile in space
that had been fired from Kodiak, Alaska.

"It is the height of folly for the US to threaten the
DPRK and try to bring it to its knees, pursuant to the
policy of 'strength'," the committee said, according
to the statement carried by the Korean Central News
Agency (KCNA).

"This desperate effort on the part of the US will only
harden the will and determination of the army and the
people of the DPRK to bolster up its deterrent for
self-defence," it said.

Turning on South Korea, the committee -- which is in
charge of inter-Korean exchanges -- said Seoul had
committed an "unpardonable crime against the nation"
by joining the United States in the war games.

"The South Korean authorities' act of supporting the
US in its dangerous war moves against the North is a
serious perfidy to the June 15 joint declaration and
an unpardonable crime against the nation," it said,
referring to a 2000 inter-Korean declaration for peace
and reconciliation.

It said the South's participation in the joint drills
"totally bedevils inter-Korean relations and brings
dark clouds of a nuclear war to this land."

Relations between the two Cold War rivals have been
soured since North Korea conducted the missile tests
in July, provoking international condemnation and a
sharp rebuke at the UN Security Council.

The North left six-party talks on ending its nuclear
weapons programmes last November and said it would not
return until US financial sanctions against it were
dropped.

The ABC television network, quoting US officials, said
last month that the North -- which claims to have
built nuclear weapons -- may be preparing an
underground nuclear test.

The United States and South Korea -- both parties to
the stalled six-way nuclear disarmament talks with
North Korea, along with China, Japan and Russia --
have warned Pyongyang against any such tests.

North Korea said in February 2005 that it had nuclear
weapons, but there have never been reports that it has
actually tested a nuclear bomb.

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Agence France-Presse
Saturday September 2, 2006

Fourteen south Asian pilgrims killed in Iraq

Insurgents have dragged 11 Pakistanis and three
Indians off a bus crossing the desert in central Iraq
and shot them dead at close range, officials said.

Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdul
Karim Khalaf said the victims were pilgrims travelling
across the war-torn country to attend an important
festival in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

"They were coming from the desert area of Turaibil
toward the Nakhab region. They did not ask the
authorities to provide them with security," he said.

"They were coming in a big bus with children and
women. The attackers freed the women and children and
shot dead the men, execution-style."

Karbala city health director Salim Kadhim confirmed
the death toll.

"Two of them are elderly men, two are young men in
their 20s and the others are middle-aged," he said,
adding that they were killed on a route that comes
across the desert from Iraq's western border past the
city of Ramadi.

Ramadi is a stronghold of Sunni Arab insurgents, who
are often blamed for murderous attacks against Iraq's
Shiite majority and against foreign Shiites on
pilgrimage to Iraqi shrines.

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Agence France-Presse
Saturday September 2, 2006

Two Pakistani soldiers killed, links to Baluch
leader's death probed

Two Pakistani soldiers have been killed in a shooting
in the port city of Karachi, possibly in retaliation
over the killing of a top Baluch rebel leader by the
army, officials said.

Unknown assailants attacked the two paramilitary men
as they came out of a mosque in an eastern
neighbourhood of Karachi after performing evening
prayers Friday, Sindh province home secretary
Brigadier Muhtaram said.

One died at the scene while the other died later the
hospital, he said. A hunt for the culprits was under
way.

"We are investigating whether the attack on the
paramilitary soldiers is linked to the unrest over
Bugti's death," he said.

The incident came amid a countrywide strike called by
the opposition parties to protest the killing of
veteran Baluch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, who died in a
cave-hideout during an army operation last Saturday.

Bugti's killing sparked nationwide protests and deadly
violence in his home province of Baluchistan where 10
people have died in bomb blasts, attacks and clashes
with the police in the past week.

Authorities hurriedly buried Bugti on Friday several
hours after retrieving his decomposed body from the
collapsed cave. Bugti's family declined a government
offer to participate in the funeral.

Friday's strike paralysed Baluchistan and neighbouring
Karachi, the commercial and economic hub of Pakistan.

Police said around 11 people were injured, including a
police officer, during Friday's clashes in Karachi.

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Agence France-Presse
Saturday September 2, 2006

Tonnes of pilgrimage trash threaten Indian Kashmir

Tonnes of trash dumped in Indian Kashmir during an
annual religious pilgrimage pose a serious threat to
the region's water supplies and flora, environmental
groups warn.

