Sunday International News

Malaysia freezes police leave,
fears protests: report
Reuters/bdnews24.com . Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia has frozen the leave of its police across the country as it braces for possible opposition-led mass street protests, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
The order was issued by the police official Zaleha Abd Rahman on Friday, the New Straits Times reported.
It quoted unnamed sources as saying the freeze was imposed after an unnamed political party threatened to call for mass street protests. The government has been trying to quell growing discontent by the public and opposition after a series of political scandals and a recent steep rise in pump prices of fuel sparked fears about the country’s political and economic outlook.
The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which has led Malaysia since independence from British rule in 1957, has seen its popularity plummet since a March general election when the opposition alliance made surprisingly strong gains.
The opposition Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia said the party could call for street protests depending on the government’s response to public anger against the recent fuel price hike.


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Taliban sow confusion on
Pak-Afghan border
Agence France-Presse . Kabul/Islamabad
NATO-led peacekeepers in Afghanistan on Saturday blamed militants for a mortar attack two nights earlier that wounded Pakistani soldiers and Afghan police on either side of the border and led to a Pakistani protest.
‘Insurgents simultaneously fired at targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan on the evening of July 10,’ said a statement from the International Security and Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul.
ISAF said it had reports four Afghan police and eight Pakistanis were wounded in the two-way attack, and added it suspected the insurgents’ aim was ‘to spark a border incident.’
The clash occurred on the border near the Pakistani village of Angor Adda in the South Waziristan tribal region, a known sanctuary for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Angor Adda lies across the border from Bermal, a village near a US base at Shikin in Afghanistan’s Paktika province.
The peacekeepers said ISAF’s retaliatory air and artillery strikes did not touch Pakistani territory.
‘ISAF forces tracked the fire to two points within Afghanistan and returned fire with artillery and one GBU-13 bomb dropped from an F-15 aircraft,’ the statement said.
‘All ISAF rounds were verified to have hit the origins of insurgent fire.’
Pakistani troops had also returned fire after coming under a mortar attack that wounded six soldiers and two civilians, a Pakistani military spokesman said.
He did not say if US-led coalition or Afghan forces fired mortars but added that a ‘strong protest’ had been lodged with the headquarters of the coalition forces in Kabul on Friday.
The latest incident comes at a time of increased tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Also, there are growing fears in Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, that the United States is planning to mount operations inside its territory.
Afghan officials say there have been more attacks inside Afghanistan after the Pakistan military reached a de facto truce with militants based in Pakistan tribal areas.


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Rights group accuses Thais of
mistreating Hmong refugees
Agence France-Presse . Bangkok
A leading rights group accused Thai authorities Saturday of intimidating and forcibly deporting ethnic Hmong to neighbouring Laos after they escaped a refugee camp last month.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said it feared for 1,300 refugees who left Huay Nam Khao camp, in the country’s northern Petchabun province, for a mass protest and never returned.
‘Thai authorities have kept Lao Hmong in fear and uncertainty for years to pressure them into giving up their hopes of refuge in Thailand,’ said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
‘The government should end this immoral and unlawful policy, and as a first step it should account for the missing.’ Some 5,000 ethnic Hmong left the refugee camp on June 20 after a year in detention to highlight their plight with a march to Bangkok.
HRW says they are intimidated and mistreated in the camp, but face persecution on their return to Laos. Thai soldiers returned 800 protesters to Laos and thousands returned to the camp, but 1,300 refugees are still missing, according to aid agency Doctors Without Borders.
Thai authorities have said they plan to return all the refugees, despite an outcry from human rights groups and a motion by US lawmakers asking Thailand to suspend the repatriations.
HRW called for Thai authorities to immediately allow independent monitors in Huay Nam Khao camp, and stop the deportations until the missing have been accounted for.
The Thai military says all repatriations are voluntary, but HRW says Hmong face violence and extra-judicial killings in their home country because of the decades-long Hmong insurgency.
The Hmong fought alongside US forces in the 1960s and 1970s when the Vietnam War spilled into Laos. After the war ended in 1975, many fled to the jungles fearing the communist authorities would hunt them down for working with the Americans.
The Thai government insists the Hmong are economic migrants using Thailand as a base to seek refugee status and travel to rich countries, but the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR has warned some could be at genuine risk of persecution.


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