World News Roundup

INTERNATIONALARAB TIMES, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2016

16

Subcontinent

‘Retract law’: An all-parties conference convened by Pakistan’s oldest Islamic political party and attended by powerful religious groups asked the government on Tuesday to retract an “un-Islamic” law that gives unprecedented protection to female victims of violence.

The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab last month, gives legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence.

It also calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse reporting hot line, women’s shelters and district-level panels to investigate reports of abuse and mandates the use of GPS bracelets to keep track of of-fenders.

Domestic abuse, economic dis-crimination and acid attacks made Pakistan the world’s third most dangerous country in the world for women, a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll showed.

On Monday, Fazlur Rehman, the chief of one of Pakistan’s largest religious par-ties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam, said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had promised him at a meeting that he would address the reservations of religious parties. (RTRS)

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Mallya probe, F1 dates clash: Drinks tycoon and motor racing boss Vijay Mallya faces a sensitive diary clash this week as the season-opening Austral-ian Formula One Grand Prix coincides with an appointment to appear before Indian investigators.

Mallya, under pressure from banks to repay $1.4 billion owed by his collapsed Kingfisher Airlines, left India for Britain on March 2. His departure sparked outrage in parliament, after creditors had asked Indian courts to ensure he stayed in the country.

A senior official from the Enforcement Directorate, India’s financial crime-fighting agency, said last week that Mallya had been summoned for questioning this Friday as part of an investigation related to one of the bank loans.

Friday is also the first official practice day before Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix. Mallya, who co-owns Britain-based team Force India and regularly attends races, did not respond to a request for comment on whether he plans to go.

If he does, without first making a pit stop back home, it is likely to trigger further uproar in India. Mallya, who sports a goatee, an ear stud and a ponytail, is one of the country’s most flamboyant entrepreneurs and a fixture in the society pages. (RTRS)

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Police arrest father-in-law: The father-in-law of a lower-caste student brutally hacked to death in a suspected “honour killing” in India has been ar-rested, police said Tuesday.

Three men armed with sickles and sharp weapons attacked the 22-year-old student from the lowest Dalit caste and his wife on a crowded street in the southern state of Tamil Nadu on Sunday, killing him and seriously injuring her.

The woman’s father and uncle were among five people arrested over the as-sault, which was apparently motivated by her decision to marry outside her own caste, police said.

“We have arrested five accused and are looking for five more,” A. Dhavamani, an investigating officer, told AFP.

“Three of them were involved in the attack, including the woman’s uncle,” he said, adding that the others have confessed to conspiracy to kill the victim.

The Press Trust of India news agency said the woman’s mother was also among those arrested, although this could not im-mediately be confirmed.

Her father surrendered to police late on Monday and was formally arrested.

Police said the 19-year-old woman married the Dalit engineering student eight months ago in defiance of her family, who are from the higher Thevar caste.

Marriage outside caste or religion still attracts strong censure in parts of India and can even lead to so-called honour kill-ings, carried out to protect family pride. (AFP)

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No. of child workers declined: The number of child labourers aged 14 or below in India dropped to 4.5 million in 2011 from 12.6 million a decade before, said the country’s labour minister, urging lawmakers to approve planned changes to existing legislation to curb the problem.

Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya told India’s lower house of parliament on Monday the government will amend a three-decade-old child labour prohibition law, and called on both houses of parlia-ment to support its passage.

“I gave a notice in the winter session, but it could not be passed. This session too, it could not be passed though I gave notice,” Dattatreya said.

The amendments to the current law are scheduled to be presented during this session of parliament which ends on May 8, with a recess between March 21 and April 19.

Dattatreya’s figure, which is from India’s 2011 census, shows the number of child workers dropped by 64 percent over 10 years.

A February 2015 report by the Inter-national Labour Organization puts the number of child workers in India aged between five and 17 at 5.7 million, out of 168 million globally. (RTRS)

Nawaz

Indian farmer Pakhir Singh examines his damaged wheat crop after days of heavy rains and strong winds on the outskirts of Jalandhar on March 14. (AFP)

Bangladesh central bank governor quits

Millions given to casino in ManilaMANILA, March 15, (RTRS): More than $30 million of the money hack-ers stole from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the New York Fed was delivered in cash to a Chinese casino junket operator in Manila, offi-cials told a Philippines Senate hearing on Tuesday.

A further $50 million was split be-tween a casino resort and a gaming firm in the Philippines, where bank accounts that first received the funds were opened in 2015 as part of what officials now believe was an elabo-rately planned laundering scheme.

“Our money trail ended up at the casinos,” Julia Bacay Abad, executive director of the Anti-Money Launder-ing Council, told the open hearing.

