The Ice Hotel

Hundreds arrested as Olympic torch makes Indian passage

Hundreds of Tibetan demonstrators were arrested in India and neighbouring Nepal Thursday as thousands of police and soldiers defended the Beijing Olympic torch on a suffocating run through New Delhi.

The heart of the Indian capital was sealed off for the most sensitive leg of the protest-hit global relay to date, with security personnel far outnumbering the schoolboys and the other few select onlookers allowed to watch.

India is home to 100,000 Tibetan refugees, including the Dalai Lama and radical youth groups, and authorities wanted to ensure that chaotic protests like those seen in Paris and London did not mar the event.

The scaled-back 2.3-kilometre (1.5-mile) relay lasted little more than 30 minutes, and there were no disruptions to the event itself.

Relay participants were tightly marshalled by tracksuited Chinese security guards, and allowed to run only a few metres each.

An estimated 16,000 police, soldiers and even elite commandos were deployed to throw up a huge security cordon around the central thoroughfare between the presidential palace and India Gate, two of New Delhi's main landmarks.

"We have around 170 to 180 people in custody," a senior police official told AFP after a day marked by a string of protests and shrouded in a fortress-like atmosphere featuring tracker dogs, bomb disposal units and metal detectors.

The Tibetan Youth Congress, a radical activist group that spearheaded attempts to disrupt the event, said as many as 530 of its supporters had been arrested in the past few days.
Among those arrested were a group of around 70 protesters who tried to make a run for the area where the torch relay began, the group said.

Another 46 Tibetans were arrested in India's financial capital Mumbai as they tried to storm the Chinese consulate, police said.

In neighbouring Nepal, police said they had detained more that 500 Tibetan refugees as they protested outside the Chinese embassy, the most rounded up there on one day since demonstrations began last month.

The round-the-world torch relay has been dogged by protests over China's military crackdown in Tibet and its human rights record -- overshadowing China's prestige in hosting the world's biggest sporting event.

In India, authorities said they were even worried that Tibetan activists might set themselves on fire in front of TV cameras. Police said they had been equipped with blankets and water, but no self-immolations were reported.

Several thousand Tibetan protesters did, however, stage a rival torch relay, symbolically setting off from the mausoleum of Mahatma Gandhi, the champion of India's non-violent independence movement.

Hundreds of Indian Buddhists and Tibetan refugees also demonstrated in the Himalayan region of Ladakh.

Seventy Indian sports figures, entertainers and others took part in the official torch run, including Bollywood actors, tennis player Leander Paes and officials from China's embassy in New Delhi.

A few others had pulled out of the run, including Kiran Bedi, India's first woman police officer, and India's football captain Bhaichung Bhutia, a Buddhist who said he wanted to show "solidarity" with Tibetans.

Some here have also been irked by the presence of Chinese security guards employed in India to guard the flame. Many here still hold bitter memories of a 1962 border war with its giant northern neighbour.

Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan defended his decision to take part.

"I am not a great supporter of China's politics. I am sympathetic to what is happening in Tibet," the star told reporters. "But at the same time I am here as a supporter of the Olympics."
India has been home to the Dalai Lama since he fled Tibet after a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule in his homeland.

Jiang Xiaoyu, the vice-president of the Beijing Olympic organising committee, thanked India for its organisational skills.

"We have been deeply impressed by the beauty of Delhi and the arrangements and the Indian people's passion for the Olympic flame," he said after the relay.
Suresh Kalmadi, head of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), said the relay was a "great occasion."

The flame was scheduled to leave for Bangkok later Thursday, IOA officials said.

Number of displaced people highest in a decade: report

Armed conflicts and violence displaced more than 26 million people within their own countries in 2007, the highest number in over a decade, an international monitoring body said Thursday.

And while there is growing international attention to the plight, there has been no breakthrough in reducing their numbers or improving their situation, said specialists from the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The council's internal displacement monitoring centre estimated that the number of such displaced people reached 24.5 million in 2006. But that figure continued to grow in 2007.

Last year, the number of displaced people rose sharply in Iraq where there were almost 2.5 million victims by year-end, as well as Democratic Republic of Congo (1.4 million) and Somalia (one million).

In Sudan and Colombia, significant populations were displaced internally -- 5.8 million and up to four million respectively.

Overall, these internal refugees reached a number that has not been seen since the early 1990s, said the centre.

But beyond the displacement, these refugees were also "too frequently victims of the gravest human rights abuses," facing continuing attacks as well as hunger and disease.

