Vanishing Cultures Photography

What's behind China's Tibetan unrest?

2012-01-31T11:49:00.002-05:00

(CNN) -- Beijing appears determined to contain the volatile situation in an ethnically Tibetan region of southwestern China by sending in thousands of extra security forces.

The move comes against a backdrop of anger and despair over Chinese rule, culminating in a growing number of protests and clashes with police, as well as a string of acts of self-immolation by Tibetans.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/31/world/asia/china-tibetans-explainer/index.html

CNN crew detained amid Chinese Tibet crackdown

2012-01-30T17:46:00.000-05:00

By Stan Grant, CNN

Sichuan province, China (CNN) -- It's after 10 p.m. when we see a light in the distance. We've traveled for more than three hours up a windy, icy road in western China.
Our hope is to get to the Tibetan autonomous zone, in the mountainous region of Sichuan province, an area reportedly locked in an ever-growing spiral of violence.
We're so close, only an hour or so away. And then the light.
Within minutes, we grind to a halt. A policeman is flashing a flashlight in my face. Our Chinese driver is already outside the car. We won't be going any farther tonight.
Roadblocks like this are strewn across the back roads of this province. For weeks, ethnic Tibetans and Chinese security forces have been locked in conflict.
Buddhist nuns and monks have been carrying out ritual self-immolation by setting themselves alight. It is a gruesome protest against what they claim is the ongoing oppression by Chinese authorities.
As our car turns back, our driver calls a Tibetan contact. Something serious is going down. The Tibetan says his village is crawling with police and the military. Later, local news reports tell of two Tibetans killed in protests.
But many of the villages that straddle the mountains are inhabited by Han Chinese -- the dominant ethnic group in China. Inside the houses, lights are on, as people eat, watch TV and talk. We ask what they're hearing. They tell us they have little time for the Tibetans. They call them lazy and accuse them of living off government handouts.
One woman claims the Han Chinese are being targeted by violent Tibetan gangs. Local media reports say more than a dozen people have already been killed.
There is hysteria, bigotry and fear here. It is fueled by government secrecy and a constant stream of military and police vehicles. Much of the province is in lockdown.
In the capital city of Chengdu, police vehicles are seen moving into position at dawn. Soon, they are on every corner, armed police patrolling the streets. They are tightening their grip on this heavily Tibetan populated neighborhood.
It's hard to get people to talk here. We see a group of young monks on a corner and wave them over. They agree to take us to their living quarters. Here in a tiny one bedroom apartment, four beds crammed against the walls and their food tied in sacks, the monks tell us they are verbally abused and harassed by police; pushed to breaking point.
"I cannot bear it any longer - any more," says one.
They are far from their home in the mountains; cut off they say, they cannot even make contact by phone.
Wherever you go they see you. We cannot go anywhere.
Monk "We want to go but we cannot, you can see all the security out there. Wherever you go they see you. We cannot go anywhere," he says.
We ask if he's afraid, but he just looks at a picture of the Buddha, a smile on his face."I can't explain," he says, "but I'm not afraid."
In their pouch, the monks hold a keepsake of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, too sacred to even show us. This pouch, they say, carries a dream.
"We wish what all Tibetans wish for the most: for the Dalai Lama to return to the palace in Tibet."
They know about the self-immolation of other Buddhists; they say they support them and vow it will continue until China leaves Tibet.
For the Chinese government though, these are dangerous men -- part of what they call a "splittist" element, determined to tear Tibet from China.
Throughout our interview, we have been watched. Later, our vehicle is followed. Our driver says his family has received threatening phone calls.
On our way to the airport, a car, rather suspiciously, rams into the back of our taxi.
As we make our way to the service counters, we are followed by plainclothes security talking constantly on mobile phones. Eventually trying to clear airport security, we're grabbed by police. We are marched to an airport police station and detained and questioned for five hours. Police keep some of our video.
They want to know who we spoke to, what we are doing here, where we've been and why we want to cover this story. We have our own questions -- questions authorities are answering only with roadblocks and police.
There are claims and counter-claims in this dark conflict. All of it is being played out behind a veil of secrecy in the mountains of western China.

Is it right to join the tribe?

2012-01-30T17:23:00.002-05:00

Does living with the tribe, Bruce Parry style, place isolated cultures at risk from pressure to change? Jonny Bealby looks at the rise in 'wild' tourism.
Running an adventure travel company is becoming increasingly complex. With competitors constantly pushing the boundaries of alternative holidays - swimming with sharks, firing AK47s, driving packs of huskies - I am constantly forced to unearth new products for evermore discerning clients. Thankfully "gimmick" holidays are not really our style, but off-the-beaten-track adventures most certainly are, and even here things are being squeezed.
As little as five years ago on a trip to Ladakh, or Kyrgyzstan, or Libya, you could have travelled for days along the most obvious routes and not seen another tourist. The yurts we sourced from local nomads became our private homes, the trekking trails our personal footpaths. Now we are forced to find new routes each year to continue to provide a genuinely "wild" experience. These days off-the-beaten-track more often than not means unusual, rather than undiscovered, holidays.
Nowhere has seen a larger relative rise in tourist numbers than India. Year on year since 2002 those of us visiting the subcontinent for our holidays has increased three fold - from 2m to 6m. And yet despite this huge increase, both tourists and tour operators seem reluctant to discover the more remote rural heart of this wonderful travel destination, preferring instead to concentrate on the monuments, bazaars and shopping opportunities of the urban centres.
Yet venture into the undiscovered rural regions of this vast country and you can see, and more importantly, experience, the normal life that the vast majority of Indians live. On our trips to these villages, abhorring the idea of flitting into villages for hasty photo ops, we spend entire days with one community or another, learning about their way of life. Visiting a Gujjar caste of milkmen in southern Rajasthan for example, we follow their daily routing from the 5am start, milking the herd, through making lassi, cooking lunch (which we'll eat off banana leaf plates), enjoy a siesta on an old rope bed, only to make dung patties and collect water from the well as the sun goes down. To break the barriers between us and them, we will even dress in their clothes. And through the funds generated by the trip, help is given to the community - either to their schools, health programmes or agricultural development projects - to recompense them for their time.
There are those that think we should leave these people and their quiet lands alone; that by going into these isolated regions - and it's no exaggeration to say that some villages have never previously seen a white face - we are in some way corrupting them ... tainting them with our western values. That by dressing up in their clothes, we are patronising them.
In my opinion, like most things in life, if something is done right it works and if handled badly it does not. In India, Pakistan and Central Asia I have seen first hand how much enjoyment locals derive from having a genuinely interested foreign audience join their life for a while. I have seen the pleasure they gain from dressing us up - which is usually their idea - from feeding us their food and explaining their customs to us. I have also seen the financial rewards that can come when entrepreneurial individuals take this new business opportunity and run with it.
But it still seems not all agree. I'm sure Bruce Parry has come under fire for travelling to, and living with, various indigenous peoples in his ground-breaking series Tribes. By doing this, it is argued, he is exposing ancient cultures to the glare of the TV camera that would in time lead to change.
But isn't it true that change comes, whether people want it or not? And the challenge is in trying to make sure that the change is for the good.
· Jonny Bealby is an author and founder of Wild Frontiers adventure travel company.
I had the pleasure of travelling with Jonny to Pakistan in 2007 and highly recommend his company.

Year of the dragon brings promise of change

2012-01-22T16:23:00.000-05:00

By Janet Davison, CBC News

In myths and fairytales, dragons may breathe fire and hold fair princesses captive until they can be rescued by their handsome heroes.

But when the dragon of Chinese astrology arrives with the Lunar New Year on Monday, the mythical creature will bring with it optimism and hope for better times ahead in 2012.
The dragon is the most auspicious and powerful of the 12 signs of the zodiac, one associated with high energy and prosperity. It's also the only mythical creature in the Chinese astrological stable that includes horses, rats and pigs. This year is considered especially auspicious because it is the year of the water dragon, something that happens once every 60 years.
"The dragon is a symbol of power and superior control," says Stephen Chu, president of the Mississauga Chinese Business Association, west of Toronto. "It's not evil. The dragon is a good symbol."
It also represents change and mobility.
"Dragons seem to be a change year, and usually from bad to good," says Paul Ng, a feng shui master in Richmond Hill, Ont., north of Toronto.
"In general, in the dragon years, the world economy does a little better."
Given how the world economy has been getting along, that wouldn't be a bad thing.
And with this year of the dragon coming after 2011's year of the rabbit, a symbol which Ng says usually represents instability, he sees the potential for an economic rebound similar to the pattern that emerged in 1987 (a bad — and rabbit — year), followed by a better (and dragon) year in 1988.
In Chinese mythology and folklore, there are many dragon tales.
Ng points to a time about 5,000 years ago, when tribes were fighting one another. The tribe of the Yellow Emperor succeeded, and combined the totems of other tribes, including the phoenix, the lion, the snake, the scorpion and the tiger, to form the dragon totem.
"So that's why when you look at the dragon claws, they are like claws of the lions and tigers mixed.
"The tail is almost like a scorpion. The body is like a snake being flexible … and the head would be just like the big lion head," says Ng.
"In other words, they combined totems of many powerful animals into one that flies like the fiery bird, the phoenix. It's quite a mixed basket. It incorporates the most powerful things of all kinds of creatures into one. That's why people love it, because if you're a dragon, you're everything."
So much so that people throughout much of Asia often do what they can to make sure are married or have a child during a year of the dragon.
Officials expect a baby boom not only in China and Taiwan, but in other Asian countries and territories that observe the New Year festival, including Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Macau.
People shop for good luck charms on the eve of the celebration of the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong Sunday. (Vincent Yu/Associted Press)Most have extremely low birth rates, reflecting a preference among young couples in these prosperous or rapidly developing societies to choose quality of life and career advancement over the responsibilities of child rearing.
But this year of the dragon looks to be breaking the mould.
A poll in Hong Kong showed that 70 per cent of couples there wanted children born under the dragon sign, while South Korea, Vietnam and China all report similar enthusiasm about dragon-year childbearing.
The year of the dragon has long proved to be an impetus for births. In 2000, the last dragon year, the rate increased to 1.7 children per Taiwanese woman of childbearing age from 1.5 the previous year.
A second child had not been in the plans for Austin Tseng, a 32-year-old office worker in Taipai, but she is now eagerly awaiting a new baby.
"I had thought one child was enough, but then comes the year of the dragon and I'm happy to have another one," Tseng said after an ultrasound check on her 20-week-old fetus.

U.S. seeks aboriginal help to halt drugs from Canada

2012-01-21T11:17:00.002-05:00

Federal law enforcement agencies will help tribal officers obtain equipment and training on aboriginal lands near the U.S.-Canadian border as part of the White House's newly released strategy for reducing the flow of illegal drugs and drug proceeds between the two countries.
Tribal officers also should be included in criminal intelligence sharing and inter-agency task forces, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy report released Friday.
"Drug smugglers have been known to seek out tribal jurisdictions in order to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States," said the report.

'Extinct' monkey still lives in Borneo

2012-01-21T11:09:00.000-05:00

Canadian scientist led team that spotted langur at mineral lick where animals congregate

A team of scientists has discovered the Grizzled Langur, thought to be extinct, living in Borneo. (Eric Fell)

A Canadian-led team of international scientists has rediscovered a rare species of monkey that was thought to be extinct in a region of Borneo where it was not known to previously live.
The finding was published Friday in the American Journal of Primatology.
Miller's Grizzled Langur (Presbytis hosei canicrus) belongs to the small primate genus Presbytis found in Borneo, Sumatra, Java and the Thai-Malay Peninsula.
In Borneo, the langur was thought to have lived in a small corner of the country's northeast, where its habitat has been ravaged by fires, human encroachment and conversion of land for agriculture and mining.
However, the research team found the langur in Wehea Forest in East Kalimantan, Borneo. The 38,000- hectare pristine rainforest is home to at least nine known species of non-human primates, including the Bornean orangutan and gibbon. East Kalimantan is a challenging place to do research given its remote location, said Stephanie Spehar of the University of Wisconsin, adding that the discovery was possible due to the help of local partners.
"Discovery of P.h. canicrus was a surprise since Wehea Forest lies outside of this monkey's known range. Future research will focus on estimating the population density for P.h. canicrus in Wehea and the surrounding forest," said lead researcher Brent Loken, of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
"Concern that the species may have gone extinct was first raised in 2004, and a search for the monkey during another expedition in 2008 supported the assertion that the situation was dire," he said.
The team confirmed that P.h. canicrus exists by setting up cameras at mineral licks where animals congregate.
"It was a challenge to confirm our finding as there are so few pictures of this monkey available for study," said Loken. "The only description of Miller's Grizzled Langur came from museum specimens. Our photographs from Wehea are some of the only pictures that we have of this monkey."
While the finding confirms the monkey still exists, it remains one of the world's most endangered primates, said Loken.
CBC news

Malawian women protest after attacks for wearing pants, miniskirts

2012-01-20T11:47:00.000-05:00

(CNN) -- Malawian women protested Friday to demand an end to attacks on those who were stripped naked on the streets for wearing pants, leggings and miniskirts, instead of dresses.
Street vendors accused women of defying cultural norms and attacked them this week in Lilongwe and Blantyre, two of the nation's largest cosmopolitan centers.
"They beat them up and stripped them naked, claiming they did not follow the tradition," said Seodi White, a rights activist and protest organizer. "Attacking women in trousers is an outrage. We are a democracy, they're taking us back to the dark ages."
Protesters wore pants, miniskirts and leggings in a show of solidarity as they gathered to condemn the attacks.
Others wore white T-shirts that said: "Today we buy your merchandize, tomorrow you strip us naked!" Written in the local Chichewa language, the words were a reference to the vendors carrying out the attacks, organizers said.
"Women have a right to wear what they want," White said by phone from a protest in the commercial capital of Blantyre. "This is an embarrassment to our nation and an outright contempt for women."
Crowds chanted, "we are strong, we are strong," in the background as they demanded an end to the attacks.
Protesters met in closed spaces to avoid confrontations, she said, with her group gathering at a hall with supporters of both sexes.
The attacks have drawn the attention of the nation's president, who ordered police to arrest anyone attacking women over their attire.
In a speech on state media, President Bingu wa Mutharika warned the perpetrators to stop the attacks, saying women have a right to wear what they want.
Malawi banned women from wearing miniskirts and trousers during decades of dictatorship, but repealed the law in 1994 when the nation adopted multiparty democracy, White said.
Attacks on women wearing pants have occurred sporadically in other African nations as well, including Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Malawi guarantees gender equality in its constitution, but disparities remain in almost all aspects including education, employment and political power, according to human rights groups.
"Like a lot of Africa, there is a culture of instilling fear in women because people know they are voiceless even though they are guaranteed equality on paper," said Faustace Chirwa, executive director of Malawi based National Women's Lobby Group.
Chirwa blamed the attacks on young men frustrated with the system who were venting their anger on women because they were easy targets.
"A lot of men in Africa believe they can dictate what women can do," she said. "We need tougher laws to protect women."
Chirwa said the Friday initiative is a step for women in Malawi to regain their constitutional rights

New Logo

2012-01-15T20:15:00.004-05:00

My logo has now been changed on both my website and blog.
Comments most welcomed.

"Mountain Kingdoms Of The Himalaya"

2012-01-15T20:08:00.001-05:00

January 14-2010

Featured on Website and Life Section of local newspaper regarding mulimedia presentation at the Central Forum. The topic "Mountain Kingdoms Of The Himalaya"

Canadian Association For Photographic Art

2011-12-15T17:30:00.000-05:00

The winning photos for the annual digital competition are included in the winter edition of Canadian Camera

An Assault on the Amazon

2011-11-24T17:47:00.004-05:00

Xingu National Park, Brazil
By LEÃO SERVA
In 1888, Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery — a profound moral stain for a nation that prides itself today on being a multiracial democracy.
During the long 19th-century struggle against slavery, at a time when abolitionists in Britain were protesting the forced transfer of millions of Africans from their homelands, Brazilian leaders denounced the global abolitionist movement for interfering in the country’s internal affairs.
More than a century later, the same right to noninterference in internal affairs is again being invoked, this time by the agribusiness interests defending Brazil’s right to strip and burn what remains of the planet’s tropical rainforests.
Brazil did not ban slavery for moral or ethical reasons. It did so because the emergence of capitalist manufacturing made slavery more expensive and inefficient than wage labor. But today, there is no attempt to rethink an economic model based on destroying forests — and emitting greenhouse gases — to produce and export livestock and minerals.
On the contrary, Brazilian agribusiness, thanks to powerful congressional representation and the neglect of the executive branch, is pushing for a new forestry law that would condemn vast areas of rainforest to extermination.
The law, currently under consideration by a committee in Brazil’s Senate, would represent an ecological calamity.
The Amazon region, which seemed infinite only a few decades ago, is now facing the prospect of extinction. Grim scientific prognoses have come to pass in the form of disasters like the unthinkable droughts of 2005 and 2010 and the great floods of 2009. And in the last two years, the country has been plagued by a record number of forest fires, which not only reduce the forest area but also dry out the air and expose even more areas to the risk of fire.
That’s what happened with the Xingu National Park, in the state of Mato Grosso, in the center of the country, where more than 10,000 forest fires were recorded in 2010. Preliminary statistics indicate that as much as 10 percent of its forest area may have been destroyed in the last two years.
In only a few minutes, one such fire completely destroyed the Kisedje village where, a few years before, the supermodel Gisele Bündchen and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio explored the rainforest and showed their support for river preservation.
When Xingu National Park was established in 1961, its founders placed the headwaters of the rivers outside the park’s boundaries. At the time, nobody suspected that the forests could be destroyed. But in only 50 years, the impossible has come to pass: almost 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed and even more has been severely degraded.
The park, home to Brazil’s first large Indian reservation, was meant to project an idealized image of a nation able to protect ethnic diversity; today it is evidence of the country’s incapacity to protect its natural heritage.
Xingu has become a green island surrounded by soybean farms and cattle ranches. The process has made the area’s climate hotter and drier. This has created fires incomprehensible to the Indians, whose ancient culture depends on agriculture by means of controlled fires. But they no longer have any control. “Fire escapes now. It doesn’t stop,” Chief Auaulukumã, the leader of the Waura Indians, one of 16 ethnic groups who live in the park, told me in September.
The burning of the forest has a profound impact on the Indians’ lives. “The forest is our supermarket, where we find everything: wood for building our houses, thatch for our roofs, sticks to make arrows, fruit and animals for our food,” Chief Auaulukumã said. “And it’s all getting farther and farther away because the fires are killing the forest near our village.”
Projections that seemed apocalyptic at the end of the 1980s — that the forest would disappear by 2030 — are now coming true. According to the World Wildlife Fund, at current rates of deforestation, 55 percent of the Amazon rainforest could be gone by 2030.
Meanwhile, government officials in Brasília are on the verge of slashing government programs to recover damaged forests and preserve existing ones. The congressional majority, representing the agribusiness elite, accuses the environmental movement of being subservient to foreign interests and of trying to reduce the competitiveness of Brazilian commodities.
Like the attacks on abolitionists more than a century ago, the criticism of outside interference in Brazil’s affairs is today being cynically used to protect an immoral law.
The confrontation is paralyzing the country and delaying the adoption of laws and practices that would permit sustainable development and economic growth.
Back then, political paralysis delayed the end of slavery by decades. Now it is allowing the destruction of the last great equatorial forest on the planet, with consequences for Chief Auaulukumã and the Indians of Xingu but also for temperatures and rainfall throughout Brazil and across the region.
It’s history repeating itself, the second time as tragedy.

