Sunday, June 24, 2012

Day after, Pratapgarh village tense; 2 FIRs but no arrest - By Prashant Pandey - The Indian Express

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/day-after-pratapgarh-village-tense;-2-firs-but-no-arrest/966315/0

The Indian Express

Day after, Pratapgarh village tense; 2 FIRs but no arrest


Prashant Pandey : Asthan, Pratapgarh, Mon Jun 25 2012, 02:04 hrs
The residents of Asthan village in Pratapgarh, UP, whose houses were torched on Saturday by a mob protesting against the rape and murder of a girl, are living in fear and not even thinking of returning to their homes to begin life afresh. The situation remains tense.

Two FIRs have been registered and 68 people identified. No arrests have been made so far. The police said 46 houses had been torched.

The Station Officer of Nawabganj police station, Arun Kumar Pathak, has been placed under suspension. Senior officials have also sent negative reports against Circle Officer (Kunda) V S Rana.

The violence had erupted when the body of the girl, who was allegedly gangraped and murdered on June 20, was being taken for cremation on Saturday.

The incident comes close on the heels of riots in Kosi Kalan in Mathura, where the Muslim localities were targeted on June 3.

One of the more than 125 “refugees” — put up at T P College in Kunda since Saturday evening — Akhtar Ali (80) said: “The mob came suddenly and surrounded us from all directions. They set our house on fire. My sons and some other residents somehow managed to save me.”

At the time, Ali’s four sons and three daughters, besides his wife, were present in the house. Three of his sons live in Bhiwandi where they work in powerlooms. Fourth one sells clothes brought from there. Together, they claimed to have lost goods worth over Rs 2.5 lakh.

“More importantly, we feel that the police simply aided the attackers. Give us that much time and we too can teach them (the attackers) a lesson,” said an angry Afsar Ali, son of the old man.

The Muslim hamlet houses mostly Ansaris who are employed in the powerloom industry in Bhiwandi. The victims could mostly have been women, children and old men, but for the fact that the many male members had come home to attend marriages. Their cattle, grains and other belongings were either taken away or burnt, they said.

All the “refugees” were shifted in the evening to a madrasa in nearby Barai for better care.

“They were facing problems at the college and the members of the Muslim community said they would be much at ease in madrasa, following which permission was given,” said Pratapgarh SP O P Sagar.

Asthan, with blackened houses, smoke still rising from a couple of houses, resembled a ghost village. A heavy posse of policemen guarded it. They also prevented this correspondent from visiting the hamlet in which the Dalits, who allegedly attacked the Muslim locality, lived.

Niyaz Ahmed Ansari, brother of Asthan’s pradhan Nizam Ansari, said the incident was waiting to happen. “When the incident of murder of the girl came to light, there were a few persons who told us that we should escape from the village if we were to save our lives,” said Niyaz.

He took refuge in Pariyawan village, about 4 km from Asthan. Niyaz said the issue could have been sorted out, but the visit of Shailendra Singh (Samajwadi Party’s MP from Kaushambi) and Vinod Saroj (independent MLA, Bihar Assembly constituency) a day before the violence led to the escalation of tension. 

Kaushambi’s two Assembly segments — Bihar and Kunda — fall in Pratapgarh.

“Although, it is matter of investigation, it is true that Singh and Saroj visited the area on Friday. They both belong to the same community as the attackers,” said Sagar.

Shailendra Singh said he had visited the Dalits and also the Muslims after the incident. “Why will any MP create strife in his own constituency? People who have a vested interest are spreading such rumours,” he said.

UP announces relief

The Uttar Pradesh government on Sunday announced a compensation of Rs 50,000 each to residents of 46 houses which were torched by a mob in Pratapgarh’s Asthan village on Saturday. It also declared to provide ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh to the family of the11-year-old Dalit girl whose rape and murder allegedly led to the arson and violence.

Morsi Is Winner of Egyptian Presidency - By David D. Kirpatrick - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/world/middleeast/mohamed-morsi-of-muslim-brotherhood-declared-as-egypts-president.html

New York Times

Morsi Is Winner of Egyptian Presidency

Andre Pain/European Pressphoto Agency

Supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate for president, gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo to await the declaration of a winner on Sunday.
By
Published: June 24, 2012 39 Comments

CAIRO — Election regulators named Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential elections, handing the Islamist group a symbolic triumph and a new weapon in its struggle for power with the ruling military council.
World Twitter Logo.