"Many national governments in 2007 were still unwilling or unable to prevent people being forced from their homes, or provide adequate protection and assistance to those who had been displaced," said the centre's secretary-general Elisabeth Rasmusson.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres also pointed to the "unwillingness of some governments to provide their own uprooted people with adequate protection and assistance.

"This survey illustrates the scope of the problem and should be a call to action for all of us in the international community," he added.

Guterres also said the displaced were among the most vulnerable to rising food and energy prices that have sparked riots and instability in many developing countries.

"We are witnessing a slowdown in the world economy and structural changes in the energy and food markets," he told a press conference.

The displaced population is the most vulnerable, as many of them end up among the urban poor, or if they are in rural areas they do not usually have direct access to farming, he said.

"They are impacted (by rising prices) in their lives, in their suffering, but also by the fact that rising food prices extend poverty, are generating instability and confrontations, and they themselves help to trigger war and conflict," Guterres said.

He warned that economic and environmental factors were growing causes of conflict and displacement, thus complicating further the attempts of aid agencies to achieve a peaceful resolution.

"When one witnesses the situation in Darfur, and one witnesses an attack by a Janjaweed group on a village, it's true it's a political dimension there but it's also true that there is more and more confrontation between farmers and others about scarce water resources," he said.

"Extreme poverty is also in itself a trigger for conflict."

Pope condemns sexual abuse by priests

Pope Benedict XVI urged US Catholics to renew their faith and condemned the "tragic" sexual abuse of children by priests as he celebrated Mass before tens of thousands at a baseball stadium.

The pontiff was greeted by an enthusiastic roar from the crowd of 48,000 and joyous singing by four choirs led by celebrated tenor Placido Domingo, as he arrived at the new Washington Nationals ballpark in his "pope-mobile."

The faithful began arriving before dawn at the gates of the stadium, Washington's latest shrine to baseball opened last month which was transformed into a cathedral for the pope's first public Mass of his six-day US visit.

In brilliant spring sunshine, Benedict appealed for a new spirit of evangelism among the faithful to respond to America's "increasingly secular and materialistic culture."
On the decades-long pedophilia scandal, the pope said: "No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse."

But the Church was making amends, Benedict insisted, in dealing "honestly and fairly with this tragic situation and to ensure that children... can grow up in a safe environment."

The US Catholic Church plunged into its worst crisis in two centuries in 2002 when the archbishop of Boston confessed he had protected a priest who had sexually abused young members of his church -- opening a floodgate of thousands of similar abuse cases around the country dating back decades.

"I haven't followed all the controversial things. I just think it's great he's here," said Carolyn Hodgson, a 17-year-old student from nearby Potomac.

Her friend Jenna Hartin said the Mass was "a once-in-a-lifetime chance" to see the 81-year-old successor to John Paul II.

The enraptured faithful were to receive communion as 14 cardinals, 250 bishops and 1,300 priests joined the German pope for his outdoor Mass.

In his homily, Benedict said Catholics in the United States and around the world had to reinforce their own faith and seek new converts in responding to "signs of alienation, anger and polarization" in society at large.

"The challenges confronting us require a comprehensive and sound instruction in the truths of the faith," he said, decrying rising violence, looser morals, "and a growing forgetfulness of God."

The pope's message of universal faith was underlined by the presence at the Mass of a Sikh man in a turban, who sat in front of a group of Jewish men wearing skull-caps.

Opening the celebration, Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl reflected on America's rich racial and religious diversity. "All of us at the Mass reflect the breadth of this family," he said.

Bleary-eyed children who had risen at 5:00 am came with their families, packing the impressive ballpark along with the top hierarchy of US Catholicism, seminary students, and ordinary Americans from around the country.

Concession stands were mobbed, especially those selling official souvenirs marking Benedict's first papal visit to the United States, which began Tuesday with an official welcome from President George W. Bush.

Colonel Gary Studniewski, a US Army chaplain, said he came to the Mass to pray for the "stretched" men and women of the armed forces fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"They can't be here. They're in harm's way but I can be here to pray for them. No one wants peace more than military personnel who see the horrors of war and the difficulties of so many people around the world," he said.

"We are grateful to the Holy Father for spreading a message of peace."

On Wednesday, on the first papal visit to the White House in three decades, Benedict urged Bush to prefer diplomacy to war as a way of resolving conflicts.

But aside from mentioning the plight of Iraqi Christians, he skirted mention of the Iraq war, on which the Bush administration and Vatican do not see eye to eye.

Later Thursday, Benedict planned to meet with Jewish representatives after an inter-faith gathering at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington.