She said her agency had frozen 44 accounts connected to the case and had requested assistance from the United States’ Federal Bureau of In-vestigation (FBI).

Teofisto Guingona, head of the Senate’s anti-corruption committee, told Reuters ahead of the hearing that cash deliveries were made to an ethnic Chinese man over several days from a foreign exchange broker.

These were made up of 600 million pesos ($12.87 million) and around $18 million, which meant the junket opera-tor would have received a haul made up of at least 780,000 banknotes.

The details shine a partial light on what happened after last month’s cyber-heist of Bangladesh Bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which netted hackers more than $80 million.

TransactionsThe hackers tried to withdraw about

$951 million from the account but the other transactions were blocked after a typo in one of the instructions raised red flags.

Bangladesh Bank suspects the money was sent to the Philippines

in four tranches and, once there, was diverted to casinos. It has said it is working with the anti-money launder-ing authorities in the Philippines to recover the funds.

The Philippines’ Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) said last week it was investigating $81 million de-posited at one of its branches.

Senator Guingona said the transfers into RCBC were subsequently con-solidated into one account and some of the money was converted to pesos.

CCTV cameras at the branch were not functioning when the money was withdrawn, RCBC’s anti-money laun-dering head, Laurinda Rogero, told the Senate hearing.

The president of a foreign ex-change broker called Philrem Service Corp, Salud Bautista, told the hearing her company was instructed over the phone by the bank branch manager to transfer the funds to a man named Weikang Xu and the two casinos.

Guingona, the senator, said Xu was an ethnic Chinese foreigner but did not know if he was from mainland China.

ControlledBautista said $29 million ended

up in an account of Solaire, a ca-sino resort owned and operated by Bloombery Resorts Corp. Bloombery is controlled by Enrique Razon, the Philippines’ fifth-richest man in 2015, according to Forbes.

Silverio Benny Tan, corporate sec-retary of Bloomberry Resorts, told the hearing that the $29 million was trans-ferred into a casino account under Xu’s name in exchange for ‘dead chips’ that can only be cashed in from winnings.

Bautista said a further $21 million went to an account of Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co., a gaming firm in north-ern Philippines. Reuters tried several phone numbers to seek comment from Eastern Hawaii officials but was un-able to reach any.

State prosecutors said a complaint has been lodged by the Anti-Money Laundering Council against the man-ager of the RCBC branch and the holders of accounts into which the money was originally deposited. A council official told Reuters that more people were likely to be named.

The branch manager, Maia Santos-Deguito, has denied any wrongdoing and in an interview with the local ANC TV channel said she was being used as a scapegoat.

Also:DHAKA: Bangladesh’s central bank governor Atiur Rahman resigned on Tuesday following demands of accountability from the government after $81 million was stolen from the bank’s US account in one of the larg-est cyber heists ever.

Rahman, who returned to Dhaka late on Monday after attending a weekend International Monetary Fund conference in New Delhi, told Reuters that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had accepted his resignation.

The government also fired two dep-uty governors of the bank, Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said, days after blaming it for keep-ing the government in the dark about the theft.

Rahman, 65, said he resigned to set an example in a country where there is not much precedence of account-ability and to uphold the image of the central bank.

“I took responsibility,” Rahman said.A former finance secretary, Fazle

Kabir, would be the new governor, the finance minister said.

Unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank and attempted to steal $951 mil-lion from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which it uses for international settlements, be-tween Feb. 4 and Feb. 5.

Heist

Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito takes an oath during a senate hearing in Manila on March 15. A Phil-ippine bank said it is investigating an $81 million deposit after Bangladesh accused Chinese hackers of stealing from a US account and illegally moving the funds online to the Philippines and

Sri Lanka. (AFP)

Razzaq Hasina

IS claims murder

Islamic State has claimed responsi-bility for murdering a Muslim preacher in Bangladesh, an online group that monitors extremist activity said on Tuesday, the latest killing declared by the militant group in the South Asian nation.

Islamist violence has surged in re-cent months in the Muslim-majority country, but the government has re-jected Islamic State’s claims, blaming the violence instead on homegrown militant groups.

The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said Islamic State had claimed to have killed the man late on Mon-day in Jhenaidah, a district about 100 miles (161 km) west of Dhaka, the capital.

“Soldiers of the caliphate in Ban-gladesh were able to assassinate the polytheist apostate Hafidh Abdul Raz-zaq, one of the top preachers for the Rafidha religion,” SITE quoted the group as saying.

Although the statement called the victim a member of the Rafidha re-ligion, or the Shi’ite Muslim minority group, police identified the dead man as a homeopathic doctor, Abdul Raz-zaq, 45, and denied that he was a preacher or a Shi’ite.