Leão Serva is a journalist and a former editor in chief of Diário de São Paulo. This essay was translated by Benjamin Moser from the Portuguese.

In Focus

2011-11-19T09:27:00.005-05:00

The Atlantic In Focus with Alan Taylor has some spectacular photographs of Bhutan and the royal wedding.
Last month, Bhutan celebrated the wedding of monarch Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth Druk Gyalpo ("Dragon King"), to 21-year-old commoner Jetsun Pema, now Druk Gyal-tsuen ("Dragon Queen") of Bhutan.

Bhutanese shopkeepers prepare a large banner of King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck and future Queen Jetsun Pema, before hanging it on their storefront in the capital of Thimphu, Bhutan, on October 12, 2011. Copyright by (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Eldertreks

2011-11-17T09:21:00.000-05:00

Eldertreks 2012-2013 Brochure is now out and I have several images inside including the cover photo.

Altitude sickness worst in Ladakh

2011-11-10T09:05:00.000-05:00

Scientists have discovered the worst place in the world for altitude sickness is Ladakh, a region on the Indian border with China and Tibet.
Situated between the Himalaya and the Kunlun mountain range, this high-altitude desert attracts thousands of adventure travellers every year, but scientists have issued a warning that this region is the worst in the world for altitude sickness. The warning comes after the largest study on altitude sickness was published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Researchers assessed more than 1,300 people who planned trips to mountainous regions which included at least three days hiking above 4,000m, and sleeping over-night above 3,500m.
Travellers were assessed for their vulnerability to altitude sickness prior to their trip – through a series of tests that mimicked the effects of high altitude on breathing and heart rate – and their results were compared with their actual experience when they returned.
Results of the study found that Ladakh presented the biggest threat, though scientists were not able to determine why, with no explainable links to the climate or difficulty of the terrain. This is the first study of its kind to suggest that there could be an association between geographical location and the likelihood of altitude sickness.
Common symptoms of altitude illness include headache, nausea, fatigue and dizziness, and in some cases swelling of tissue in the brain or lungs. Exercising at high-altitude can result in the respiratory system failing to keep pace with the demands of the body, triggering involuntary gasps for air and a feeling of suffocation. Physical fitness is not a defence for altitude sickness, rather a conscious effort to breathe faster and deeper is necessary as part of acclimatisation.
Wanderlust

Xingu Photo Gallery now posted

2011-11-04T13:44:00.003-04:00

"Where Spirits Speak"

The ability to visit the Xingu Indian Reservation is contingent upon obtaining appropriate permits and a health certificate. My health certificate had to attest that I had all the necessary vaccinations needed, and that I had no contagious diseases. My certificate signed by a doctor said that I had been screened, and was immune to measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella. It also stated that I had a negative TB skin test.
It was also compulsory to have a yellow fever vaccination.
Within the remote reservations, however, FUNAI restricts visits to villages. The Indians live protected by the FUNAI agency (National Indian Foundation) and have the right to use their land as they wish, forbidding entrance to whoever has not been invited by the tribe. A large part of the travel price will go to the Indian community for making the project possible. It will be paid directly to the tribe's chief. A two day drive from Cuiabá takes you to the airport at Canarana, from here it is about a 55 minute flight to the Waura village.
Please view the links page on the web site for details about the companies that arranged my travel.

Xingu

2011-10-20T18:01:00.003-04:00

I have just returned from Brazil and spent time living with the Waura Indians.
I will be updating the web site very shortly with the photographs taken of these very special people.

CAPA 2011 Annual Digital Competition

2011-10-20T10:45:00.002-04:00

I was notified this morning by the "Canadian Association For Photographic Art" that I have won their annual digital competition. The themes were Shadow Play and Silhouette.
My entry was a photo taken at 6 a.m.on the Li River Guangxi China.

Bhutan's King Jigme weds in colourful ceremony

2011-10-15T17:37:00.000-04:00

13 October 2011
Bhutan's King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk has married his commoner bride in a lavish ceremony at a monastic fortress in the Himalayan nation.

King Jigme is widely revered in the remote kingdom of some 700,000 people.
Celebrations, which were broadcast live on state television, began at 0820 local time (0220 GMT) - a moment deemed auspicious by royal astrologers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15298438

Everest tour plane crash kills all 19 on board

2011-09-25T12:24:00.003-04:00

I had taken a similar flight almost one year ago today

By Deepak Adhikari (AFP)
KATHMANDU — A small plane taking tourists on a sightseeing trip around Mount Everest crashed into a hillside near the Nepalese capital Kathmandu on Sunday, killing all 19 people on board.
The Buddha Air Beechcraft plane, carrying 10 Indians, two Americans, one Japanese citizen and three local passengers, came down in heavy rain and fog at Godavari, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from Kathmandu.
The three Nepalese crew also died in the accident as the plane smashed into wooded slopes, leaving the fuselage broken into several pieces.
"All 19 people have died. The Buddha Air-103 was returning from a mountain flight when it crashed into Kotdada Hill," Bimlesh Lal Karna, head of the rescue department at Tribhuwan International Airport, told AFP.
Police spokesman Binod Singh said one person initially survived the crash but died in hospital.
"The rescue efforts have been hampered by heavy rain," he added, confirming the nationalities of the passengers.
Airport authorities on the ground lost contact with the plane at 7:30 am and it crashed minutes later.
"When we reached the crash site, we found the dead bodies scattered within 25 metres (yards) of the site which is surrounded by trees," Dip Shamsher Rana, a police officer who took part in the rescue, told AFP.
"The nearest road is 50 metres away. There was mangled remains of the aircraft which was broken into several pieces."
Witnesses told local television stations how the plane burst into flames on impact.
"The plane was flying very low. We were surprised. It crashed into the hill and there was a huge explosion," one man told the Avenues Television news channel.
Investigators scouring the accident site found the black box flight recorder several hours after the crash, and police said a probe was underway to establish the cause of the accident.
Buddha Air, a private airline based in Kathmandu, was not immediately available for comment.
The company offers a 8,240 rupee ($140) "Everest Experience" package, taking tourists from Kathmandu and flying them around the world's tallest mountain and surrounding peaks.
The Buddha Air website describes the Beechcraft as the "safest plane operating in the domestic sector".
It adds that early morning flights are scheduled to take advantage of better weather conditions before winds blow up snow plumes that can obscure the Himalayan panorama.
The one-hour flights are popular among tourists, and several companies offer daily trips to view the 8,848 metres (29,029 feet) Everest summit.
Aviation accidents are relatively common in Nepal, particularly during the summer monsoon when visibility is often poor.
In December last year, a Twin Otter plane carrying three crew and 19 passengers smashed into a mountainside shortly after taking off from a small airstrip 140 kilometres east of Kathmandu.
The passengers were mostly Bhutanese citizens on a religious tour of Nepal and had chartered the Tara Air plane to take them to a Buddhist holy site in the area.
In November last year a helicopter crashed near Mount Everest during a mission to rescue two stranded climbers, killing the pilot and an engineer.
Three months earlier, a plane headed for the Everest region crashed in bad weather killing all 14 people on board, including four Americans, a Japanese and a British national.
Nepal has only a limited road network and many communities in the mountains and hills are accessible only on foot or by air.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved

Race to rescue quake victims in India, Nepal and Tibet

2011-09-19T09:40:00.001-04:00

Rescue efforts are under way across isolated Himalayan regions in India, Nepal and Tibet after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck the area on Sunday.
The epicentre was the northern Indian state of Sikkim, where the Indian government says that at least 35 people have been killed.
But the relief effort there has been hampered by rainfall and landslides. It is feared that the toll could rise.
Several earthquakes hit the region this year, but none caused major damage.

Significant damage

"The situation doesn't look good," an official from the UN's disaster management team in Delhi told the Reuters news agency. "My feeling is the death toll and number of injured are going to increase."
Tremors were felt in the north-eastern Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura. They were also felt in regions of India: West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chandigarh and Delhi. Bangladesh and Bhutan also felt the quake.
One person was killed during a stampede as people panicked in a town in the eastern state of Bihar, and other deaths were reported near Darjeeling, in West Bengal.
Latest reports from Nepal say that at least six people have been killed with more than 100 injured. Officials say that significant structural damage has been caused to buildings in the east of the country.
In addition a landslide triggered by the quake has blocked transport along the highway which links the city of Dharan to the town of Dhankuta. Dharan was hit by a devastating quake 28 years ago.
In the capital Kathmandu, three people were killed when a wall at the British embassy collapsed. A budget debate in the country's parliament was suspended for 15 minutes when lawmakers fled the chamber as the entire building shook.
Just over the border in Tibet's Yadong County, just 40km (25 miles) from Sikkim, the earthquake caused hundreds of landslides disrupting traffic, telecommunications, power and water supplies.
Chinese authorities said relief supplies were on the way to the area.

Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year "Travel Photos Of The Decade"

2011-08-15T12:37:00.004-04:00

My image of a fisherman on the Li River Guangxi China was selected by Wanderlust "Travel Photo Of The Year" as one of their favourites from the last ten years.

The photo is featured in their "Ultimate Guide To Travel &Holiday Photography" "Travel Photos Of The Decade"

What is Canada becoming? Canada's tolerance misplaced?

2011-08-13T18:35:00.004-04:00

By Mahfooz Kanwar, For The Calgary Herald.

Mahfooz Kanwar, PHD, is a Sociologist and an Instructor Emeritus at Mount Royal College. This very wise, educated gentleman is a first generation Canadian whose parents immigrated from Pakistan. He is also Muslim, but truly understands what it is to be Canadian first, even though he and his parents are from another country.
Canada's Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is getting flak from the usual suspects, but he deserves praise instead. Recently, Kenney pointed that out while at a meeting in Toronto. Members of Canada's Pakistani community called on him to make Punjabi one of Canada's official languages. It makes me angry that such an idea would enter the minds of my fellow and former countrymen, let alone express them to a Minister of the Crown.
A few months ago, I was dismayed to learn that Erik Millett, the principal of Belleisle School in Springfield, N.B.., limited playing our national anthem because the families of a couple of his students objected to it.
As a social scientist, I oppose this kind of political correctness, lack of assimilation of new immigrants to mainstream Canada, hyphenated-Canadian identity, and the lack of patriotism in our great nation.
Increasingly, Canadians feel restricted in doing things the Canadian way lest we offend minorities. We cannot even say Merry Christmas without fear of causing offence. It is amazing that 77 per cent of the Canadian majority are scared of offending 23 per cent of minorities. We have become so timid that the majority cannot assert its own freedom of expression. We cannot publicly question certain foreign social customs, traditions and values that do not fit into the Canadian ethos of equality. Rather than encouraging new immigrants to adjust to Canada, we tolerate peculiar ways of doing things. We do not remind them that they are in Canada, not in their original homelands.
In a multicultural society, it is the responsibility of minorities to adjust to the majority. It does not mean that minorities have to totally amalgamate with the majority. They can practice some of their cultural traditions within their homes -- their backstage behaviour. However, when outside of their homes, their front stage behaviour should resemble mainstream Canadian behaviour. Whoever comes to Canada must learn the limits of our system. We do not kill our daughters or other female members of our families who refuse to wear hijab, niqab or burka which are not mandated by the Qur'an anyway. We do not kill our daughters if they date the "wrong" men. A 17-year-old Sikh girl should not have been killed in British Columbia by her father because she was caught dating a Caucasian man.
We do not practice the dowry system in Canada, and do not kill our brides because they did not bring enough dowry. Millions of female fetuses are aborted every year in India, and millions of female infants have been killed by their parents in India and China. Thousands of brides in India are burned to death in their kitchens because they did not bring enough dowry into a marriage. Some 30,000 Sikhs living abroad took the dowries but abandoned their brides in India in 2005. This is not accepted in Canada.
In some countries, thousands of women are murdered every year for family or religious honour. We should not hide behind political correctness and we should expose the cultural and religious background of these heinous crimes, especially if it happens in Canada. We should also expose those who bring their cultural baggage containing the social custom of female circumcision. I was shocked when I learned about two cases of this barbaric custom practiced in St. Catharines, Ont. a few years ago.
I have said it on radio and television, have written in my columns in The Calgary Herald, and I have written in my latest book, Journey to Success, that I do not agree with the hyphenated identity in Canada because it divides our loyalties. My argument is that people are not forced to come to Canada and they are not forced to stay here. Those who come here of their own volition and stay here must be truly patriotic Canadians or go back.
I am a first-generation Canadian from Pakistan. I left Pakistan 45 years ago. I cannot ignore Pakistan, because it is the homeland of my folks, but my first loyalty should be and is to Canada. I am, therefore, a proud Canadian, no longer a Pakistani-Canadian. I am a Canadian Muslim, not a Muslim Canadian.
I do not agree with those Canadians who engage in their fight against the system in their original countries on Canadian soil. They should go back and fight from within. For example, some of the Sikhs, Tamil Tigers, Armenians and others have disturbed the peace in Canada because of their problems back home. Recently, a low-level leader of MQM, the Mafia of Pakistan, came to Canada as a refugee and started to organize public rallies to collect funds for their cause in Pakistan. On July 18, 2007, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that MQM is a terrorist group led by London-based Altaf Hussain, their godfather. As a member in the coalition government of Pakistan, this terrorist group is currently collaborating with the Taliban in Pakistan. That refugee was deported back to Pakistan..
Similarly, I disagree with newcomers who bring their religious baggage here. For example, Muslims are less than two per cent of the Canadian population, yet in 2004 and 2005, a fraction of them, the fundamentalists, wanted to bring Sharia law to Canada. If they really want to live under Sharia, they should go to the prison-like countries where Sharia is practiced.
I once supported multiculturalism in Canada because I believed it gave us a sense of pluralism and diversity. However, I have observed and experienced that official multiculturalism has encouraged convolution of the values that make Canada the kind of place people want to immigrate to in the first place
Here, we stand on guard for Canada, not for countries we came from. Like it or not, take it or leave it, standing on guard only for Canada is our national maxim. Remember, O Canada is our national anthem which must not be disregarded by anybody, including the teacher in Springfield, N. B.

Mahfooz Kanwar, PHD, Is A Sociologist and an Instructor Emeritus at Mount Royal College

"Grease Devil" panic grips rural Sri Lanka, at least three killed

2011-08-12T09:14:00.001-04:00

By Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal, Reuters

COLOMBO — Panic over nighttime assaults blamed on "grease devils" has struck rural Sri Lanka, leading to the deaths of at least three people this week and prompting women to stay indoors and men to arm themselves, police and local media said.

Historically, a "grease devil" was a thief who wore only underwear and covered his body in grease to make himself difficult to grab if chased. But lately, the "grease devil" has become a nighttime prowler who frightens and attacks women.
"The story we hear is he comes and bites young women's necks and breasts. Despite several complaints, the police have failed to act on that and in fact in two places have released the culprits," a 36-year old airline ticketing agent from the Hill Country district of Matale said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting authorities.
Two men whom wary villagers identified as "grease devils" were hacked to death on Wednesday by a mob in the central Sri Lankan village of Kotagala, in a tea-growing area, police said.
A 22-year-old man hunting for a "grease devil" in the jungle died after accidentally stepping an electric trap set for wild boars, the Tamil-language newspaper Sudar Oli said on Friday.
At least 30 incidents have been reported across seven districts from Sri Lanka's east coast and across its tea-growing regions in the central Hill Country. Police have arrested 47 people since last month.
"There is no grease devil as such. It is a human among us with an ulterior motive of stealing or to engage in some illegal activities," police spokesman Prashantha Jayakody said.
Jayakody also said some people with "mental disorders" were posing as grease devils.
The panic has nonetheless been enough to prompt men to arm themselves with clubs and sticks to stand guard at night, and women to stay at home. The public fury over the scare even prompted rioting at a police station.
On Tuesday in the eastern village of Ottamavadi, six people including two police officers were injured in a melee after angry residents stormed a police station after the release of a suspected "grease devil."
Traditional Sri Lankan beliefs about spirits and devils remain strong in some areas, where invocations upon them to cure illnesses or curse enemies are common. Traditional devil masks remain a favourite tourist souvenirs.
State TV stations have been broadcasting a picture of what police says is one suspect, whose face is covered in white greasepaint, with the message that the grease devil is not real.

© Copyright (c) Reuters

China restores ancient Tibet ruins

2011-08-10T08:27:00.001-04:00

The Chinese government is investing $8.9m to restore and preserve the ancient Guge Kingdom ruins in Tibet.
It is estimated that the project will be completed in five years making the 10th Century site more resilient to natural disasters.
Increased rainfall in the dry region over the past decades caused cracks on the walls and landslides.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14469781

Remote Brazilian tribe threatened by 'drug dealers'

2011-08-08T17:00:00.002-04:00

Guards in the Brazilian jungle protecting a tribe of Indians who have had no contact with the outside world say their guard post has been attacked by armed men.

Brazil's Indian Affairs Department said a guard post in Acre state had been surrounded by suspected drug dealers.

It said it feared the men wanted to traffic drugs from Peru into Brazil through the area where the tribe lives.
The tribe was first photographed from the air three years ago. The five people manning the post said they were surrounded.
"They're coming at us from three sides, we have nowhere to run," Carlos Lisboa Travassos, the head of the Brazilian government's Isolated Indians Department, told local media via e-mail.
The post is on the shores of the Xinane river, just 23km (15 miles) from the Peruvian border, but more than 200km from the nearest Brazilian city.

It was set up by Brazil's Indian Affairs Department (Funai) to protect the tribe of Panoan Indians after they were first filmed from the air in 2008.

Mr Travassos said he was worried about the tribe. He said that on Saturday the guards found a rucksack belonging to one of the armed men which contained a broken arrow, most likely seized from members of the tribe.