That, and a planned stop at a New York synagogue, appear aimed at quelling Jewish unhappiness over the revival of the 16th century Latin Rite Mass in which Catholics pray for the conversion of Jews.

Agence France-Presse - 4/17/2008 2:46 PM GMT

China cancels May 1 plan to reopen Tibet: official

China has abandoned plans to reopen riot-hit Tibet to visitors on May 1, a tourism official in the Himalayan region said Thursday, amid reports of simmering tension there.

Asked whether the reopening for foreign and domestic tourists had been postponed, a Tibet Tourism Bureau official told AFP by phone: "Yes, because conditions are not ripe for it."

The man, who refused to give his name but said he was director of the bureau's main office in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, said a new date had not been set.

"No. It's not decided yet," he said, refusing to give further details.

Tour organisers had been informed of the postponement, a tour operator in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu who regularly arranges trips to Tibet told AFP.

"Yes, they have told us. But they haven't indicated what the new date would be," said the woman, who organises such trips from a guesthouse in the city.

She asked that AFP not use her name to avoid trouble with authorities.

The US-based International Campaign for Tibet first reported the postponement last week, saying the reversal was due to lingering unrest and that Tibet might not be reopened until after the August 8-24 Beijing Olympics.

Chinese authorities began clearing Tibet of foreign tourists after riots erupted in the region's capital, Lhasa, on March 14 amid protests by Tibetans against China's 57-year rule of the remote region.

Foreign reporters were also banned as China sent in a massive security force to quell the unrest, which spread to other areas of western China with Tibetan populations.

Chinese authorities announced on April 3 that the region would be reopened to foreign and domestic tourists on May 1, a national holiday in China.

The official Xinhua news agency said independent travellers, as well as those on group tours, would be allowed back in.

The report cited Tibet's tourism bureau while Lhasa's tourism authorities also confirmed the May 1 plan to AFP.

However, the government appeared to begin backtracking last week amid continuing reports of tension in the region.

On two occasions in recent weeks, Tibetan monks at Buddhist monasteries in Lhasa and the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu have held protests in front of foreign journalists brought to the region by China on tours aimed at showing calm had returned.

The monks denounced China's rule and called for the return of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who was forced into exile in India in 1959.

Pro-Tibet groups overseas have said China has added to anger in the region by responding with a campaign of "patriotic re-education" in monasteries, which the groups say typically involves forcing monks to denounce the Dalai Lama.

Exiled Tibetan leaders say more than 150 people have died in the Chinese crackdown on the demonstrations. China insists it has acted with restraint and killed no one, while blaming Tibetan "rioters" for the deaths of 20 people.

Alongside the Great Wall and the famed Terracotta Warriors in Xian, Tibet has become one of the most popular destinations for foreign travellers in China.
Its spectacular landscape, Buddhist culture and access to Mount Everest base camp are among Tibet's top drawcards.

54 Myanmar migrants die in seafood container: Thai police

Fifty-four Myanmar migrants have suffocated to death in a cold storage container while being smuggled to Thailand to escape desperate conditions at home, Thai police said Thursday.
The incident was the deadliest in a wave of recent tragedies as people flee economic collapse in military-ruled Myanmar and search for work in Thailand, where they often end up abused and exploited.

Police said that 121 people had been crammed inside an airtight frozen seafood container measuring six metres (20 feet) long and 2.2 metres wide.

Colonel Kraithong Chanthongbai, local police commander in southern Ranong province on Myanmar's border where the bodies were found late Wednesday, said the men and women were trying to get to Phuket island to work as day labourers.

But before they reached their final destination, 37 women and 17 men had suffocated to death in the stifling box with a broken ventilation system.

"The people said they tried to bang on the walls of the container to tell the driver they were dying, but he told them to shut up as police would hear them when they crossed through checkpoints inside Thailand," Kraithong said.

One female survivor told Thai television: "No matter how many times we hit the container, the driver did not pay any attention."

When the truck driver realised some of the migrants had died, he parked by the side of the road, opened the door to the storage box and fled, Kraithong said. Police were still searching for him.
Ten of the migrants remain in hospital suffering from dehydration and lack of oxygen, a hospital worker said, while the dead have been buried in temporary graves in Phuket until their bodies are claimed by relatives.

The 57 migrants who escaped unharmed or were released from hospital have been arrested, Kraithong said.

The Myanmar nationals, who were likely to be deported, had agreed to pay a Thai smuggling ring 5,000 baht (157 dollars) each for the journey.

About 540,000 migrant workers are registered to work in Thailand, most of them from Myanmar, labour ministry figures show, but as many as one million undocumented workers are believed to be in the kingdom.