Anowar Hossain, the officer in charge of the police station handling the case, said he was not aware the killing had been claimed by any militant group.

“We suspect local militants are be-hind the latest killing,” he added. “The pattern of killing bore the hallmarks of previous killings of priests. He was not a Shi’ite. We have checked with his family.” Sheikh Hasina is the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.

But civilian politicians on both sides of Thailand’s divide have already shot down drafts of the charter as undemocratic, a

rare show of unity.In the past week two high-profile rival

ex-premiers, Thaksin Shinawatra and

Abhisit Vejjajiva, have slammed the con-stitution, saying it is unlikely to resolve bitter political disputes. (AFP)

cycle of coups and political turbulence — this is the twentieth charter since absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932.

Prayut insists this version will help him deliver on his vow to rid the country of corruption and bring stability once and for all. (AFP)

Asia

The sun sets behind the electricity wires in Colombo on March 14. Sri Lanka deployed troops on March 14 to guard electrical installations as authorities investigated whether sabotage was behind the island’s worst blackout in 20

years. (AFP)

2 dead as villagers and Islamists clashDHAKA, March 15, (AFP): Thou-sands of Bangladeshi villagers clashed on Monday with members of a minority Islamic group who are often regarded with suspicion, leaving two dead people and scores injured, an official said.

Villagers rallied in the southern coastal district of Noakhali to de-mand a halt to construction of a lo-cal Hizbut Tauhid mosque, execu-tive magistrate M. Nikaruzzaman told AFP.

“As the clashes spread, some 5,000 villagers attacked hundreds of followers of Hizbut Tauhid with sticks and rocks. Two people were killed and some 60 people were injured. The villagers also torched two homes of Hizbut Tauhid mem-bers,” he said.

‘Asylum-seekers can come home’: Iran said Tuesday it could not force Ira-nian asylum-seekers to return home from Australia but remained open to voluntary returns as Canberra tries to reduce the number held in detention.

Canberra has been lobbying Tehran to take back Iranians, with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop last year saying there were 8,000 in Australia in immigration deten-tion or on bridging visas, and hundreds of others held in Pacific camps.

“We don’t have any objection to Iranian citizens coming back to Iran voluntarily,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said after talks with Bishop in Canberra.

“And we are working to allow them — enable them — to come back voluntarily.

“We cannot force anybody to come back to Iran but if anybody wants to come back voluntarily, we always take our citizens with pride.”

Zarif said it would be up to Australia to decide on its own legal advice whether it could deport the failed Iranian asylum-seekers back to their homeland.

Asylum-seekers from any nation who arrive by boat are denied resettlement in Australia and sent to Pacific island camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea. (AFP)

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Cambodia jails student: A Cambo-dian court on Tuesday jailed a university student for 18 months for inciting crimes in an anti-government Facebook post that called for regime change.

Facebook is popular in Cambodia, where disenfranchised citizens have increasingly turned to the Internet to highlight alleged state abuses and demand political reforms.

Kong Raya, 24, was the first Cambo-dian convicted of using social media to at-tack the government of long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has warned that online critics could be traced and arrested in a matter of hours.

“There’s nothing to be surprised about. This is how the court works,” Raya, who looked unshaken by the verdict as he left the courtroom flanked by guards, told reporters. (RTRS)

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Trafficking trial opens: The trial of 92 suspected human traffickers, arrested after the discovery of shallow graves of migrants in Thai jungle, began in Bangkok on Tuesday and the attorney-general’s office said it would be over within a year amid fears about the safety of witnesses.

Traffickers abandoned boatloads of migrants at sea last year after a crackdown by Thai authorities that led to a regional migrant crisis with Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh refus-ing boats permission to land.

Rights groups had expressed fears that a drawn-out case, lasting anything up to two years, could put the hundreds of wit-nesses at risk because of inadequate police protection.

“The court is accelerating the case to finish within a year,” said Prayuth Porsut-tayaruk, deputy director-general of the human trafficking office at the Attorney-General’s Office. (RTRS)

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Junta sets Aug 7 for referendum: Thailand’s military government on Tues-day set Aug 7 as the date for a referendum on a controversial constitution it has drafted since seizing power in a coup two years ago.

The referendum will be the country’s first return to the ballot box since junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha toppled an elected government and suspended democ-racy in May 2014.

“The cabinet has approved the referen-dum bill proposed by the election com-mittee,” junta spokesman Major General Sansern Kaewkumnerd told reporters after announcing the Aug 7 date.

Constitution rewrites have done little to end the kingdom’s seemingly endless