Broken arrow

"Arrows are like the identity card of uncontacted Indians," said Mr Travassos.
"This situation could be one of the biggest blows we have ever seen in the protection of uncontacted Indians in recent decades."
It is not clear why the armed gang had attacked the post, but local media say the men, believed to be from Peru, could be crossing through the tribe's territory while smuggling drugs into Brazil.
There are also reports that they could be trying to clear the area to grow coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived.
Anthropologist Terri Aquino, who is one of the five people at the Xinane post, said they had received no back-up from the police or the army, but that a group of Ashaninka and Kaxinawa Indians had joined them to help defend the territory.

The post is in a remote part of Acre, near the Peruvian border

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14451878

Leopard attack caught by photographers

2011-07-23T09:50:00.002-04:00

The UK Guardian features a series of images showing a leopard attacking a forestry official after the animal had wandered into an Indian village and mauled several people.

Nepal to re-measure Mount Everest to end China row

2011-07-20T09:51:00.003-04:00

Nepal has ordered a new survey of Mount Everest to end the "confusion" over the exact height of the world's tallest mountain, a government spokesman has said.
The official overall height of Everest is designated as 8,848m (29,029ft).
But China and Nepal have had a long-running disagreement over the height.
The Chinese have argued it should be measured by its rock height. Nepal said it should be measured by its snow height - which is four metres higher.
The world's highest mountain traverses the border of the two countries.
Last year the two sides agreed that Mount Everest should be recognised as being 8,848m tall.
But Nepal government spokesman Gopal Giri told AFP news agency that, during border talks between the two countries, Chinese officials often use the rock height.
"We have begun the measurement to clear this confusion. Now we have the technology and the resources, we can measure ourselves," Mr Giri said.
"This will be the first time the Nepal government has taken the mountain's height."
He said stations will be set up at three different locations using the global positioning system, and the task of measuring the peak would take two years.
Correspondents say that while thousands of people have climbed the mountain since the first ascent in 1953 by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, its exact height has been disputed ever since the first measurement was made in 1856.
The broadly-accepted height of 8,848m was first recorded by an Indian survey in 1955.
But geologists say that the estimates of both countries over the height of Mount Everest could be wrong.
They say that the mountain is becoming higher as India is gradually pushed beneath China and Nepal because of shifting continental plates.
In May 1999 an American team used GPS technology to record a height of 8,850m - a figure that is now used by the US National Geographic Society, although it has not been officially accepted by Nepal.

© Kieron Nelson 2011"Vanishing Cultures Photography"

Bhutan Royal Weddings

2011-07-19T09:38:00.001-04:00

This is the story of another royal wedding in October, 1951 in Paro. The wedding that made the world to discover Bhutan as the National Geographic published the wedding story of Prince Jigme Dorji Wangchuck and Ashi Kesang Choden Dorji.
The photos of the beautiful bride riding a caparisoned horse down the mountain followed by a brightly attired retinue, to meet her King was exotic, and had a fairy tale quality for a world which was out of a long war and needed to dream.
This occasion was perfect and, although Bhutanese people had no idea about this article, the country became known beyond the British and Indian spheres. The article also helped to shift the focus of attention from the King alone to the King and the Queen.
King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck (b. 1928) has just succeeded his father and the lady he was marrying was far from unknown to him. Her father Gongzim Sonam Tobgay Dorji(1896-1953), from Haa valley, was the Second King’s close assistant for external affairs, he was the Bhutanese agent in Kalimpong, and her grand-father Kazi Gongzim Ugyen Dorji (d.1917 ) was a trusted confident of the First King as well as the Bhutanese agent in Kalimpong . Her mother Mayum Chonying Wangmo Dorji also called Rani Chuni (1897-1994) was a strong woman and the sister of the then King of Sikkim Chogyal Tashi Namgyal (1914 -1963).
She was known for her religious deeds but also, like her husband, for her progressive view on education, like starting the Haa school as well as educating Bhutanese in Kalimpong. These family ties are illustrated by a wonderful 1935 New Year photo taken in Calcutta where the families are pictured together and the future Third King sits in the front row next to his future queen, respectively aged 6 and 4 years.
Ashi Kesang Choden Dorji (b. 1930) was educated at St Joseph Convent in Kalimpong, then at Loreto College in Darjeeling, and later went to England for further education in an exclusive school. The new queen therefore not only spoke perfect English but she also had a great grasp on hospitality rules and etiquette as well as a deep understanding of religion. Besides her charm and intelligence, these qualities were going to be invaluable in her new role. King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, the Father of Modern Bhutan, understood from the geo-political situation that if Bhutan wanted to survive as an independent nation, it had to open to the world.
In 1954, Queen Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck accompanied the King during their state visit to India and a strong friendship was born between Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the royal couple. It was followed by the historic visit to Bhutan in 1958 of the Indian PM and his daughter Indira Gandhi. These visits resulted in the ties with India being strengthened and in 1961 it became the first and foremost development partner.
In a span of ten years, the Queen gave birth to five children, and the heir to the throne was born in 1955. She was a great traveler and often visited her mother Mayum Chonying Wangmo at the Bhutan House in Kalimpong while upholding the name of Bhutan amongst her friends throughout the world and entertaining scores of visitors in Thimphu and Paro. She also strongly supported the King in his endeavor to establish a modern education system in the country, his development activities and Bhutan’s accession to the UN.
The queen’s kindness and élégance radiate throughout the numerous photos taken of her. She was a photographer’s delightat a time when print media ruled.
After the Third King’s prématuré death in 1972 and the coronation of their son Jigme Singye Wangchuck as the Fourth King in 1974, the Queen, who had a keen interest in the religious culture of Bhutan, dedicated more and more time to her religious practices and Works while still keeping contacts with her international friends and hosting important visitors.
Her religious devotion, encouraged by her mother Mayum Chonying Wangmo, made her the patron of many important religious masters, including His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche who presided over her annual rituals at Kyichu and Kuje temples for the prosperity of the King, the country and the people. She also sponsored religious public teachings by HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and many others important lamas. Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck supervised the restoration of numerous temples and chortens ad as early as 1961, she advised the Third King to protect and establish a Buddhist Institute at Semtokha Dzong, and in the early 80s, she influenced the establishment of a National Library. She generously sponsored the constructions of new temples such as Guru lhakhang at Kyichu, as well as the Demchog and Jamyang lhakhang in Punakha Dzong, the Kagongphursum and Zangdopelri in Kuje, amongst others. She also restores temples and established monastic schools in the true line of Buddhist Queens.
The chapter that Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck contributed in Brilliant Moon (pp.239-262) reflects her unfailing dedication to Buddhism and Bhutan.
Now, the Royal Grand Mother Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck still involves herself in cultural activities and was influential in the Dragon’s Gift exhibition which toured the world. With Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck, the Queen’s role in Bhutan was no more confined to being the head of the royal household, a Buddhist patron, and the consort of the King but had important public responsibilities. She empowered the Queen of Bhutan with an international stature. This is a role that the present Queen Mothers have perfectly endorsed, and which has been amplified by the development of the print, audio-visual and digital media in Bhutan and the world.
When in October 1988, His Majesty the 4th Druk Gyalpo Jigme Singye Wangchuck married Ashi Dorji Wangmo, Ashi Tshering Yangdon, Ashi Tshering Pem and Ashi Sangay Choden of the prestigious Zhabdrung lineage, the event did not make headlines around the world, let alone in Bhutan.
TV was not yet in Bhutan, and there was only one newspaper. The marriage was a traditional ceremony in Punakha, followed by lunch parties at Dechenchholing palace. Few at that time would have guessed the fantastic development of the media and the extraordinary influence the Queens were going to have in the country and beyond. Most of the Bhutanese had even never seen a picture of the Queens.
From 1998, with the opening of the country to TV channels, BBS, and internet, the outlook on the Queens has changed even if the respect of privacy is kept.
They are seen on the screen, walking, travelling throughout the country and talking to the people in the remotest corners of the kingdom. Their activities reverberate through Bhutan and the world in audio-visual form.
The Queens, like their predecessors, are devout Buddhist and have restored many religious buildings.They have built several landmarks such as the Khamsum Yulley Chorten in Punakha and the Druk Wangyal Chortens and temples at Dochula. They have also immersed themselves in social work and have become patrons of charities and cultural institutions which all have a website.
Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck is also an author who has greatly contributed to the history of Bhutan through her books. The Queens, now Queen Mothers, have a voice of their own and their voices are heard. They attend not only official functions but also international events where they represent Bhutan. Universally considered beautiful and charming, they are also empowered women who play a crucial role in the age of media supremacy to bring forth the image of Bhutan in the international arena and contribute to social awareness in the country.
Ashi Lemo, who walked from Kurtoe to Bumthang in 1902, was a woman of her time and the Queens who followed her played an increasing role as per time and circumstances. But nobody could have imagined even a year ago that when on May 20th, 2011, His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck announced his wedding, the news would be immediately tweeted throughout the world.

Reprint from
http://www.bhutantour.bt/bhutan-news/bhutan-royal-weddings.html

Why India can't feed her people

2011-07-17T10:36:00.001-04:00

By Rick Westhead

NEW DELHI—From the moment Mather left the south Indian state of Kerala, heading 2,500 kilometres north to New Delhi, he knew there was no time to waste.
In the back of his faded red transport truck were 27.2 metric tons of pineapple, ripened and ready for sale. With temperatures approaching 50 degrees, the fruit might as well have been ferried in a broiler. More than 20 per cent would be tossed aside by the time he arrived, fought over by cows, dogs and the children from nearby slums.
As much as 40 per cent of all the fruits, vegetables and food grains grown in India never make it to the market. The country wastes more grain each year than Australia produces, and more fruits and vegetables than the U.K. consumes.
Food is an all-consuming crisis here. Waste is only one facet. Agriculture, infrastructure, inflation, innovation and corruption are others. It is a scourge and challenge for this country of 1.2 billion people, which has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies with an 8-per-cent annual growth over the past decade.
And yet, 40 per cent of Indian children remain chronically malnourished. In some areas, the hunger-related statistics are startling. In the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, for instance, where UNICEF and other aid agencies run mobile feeding centres, two-thirds of children under five are malnourished — a rate that’s higher than most countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
In April 2010, reports surfaced that some children in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, were eating mud laced with silica, a raw material used to make glass and soap. The children were not officially classified as poor and were ineligible for official help, the Hindustan Times reported.
Today, there is less food available for each Indian resident that there was 30 years ago. In 2008, the most recent year for which statistics are available, India produced 436 grams of food grains per person per day, a drop from 445.3 in 2006.
Satyajit Majumdar, an economics professor at the Tata Institute of Social Studies in Mumbai, raised an alarm in a January report distributed by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania: “Before the situation worsens and we witness a civil war, it is better to feed the hungry citizens of this country.
Agriculture
In many parts of India, the rich loam that once ran 70 metres deep on farm fields is long gone, sapped of its nutrients after years of aggressive farming. As well, groundwater levels in 20 per cent of the country are described by the government as “critical” or “over-exploited.”
For about three decades, starting in the mid-1960s, India enjoyed a “Green Revolution” during which food no longer seemed a problem. In 1999, Indian farmers were growing 70 million tons of wheat, compared to 12 million in the early 1960s.
But the Green Revolution came with a cost: hybrid grains demand relatively huge amounts of water and fertilizers, and plunging groundwater levels and soil erosion are the result.
The agricultural sector, which employs more than half of Indians, lags behind the rest of the economy, growing about 2 per cent a year.
Shrinking too are the country’s farms as inherited land is split and split again among brothers. The average farm in India is now smaller than five acres, 50 per cent less than in 1947, when India gained its independence. Smaller plots — some the size of a basketball court — typically means smaller incomes.
And with meagre earnings, many small farmers can’t afford to invest in new technologies that would increase their productivity.
This year, Indian officials estimate, farmers will grow about 1,798 kilograms of food per hectare of farmed land, down 5 per cent from 2010.
The Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington predicts India’s agricultural output will actually fall by 30 per cent by 2080.
“We are at a crossroads,” says M. Hasan, a scientist at the India Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi. “Farmers are desperate and uneducated and water is so scarce because they have used it faster than it can be replenished. So now, they are using so much more pesticides, fertilizers and insecticides. It’s killing the earth.”
Inflation
In recent months, Thanks to a surge in oil and petrol prices and the rampant corruption and inefficiencies of the public welfare system, food prices have skyrocketed by 20 per cent, and many of the country’s poorest—the labourers who actually grow the grains — can’t afford to buy them.
Some farmers see no way out. Between 1997 and 2009, an estimated 200,000 Indian farmers committed suicide, buried under mountains of rising debt.
“It’s a double crisis,” said C.P. Chandrasekhar, a scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “There’s both falling food production and people who can’t afford to eat. It’s a tragedy.”
Innovation, Research and Development
India has a well-earned reputation as a breeding ground for innovation. Cities and remote villages teem with tales of ingenuity.
Just recently, Indian media have profiled an inventor who wheeled around Mumbai on a home-made, solar-powered scooter, an entrepreneur who has created a market for expensive writing paper made from elephant poop, and a group of university students who claim to have found a way to use the husks from coconuts to clean industrial spills in open water.
Yet stories about advances in the effort to solve India’s food crisis remain rare.
For one thing, young scientists simply aren’t interested.
“Agricultural research isn’t glamorous,” says Sunil Nath, dean of the biotechnology department at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. “In the summer when it’s so hot, you have to leave that air-conditioned lab and go out into the villages and fields. It takes willpower.”
Nath said his department receives about 400 applications per year from prospective students. The last time one was interested in pursuing an agriculture-related dissertation was in 1986.
“Students come in dreaming about winning a Nobel Prize; no one thinks you get that in agriculture,” he says.
While China pumps $3.5 billion into agricultural research — Chinese farmers grew 6.2 metric tons of rice per hectare in 2008, double India’s output — India’s spends a fraction of that.
In 2009, India spent about 0.6 per cent of its GDP on agriculture, down from 1.4 per cent in the 1980s. China, by contrast, spends 5 per cent.
“We do this half-hearted,” says Deepak Pintal, a professor at Delhi University. “We have lots of brick and mortar with 46 agricultural universities and 17 national research centres, but how many papers published in top journals? Hardly any.
“There’s an agricultural fatigue,” he continues. “We have nothing new to offer. Look at Canada, where every 100 kilometres there’s a granary. Don’t we know how to make new grain silos?”
Since 1996, India has built seven grain silos for a total of 20, says Sumit Bansal, an official with the Food Corporation of India, which distributes food stocks to regulated shops. Canada has 400 silos.
Infrastructure
Foreign big-box chains including Wal-Mart, U.K.-based Tesco, and France’s Carrefour all covet access to India’s $435-billion retail market and are anxious to expand beyond existing wholesaling practices. This may come with demands that they make investments in infrastructure to shore up electricity supplies and improve local roads.
This is, after all, a country where a 300-kilometre trip on roads near the capital can take eight hours.
And there’s a good chance the drive will be in the dark. Kumari Mayawati, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, recently promised improved electricity to her constituents, who struggle through extended power outages every day. In coming months, however, locals will have to navigate only 10 hours of blackouts each day.
A reliable power supply is partly what is scaring companies from developing improved refrigerated transport services which would help reduce spoilage.
“The lack of power is a huge challenge,” said Ravi Kannan, whose company Snowman Logistics operates 200 trucks at 16 locations in India. “You wouldn’t believe how much diesel we go through.”
While India currently has about 3,500 cold-storage facilities, it needs many more — enough to store an additional 10 million tons worth of food, according to a recent study by the consulting company KPMG.
Corruption
On a recent afternoon in Fazilka, a small, tight-knit community in western Punjab, piles of harvested grain sit in three-metre-tall mounds in a government holding facility.
The grain had been rotting outside on pine palettes, uncovered for at least several years.
Kapil Trikha, a local journalist, explains that this is not necessarily bad news for the local elected official.
“He owns a brewery where he makes country liquor, and once the grain starts rotting here and fermenting, he basically takes it for nothing,” says Trikha, a reporter with Day and Night, a Punjabi cable news channel. “We don’t have the best leadership.”
In October, newspapers reported that in Punjab and Haryana states, India’s traditional breadbasket, auditors had discovered as much as 67,000 tons of grain rotting under the sun. It became a national scandal.
Tarun Khanna, an economics professor at Harvard Business School, has a theory for why politicians here seem ambivalent towards increased agricultural research.
“Increasing investment in agriculture is the right thing for the country but they aren’t doing that because it’s not why they are in politics,” Khanna says. “The average Indian politician is there to milk the system. Even now, at a time when we’re facing a demographic albatross.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1026114--why-india-can-t-feed-her-people?bn=1

An arid city cries out for help

2011-07-10T10:30:00.001-04:00

By Ben Brown, Sunday Telegraph July 10, 2011

It is more like a city than a refugee camp. It sprawls for 50 kilometres and its population could soon be half a million. This is Dadaab, Africa's fastest-growing population centre -and all for the wrong reasons.
Drought and famine in the Horn of Africa are driving hungry and exhausted people from hundreds of kilometres around to this arid corner of northern Kenya in the hope of finding food, medicines and water. The crisis has led to international agencies declaring an emergency and appealing for funds.
There are not nearly enough tents. Emaciated refugees use branches and scraps of plastic as makeshift shelters in attempts to keep out winds that whip up choking clouds of red dust. On the parched earth where it has barely rained for two years, the carcasses of animals lie everywhere: dried-out pastures have become the graveyards.
Livestock are everything to people in this part of Africa -when the animals start to die, so do the humans. Dadaab might seem like a vision of hell and yet, day after day, refugees flock here from Somalia -trekking with their families through barren lands for up to a month.
"We had no choice but to leave our homes," said Aden Issack Ibrahim as he walked along a dusty road to the camp, an exhausted child upon his shoulders. "The journey has been too tiring, we were chased by wild animals. It was terrifying."
Ibrahim was one of 30 people who left Sakow, their village in Somalia. The children were barefoot, clutching empty water canisters. Between them, the villagers had only a handful of possessions, including a single live chicken.
"Our children haven't eaten for days," he said. "We are tired and hungry. We are begging for help from the UN, from anyone in a position of power."
He said his village had no future. It had become an arid wasteland like so much of Somalia, where the rains have failed two years running and famine may not be far away. The twin curses of drought and endless civil war convinced them they had no choice but to leave.
There are harrowing stories of people who have made the journey to Dadaab. Some are raped and robbed along the way, others are chased by hyenas. One woman had six children, all of them too frail to walk. She was determined to get them to the camp, so she carried them two at a time, shuttling back and forth.
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

$20 billion! Temple's secret vaults yield treasure

2011-07-05T17:42:00.002-04:00

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India — Investigators plan to pry open the final vault hidden deep under a centuries-old Indian Hindu temple as police guarded round the clock the shrine where billions of dollars worth of treasure has been discovered.
Over the last week a seven-member team of investigators has broken into five of the six secret subterranean vaults piled high with jewels that have lain untouched for hundreds of years.
Onlookers and devotees thronged the shrine in the bustling center of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of India's southern Kerala state, as officials said treasure worth more than $20 billion had been found — more than India's education budget.
Sacks filled with diamonds were piled next to tons of gold coins and jewelry, media reported, in the vaults of the 16th century Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple, the royal chapel of the former rulers of Travancore, now part of Kerala state.
"The current market value of the articles found so far by the committee members would be roughly 900 billion rupees ($20.2 billion)," one temple official who was not authorized to speak to the media told Reuters.
Investigators searched the vaults to draw up an inventory of the riches because of worry about security but they had no idea of the amount of treasure they would find.
Investigators have been unwilling to disclose the official amount partly because of the ambiguity involved in valuing the priceless jewels and gold coins by weight.
As estimates of the treasure's worth rise, a fierce debate is growing regarding what to do with the discovery, in a country where 450 million people live in poverty.
Leaders of the Hindu community want the wealth to be invested in the temple, while many intellectuals, including former Supreme Court judge Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer have suggested it should be used for the public good.
The government has said it would adhere to the Supreme Court's ruling on ownership of the treasure found in the temple, which is still controlled by the royal family unlike other temples in Kerala which are managed by the government.
The vaults were searched after a lawyer petitioned the country's top court to order the government to take over the temple as it did not have adequate security.
Several temples in India have billions of dollars worth of wealth as devotees donate gold and other precious objects as gifts to spiritual or religious institutions that run hospitals, schools and colleges.