Connect With Us on Twitter

Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
European Pressphoto Agency
Mohamed Morsi, the candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, was declared the winner of the Egyptian presidential election on Sunday.

Readers’ Comments

After an hourlong speech in which he detailed dozens of specific inquiries down to the ballot-box level, the chairman of the election commission, Farouk Sultan, announced that Mr. Morsi had won 51.7 percent of the runoff vote completed last weekend. The other candidate, the former general Ahmed Shafik, won 48.3 percent.

In Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands had gathered to await the result, the confirmation of Mr. Morsi’s win brought instant, rollicking celebration. Fireworks went up over the crowd, which took up a pulsing, deafening chant: “Morsi! Morsi!”

Mr. Morsi now becomes the first Islamist elected to be head of an Arab state. But his victory is an ambiguous milestone in Egypt’s promised transition to democracy after the ouster 16 months ago of President Hosni Mubarak.

After an election that international monitors called credible, the military-led government has recognized an electoral victory by an opponent of military rule over Mr. Shafik, who promised harmony with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. But Mr. Morsi’s recognition as president does little to resolve the larger standoff between the generals and the Brotherhood over the balance of power over the institutions of government and the future constitution. Under the generals’ plan, Mr. Morsi, 60, will assume an office stripped of almost all authority under a military-issued interim constitution.

Having dissolved the democratically elected and Brotherhood-led Parliament on the eve of the presidential vote, the generals who seized control after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster abrogated their pledge to hand power by June 30, eliciting charges of a new military coup.

After 84 years as an often outlawed secret society struggling in the prisons and shadows of monarchs and dictators, the Brotherhood is now closer than ever to its dream of building a novel Islamist democracy. And its leaders vowed to fight on for the restoration of Parliament regardless of Mr. Morsi’s win.

Although it was clear as early as Monday morning that Mr. Morsi had won more votes than Mr. Shafik, the weeklong delay in the official results stirred widespread fears that the military-led government might seek to name Mr. Shafik as a decisive blow in the generals’ power struggle with the Brotherhood.

Before the results were announced, the capital was as tense Sunday as on any day since the two and a half week revolt that brought down Mr. Mubarak. Army tanks and soldiers were deployed around the election commission, the Parliament and other institutions to prepare for possible violence. Foreign embassies warned their citizens to stay away from downtown. Banks, government offices and schools all closed early to allow students and employees to get off the streets.

His designation as president-elect will hand the Brotherhood and its allies a bully pulpit to use the struggle for power with the military. The Brotherhood has sought to rebuild the partnership with more secular and liberal advocates of democracy that came together in the uprising against Mr. Mubarak, and Brotherhood leaders have vowed not to hold any negotiations with the generals without the participation of the other groups in their so-called “national front.”

But on its own, the Brotherhood’s control of the presidency will do nothing to reduce the calm the fierce polarization of Egyptian society. On Saturday night, a counter protest that reportedly grew to over 10,000 gathered in a neighborhood with a heavy concentration of military personnel to demonstrate in support of the ruling generals, Mr. Shafik and secular government. Mr. Shafik, Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, has campaigned with the support of the old ruling party elite as a new strongman who can bring back order after the 16 months of chaos.

Earlier in the day, a group of secular political leaders and lawmakers who call themselves liberals had held a televised news conference to declare their support for the generals and the dissolution of the Brotherhood-led Parliament. The praised the shutdown of parliament as a victory for law and order, citing an unusually rushed court decision announced the day before. (The Brotherhood has respected the ruling but challenged its implementation.)
The secular politicians also accused the Brotherhood of “hijacking” the revolution and called it a threat to the “civil” character of the state. They dismissed the Brotherhood’s pledges to govern in coalition, respecting individual and minority rights, and instead accused the group of plotting to impose religious rule.

Incongruously given Washington’s history of antagonism with the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the secular block argued that the United States was improperly attempting to sway the presidential race in favor of the Brotherhood, although American officials and the embassy have said they support only the democratic process regardless of the result.

Mr. Morsi is an American-educated engineer who received his doctoral degree at the University of Southern California. He used to lead the Brotherhood’s small bloc of lawmakers in the Mubarak-dominated parliament.