"Their own country has been made into a pauper state by the military," said David Mathieson, Myanmar consultant for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The migrants flee low wages, high unemployment, poor education and harassment by the military in the country formally known as Burma, he said, often only to face abuse, persecution and exploitation in Thailand.

"A lot of people from Burma would much rather come and work in a factory in Thailand in desperate conditions with low pay rather than have to do forced labour and have things stolen from them by the Burmese army," he told AFP.

Myanmar is one of the world's poorest countries, its economy battered by decades of mismanagement under military rule and further hampered by Western sanctions imposed over the junta's human rights record.

The nation's economic plight sparked protests last August which, when joined by Buddhist monks in September, snowballed into the biggest anti-government demonstrations in nearly 20 years.

The military responded by opening fire on the crowds, killing at least 31 people, according to the United Nations.

Six months later, the plight of Myanmar's people remains desperate.

Many choose to flee by land to Thailand, or to escape by sea to Singapore, Malaysia or elsewhere in Asia -- all treacherous journeys.

The border with Thailand is littered with landmines and riven by civil war while the long sea trip is usually made on flimsy boats without adequate supplies.

Seven migrants were found dead in January, apparently having drowned in a Thai lake while making the illegal crossing. In December, at least 22 died while making the sea journey when their boat collapsed.

They are not the only migrants in the world risking their lives searching for better conditions for their families.

In June 2000, 58 Chinese immigrants were found suffocated to death in the back of a truck in Dover, southeast England.

Report : North Korean jets flew near South 10 times

North Korean jet fighters have tested South Korean defences by flying near the border repeatedly in the past month, prompting Seoul to scramble aircraft in response, news reports said Monday.

Seoul military authorities refused comment on the reports, which come amid a flare-up in tensions.

On Sunday the communist state's official media claimed that Seoul was planning a preemptive military strike and threatened to turn South Korea into "ashes" if it went ahead.

In the past five days the North has expelled South Korean officials from a joint industrial complex, test-fired missiles, accused Seoul of breaching a disputed sea border and threatened to suspend all dialogue.

Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted military sources as saying the North's jets, including MiG-21s, had flown near the heavily fortified border 10 times since conservative President Lee Myung-Bak was inaugurated in Seoul on February 25.

Jets scrambled each time to intercept the North's aircraft according to their operational rules, said Chosun, the largest-circulation newspaper.

"It is very unusual for North Korean jet fighters to fly southward so intensively in such a short period of time as one month," the paper said.

Chosun also said a North Korean mechanised army unit was recently spotted moving south after a regular exercise in what it called an unprecedented military move.

Yonhap news agency said the North's winter land, sea and air military exercises have increased more than 50 percent this year over previous years.

The North is angry at Lee's tougher stance on cross-border relations, especially his decision to link long-term economic aid to progress in nuclear disarmament and to raise the North's human rights record.

It blames the United States for delays in carrying out a six-nation nuclear pact and said last Friday it may slow down work to disable its atomic plants.

With US negotiator Christopher Hill due in Seoul on Tuesday to discuss ways to restart the stalled negotiations, Washington decried the inter-Korean row.

"Is it directly related to the six-party talks, to the six-party process? No. But is it helpful? I certainly don't think so," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

South Korea's military and the defence ministry refused comment on the Chosun report. There was also no official response to Sunday's "ashes" remarks by Pyongyang.

"It truly is unfortunate for North Korea to make such threats but the government sees no need to be alarmed and make an immediate response," a defence ministry official told Yonhap on condition of anonymity.

Analysts believe the North is intent partly on swaying the outcome of South Korea's April 9 general election in which Lee's conservative party is seeking a parliamentary majority.
Late Saturday the North's chief delegate to high-level military talks said all dialogue with South Korea may be suspended and called for an apology over reported remarks by the South's new military chief.

Last week General Kim Tae-Young told parliament the South would strike the North's nuclear sites should the North attack it with nuclear weapons.

The North claims the remarks amount to plans for a preemptive strike, something the South strongly denies.

"Our revolutionary army will counter any slightest move of the South's 'preemptive attack' on our nuclear bases with a more rapid and more powerful preemptive attack," the official Korean Central News Agency said Sunday.

"It should be kept in mind that once our preemptive attack is launched, everything will turn into ashes, not just a sea of flames."

North Korea vowed to turn the South into a "sea of fire" during a previous nuclear crisis in 1993-94.

Choson Sinbo, a pro-North Korea paper published in Japan, said tensions were the worst since the 2006 nuclear test. "The North is firmly responding to the South's provocations," it said.