Thailand wants Buddha tattoo ban for tourists

2011-07-02T14:04:00.000-04:00

Culture minister says tattoos deemed 'fashionable' by visitors seen by many Thais as offensive and disrespectful.
Tourists visiting Thailand should be barred from getting culturally insensitive Buddhist tattoos, the culture ministry says.
Niphit Intharasombat, the culture minister, said residents have complained that tattoo parlours are etching sacred images of Buddha and other religious images on to the skin of non-Buddhist visitors.
"Foreigners see these tattoos as fashion," Niphit said on the ministry's website.
They do not think of respecting religion, or they may not be aware that these tattoos can be offensive, he added.
Thailand is mostly Buddhist, and Buddha statues and images are considered sacred objects of worship.
Niphit said the culture ministry had asked Thai tattoo parlours to halt the activity.
According to the official news agency, NNT, he also asked provincial governors to "inspect tattoo studios and seek their co-operation".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/02/thailand-ban-tourists-buddha-tattoo

When Paradise is Not Enough

2011-06-27T13:20:00.002-04:00

48 Bali Residents Take Their Own Life January –June 2011
Bali Post reports that suicide rates in Bali remain high, with 48 Balinese dying at their own hand between January 1 to June 2011.
The face of suicide in Bali reveals:
• 83% of all suicides thus far in 2011 were by hanging.
• Of the 48 who committed suicide: 9 were from the capital of Denpasar; 7 from Buleleng in North Bali; 3 from Tabanan; 1 from Gianyar; 2 from Klungkung; 8 from Bangli; 7 from Karangasem; 7 from Badung; and 4 from Jembrana.
• After hanging, the second most preferred form of self-annihilation was by drinking acid followed by drowning in lakes or wells.
• Authorities blame prolonged states of depression due to chronic illness or economic difficulties as the motivation for most suicides.
http://www.balidiscovery.com/

Stolen Inuit remains returned to Labrador

2011-06-23T09:23:00.000-04:00

The remains of 22 Inuit removed from gravesites in 1927 and taken to the U.S. were reburied Wednesday at a ceremony in northern Labrador.
American researcher William Duncan Strong took the remains from the abandoned community of Zoar and brought them to the Chicago Field Museum more than 80 years ago.
More than 75 people attended the reburial.
"What we are doing today is a good thing. What was done 84 years ago was immoral, disrespectful and disgraceful,” said Johannes Lampe, Nunatsiavut's minister of culture.
"This is a happy day in heaven for these, our ancestors. We have to welcome back the wandering spirits of these remains.”
For John Terriak and his brother, it's a chance to bury the great-grandfather they never knew in the settlement they'd heard of as children.
"To find your ancestors is important to me and I didn't like the idea that someone dug him up, like he's an animal,” he said.
Helen Robins, who works at the Chicago Field Museum where the remains had been held, said the museum was aware of the issue.
"We know that [William Duncan Strong] knew it was wrong, and the institution knew it was wrong because they tried to cover it up and kept it secret...so they had a real awareness the community was unhappy," said Robins.
There are still more Inuit remains exhumed from different gravesites, waiting to be returned to Labrador.

Tibet closes its doors to foreigners... Again

2011-06-16T09:04:00.000-04:00

Tibet has barred foreign travellers from entering the Chinese occupied region for the second time this year, restricting access until late July
The ban has been imposed to mark the 60th anniversary of China's rule over the Himalayan region, which is scheduled to last until 26 July. Chinese citizens have not been included in the ban.
One travel website based in Tibet's administrative capital, Lhasa, was quoted by the Global Times newspaper as saying they would not accept visitors holding foreign passports until mid-August due to “safety concerns.”
The plans have been announced amidst years of tension in Tibet, where many of its citizens continue to raise concerns about the presence of Chinese rule impinging on Tibetan culture and religious practice.
In 2008, Lhasa experienced severe political unrest as anti-government protests, demonstrations and riots took place, spreading to neighbouring provinces with significant Tibetan populations.
Following the unrest, foreigners were banned from visiting the region for over a year and security has been increased.
Earlier this year, overseas visitors were barred from entering the region, as March marked the third anniversary of the Tibetan uprising. However, travel agencies said that foreigners have been able to visit since April.
When allowed to enter, foreigners are required to carry a special permit alongside a Chinese visa, and also have to travel in tour groups.
China says living standards in the region have increased dramatically since the violence in 2008, but a region in the south western province of Sichuan experienced unrest earlier this year, after a Tibetan monk self-immolated and died in an apparent anti-government protest.

Potala Palace from Jokhang roof

2011-06-15T11:23:00.008-04:00

Before travelling to Tibet I had viewed many photographs of The Potala Palace.
Things have changed in Tibet especially Lhasa.
Many areas have been demolished and new construction is happening everywhere.
I wanted to photograph the Potala from the roof of the Jokhang but access for a glimpse of it was under construction.
I asked my guide if he knew of a way up, or around the construction.
He talked to one of the workers who said he would be happy to accommodate my request.

Chinese Truck Driver Sentenced to Death Over Accident

2011-06-12T10:46:00.001-04:00

By MICHAEL WINES
Published: June 8, 2011
BEIJING — An ethnic Han truck driver who killed an ethnic Mongolian herder in a hit-and-run accident last month, sparking Inner Mongolia’s largest protests in 20 years, was sentenced to death on Wednesday by a court in Xilinhot, the area of Inner Mongolia where the accident occurred.
The swift resolution of the case reflected Chinese leaders’ deep concern about ethnic tensions in China, where Muslim Uighurs and Buddhist Tibetans also have mounted violent protests against perceived injustices under rule by the Han, by far China’s largest ethnic group.
Inner Mongolia, in north central China, is a region separate from Mongolia, which is an independent nation that borders both Russia and China.
The driver, Liu Lindong, was sentenced by the Intermediate People’s Court in Xilinhot after a six-hour trial attended by 160 people, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. A second driver who was in the truck’s cab at the time, Lu Xiangdong, was found guilty of homicide and sentenced to life in prison, Xinhua reported. Two others, both Han, received three-year sentences after being convicted of obstructing justice for helping the two drivers escape the accident scene.
The charges stem from an incident on May 10 in which Mr. Liu ran over a herder named Mergen who, like most Mongols, used a single name. Mergen was among other Mongols who were blocking a road to protest environmental damage by trucks hauling coal from Mongolian mines that have only lately become a major source of coal for Chinese power plants.
Environmentalists say the trucks and attendant pollution are ravaging the delicate grasslands that sustain Mongolia’s nomadic herders. More broadly, the trucks symbolize the low-boil discontent that some Mongolians are said to feel about their marginal power in a Han-ruled nation.
Police officers said that Mr. Liu dragged Mergen’s body nearly 500 feet before stopping. Outrage over the accident, as well as the death of a second Mongolian in a battle with Han Chinese coal miners, led to six days of street protests last month by thousands in the Mongolian capital, Hohhot, and elsewhere.
The unrest is believed to have posed a particular challenge to Inner Mongolia’s Communist Party secretary, Hu Chunhua, who is regarded as a rising star in China’s party ranks. Mr. Hu has made a point of pledging that the government would ensure that justice would be done in the case.

'Gangster' monkeys removed from Cambodian temple

2011-06-05T09:44:00.001-04:00

PHNOM PENH - A gang of big, "sharp-toothed" monkeys have been caught at a Phnom Penh temple as part of a crackdown on the unruly animals after a spate of attacks on visiting tourists, a zoo official said on Friday.
"Phnom Penh authorities asked us to remove the violent monkeys from the temple... The guards there said many visitors had been bitten by big monkeys," Nhek Rattanak Pich, director of Phnom Tamao Zoo and rescue centre, told AFP.
Veterinarians from the zoo tranquilised 13 macaques at the Wat Phnom pagoda on Tuesday and Friday and the operation is set to continue.
The temple is crowded with some 200 semi-tame macaques who occasionally cause havoc when they stray towards nearby homes and hotels, tearing tiles off roofs, destroying laundry and making off with items left lying around.
Cambodian police have described the macaques as "gangster" monkeys in the past after a failed attempt to trap them with eggs laced with sleeping pills. Authorities even put a $250 bounty on several of the animals’ heads.
A violent 20-kilogram (44-pound) monkey was shot dead in 2008 at the temple after it attacked visitors.
Pich said blood samples from the monkeys would be tested to check for diseases before the animals are sent either to the zoo or freed in remote forests near Tonle Sap lake, far away from the capital.
© Copyright (c) AFP

Apa Sherpa says farewell to Everest

2011-05-28T11:13:00.003-04:00

KATHMANDU: He conquered Mt Everest an incredible 21 times, making India's youngest Everest hero Arjun Vajpai say in admiration that Apa Sherpa could climb the world's highest peak blind-folded. But now, the Everest legend will hang up his climbing boots and grapple with pen and paper to write his memoirs instead of risking the dreaded Khumbu cough next year.
"This is my last Everest expedition," said 51-year-old 'super Sherpa' Apa Sherpa, who broke his own record this month by striding up to the 8848m peak for the 21st time on May 11 as part of the Eco Everest Expedition 2011 to exhort the world to prevent climate change. "I risked my life for my country. But now I am getting old and I leave my best wishes for the younger climbers."
Apa said he would have no regrets if a younger climber broke his record one day. Among the things he would try his hand at now would include trying to write a book to raise funds for the Apa Sherpa Foundation, the NGO he registered last year to share his good fortune with his village Thame, nestled among the Himalayan foothills. Also, the shy man who found it easier to scale mt Everest than give a public speech is now becoming a motivational speaker in the US, also to raise funds.
"The education system is poor in Nepal," he said. "I moved to the US so that my children could have a better education. My only regret is that the government never did anything for us. In other countries, when people return home after climbing Mt Everest, their governments give them promotions and other facilities. But in Nepal the government remained oblivious to us."
Apa, who began his illustrious career as a young porter for foreign trekkers, first summited Mt Everest in 1990 as part of an expedition that also included wellknown New Zealand mountain guide Rob Hall, who died in the Everest snow storm tragedy in 1996, and Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund Hillary.
He was ready to retire after his 17th ascent in 2007 but was persuaded by the Eco Everest Expedition to return to the mountain to create awareness about the perils of global warming, especially in the Himalayas, and to clean the mountain of the garbage left behind by climbers. With this expedition, the Eco Everest Expeditions have brought down nearly 14,000 kg of garbage, including the wreck of a helicopter. Asked if he had been invited to the White House by American President Barack Obama, he said his work in Nepal was more important.

Found in space: Satellite-red imaging locates the lost pyramids of Egypt

2011-05-26T10:26:00.001-04:00

By Rob Crilly, The Daily Telegraph
Seventeen lost pyramids and more than 1,000 tombs have been found in a new satellite survey of Egypt. Scientists at the University of Alabama also found 3,000 ancient settlements using a new technique of infra-red imaging.
The astonishing results have been confirmed by archaeologists with picks and shovels, who have located two of the pyramids found from space.
"I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the 'aha' moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found," Dr Sarah Parcak told the BBC. The team analysed images from satellites orbiting 400 miles above the Earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they could pinpoint objects less than a yard in diameter.
Infra-red imaging was then used to highlight different materials under the surface. Because the ancient Egyptians built houses from mud brick, which is much denser than surrounding soil, they left a clear fingerprint that the researchers could identify as tombs, pyramids or homes.
Dr Parcak believes many more buildings are buried deeper than those already spotted - even under the Nile.
"These are just the sites close to the surface. There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered with silt," she said.
Dr Parcak added: "Indiana Jones is old school, we've moved on from Indy, sorry Harrison Ford."
© Copyright (c) The Daily Telegraph

Royal wedding in October

2011-05-21T12:20:00.005-04:00

His Majesty and Jetsun Pema

(Photos from His Majesty's Facebook page)

His Majesty the King announced to the nation at the opening of the 7th session of parliament today that he will marry in October this year. “As King, it is time for me to marry. After much thought I have decided that the wedding shall be later this year,” His Majesty announced.
Before revealing the name of the future Queen of Bhutan, His Majesty said, “Now, many will have their own idea of what a Queen should be like – that she should be uniquely beautiful, intelligent and graceful. I think with experience and time, one can grow into a dynamic person in any walk of life with the right effort.” What is most important for Queen, His Majesty said, is that at all times, as an individual, she must be a good human being, and as Queen, she must be unwavering in her commitment to serve the people and country.
“As my queen, I have found such a person and her name is Jetsun Pema,” His Majesty announced. “While she is young, she is warm and kind in heart and character. These qualities together with the wisdom that will come with age and experience will make her a great servant to the nation.”
Jetsun Pema, the future Queen of Bhutan, was born in Thimphu on June 4, 1990. She received her education from Regents College in London, the UK; the Lawrence School, Sanawar, in Himachal Pradesh and St. Joseph’s Convent in Kalimpong, India; and Changangkha Lower Secondary School and Lungtenzampa Middle Secondary School in Thimphu, Bhutan.
Jetsun Pema’s father, Dhondup Gyaltshen, is the grandson of Trashigang Dzongpon Dopola. Her mother, Sonam Chuki, comes from the family of Bumthang Pangtey. Jetsun Pema has two brothers and two sisters. She is the second eldest.
His Majesty said that his wedding with Jetsun Pema did not mean that he was starting his own family. “From the very day I received the Dhar Ngay-Nga [five-coloured scarves] from the sacred Machhen, the people of the 20 Dzongkhags became my family,” His Majesty said, adding that such is the duty and privilege of all Kings of Bhutan.
“It is through this union that I shall have a Queen who will support, and work with me, as I serve the People and Country,” His Majesty said.
His Majesty announced that the wedding will be in accordance with age-old tradition, to seek the blessings of the guardian deities. He, however, said, “I ask the government not to make any plans for a grand celebration. The happiness of my beloved father and the blessings of our People will give me the greatest joy and happiness.”
In recent times, Jetsun Pema has begun to accompany His Majesty on royal tours around the country.
In the parliament hall, Prime Minister Jigmi Y Thinley and the members of parliament expressed their happiness on the announcement of the royal wedding and highlighted the pivotal role of the Throne in Bhutanese nationhood. They offered good wishes to the future queen of Bhutan.
Outside the parliament hall, a wave of excitement and joy swept across the country as the people of 20 dzongkhags watched His Majesty announce his wedding on live television. The feeling of joy at the news is palpable on every face.
Even as His Majesty announced the wedding, people across the kingdom shared the news real-time on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites. Some excitedly text-messaged the news to their friends and relatives living in remote pockets of the country where television and internet have not yet reached.
In the capital, the news of royal wedding is a talking point wherever – in the offices, on the streets, in hotels, bars and restaurants.

Activist battles Kenyan tradition of rape 'beading'

2011-05-12T10:39:00.000-04:00

By David McKenzie, CNNMay 11, 2011 4:34 p.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/05/11/kenya.children.beading/index.html?hpt=C2

Isiolo, Kenya (CNN) -- "Josephine" is 12 years old and several months pregnant.
She's a member of the Samburu tribe, living in a small village in a remote part of Isiolo in Kenya's Eastern Province. The pre-teen, whose identity is being protected, claims she had sex with a relative -- a rape sanctioned by the Samburu, through a practice called "beading."
Intricate beaded necklaces are a symbol of the Kenyan nation. But to young Samburu girls, the necklaces are a symbol not of national pride, but something much darker, that can lead to rape, unwanted pregnancies -- and even the deaths of newborns, according to activist Josephine Kulea and the Samburu tribe itself.
In "beading," a close family relative will approach a girl's parents with red Samburu beads and place the necklace around the girl's neck.
"Effectively he has booked her," says Kulea, a member of the Samburu herself. "It is like a (temporary) engagement, and he can then have sex with her." Girls are also "beaded" as an early marriage promise by non-relatives.
Some girls who are "beaded" are no more than 6 years old. They are the focus of Kulea's rescue mission, a trip to Isiolo she's been planning for weeks.
Samburu culture dictates that girls be engaged to a relative, she says, and they are allowed to have sex with him. But "they are not allowed to get pregnant and there is no preventative measures," she says. "At the end of the day, most girls get pregnant ... and these (infants) end up dying or being killed or being given away."
When they reach adulthood, Samburu girls will marry outside of their village, but taboo dictates the girls will never be able to marry if they keep their babies resulting from beading.
Some girls, she says, undergo a crude abortion before their pregnancy advances. Others hide their condition until it is too late for that. "They let them give birth, but only to kill these babies," Kulea says.
If the girls are lucky, their babies are given away to strangers. "Most of these girls are traumatized," Kulea says, and some get infections from the crude abortions.
Philip Lemantile, the father of 14-year-old Nasuto, says beading is aimed at stopping promiscuity among young girls.
"This is our culture," he says. "It is part of us. And we have been practicing it, and we accept that these girls should be beaded, and sometimes the girls just get pregnant."
Kulea calls that a bad cultural practice.
"For any change that comes by, we have to have a start," she says. "And this is the start."
But the start is traumatic for the Samburu, as the girls are taken away from their families and put in a shelter. Their babies are placed in orphanages.
Still, Kulea says, it's better than staying.
"I just felt that it is wrong," she says. "Something wrong is going on in my community. And that is where my passion began. And so I decided to help out the girls."