The trash is dumped during an annual trek to a shrine
in the Amarnath cave, 3,800 meters (12,800 feet) up in
the Himalayas, which is considered an abode of the
Hindu deity Shiva.

The State Pollution Control Board says 5,500 kilograms
(121,000 pounds) of waste were generated by nearly
300,000 pilgrims a day during the June 11 - August 9
pilgrimage this year, making 330,000 kilograms for the
60-day trek.

Similar amounts of trash -- which includes plastic
bags, bottles and human faeces -- have been dumped in
previous years by pilgrims, and Greenpeace says the
amount now is overwhelming trek organisers.

"Heaps of waste have been piling up for years now.
It's causing colossal damage to the environment," says
Shafat Hussain, who heads Greenpeace in Srinagar, the
summer capital of Indian Kashmir.

"Until a system is put in place for dealing with the
garbage, we're in for a big environmental problem."

Greenpeace says the decomposing trash leaches into the
glacier-fed streams which are the main source of water
for thousands of families. It also destroys the area's
delicate flora.

The group says accumulated trash must be removed from
the pilgrimage tracks before it begins snowing in
November to prevent further contamination.

"When it gets enveloped in snow, it will start
degrading and contaminate the glaciers and streams,"
says Hussain.

Greenpeace and other groups say pilgrimage organisers
fail each year to make proper plans to dispose of the
trash.

Most pilgrims set out from Nunwun base camp near the
southern Kashmir town of Pahalgam in June on a
50-kilometer (31-mile) trek to worship an ice
stalagmite that forms most years in the cave. Others
opt for a 16-kilometer route from Baltal town.

"Both routes are littered with plastic bottles,
polythene and biscuit wrappers. If immediate measures
are not taken to dispose of the garbage, an ecological
crisis looms," says Zahoor Ahmed, who heads the
non-governmental group Human Objective to Protect
Environment, or HOPE.

A shrine board official defended its actions, saying
it employs people to collect garbage and bury it on
site with all plastic items removed.

"We're committed to preserving the fragile
environment," says the official, Madan Mantoo.

Ahmed disputes this, saying plastic goods were not
being separated.

Environmental groups "would have brought the waste to
base camps and from there shifted the waste to dumping
grounds," says Ahmed.

Since the end of this year's trek, environmental
groups have tried to interest civic groups in removing
the garbage.

"We've been involving school children ... but cleaning
the entire track needs huge resources," says Hussain,
who appealed for government help.

"Clearing the area needs a massive effort not only by
voluntary organisations like ours but by the
government," says Hussain.

Environmental groups "can't do it alone. We don't have
enough resources and manpower to do that," he says.

Trash left at high altitudes poses a problem
throughout the Himalayas including on Mount Everest in
neighboring Nepal, where mountaineering teams are too
tired to remove the waste.

A clean-up campaign was launched by the government and
the Nepal Mountaineering Association in 1996, but it
ran out of steam, allowing oxygen cylinders, plastic
bags and beer cans to pile up, says association
president Ongchu Sherpa.

Aside from the pilgrims, the area is filled with
security forces during the trek, because it has been
the scene of attacks by Islamic militants who have
waged a deadly separatist insurgency in Kashmir since
1989.

"The troop deployment is in excess of 20,000 soldiers
... Their presence cannot but affect the rise in
pollution levels," says Gautam Navlakha, a leading
human rights activist.

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Agence France-Presse
Saturday September 2, 2006

Cambodia's ailing former king leaves for China for
medical treatment

Cambodia's former king Norodom Sihanouk, who is
battling cancer, has left for China for medical
treatment, officials said.

The cancer-stricken 83-year-old was accompanied by his
wife, former queen Monineath, and their 53-year-old
son, King Norodom Sihamoni, who was formally sworn in
as monarch in October 2004.

"He goes to China for medical treatment as he is old
and has been away from doctors for a while," said
Prince Sisowath Panara Sirivudh, who is also the
minister of culture.

In May, the former king returned to Cambodia after
spending nearly a year abroad to seek medical
treatment.

Officials said Saturday the king would make official
visits to France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia
following his trip to Beijing. They gave no further
details.

Despite giving up his role as monarch, Sihanouk
remains a powerful figure in Cambodia, frequently
wading into the political fray with critical
communiques.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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