Group asks to halt support for militia

July 16, 2008

NEW DELHI - The Indian government, locked in a deadly struggle with Maoist rebels, should stop supporting an anti-insurgency militia whose members have intimidated, beaten, raped, and killed civilians while authorities look the other way, according to a Human Rights Watch report released yesterday. The group accused the Salwa Judum militia of routinely abusing poor villagers in Chattisgarh state, thousands of whom have fled or been uprooted from their ancestral lands because of the conflict pitting government forces and the militia against the Maoists, known as "Naxalites." Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the Naxalites, whose insurgency covers a large swath of eastern India, the number one internal security threat facing the country. (Los Angeles Times)

WASHINGTON - Senators Joseph Biden of Delaware and Richard Lugar of Indiana said yesterday they will push bipartisan legislation this year that would triple humanitarian spending in Pakistan but threaten to cut military aid unless Islamabad does more to fight terrorists. At a news conference, the two leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said they worked closely with the State Department and USAID to draft the bill and believe it would be signed by President Bush. If the measure passes by year's end as the senators hope, it would send a sharp message to Pakistan that the United States is frustrated by continued terrorist activities along its Afghan border. "While our bill envisions sustained cooperation with Pakistan for the long haul, it is not a blank check," said Lugar, the committee's top Republican. (AP)

HARARE - Zimbabwe's Christian community yesterday rejected President Robert Mugabe's reelection last month as marred by violence and intimidation and said it would support a government of national unity. In a statement, the heads of all the churches in the predominantly Christian country said they were "ready and committed to partner with all efforts that will result in a transitional authority and subsequently a government of national unity." The Heads of Christian Denominations said that torture, murder, abductions, displacement, and psychological trauma had undermined last month's election. (Reuters)

MOGADISHU - A World Food Program contractor was gunned down in the fifth fatal attack this year on one of the agency's workers, the WFP said yesterday as thousands of Somalis gathered to protest the assaults. Most members of the crowd that assembled outside the capital, Mogadishu, had been driven from their homes by the violence that has been plaguing the country. "We have been forced to live in the open, we have no shelter from the sun and the rain, and now they are killing and abducting our helpers?" protester Said Dahiro said. The Somali staff member of a WFP-contracted trucking company was shot in the southern town of Buale on Sunday, WFP Country Director Peter Goossens said. (AP)