Journalist Lillian Leposo contributed to this report

Photographing Travel Icons

2011-05-09T12:39:00.003-04:00

I came accross this article today online at Wanderlust, it gives the impression that the author took this photograph as there is no mention or copyright for the photo. My photo has also been cropped from the original.
You can read the article here: http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/articles/advice/photography-tips-classics-travel-icons?page=all
Update: If you hover over the photo in the article my name will appear.

Art a La Carte

2011-05-07T11:37:00.001-04:00

I was happy to receive this email from the WorldWide WOW partnership yesterday.

We are happy to inform you that Four of your photographs has been selected from our pool of submitted photographs by Art a La Carte to be included in their library of donated art.

This is with regards to the WorldWide WOW partnership with Art a La Carte in Calgary, AB for the May 12^th, 2011 AdDrinx event. Art a La Carte is a volunteer society that provides acute care cancer patients with a choice of art for their hospital rooms. Based in Calgary Alberta, the program complements healing by transforming sterile, hospital treatment areas into places of comfort and warmth.

National Geographic Explorer and National Geographic Extreme Explorer

2011-05-07T10:59:00.000-04:00

I was contacted several months ago by the above publications regarding the use of images for their May 2011 editions. National Geographic Explorer is a classroom magazine for grades two through six. Its pages invite students to explore the world and all that is in it. The website provides an extension to the magazine and allows students to explore in a fun, safe, online environment. Each issue contains 24 full-color pages. Three nonfiction features probe curriculum-related topics in science and social studies. Articles also provide glossaries with kid-friendly definitions of key terms. The website offers games and activities that support and extend topics that appear in the magazine.

Armless man aiming to climb Mount Everest

2011-04-29T12:44:00.005-04:00

CALGARY - Sudarshan Gautam has a long road ahead of him before next year's historic attempt to summit Mount Everest.
The Nepalese-born Mount Royal University student, who has no arms, will be cruising from one Canadian coast to the other to raise cash, awareness and, perhaps, the pulses of other drivers as he makes the journey behind the wheel using just his feet.
The inspiring amputee, who is licensed to drive and has done so on asphalt in 29 countries, is planning to pull off the feat as early as this summer.
Donations generated through his adventure will be split among a mountaineering program for the disabled, offered through the Vancouver-based Tetra Society, and his own endeavour to scale the world's highest peak, planned for next March.
"I like to spread the message that disability is not inability and I hope it will help for our mission to raise (money) for those things," said Gautam, 30, who will meet with sponsors Tuesday to finalize a start date for the cross-country tour.

"I have been planning this for next month, but because of the federal election the sponsor wants to move the project a couple months later."

Gautam, who hails from the rural Ramecchap district of Nepal, lost his arms at 14 while vacationing with his family in Kathmandu.
He was flying a kite that became entangled with overhead power lines.
Believing the wire was insulated, he used a piece of iron to dislodge the kite.
The resulting jolt badly damaged his limbs, which doctors had no choice but to remove.
The physical disadvantage has proven to be of little consequence to Gautam. In 2005, he earned a bachelor's degree in management and commerce before moving on to his next challenge - scaling the 5,372-metre Mount Yala using his teeth, feet and the aid of sherpas.
Through the Mount Everest expedition, Gautam hopes to raise $1 million for Nepalese orphans and disabled persons.

By MICHAEL WOOD QMI Agency

The Hanging Coffins of Sagada: An Ancient Tradition

2011-04-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

The Segada people of the Phillipines have been burying their dead in coffins hanging from limestone cliffs high above the ground for more than 2,000 years. Their particular tradition involves the placement of dead relatives into caves after carefully preparing a hollowed out log.
Although no one can say for sure, it is likely this ritual concerns the idea that that the higher the body is placed, the closer to heaven. It also provides a way to protect bodies that could potentially be destroyed by natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.
Segada is a remote area, situated some six hours away (12 in rainy season) from the Luzon island town of Banaue, north of Manila. The cliffs are laden with hundreds of coffins, but how they got there seems a phenomenal effort involving either ropes to lower the coffins down the cliff or some sort of timber scaffolding to raise the coffin to such a height.
The coffins were carved by those that would inhabit them for all eternity as part of this bizarre but very poignant ritual.
The corpses are smoked to preserve them throughout the 5-day pre-burial feast and as the bodies are pushed into the coffins, the cracking and even breaking of bones often occurs as the process is completed.
The deceased remain in caves high in the cliffs in company of the coffins of other ancestors. There are as many as hundreds of coffins lined up in some of these caves.
Due to the fact that the area is unregulated, tourists have been stealing bones as grisly souvenirs of their expedition into the remote mountains.
While visiting these incredible caves, it is recommended that you hire a guide, as the roads are complicated and difficult to navigate.

Centuries-old festival Thailand

2011-04-10T14:13:00.001-04:00

Songkran is a centuries-old festival which marks the beginning of the traditional Thai new year. It is a unique fun-filled event during which we splash others with water in order to give and request a blessing.
The word "Songkran" is derived from Sanskrit and means "to pass" or "to move into". It implies the moving of the sun, moon and other planets into a new place in the zodiac. People in Burma, Cambodia and Laos organise similar festivals at this time of the year.
Freed from routine work for a few days, Thais have the time to perform various rites designed to show respect to their forebears and senior members of the family. Highlights include sprinkling the hands of their elders with scented water, pouring scented water on Buddha statues and joining in family reunions.
This year, Great Songkran Day falls on April 14 and the designated symbol is Kirini Thewi, a lady who sits on an elephant's back, wears a montha flower behind one ear and has an armlet on her right arm and a gun in her left. Every region in the country will be celebrating the festival under the common theme of "Love Songkran in Your Home Town".

Pakistani brothers arrested over 'cannibalism'

2011-04-09T14:20:00.002-04:00

Omer Farooq Khan, TNN
Apr 7, 2011, 08.00pm IST
ISLAMABAD: A court in Pakistan's eastern city of Sargodha has extended the remand of two brothers accused of stealing corpses from a graveyard and then eating them.
The police had arrested earlier this week two brothers, Arif Ali, 40, and Farman Ali, 37, for allegedly digging up newly buried corpses and eating their flesh. The brothers practicing cannibalism was discovered after a body of 24-year-old deceased woman, named Saira Parveen, was found missing from her grave in Darya Khan town of Sargodha district. Saira's family became suspicious after visiting her grave on Sunday and found as if it had been dug up and then untidily built up in haste. After digging the grave to check the corpse, it was found missing. Her family lodged a complaint with the police and the subsequent police probe led to the arrest of two brothers. The police recovered the remains of Parveen's body from their house.
"They had cut legs of the corpse and were cooking it when we entered the house. We also recovered the other remains of Saira's body, wrapped in a white cloth," said Abdur Rehman, a police official.
He said the brothers had been eating corpses for at least a year, but some local TV stations reported that they had been indulged in human flesh eating for a decade. Previous victims include the corpse of a four-year-old girl, also taken from a local graveyard, the police investigation found. The brothers have also allegedly admitted eating local dogs before becoming human flesh eaters.
What led these two men to involve in such a socially-disgusting practice remains unclear.
According to Rehman, the brothers seemed to have taken up cannibalism as an act of revenge as their wives had left them after the death of their mother. However, the accused have confessed not only to these crimes but also to eating their own children.

7.0-magnitude quake hits Myanmar

2011-03-26T09:23:00.002-04:00

March 25-2011
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit northeastern Myanmar Thursday night, affecting a wide swath of land of Myanmar, Thailand, China and Vietnam, with a person was reported killed in quake-caused collapse of a wall in Thai northern city of Chiang Rai.
According to Myanmar's Meteorology and Hydrology Department, the quake that hit hilly areas some 56 km east of Kengtung, Shan state, occurred at 8:29 p.m. local time (1369 GMT). The quake, with the epicenter only 10 km deep, struck along Myanmar's borders with Thailand and Laos, about 87 km from Chiang Rai.
The quake affected many areas in Myanamr, with it being felt strongly in the border town of Tachilek and slightly in Taunggyi, Bago, Shwegyin, Nay Pyi Taw, Mandalay and Toungoo. It is reported that Tachilek authorities have advised people to stay out of their houses.
Although there were no immediate reports of casualties or property damage in Myanmar, Thai TV has reported that one woman was killed in Chiang Rai as a wall collapsed onto her in the quake.
Thai media also reported that the quake was felt in the country 's capital Bangkok, a city some 772 km away, with buildings there seen shaking and swaying.
According to Vietnam News Agency, buildings in Hanoi shook when the earthquake happened, causing panic among residents of apartment blocks. The U.S. Geological Survey has put the quake at 6.8 magnitude.

Shwedagon Pagoda

Inle Lake Legrower

Living at high altitude reduces risk of dying from heart disease

2011-03-26T09:09:00.001-04:00

In one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in partnership with the Harvard School of Global Health have found that people living at higher altitudes have a lower chance of dying from ischemic heart disease and tend to live longer than others.
"If living in a lower oxygen environment such as in our Colorado mountains helps reduce the risk of dying from heart disease it could help us develop new clinical treatments for those conditions," said Benjamin Honigman, MD, professor of Emergency Medicine at the CU School of Medicine and director of the Altitude Medicine Clinic. "Lower oxygen levels turn on certain genes and we think those genes may change the way heart muscles function. They may also produce new blood vessels that create new highways for blood flow into the heart."
Another explanation, he said, could be that increased solar radiation at altitude helps the body better synthesize vitamin D which has also been shown to have beneficial effects on the heart and some kinds of cancer.
The study was recently published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
At the same time, the research showed that altitudes above 4,900 feet were detrimental to those suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
"Even modestly lower oxygen levels in people with already impaired breathing and gas exchange may exacerbate hypoxia and pulmonary hypertension [leading to death]," the study said.
Honigman, senior author of the study, along with researchers that included Robert Roach, PhD, director of the School of Medicine's Altitude Research Center, Deborah Thomas, PhD, a geographer at the University of Colorado Denver and Majid Ezzati of the Harvard School of Global Health, spent four years analyzing death certificates from every county in the U.S. They examined cause-of-death, socio-economic factors and other issues in their research.
They found that of the top 20 counties with the highest life expectancy, eleven for men and five for women were located in Colorado and Utah. And each county was at a mean elevation of 5,967 feet above sea level. The men lived between 75.8 and 78.2 years, while women ranged from 80.5 to 82.5 years.
Compared to those living near sea-level, the men lived 1.2 to 3.6 years longer and women 0.5 to 2.5 years more.
Despite these numbers, the study showed that when socio-economic factors, solar radiation, smoking and pulmonary disease were taken into account, the net effect of altitude on overall life expectancy was negligible.
Still, Honigman said, altitude seems to offer protection against heart disease deaths and may also play a role in cancer development.
Colorado, the highest state in the nation, is also the leanest state, the fittest state, has the fewest deaths from heart disease and a lower incidence of colon and lung cancer compared to others.
"We want to now look at these diseases in a more focused way so we can see the mechanisms behind hypoxia and why they affect the body the way they do," Honigman said. "This is a public health issue in Colorado and the mountain West. We have more than 700,000 people living at over 7,000 feet above sea level. Does living at altitude change the way a disease progresses? Does it have health effects that we should be investigating? Ultimately, we hope this research will help people lead healthier lives."

Nepal Christians demand designated burial grounds

2011-03-24T09:42:00.001-04:00

Hundreds of people from Nepal's minority Christian community have protested in Kathmandu to demand designated burial grounds.
Last month Christians were prevented from burying their dead in the grounds of the Hindu Pashupatinath Temple - which they have done for decades.
They say that there are only a few places where they can bury their dead in predominantly Hindu Nepal.
The government has pledged to find land near Kathmandu for Christian burials.
So far no progress has been made in resolving the issue. Temple authorities have said that there is no space left for new graves.
Most bodies in Nepal are cremated in keeping with Hindu tradition.
The BBC's Joanna Jolly in Kathmandu says that Christianity is a growing religion in Nepal - where it has become popular among low-caste Hindus as a way of escaping the rigid caste system.

'Christian practices'
About 1,000 Christians attended the protest in the centre of Kathmandu, some carrying banners which read "Give us our rights, give us burial grounds".
Pastor Sundar Thapa - who led the protest - said the Christian community wanted the government to provide space in all 75 districts of the country so that "we can bury our dead according to Christian practices".
"If the government listens to our demands, we will [continue] peacefully living in this country and helping this country to develop. But if it doesn't listen, then we will have to come on to the streets in coming days," he said.
Some Christians have warned that if the government does not provide the land, they will even go so far as to parade their dead in front of parliament.
The Supreme Court temporarily lifted the Pashupatinath temple ban, but the dispute continues and Christians have been protesting since it was announced.
Christian leaders have also been demanding that the government formally recognise their status.
Hindus make up the majority of the population in Nepal - Christians comprise about 1.5% of the country's 27 million people.

Pashupatinath Temple

© Kieron Nelson 2011 "Vanishing Cultures Photography"

Avian flu makes a comeback in Bali

2011-03-23T17:40:00.003-04:00

Ni Komang Erviani, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar | Wed, 03/23/2011 10:55 PM | Bali
Dozens of chickens have died at poultry farms in Badung and Tabanan regencies as of Tuesday.
Putu Sumantara, head of the province’s husbandry office, confirmed that the dead chickens tested positive for the H5N1 virus that causes the deadly avian flu.
“However, we have not received any reports of human infection,” insisted Sumantara.
The first case of avian flu was found in Sobangan village, Mengwi, Badung regency, where 17 chickens died of the H5N1 virus between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8.
Between March 10 and March 18, more than 60 chickens also died in several villages in North Denpasar, Badung, and Tabanan regency.
“We have carried out several measures, including culling chickens, in some affected areas to prevent the virus from infecting chickens on nearby farms,” explained Sumantara.
The office was quick to respond to the avian flu outbreak, calling on local farmers to increase sanitation on their farms.
The H5N1 virus re-emerged after a two-year hiatus. The virus infected thousands of fowls in Bali between 2007 and 2008.
There had been no sign of the virus since 2009, until it reappeared in early February 2011.
“It is quite difficult to detect the emergence of the virus, whether it was caused by the current extreme weather or was carried by chickens from outside of Bali,” he said.
“We have already activated the Participatory Disease Surveillance and Response Team, which will first respond to any new infected chickens and humans,” he said.
Coordination has been set up between relevant agencies, including the husbandry office, the quarantine agency, ports, airport, health offices, farmers’ associations and traditional markets, to jointly deal with the fresh avian flu outbreak.
“Security at entry points will be tightened to strictly control inter-island animal traffic to Bali,” Sumantara said.
According to a gubernatorial decree passed in 2005, no chickens or other poultry are allowed to enter the island. The decree is still
in effect.
Saiful Muhtadin, head of the agricultural quarantine office, conceded that the office had frequently found poultry illegally shipped from outside Bali via Gilimanuk and Padang Bai ports.
I Nyoman Sutedja, head of the health office, confirmed Tuesday that there had been no reports of avian flu in humans. The 2007 and 2008 outbreak in Bali claimed two lives.
“We urge people to stay away from poultry farms. Balinese are fond of breeding chickens and touch them like pets, making them susceptible to the H5N1 virus,” he warned.
I Ketut Yahya, chairman of a poultry farmers association, said he had asked the association’s members to improve health and sanitation on their farms.
“All poultry must be vaccinated to strengthen their immune systems,” he said.
Currently, the association has 50 active members who produce 120,000 chickens every day for local consumption.

Travelling to Eastern Bhutan

2011-03-21T16:51:00.005-04:00

The number of tourists visiting Eastern Bhutan is expected to increase as Samdrup Jongkhar – the bordering town to the north east Indian state of Assam becomes a tourist hub if everything goes according to plans.
The government is planning to make Samdrup Jongkhar an exit and entry point for tourists to Bhutan since Guwahati is the nearest airport to where Druk Air flies.
The upcoming Dewathang domestic airport will also be an added advantage for the plans to make the dzongkhag a tourist destination.
During the Mid-Term Review (MTR) Prime Minister Lyonchen Jigmi Y. Thinley said the new Asian Highway will help to bring in tourist and help the town grow.
The Asian Highway which is going to connect major highways in the region passes along Samdrup Jongkhar.
The new plans bring development hope for Samdrup Jongkhar, a dzongkhag that has faced security threats from Indian extremists.
The Lyonchen said he has already spoken to the Assam government regarding the safety of tourist coming to Bhutan and the government has assured safety.
But Lyonchen also said the place cannot become like Paro or Bumthang which are rich in cultural heritage and religion to which most of the tourist are attracted.
As of now Paro, which has the only international airport, receives the maximum number of tourists. At this only airline exit and entry point, tourists have to spend two nights.
Samdrup Jongkhar can attract tourist with its rich flora and fauna, sightseeing, bird watching and there are plans for home stays and cultural programs.
There are already few local residents who are gearing up for the tourism plans with the construction of tourist standard hotels.
“We are definitely planning for the tourism,” said the new mayor of the town, Karma Sherab Thobgyal.
One of his major priorities will be to encourage and develop dzongkhags specific plans to boost tourism.
However, lyonchen warned local residents not to let foreign direct investments for hotels there. He was of the view that if that happens then owners will be non-Bhutanese which will not benefit the local people.
Construction of smaller hotels was recommended which could be run as family businesses.
He said that the town will boom with business once all the tourism activities are in place and also added that extremist problem in the neighboring Indian state is solved then business will thrive in Samdrup Jongkhar.
http://www.bhutantour.bt/bhutan-news/traveling-to-eastern-bhutan.html

Fiery death of Tibetan monk sparks protests: Activists

2011-03-21T13:32:00.001-04:00

A YOUNG Tibetan monk set himself on fire and died triggering protests in Tibet on Wednesday, marking the third anniversary of violent anti-government riots there, an activist group said.
Police tried to extinguish the fire when a monk, called Phuntsog, set himself ablaze, but Tibetan exiles in contact with people in the Ngaba region said they then beat the 21-year-old who died.
The monk's body was taken back to the Kirti monastery and protests flared involving hundreds of monks and civilians, the International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement. Police broke up the demonstrations, arresting an unknown number of monks, the activist group alleged.
'I was told that many of the monks at Kirti monastery would rather die than allow Phuntsog's dead body to be passed onto the Chinese authorities,' a monk from the monastery who lives in exile in Dharamsala, India, told the campaign.
'Now, the whole monastery of Kirti is surrounded by armed Chinese military and I am told that some phone connections have been cut.'
It was the second time that a Kirti monk had set fire to himself since the crackdown imposed after the 2008 demonstrations, in which hundreds of monks marched in Lhasa demanding independence for the region, sparking days of unrest. Parts of the city were burned and looted, and the violence then spread to neighbouring areas. -- AFP

Canadians make malaria breakthrough

2011-03-20T10:11:00.002-04:00

By Lana Haight, Postmedia News

SASKATOON — Scientists in Saskatoon have developed an inexpensive malaria treatment that will help the million people who die every year from the infection.
“This is the most important drug in the treatment of malaria today. The World Health Organization says it should be the first line of defence,” said Patrick Covello, a senior research officer at the National Research Council in Saskatoon.
Covello and his team figured out a way to produce a difficult-to-cultivate chemical needed to build effective malaria drugs.
The breakthrough was announced Friday at the National Research Council Plant Biotechnology Institute.
The best drugs available to fight malaria are made with artemisinin, a compound derived from the sweet wormwood plant found in parts of Asia and Africa. But cultivating and harvesting the plant and then extracting artemisinin is time-consuming and labour intensive, says Covello. And the supply of the natural compound is also dependent on weather and growing conditions.
In 2003, Covello began work to identify the genes in the wormwood plant that produce the protein that leads to artemisinin.
“We identified four genes in what we call the pathway to artemisinin in the plant,” he said in an interview.
Meanwhile, University of California at Berkley researchers found they could develop a precusor to artemisinin by introducing chemicals into yeast.
Covello contacted Amyris Technologies, a spinoff company from the Berkeley research group, to suggest it use the genes his group had identified in the wormwood plant. When two of the genes identified in Saskatoon were introduced to the yeast compound developed at Berkeley, the production of artemisinin doubled.
The Institute for OneWorld Health, the American-based organization that has led the project to develop the semi-synthetic artemisinin, and pharmaceutical company Sanofi-aventis jointly announced on Friday that the drug company is preparing to ramp up production using the genes identified in Saskatoon.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has already contributed $42.6 million toward the American research, is also supporting the production of the drug to ensure it will be available on a not-for-profit basis for the developing world.
“The idea is to provide the developing world with antimalarial drugs at the lowest possible cost and, in addition, to provide a very stable supply because this yeast-fermentation process is shorter term and more reliable than growing the plants themselves,” said Covello.
Covello understands that Sanofi-aventis will begin commercial-scale production in 2012.
The federal government has spent $869,000 over eight years to support the Saskatoon research.
“Our government is committed to improving the health of women and children in developing countries,” said Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science and technology, in a government news release.
“This new development in the production of a malaria treatment represents a major development in the fight against the disease. It will strengthen Canada’s position as a world leader in health research and provide a reliable and affordable solution.”
Saskatoon StarPhoenix
lhaight@thestarphoenix.com
© Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix

Branded witch, these women are scarred forever

2011-03-18T10:50:00.001-04:00

VARANASI: It is impossible for Jagesari Devi (32), a tribal woman of Sonebhadra district, to forget the fateful day when she became a victim of witch hunting and her tongue was chopped off. She was branded a 'dayan' (witch) by a local 'ojha' (sorcerer). Though her wounds have healed, the scars remain forever. The unforgettable nightmare has rendered the Holi festival colourless for her.
"Am I really a dayan," wonders Jagesari, wife of Ramashankar and a native of Karahiya village under Dudhi police station in Myorpur Block of Sonebhadra district. Following this inhuman act of others, today she can neither speak properly nor can eat or drink with ease.
In her testimony to a human rights organisation, Peoples Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), she narrated her ordeal with the hope to get justice.
The daughter of her brother-in-law Sahdev died due to illness on August 1, 2010. When she went to his house to condole the death, she saw that a local sorcerer was also present there. He started claiming that Jagesari was a dayan and had caused the death. Soon, the orthodox people were supporting the man who chopped off her tongue in punishment. She cried out for help, but no one heard her cries. Somehow, her husband managed to rush her to a hospital for treatment.
"After being labelled a witch and facing physical torture and social humiliation, how can she be expected to lead a normal life?" questioned Lanin Raghuvanshi of PVCHR. The PVCHR, in association with the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims of Denmark, organised a programme of public hearing recently in the city to hear the story of Jagesari and other such victims of witch hunting. The volunteers tried to document the cases of witch hunting in remote villages of Sonebhadra.
According to Raghuvanshi, poor and low-caste women are easily branded as witches, mostly in tribal areas. The woman once branded a witch finds it impossible to get rid the stigma. She is subjected to violent acts like physical torture and social humiliation, even to the extent of being stripped naked.
Manbasia (45) is another woman who has been subjected to inhuman ordeal in Ghaghari Tola Sahgora village, under Babhani police station, in Myorpur block of Sonebhadra district. After the demise of a boy in the village, she was not only attacked with sharp weapons but also paraded naked in public on July 17, 2010. "I was not a dayan, then why was I paraded naked?" she questioned. Her husband Jodhilal said he had to mortgage his land for his wife's treatment.
However, officials of both police stations categorically denied that such cases had ever taken place in their respective areas. Both Vijaymal Singh Yadav, inspector of Dudhi police station, and Asharam Goyal, inspector of Babhani police station, when contacted over phone on Thursday told TOI that they had no information about witch hunting or practice of witchcraft in their area. However, in another case of witch hunting, a woman Somari Devi (40), wife of Dinesh Gond and native of Baliyari village under Dudhi police station, was also humiliated on January 14, 2011. A local native after branding her a witch, pushed her into fire. Her saree was burnt, however, her husband saved her. In her testimony, she alleged that the police did not register her complaint. Instead of punishing the culprit, the police let him off scot-free, she said.
Raghuvanshi says there are many factors responsible for the prevalence of witch hunting. One of the reasons is socio-economic. Generally witch hunters do so for property (grabbing) reasons. Sometime women become victims for refusing sexual advances. But, in most of the cases, women suffer because they are unable to get any help from the society. "Most of the cases go unreported," he said and added "police do not play a positive role in stopping harassment of women in the name of witchcraft practice."

Dalai Lama to step down as 'political head'

2011-03-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

The Dalai Lama announced on Thursday that he would step down as “political head” of the so-called Tibetan government-in-exile but would remain as religious leader and continue to advocate “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama, 75, a Nobel Laureate, said he would hand over his “formal authority” to a “freely-elected” leader. He said he was committed to playing his part for the “just cause” of Tibet.

Making the announcement in his speech at the main temple in this hill resort on the 52nd anniversary of the “Tibetan uprising day,” he said he would formally propose on Monday amendments to the “charter for Tibetans-in-exile” reflecting his decision to devolve his “formal authority” to an elected leader.

“As early as the 1960s, I have repeatedly stressed that Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power. Now, we have clearly reached the time to put this into effect,” said the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

The new “Parliament” will be elected when Tibetans across the world vote on March 20. By devolving his powers, the Dalai Lama hopes to give the “prime minister” a greater clout.

In a quick response, China said the talks of retirement “are his [the Dalai Lama's] tricks to deceive the international community.” “The Dalai is a political exile under a religious cloak long engaged in activities aimed at splitting China,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

In his 15-minute speech, the Dalai Lama said: “My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility. It is to benefit Tibetans in the long run. It is not because I feel disheartened.

“Tibetans have placed such faith and trust in me that as one among them I am committed to playing my part in the just cause of Tibet.”

“China, with the world's largest population, is an emerging world power and I admire the economic development it has made.

“It also has huge potential to contribute to human progress and world peace. But to do that, China must earn the international community's respect and trust.

“In order to earn such respect China's leaders must develop greater transparency, their actions corresponding to their words. To ensure this, freedom of expression and freedom of the press are essential.”

The Dalai Lama also said they had to find a way to keep the dialogue process going with Beijing.

Referring to the ‘Jasmine Revolution' in the Middle East in his speech, the Dalai Lama said he was a firm believer in non-violence and people's power, and these events had shown once again that determined non-violent action could indeed bring about positive change.

China closes Tibet to foreign travellers

2011-03-10T08:23:00.001-05:00

The Chinese government has banned travellers from entering Tibet ahead of the third anniversary of violent anti-government riots, according to AP reports
Chinese travel agents say they have been ordered not to receive foreign visitors around the March 14 anniversary of a bloody anti-government riot in 2008, according to AP reports.
In what is becoming a yearly ritual, Chinese authorities will reportedly not give permission to foreigners to enter the troubled region this month.
The impact on travellers is expected to be minimal, as March is the tail end of the low season.
However, there is speculation that the ban could last for up to three months, according to reports.
Travellers require a special permit to enter Tibet, in addition to a Chinese visa.
Foreign tourists were banned entirely for more than a year following the 2008 riots in the main city of Lhasa that left at least 22 people dead and ignited protests across Tibetan areas of western China.
China responded with a massive military crackdown in which human rights campaigners say nearly 140 Tibetans were killed.
The protests were fuelled by anger over the increasing numbers of Han Chinese migrants arriving in the region, as well as a desire for Tibetan independence.

Nepal sadhus banned from selling cannabis at temple

2011-03-09T18:03:00.003-05:00

By Joanna Jolly

BBC News, Kathmandu
Thousands of sadhus - or holy men - have been banned from selling cannabis to festival-goers at an ancient temple in Nepal.
They are gathering at Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu to celebrate the Hindu festival of Shivaratri.
Sadhus - Hindus who renounce the world around them - traditionally celebrate Shivaratri by smoking cannabis.
But those found selling drugs at the temple this year will face eviction by armed police, temple officials say.
Since last week police have been mingling with the sadhus in plain clothes to identify anyone selling drugs.
About 20 sadhus have already been arrested and have been moved to an area outside the city, officials say.
"We heard a lot of rumours that sadhus were selling these drugs. We tried to stop them doing this last year, but weren't able to," said Mr Nahata.
"This year we've started a proper campaign."
The PADT has put together a task force of 25 people, including police and armed police officers, to enforce the ban.
"We have only found limited amounts of hashish in cigarettes so far," Mr Nahata said.
He added: "Any sadhus arrested with large quantities of the drug will be sent to jail."

Smoking cannabis
© Kieron Nelson 2010 "Vanishing Cultures Photography"

China may end one-child norm

2011-03-08T09:12:00.001-05:00

Experts have been studying propositions of allowing couples to have a second child, said Wang Yuqing, a deputy director of the National Committee of Population, Resources and Environment.
Wang said the high cost of raising a child will keep the population growth at a stable level, Guangzhou-based New Express Daily reported.
The policy, adopted in the late 1970s, limited most couples to having only one child. However, couples who are both the only children of their families, parents whose first child has a congenital disease, and parents in rural areas whose first child is a female are currently allowed to have a second child.

Foreign tourists no longer need special permits for visiting Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram

2011-03-02T17:09:00.007-05:00

The Central Government is leaving no stones unturned in its effort to develop the northeastern region. Recently it excluded Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram from the protected area permit to promote tourism in the region.
The decision to do away with the protected area permit will give a boost to tourism to the state that will help generate employment for the youth in the region.
Many NGOs from the northeastern states have strongly opposed the central government's decision to do away with the Protected Area Permit (PAP), a mandatory official authorisation for foreigners to visit the region.
'We fear that the lifting of PAP would have a detrimental affect on the social security of the ethnic people of these states, specially those dominated by the tribals,' Zodingliana said.
The NGOs also fear that the lifting of PAP would further jeopardise the Inner Line Permit (ILP) that safeguards the indigenous people from assimilation since the British rule. The ILP is required for any Indian to enter some of the northeastern states, including Mizoram and Nagaland.

The all-powerful Ang (Head of the tribe).

© Kieron Nelson 2011 "Vanishing Cultures Photography"

PNG man 'eats son in witchcraft ceremony'

2011-02-28T09:18:00.004-05:00

Residents of a Papua New Guinea mining town say they found a man with a history of drug abuse allegedly eating his screaming, newborn son during a sorcery initiation ceremony.
Police said locals on the outskirts of the town of Tabubil, in Western Province, woke on Thursday to the screams of the baby.
Beset with the grisly sight of the father allegedly eating his child, an angry mob chased him to the police station where he was detained after a short struggle.
Police said the discovery was too late to save the baby, who died of his injuries.
Tabubil police commander Demas Tapea said officers had detained a man and his wife to assist them with their inquiries.
"It is a very disturbing incident," Sergeant Tapea said.
"The community is upset, angry but there is also a lot of fear and anxiety because there is a belief in sorcery or witchcraft."
Sgt Tapea said the main suspect was known to police.
"Locals are saying the man was carrying out a sorcery ritual, or initiation, to become part of some sort of special society," he said.
"The suspect has a long history of drug abuse and we are not surprised something like this has happened.
"A few years ago, he went crazy in what we believe was due to the effects of drugs," he said.
In 2009, it was estimated at least 50 people were killed that year in sorcery-related murders in sudden or unexplained deaths in isolated communities.

© AAP 2011

"Ladies in mourning "

First ever aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe released

2011-02-26T09:51:00.000-05:00

http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/brazilfootage

Extraordinary film footage narrated by movie star Gillian Anderson has launched Survival International’s new campaign to protect some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes.

In China, windfall for enterprising villagers

2011-02-25T18:53:00.001-05:00

Villagers along a congested freeway in Guizhou took their mercantile mettle to the streets, as one New York Times reporter writes:
Compared with some of the more spectacular recent traffic jams in China, among them a 60-mile snarl last summer that paralyzed a major artery outside Beijing for two weeks, the thousands of travelers who spent the night trapped on a snow-coated highway in southwest Guizhou Province on Monday did not even warrant a mention in the local news media.
The immediate effect of the information vacuum was to suck more unwitting victims — including this reporter — into the morass, which stretched for miles along the four-lane affair linking Guizhou north to Chongqing .
Stranded drivers chain-smoked, stomped their feet against the chill and cursed the government for failing to come to their rescue. As the night wore on, fuel lines froze and cellphone batteries died.
The residents of Hetaocun, however, saw the unmoving necklace of taillights from their mountain village and got entrepreneurial. They roused children from their beds, loaded boxes of instant noodles into baskets and began hawking their staples to a captive clientele. The 500 percent markup did not appear to dent sales.

Nephew of Dalai Lama killed by SUV during Walk for Tibet in Florida

2011-02-21T12:06:00.000-05:00

Palm Coast, Fla.— The Associated Press
The Dalai Lama's nephew was killed along a Florida coastal highway during one of his long treks to bring awareness to the Tibetan struggle for independence from China, officials said.
Jigme K. Norbu was hit after dark Monday on the side of the unlit highway by an SUV. A Highway Patrol accident report said Norbu, 45, was walking on the white line in the same direction as traffic, on the southbound side of a highway that runs the length of the state's Atlantic coast.
The driver, 31-year-old Keith R. O'Dell of Palm Coast, was not charged. He and a passenger, his 5-year-old son, were not injured.
Police released few other details. Mr. Norbu, who lived in Bloomington, Ind., and was active in a Tibetan rights group there, had started with others Monday on a Valentine's Day “Walk for Tibet” meant to cover some 300 miles from St. Augustine south to West Palm Beach, according to his group, Ambassadors For World Peace.
Mr. Norbu's late father was a high lama who was abbot of a monastery when the Chinese invaded. The brothers fled into exile following the 1959 uprising.

Nepal police disrupt Tibetan community election

2011-02-17T09:46:00.001-05:00

Kathmandu - Nepalese police seized ballot boxes in Kathmandu, preventing Tibetan exiles from electing a local leadership, a Tibetan advocacy group said Thursday.
Police shut down Sunday's election, which is held annually to choose leaders to take up responsibilities within the Tibetan refugee community in Nepal, the International Campaign for Tibet said.
The police said the refugees were not allowed to hold elections.
It was the second time in four months that the Tibetans had been prevented from voting. In October, police also confiscated ballot boxes as Tibetans in Kathmandu voted for the Tibetan government-in-exile, based in Dharamsala, India.
About 20,000 Tibetan refugees live in Nepal, according to government statistics, but thousands more live as illegal migrants.
Nepal has vowed repeatedly not to allow anti-China activities on its soil, saying it observes a "one China policy," which holds that Tibet is part of China.
It has rounded up Tibetan refugees on the streets of Kathmandu for demonstrating against China and marking the birthday of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader.
China has stepped-up pressure on the Nepalese government to curb "anti-China" activities in Nepal since 2008 when Tibetan refugees living there staged protests against China in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games.
Sunday's move to stop the Tibetan elections was condemned by the United Nations, which has asked repeatedly that Nepal abide by a "gentlemen's agreement" between Nepal and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide safe transit to Tibetan refugees who wish to travel through Nepal to Dharamsala.

Vanishing Cultures

2011-02-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

Vanishing peoples: since the beginning of human existence there have been about 10,000 languages spoken. Today, there are still 6,000 languages in use, but 90% of them are in danger of disappearing altogether. Each lost language means that a culture somewhere has disappeared, and almost all of these vanishing peoples are Indigenous.
The United Nations has defined Indigenous peoples as: "... those people having an historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations, their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions, and legal systems."
Africa is the continent with the greatest number of Indigenous groups, about 2,000. Next comes Asia with 1,300 groups. Following these are: Latin America/Caribbean (800); the Pacific (750); North America (250); and, Australia/New Zealand (100). There are 135 Indigenous groups in the former Soviet Union and 50 in the Middle East.
Until quite recently, most of these peoples were described as "primitive," "backward," and "pagan." The developed world appointed itself to the task of bringing these peoples into the modern era. The process began 500 years ago as European colonizers spread out across the globe. Thousands of Indigenous cultures were destroyed in the process, some through assimilation, others through conquest.

Article from: Canada and the World Backgrounder

Karmapa reassures followers, says truth will prevail

2011-02-10T20:01:00.002-05:00

One of Tibet’s top monks appeared before thousands of followers on Wednesday in India to reassure them about a police probe into nearly $1 million in cash found at his monastery.
“Do not worry about the case,” the Karmapa said as he appeared before devotees at the Gyuto monastery in Dharamshala in northern India, where the Tibetan community in exile is based.
“Investigations are going on and the truth will come out,” he added.
Thousands of supporters, many of them monks dressed in traditional maroon and saffron-coloured robes, staged a solidarity march to the picturesque monastery in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Over the last week, police have quizzed the Karmapa and arrested several of his aides in an investigation into the cash which is mostly in US dollars but also in Chinese yuan and two dozen other currencies.
The Karmapa heads one of the four sects of Tibetan Buddhism and could emerge as a future spiritual leader of Tibet after the death of the 75-year-old Dalai Lama, who has said he might not be replaced.
The Indian media, quoting unnamed security sources, have reported concerns that the Karmapa could be a Chinese stooge sent to India from Tibet to set up pro-Chinese monasteries.
The office of the Karmapa has dismissed the rumours as baseless and said the money is the result of years of accumulated donations. It has acknowledged negligence in its book-keeping.
“Unlike China, India is a free and democratic country so I have full faith in it” to uncover the truth, the Karmapa told his followers.
Notes totalling $600,000, 1.2 million yuan ($180,000), HK$500,000 ($64,000) and 5.3 million Indian rupees ($115,000) were discovered at the monastery and other offices, police say.
The Karmapa fled Tibet in 1999 as a 14-year-old because he said he was concerned that Beijing would force him to turn against the Dalai Lama, who has acted as a father figure for him in Dharamshala.
China regards the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist, and has sought to groom monks who would accept Tibet as an integral part of China and drop all claims for an independent state. The Dalai Lama has called for a “thorough investigation” into the discovery of the money.

Copyright © 2011 AFP
Published in Yahoo News

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Wanderlust Finalist

2011-02-05T09:50:00.002-05:00

My photograph of a fisherman on the Li River was a finalist in the Wanderlust Photo Of The Year "Iconic" category. http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/photography/wanderlust-travel-photo-of-the-year-2010--icon/li-river-fisherman-guangxi-china/1327

Why India is Investigating a Reincarnated Tibetan Lama

2011-02-04T16:00:00.005-05:00

By ISHAAN THAROOR
In the West, the Tibetan religious leader Ogyen Trinley Dorje is admired for his youth (he's 25), his looks (he was once introduced at a U.S. event as "His Hotness") and his courage (as a teenager, he fled from Chinese-ruled Tibet on horseback). But in India, where Dorje, the reputed 17th incarnation of the Karmapa Lama, now lives, he is seen by many in less reverential terms. This week, the second-most famous Tibetan in exile after the Dalai Lama found himself at the center of an Indian media storm after government investigators confiscated around $1 million in cash kept in his monastery. The fact that a sizable chunk of the currency was in Chinese yuan prompted manic headlines in India's ever voluble press, querulously asking whether this was proof that Dorje was a Chinese "spy" or "mole."
Dorje, his associates and allies — the Dalai Lama chief among them — have dismissed the spying accusations, explaining that the money is just an accumulation of unsolicited donations from devotees around the world, including Chinese Buddhists living in mainland China. In Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital-in-exile, some 2,000 Tibetans rallied in support of the Karmapa Lama. Facing a crowd massed at his Gyuto monastery on Feb. 2, Dorje urged his backers to "be at ease... truth will prevail." In a nod to his hosts, he reportedly added: "The Indian government, in contrast to the communist regime in China, is a free and democratic country." All the while, Indian news channels documented the continuing investigation into the matter by the Research and Analysis Wing — New Delhi's equivalent to the CIA.
The controversy has in part illustrated the still uncomfortable relationship between the Indian state and the many Tibetans who live as permanent guests on Indian soil. Decades ago, India accepted tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees fleeing Chinese occupation, but it has never accorded the Tibetans full rights of citizenship. Many typical transactions, from buying land to depositing foreign currency in Indian banks, are either illegal for Tibetans or a bureaucratic nightmare — and, in no small part, an explanation for why Dorje's monastery held onto the various funds it had amassed from donations. Robbie Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University and an authority on the Tibetan government in exile, is bemused by the current Indian hysteria. "It's a bit like saying the Pope is a Chinese spy because he has donations from Chinese followers," he says.
But to his Indian critics India, Dorje is hardly the Pope. Unlike the Dalai Lama, who embarks on visits to remote monasteries and global tours every year, Dorje's movement is tightly controlled and restricted by the Indian government. His only ever foreign trip was a swing through the U.S. in 2008. Because of challenges leveled by a couple of rival claimants to his holy position as the Karmapa Lama, he's barred from visiting the Rumtek monastery in the Indian state of Sikkim, one of the most important shrines of his Karma Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism and the abode of the "Black Crown," one of the sect's most hallowed relics.
In a better era of cooperation between Tibetan exiles and the Chinese government, monks from this monastery were permitted in 1992 to discover and determine that the Karmapa had reincarnated in Dorje, the son of nomadic sheepherders in northeastern Tibet. He remained in China with Beijing's endorsement, but cozy relations were over by 1995 — when China handpicked the successor to the recently-deceased Panchen Lama — and Dorje was soon blocked from receiving the vital tutelage of the Rumtek monks. A few years later, he and his aides escaped to India following days of treacherous driving through mountain passes, treks around checkpoints and a lengthy spell on horseback. "The Karmapa's escape to India was the single most humiliating incident for China's Tibet policy in decades," says Barnett. After learning of his flight, Beijing initially tried to justify the trip as a mission to find "musical instruments" necessary for Buddhist rituals.
But a coterie of influential figures in New Delhi and elsewhere in India harbor suspicions — backed by little to no evidence — over Dorje's presence, doubting that China would have allowed him to escape. Dozens of Tibetans with lesser means manage to slip across the border every year. Bahukutumbi Raman, a respected political analyst and former Indian government official, wrote on his blog this week that Dorje "could be a planted Chinese 'agent of influence.'" Fear over China's inroads into South Asia plays well in the Indian media. At a Feb. 1 press conference, Prem Kumar Dhumal, Chief Minister of the state of Himachal Pradesh, where Dharamsala is located, used the occasion of the investigation to sound the alarm. "[China is] making air strips, rail lines [along the border]... China is surrounding us from all sides," he said.
Though Dorje seems to be handling the scrutiny with calm and grace, this expression of Indian distrust may have negative consequences for New Delhi. Dibyesh Anand, an assistant professor of international relations at Westminster University in London and author of Tibet: A Victim of Geopolitics, lamented the overblown controversy in an op-ed in the Hindustan Times. "Hardline officials in China must be laughing their heads off at the Indian media circus," Anand wrote. "They know that this will not only create confusion in the exiled Tibetan community in India, but will also create disenchantment about India among Tibetans inside China."
As the Dalai Lama reaches his twilight years, a disenchanted, disgruntled population is the last legacy he wants to leave behind. It's unlikely Dorje would directly replace him — after all, he is supposedly the realized incarnation of a sect that's considerably older than the Dalai's Gelugpa order. But in the power vacuum that may follow the Dalai Lama's death, no other spiritual leader could rival Dorje's charisma and prestige.
Though articles in the West tend to focus on the Karmapa Lama's penchant for video games and X-men comics, Dorje is reputed to be an erudite scholar, despite his youth, as well as a capable poet and a leader with great "diplomatic acumen," as Barnett describes. The difficulty for him now, though, is to what extent he'll be able to express his talents. Hemmed in his monastery in the outskirts of Dharamsala, Dorje cuts something of a forlorn figure, isolated from his parents in China and devotees in India and elsewhere. In an interview with a visiting journalist last year, he complained, "I don't see much of the outside world." And given the current controversy, the curtailed life of the Karmapa Lama looks likely to continue.

Victory for Kalahari Bushmen as court grants right to water

2011-01-28T09:57:00.001-05:00

•Botswana government guilty of ‘degrading treatment’
•Case described as ‘a harrowing story of human suffering and despair’
In a momentous decision, Botswana’s Court of Appeal today quashed a ruling that denied the Kalahari Bushmen access to water on their ancestral lands.
With support from Survival, the Bushmen appealed a 2010 High Court judgment that prevented them from accessing a well which they rely on for water. The panel of five Appeal Court judges has found that:
•the Bushmen have the right to use their old borehole, which the government had banned them from using
•the Bushmen have the right to sink new boreholes
•the government’s conduct towards the Bushmen amounted to ‘degrading treatment’.
•the government must pay the Bushmen’s costs in bringing the appeal.
Celebrating after the decision, a Bushman spokesman said, ‘We are very happy that our rights have finally been recognized. We have been waiting a long time for this. Like any human beings, we need water to live. We also need our land. We pray that the government will now treat us with the respect we deserve.’

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/6925

Australia Issues Legionnaires Disease Alert for Bali

2011-01-24T08:24:00.001-05:00

11 Confirmed Cased of Legionnaires Diseases in Bali Potentially Linked to a Kuta Area Hotel and Shopping Center. Preventative Clean-Up Underway.
1/22/2011) The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs has posted a caution for Australians traveling to Bali advising that a "small number" of cases of Legionnaires' disease (Legionella pneumophila) have been detected among holiday makers returning from the island.
The cases have been linked to the popular Kuta region of Bali and a specific hotel and shopping center frequented by the 11 victims confirmed between August 2010 and January 2011. Of the 11 confirmed cases, 9 were Australian from Western Australia, one Dutch and one French national.
http://www.balidiscovery.com/messages/message.asp?Id=6682

Tibet will live again

2011-01-23T09:42:00.006-05:00

By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa

Our snow peaks are melting

Our forests are wilting

Our rivers are putrefying

Our animals are starving

Our monasteries are crumbling

Our people are mourning

Our nation is dying

And China is celebrating

But have no doubt

Our peaks will be white with snow again

Our forests will flourish again

Our rivers will cleanse again

Our animals will eat again

Our monasteries will rise again

Our people will rejoice again

And Tibet will live again

If only we do not lose hope

And continue our struggle for freedom

7.4 magnitude earthquake rocks Pakistan

2011-01-20T14:58:00.001-05:00

Initial reports of damage and injuries from the Pakistan earthquake have not yet been received. On Oct. 8, 2005, a 7.6 earthquake in northwestern Pakistan left 3 million without homes. Also, 80,000 people were killed by that 2005 Pakistan earthquake. However, the border region of Pakistan hit by today’s 7.4 earthquake is very lightly populated and very seismically active. The Baluchistan province of Pakistan is considered a “conflict zone,” as the border it shares with Afghanistan is not very well-secured and is in a very difficult-to-survive area of the desert.
The Pakistan earthquake comes at a very difficult time for the country. Currently, Pakistan is dealing with the aftermath of the 2010 monsoon season, which put one-fifth of the country under water. The Pakistani military also spends a significant amount of time in the region hit by the Pakistan earthquake, trying to control the conflict and border troubles with militants from Iran and Afghanistan. The damage from the 7.4 earthquake this morning is likely to be severe, and the country has incredibly limited resources for handling the aftermath of the Pakistan earthquake.

Culture-Site.com

2011-01-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

The Kalash of Pakistan
I have asked this site to remove a photo of mine that they are using without permission.
I have informed them that the image has a copyright, yet they refuse to remove it.
I can only assume that all of the images on this site have been stolen off the internet.
http://www.culture-site.com/

India will take revenge for incursion in Ladakh

2011-01-15T09:58:00.002-05:00

SRINAGAR: Former Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah has threatened China of revenge in Leh during summer amid reports of "incursions" into Indian territory in J&K's Ladakh region. Abdullah said China had "betrayed the concept of friendship".
Farooq Abdullah told reporters in Jammu on Sunday that India will show its strength during summer as there is extreme cold this time in Leh.
"China has betrayed the concept of friendship despite the fact that the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had promised friendship during his visit to India," Abdullah said on the sidelines of a function in Jammu on Sunday night.
"Those hopes have been belied by the incursion of Chinese troops into the border area of Leh," the minister said, replying to a question on reports of incursion by Chinese troops and halting of work at Demchok, close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in October last year. "We already had a bitter experience with our neighbouring country China and I think India should not lower its guard from the borders touching China and simultaneously vigil should also be intensified," said Farooq.
"Currently, many villages in Demchok are empty as there is no security provided to the residents to save them from the haunting shadow of the Dragon," Dorjee said. "Recently, I along with some administrative officials went to Demchok. But the entire community has left from some villages there."

The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Pakistani militant fight leads to polio spike

2011-01-15T09:48:00.003-05:00

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Tiny Shamsa is a victim of the war against Islamist militants in northwest Pakistan, but it wasn't bullets or bombs that paralyzed her right leg. The 18-month-old contracted polio after fighting blocked vaccination teams from reaching her village.
In a country with no shortage of alarming statistics, here is another: Pakistan was the only country in 2010 to record an increase in cases of the crippling disease — 138, up from 89 in the previous year, according to World Health Organization figures. That made it the nation with the highest incidence of polio in the world.
Most cases were in the northwest close to the Afghan border, where battles between the U.S.-supported Pakistani army and Taliban fighters make many areas too dangerous to visit. The army bans travel to parts of the region, citing the security situation, and territory under militant control is highly dangerous for outsiders, even Pakistani aid workers.
In 2009, one Pakistan Taliban commander declared the vaccine un-Islamic, echoing a few conservative clerics in other Muslim countries. But others have not publicly stated any objections. In Afghanistan, the Taliban cooperate with health workers administering the vaccine, in part because doing so adds to the movement's legitimacy.
Polio was eradicated generations ago from the Western world, but remains endemic in Pakistan, neighboring Afghanistan and India, as well as Nigeria. Sometimes fatal and highly contagious, it can be prevented with a few drops of bitter vaccine on a child's tongue.

By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press Rod Mcguirk, Associated Press – Fri Jan 14, 6:44 am ET

Bali Experiences a New Year's Surge in Rabies Deaths

2011-01-10T09:01:00.003-05:00

Bali's Death Toll Rises to 118 with Disease Now Spreading to Nusa Penida Island.
The scourge of rabies remains a continuing threat in Bali with four more victims dying of the disease in the first week of 2011. The latest victims bring the death toll to 118 and come from the regencies of Klungkung and Karangasem in Bali.
Wayan Sulana (36) of Pelisan village, Kubu, Karangasem, died on New Year's day while being treated in the isolation unit of Denpasar's Sanglah General Hospital. Meanwhile, Putu Adi Sucipta Yasa (11) of Banjar Pancingan, Kusamba, Klungkung was rushed to the hospital on Sunday, January 2, 2011, in a critical condition exhibiting classic symptoms of rabies following an untreated dog bite suffered three months earlier. According to Kompas.com, the child died within 24 hours of admission to the hospital.
The near island of Nusa Penida, which forms a part of the Klungkung regency, is also not free of the scourge of rabies. 58-year-old Nusa Penida resident Wayan Citra died in the Sanglah hospital on Friday, January 7, 2011, after being admitted with rabies symptom the day before. Citra's family told hospital officials that the man had been bitten in the calf of his leg one month before.
Authorities also report the death of Dewa Nyoman Kartika (43) of Banjar Bumbungan in Klungkung who died on January 4, 2011, within hours of his admission to the Denpasar General hospital. Kartika was bitten by a dog three months before his hospitalization and had not been treated with the required vaccine following the canine attack.
http://www.balidiscovery.com/.

Cold weather kills more in northern India

2011-01-08T16:12:00.001-05:00

Near-freezing temperatures have killed more than two dozen people in northern India in recent days despite government efforts to distribute blankets and medicine to the poor, an official and a news report said.
In worst-hit Uttar Pradesh state, at least 22 people — many of them homeless — died over the past three days, pushing the death toll from two weeks of cold weather to 63, Ram Mohan Srivastav, a top government official, said Saturday.
Uttar Pradesh is one of India's poorest states and nearly a fifth of its 180 million people are homeless, according to state government statistics.
At least six people died from frigid temperatures in the past two days in neighboring Jharkhand state, the Press Trust of India news agency reported late Friday.
The temperature dipped below 37 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in parts of Uttar Pradesh this week, with the mercury plunging to 33 F (0.6 C) in Agra, the city where the Taj Mahal is located.
State authorities have ordered all schools to close until the weather improves, Srivastav said.
Welfare department workers distributed blankets and medicine to the poor and homeless in Uttar Pradesh this week. In the state capital, Lucknow, the government arranged all-night bonfires at major road crossings and near railway stations.
All flights to and from Lucknow were canceled after a dense fog shrouded the city's airport Friday. Almost all long-distance trains were running four to five hours late due to the fog, Srivastav said.
In New Delhi, at least 10 homeless people have died from cold weather over the past two weeks despite a drive by police and welfare officials to persuade people living on the streets to sleep in 80 city-run shelters.
Though India is famous for its brutally hot summers, temperatures fall sharply for a few weeks in December and January. Poor people, particularly those living on the streets, are the worst hit.

The Travel Photographer`s Favorite Image Makers of 2010

2010-12-24T16:50:00.001-05:00

I was very surprised to discover that my favourite blog by Tewfic El-Sawy (The Travel Photographer) had selected a photo from my Guangxi gallery as one of his favourite images from 2010.
I found it to be quite an honour as he is a photographer whose work I greatly admire.

Wild Frontiers and other news

2010-12-23T15:08:00.004-05:00

I received the 2011 Brochure today from Wild Frontiers in the U.K.
They have used a photo taken of the Hussaini Suspension bridge in Pakistan as a two page spread.
They chose a photo of a Kalash school girl as well.

Three photos are now in the top ten for the "Eldertreks Photo Contest"
I was notified last week that I have been shortlisted by Wanderlust Magazine for "Travel Photo Of The Year" "Iconic" category.

Irma Turtle and TurtleWill

2010-12-22T10:23:00.002-05:00

Irma Turtle is founder and President of TurtleWill, her humanitarian organization devoted to helping remote tribal peoples retain their traditions and their dignity. She is also Director of Turtle Tours, an adventure travel company which specializes in introducing travelers to these remote populations and their unique ways of life.
Irma began Turtle Tours 19 years ago after a lengthy career in publishing and advertising in New York beginning in 1974. In 1981 Ogilvy and Mather, the multinational advertising agency with whom she was working, sent her to Brazil. After six months Irma was made President of the newly acquired agency. In 1984 she returned to New York and quit, feeling that it was time to find something more personally meaningful.
In early 1985 after a trip to the Sahara Desert and a glimpse into the unique lifestyles of nomadic peoples, Irma began Turtle Tours. She chose nomadic and tribal peoples as the focus of her company in tribute to their remarkably tenacity to survive into the 21st century with their traditions and cultures still intact. Irma is well recognized for her unique personal entree into tribal societies. Her love for her tribal friends is reciprocated wherever she goes.
TurtleWill, her humanitarian organization, devoted to helping remote tribal peoples retain their traditions and their dignity, took shape in the 90's. Using her expeditions and tribal contacts as a point of departure she was able to witness first hand the needs of these peoples and together with them work out what would be most helpful and needed.

Today TurtleWill's work includes digging wells, funding bush schools for nomadic children so they can attend school, bringing in mobile medical clinics to these peoples who would otherwise have no source for medical help, funding cooperatives that teach women skills and food cooperatives that help feed the remotest of nomads. She creates, organizes and runs all this, working directly with the people in Africa. All the money she raises goes direct to the people without any red tape or government interference. The TurtleWill overhead is under 10 %.

There is no one else helping the people TurtleWill works with. This explains the origin of the name. It answers the question "Who will help these people?" The answer: "Turtle will!"

Irma Turtle is featured, along with the Dalai Lama, in an international television series called "Nomads of the Human Condition".

TurtleWill has also been featured in the Barron's Weekly cover story on November 29, 2004 entitled "The New Giving". TurtleWill is referred to as "one of five nonprofits leading the charge...donors increasingly want to see their dollars at work...with TurtleWill you see the sewing machine being bought for the women's cooperative."

http://www.turtlewill.org/

Bali Travel Warning for Dengue Fever

2010-12-21T15:31:00.004-05:00

The climate in Bali is one that is a natural breeding ground for germs. Add to that some of the local methods of washing and cooking and so its no wonder tourists get ill occasionally, and now, the Health Department in Australia has put out an alert regarding Dengue Fever and the growing number of people suffering the malady is increasing. In fact, there had been over 430 reports of dengue fever in West Australians this year and that is a threefold increase on last year.
Dengue Fever is transmitted by a virus carried by mosquitoes. Today I read about this potentially deadly disease and the symptoms can develop within three to 14 days of being bitten and include fever, vomiting, severe headaches, aching joints and muscles, rashes and pain behind the eyes.
There is no medication to stop or treat dengue fever. This mosquito tends to attack during the day and is slightly larger than the malaria carrying variety.

Bomb kills at least 10 in northwest Pakistan

2010-12-10T17:57:00.002-05:00

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide attacker drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a hospital for Shiite Muslims that was under construction in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 10 people, police said.
Several people were also wounded in the blast in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province's Hangu district, senior government official Khalid Khan Omarzai said.
Elsewhere in the region, a missile fired from a U.S. drone destroyed a vehicle in the Mir Ali town of North Waziristan, killing at least four suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The identity of those killed was not immediately known.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The suicide attack in Hangu comes a day after the start of the holy month of Muharram, which is especially important for Shiites, but has been marred by bombings.
Hangu has been the site of attacks in the past by extremist Sunni militant groups targeting Shiites. The town is effectively segregated between the two Muslim sects, with each having their own markets, hospitals and schools.
Earlier this week, a bomb attack in nearby Kohat town killed 15 people.
Pakistan's tribal regions are home to thousands of militants staging or supporting attacks on American troops in neighboring Afghanistan. It also houses al-Qaida leaders and operatives from around the world plotting attacks on the West.
The United States is squeezing the insurgents with missiles fired from unmanned drones. The frequency of such attacks has surged under the Obama administration.

Room view Peshawar

Young woman murdered by husband, in-laws for dowry

2010-12-05T10:22:00.002-05:00

Nepal
A woman was reportedly murdered by her husband and in-laws for not bringing a bicycle as a dowry in Rautahat district.
Mamatadevi Das, 19, was murdered by her husband, Mahendra Das, father-in-law Manchit Das and mother-in-law Shiva Kumari Das for not fulfilling their demand even two years after marriage, national news agency RSS reported Sunday.
She had been repeatedly tortured for not bringing the bicycle. This is the third incident of murder that has taken place taking over dowry in Rautahat recently.
On November 20, Rupkant Devi Mandal, 21, of Aurya VDC-5 was murdered by her in-laws including her husband, who fled after the incident.
Likewise, on November 13, Babita Devi Mahato, 20, of Hajamuniya VDC-5 was suffocated to death by her husband and other members of the family.

ORISSA is now ODISHA

2010-12-02T18:24:00.011-05:00

On the first day of Parliament's winter session, the Lok Sabha passed the Orissa Bill and approved the name of Orissa state to 'Odisha', and its language to 'Odia' from Oriya.
The Orissa Alteration of Name Bill, seeking change of the state's name, was introduced in the 2010 budget session. The state was called Udisa in Hindi and Orissa in English, and its language called Udiya in Hindi and Oriya in English as per the Constitution.

Paroja girl

Bonda lady

Toronto Zoo Cuts Panda Accommodation Budget In Half

2010-11-28T09:02:00.001-05:00

If the visit from the pandas the zoo is banking on comes through, the black and white bears will be staying in more modest accommodations than previously planned.
Toronto Zoo chief executive John Tracogna informed the board Thursday the original plan for a $16 million enclosure is more extravagant than is needed. The budget for the exhibit has been cut in half.
The original design was three to four times larger than what is actually needed, Tracogna said.
The local zoo and facilities in Calgary, Alta., and Granby, Que. are negotiating with China to obtain two pandas for 15 years. If the deal is approved, Toronto would be the first five-year stop on the panda’s Canadian tour, starting in 2012.
The zoo plans to issue its Request for Proposal in early 2011.
"We have always anticipated that future financing to move this project forward would be done to minimize the costs to both the Zoo and City of Toronto tax-payers," said Giorgio Mammoliti, the zoo's fundraising board chair.

Himalayan Viagra leads to violent clashes

2010-11-27T09:13:00.001-05:00

Violent confrontations that are occurring in Tibet, as people scramble to collect ‘Himalayan Viagra’.
The official name for this aphrodisiac is cordyceps sinensis, or the caterpillar fungus (Tib: Yartsa Gunbu or “Winter Insect and Summer Grass”), and it grows on the mountains of Tibet and China.
Aside from enhancing libido it is said to help treat cancer, and have other health properties. It was previously thrust into the media limelight when China’s Olympic coach hailed it as the reason for the success of three female runners, in the 1993 Olympics.
Because the fungus is so highly valued in the region, many locals are taking to the mountainsides to hunt for it. Some are working 12 hour days to maximise their takings. Yet as more and more people pick the fungus, competition is sometimes turning nasty. In 2007 violent confrontations with guns and knives broke out, The Guardian reports. Eight people were shot to death, and fifty people were wounded.
There are fears that if this intense gold rush for the fungus continues, clashes such as these could occur again. There are also concerns that the mountains will soon be bare of the fungus.

Indian village bans cell phones for unwed women

2010-11-24T09:50:00.003-05:00

By BISWAJEET BANERJEE, Associated Press Biswajeet Banerjee, Associated Press – Wed Nov 24, 5:20 am ET
LUCKNOW, India – A northern Indian village has banned unmarried women from using cell phones for fear they will arrange forbidden marriages that are often punished by death, a local official said Wednesday.
The Lank village council decided unmarried boys could use mobile phones, but only under parental supervision, council member Satish Tyagi said. Local women's rights group criticized the measure as backward and unfair.
Marriages between members of the same clan are forbidden under Hindu custom in some parts of north India, where unions are traditionally arranged by families. In conservative rural areas, families sometimes mete out extreme punishments, including so-called honor killings, for those who violate marriage taboos. In some cases, village councils themselves have ordered the punishments, though police often intervene to stop them.
The Lank village council feared young men and women were secretly calling one another to arrange forbidden elopements.
Last month, 34 couples eloped in Muzaffarnagar district, where Lank is located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, police said. Among the couples who eloped, eight honor killings have been reported in the last month, police said.
"Three girls were beheaded by the male members of their family after they eloped" with boys from their same clan, said police assistant director general Brij Lal in the state capital of Lucknow.
The conflict is relatively new for the Indian region, where most marriages are still arranged by the parents, sometimes without the couple meeting before the wedding.

Seven commit suicide in 24 hours in Kathmandu

2010-11-23T10:13:00.004-05:00

nepalnews.com

Seven persons committed suicide in a span of 24 hours in Kathmandu valley between Saturday and Sunday, Annapurna post daily reported.
Norbu Lama, 30, of Ranibari, Indra Bahadur Khanal, 40, of Chandol, Hom Bahadur Shrestha, 30, of Tinthana, Subash Phuyal, 24, of Jitpurphedi, Nabaraj Lamichhane, 27, of Telkot, Bhaktapur, and Krishna Prasad Gautam, 58, of Lubhu, Lalitpur committed suicide, the daily reported quoting various police sources.
The reasons for suicide include household dispute, divorce, unemployment and failure in exams, according to Superintendent of Police (SP) Ramesh Kharel, chief of Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu.
The cases of suicide are increasing in the recent years due to various social, political and economic problems.
A recent report compiled by Nepal Police headquarters showed 677 persons committed suicide across the country in a span of two months between mid-April and mid-June.
At this rate, the number of suicide cases across the country per day is more than 10 on average.

Hundreds dead in Cambodian stampede

2010-11-22T19:13:00.003-05:00

Thousands of Cambodians celebrating the water festival by the river in the Cambodian capital stampeded on Monday night. The panic was exacerbated as the crowd rushed to cross a bridge, and some fell into the water.
Ambulances raced back and forth between the river and the hospital for several hours after the stampede, while onlookers and relatives waited outside. The death toll seemed likely to rise sharply, as many of the injured appeared to be badly hurt, and local medical facilities have limited capacity.
Witnesses said the stampede began after several people were electrocuted on a small bridge connecting Phnom Penh to nearby Diamond Island. Most either drowned in a tributary of the Tonle Sap lake or were trampled to death, authorities said.
Prime Minister Hun Sen apologised for the disaster and ordered an investigation as television footage showed relatives crying over the bodies of the dead piled up on each other.
"This is the biggest tragedy in more than 31 years after the Pol Pot regime," he said, referring to the murderous Khmer Rouge regime whose agrarian revolution in 1975 killed an estimated 1.7 million people in Cambodia under the command of Pol Pot.

Lhasa receives 257,544 tourists during "Golden Week"

2010-11-21T09:16:00.004-05:00

Statistics shows that during the "golden week" period, altogether 257,544 person-time tourists visited Lhasa, capital city of Tibet Autonomous Region, highlighting a 30.38 percent increase over the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the total tourist revenue was reported to reach 79.434 million yuan from Oct.1 to 8, up 28.94 percent year on year.
Among so many scenic spots, the Potala Palace and Namtso Lake hosted 0.24 million and 0.11 million tourists respectively. The average occupancy rate of star hotels was said to remain above 60 percent.
During the National Day holidays, the Municipal Tourism Bureau intensified monitoring the local tourist market and strictly regulated the market order in line with the objectives of "safety, order, quality and efficiency".
Specifically, tourism authorities checked on the service provided by bus drivers and tour guides to prevent from cheating in shopping and travel arrangements.

Bad weather strands thousands near Everest

2010-11-19T09:34:00.005-05:00

Around 2,000 foreign tourists and their porters have been stuck for five days.

KATMANDU — Helicopter rides back from Mount Everest after a week on the slopes of the world's tallest mountain might sound like a trekker's delight, but for the tourists trapped in the remote region of Nepal, the extended stay was not on the itinerary.
Around 2,000 foreign tourists and their porters have spent the past five days stuck in a tiny village 9,186 feet up the slopes of a hill near Everest due to bad weather, with Nepali army helicopters set to begin flying the stranded sightseers to safety on Friday.
They have been trapped in Lukla, the gateway to Mount Everest in east Nepal, after thick cloud and blustering winds forced airlines to cancel their flights to and from the remote region, officials said on Friday.
'Low clouds and high winds' Tens of thousands of trekkers and climbers visit the Solukhumbu region in east Nepal, home to Mount Everest, every year. Many start their trek from windswept Lukla village where a small airstrip is carved into the rugged mountainside.
Weather officials in Katmandu said the area had seen "low clouds and high winds" in the past three to five days, making flights by fixed-wing small airplanes difficult and risky.
"Flights by private helicopters are inadequate and their fares out of reach of common budget trekkers," Mahendra Singh Thapa, a senior official from the Trekking Agency Association of Nepal said in a statement.
Bikram Neupane, chief of the Himalayan Rescue Association of Nepal said all hikers were safe and not in danger. "They are unable to get into their return flights to Katmandu because of bad weather," Neupane told Reuters. The autumn season, which extends from September to November, is popular among Western trekkers in Nepal, which gets nearly four percent of its gross domestic product from tourism.

China continues harassment of Tibetan Buddhists: Clinton

2010-11-18T17:04:00.003-05:00

Posted: Thu Nov 18 2010, 09:42 hrs

China continues harassment of Tibetan Buddhists and such infringements on religious freedom "strain" bonds that back democratic societies, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.
"We received reports from China of government harassment of Tibetan Buddhists, house-church Christians and Uighur Muslims," Clinton said in her opening remarks during the release of the annual State Department Report on Religious Freedom.
"And several European countries have placed harsh restrictions on religious expression. These infringements on religious freedom strain the bonds that sustain democratic societies," she said.
In China one continues to see restrictions on the Uighur population in Shenzhen, on the Tibetan Buddhist community, and other restrictions on religious freedom, including on the unauthorised house churches, Christian churches, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, Michael Posner, said.

Leaping Tsechu dancers

2010-11-14T18:26:00.006-05:00

Tsechu (literally "day ten") are annual religious Bhutanese festivals held in each district or dzongkhag of Bhutan on the tenth day of a month of the lunar Tibetan calendar.
The highlight for a photographer is when the dancers perform amazing leaps into the air.

Kumari

2010-11-08T11:34:00.013-05:00

While in Kathmandu, Nepal, I had the privilege of meeting and photographing the Living Goddess of Patan, Samita Bajracharya. She is eight years old, and lives in the god-house Kumari Ghar, where the Living Goddess performs her daily rituals. Trying to photograph her in the eight-foot room with a small window was a real challenge. The power of the Kumari is perceived to be so strong that even a glimpse of her is believed to bring good fortune. Under normal circumstances, her days in the god-house come to an end with her first menstruation, but if she turns out to be unlucky, as they say, even a minor scratch on her body that bleeds can make her invalid for worship. She then changes back to the status of normal mortal, and the search for a new Kumari begins. It is said to be unlucky to marry an ex-Kumari.
The selection of the Living Goddess is a highly elaborate tantric ritual. Upon passing the preliminary test, this is merely concerned with their 32 attributes of perfection, including the colour of her eyes, the shape of her teeth and the sound of her voice. Her horoscope must also be appropriate. The 4 to 7 year old girls from the Sakya community are made to confront a goddess in the darkened room. The sight of the Buffalo heads scattered around, the demon-like masked dancers, and the terrifying noises they encounter scare some of these innocent babies. The real goddess is unlikely to be frightened, so the one who is calm and collected throughout the tests is the only girl who is entitled to sit on the pedestal for worship as the Living Goddess. Then, as a final test similar to that of the Dalai Lama, the Kumari then chooses items of clothing and decoration worn by her predecessor.

Travelling to Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan

2010-10-04T13:01:00.001-04:00

I felt it was time to update my website, so this is a good excuse to venture out and spend some time in the himalayas.

US Congress’ historic hearing on Papuan human rights abuses

2010-10-04T12:58:00.001-04:00

The US Congress held an open hearing last week to hear testimonies from Papuans and academics about human rights violations in West Papua. The hearing, hosted by the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment, was titled, ‘Crimes against humanity: When will Indonesia’s military be held accountable for deliberate and systematic abuses in West Papua?’
This was the first time that Papuans had been given the opportunity to speak in the US Congress about the horrors they have experienced at the hands of the Indonesian military. Papuan Henkie Rumbewas told of how the arrest of his father, the disappearance of two uncles and the murder of a cousin by Indonesian soldiers, persuaded him to speak out against the human rights abuses and political repression in West Papua.
Anthropologist and expert on West Papua, Eben Kirksey, told the hearing that he was on the Papuan island of Biak in 1998 while a massacre took place. From his hotel he could hear the police and army firing into a crowd of men, women and children who had raised the banned West Papuan flag.
An eyewitness told Mr Kirksey that they had watched soldiers loading the bodies of dead and dying protestors into trucks. Survivors were taken by navy ships, and dumped overboard. In the coming weeks 32 bodies were washed ashore, some missing their heads, hands or genitals. Survival reported on this massacre at the time, but the world’s media paid little attention and, despite international calls for justice, there was never an official inquiry and no soldiers were prosecuted.
Congressman Eni Faleomavaega who chaired the hearing said, ‘It is an indisputable fact that Indonesia has deliberately and systematically committed crimes against humanity and has yet to be held accountable.’
In July this year, 50 congress members wrote to President Obama stating that there were strong indications that the Indonesian government has committed genocide against the Papuans. They also called upon the President to ‘make West Papua one of the highest priorities of the Administration.

Five Plague Cases Reported in Tibet, One Dead

2010-10-02T08:37:00.001-04:00

Five people have been diagnosed of pneumonic plague in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region and one of them has died, health authorities confirmed Sunday.
All the five cases were reported in Latok Village, Nangxian County of Nyingchi Prefecture, Ministry of Health said on its website, quoting a report from Tibet's regional health department.
It said the first case was detected on Sept. 23 and the patient died of severe lung infections.
The other four cases, all of whom reportedly had direct contacts with the first patient, have been quarantined.
"One of the cases is critical and the other three appear in stable condition," the report said.
Health authorities did not identify the patients.
The health department in Tibet has sent disease prevention and control specialists to Nangxian County to prevent the epidemic from spreading further.
It said everyone who visited the county after Sept. 18 must immediately seek treatment should fever, cough or other flu-like symptoms appear.
Tibet has alerted all neighboring provinces to the cases.
Pneumonic plague, an infection in the lungs, is a rare but deadly form of plague. Signs of illness include fever, headache, weakness and rapidly developing pneumonia.
In China plague is categorized as Class A infectious diseases -- the most serious class under China's Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases.
The most recent fatal case of plague in China was reported in June, according to the health ministry. Five people have been diagnosed of pneumonic plague in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region and one of them has died, health authorities confirmed Sunday.
All the five cases were reported in Latok Village, Nangxian County of Nyingchi Prefecture, Ministry of Health said on its website, quoting a report from Tibet's regional health department. It said the first case was detected on Sept. 23 and the patient died of severe lung infections.
The other four cases, all of whom reportedly had direct contacts with the first patient, have been quarantined.
"One of the cases is critical and the other three appear in stable condition," the report said.
Health authorities did not identify the patients.
The health department in Tibet has sent disease prevention and control specialists to Nangxian County to prevent the epidemic from spreading further.
It said everyone who visited the county after Sept. 18 must immediately seek treatment should fever, cough or other flu-like symptoms appear.
Tibet has alerted all neighboring provinces to the cases.
Pneumonic plague, an infection in the lungs, is a rare but deadly form of plague. Signs of illness include fever, headache, weakness and rapidly developing pneumonia.
In China plague is categorized as Class A infectious diseases -- the most serious class under China's Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases.
The most recent fatal case of plague in China was reported in June, according to the health ministry.