DRULAP

Pakistan launched a week-long nationwide polio vaccination campaign Monday, as the country remains one of only two around the world where the paralyzing virus still exists.

This year, so far, Pakistan has reported five cases of the highly infectious disease. The latest polio eradication campaign will target more than 4.4 million children across much of the country, as well as in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.  

The South Asian nation came close to eradicating polio in 2021 when it reported only one case of paralysis from the virus. However, last year the country saw a spike with 20 cases on the record. The virus generally spreads through the fecal matter of a carrier that has contaminated the water supply. 

Two of this year’s five cases were detected in the country’s most populous city Karachi in the southern province of Sindh. This came after the city recorded zero cases in the last two years.  

A spokesperson of the provincial Emergency Operation Center, Syed Nofil Naqvi, told VOA both cases are children from Afghan families settled in Pakistan for years.  

Naqvi blamed cross-border movement between Pakistan and Afghanistan for the disease. Afghanistan, the only other country fighting to eliminate the virus has reported six cases so far in 2023.  

“The environmental samples found across Pakistan are genetically linked to Afghanistan,” Naqvi said.  

To counter the spread of the virus through travelers, Naqvi said, polio teams vaccinate children at bus stops and other transit points.   

All of Pakistan’s remaining polio cases this year came from Bannu, a town in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Muhammad Zeeshan Khan, deputy coordinator for the provincial Emergency Operation Center, told VOA all three families had refused to vaccinate their children.   

“We tried a lot to convince them. One child’s family agreed to giving polio drops but the child had not received an [initial] injection [to build immunity]. This [refusal] is the reason that all three children succumbed to paralysis.” Khan said the families worried the vaccine might harm their children.  

Parents’ refusal to give the oral polio vaccine to their children is one of the primary reasons polio virus still exists in Pakistan.   

Polio workers and the security personnel protecting them frequently come under lethal attacks from parents and militants who see the vaccination drive as part of a foreign conspiracy to render Pakistani children impotent or to give them ingredients not permissible for Muslims to consume.

Provincial officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded more than 16,000 refusals in October. According to Khan, Peshawar, the provincial capital, recorded nearly 8000 refusals followed by Bannu, and North Waziristan where most of Pakistan’s polio cases were recorded last year.  

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 14 incidents of violence against polio teams this year.   

To counter such misconceptions, authorities have been engaging local clerics and influencers, and running expensive TV and radio campaigns to convince parents to vaccinate their children.   

Still, other parents refuse and bargain for unmet civic needs. The National Emergency Operation Center’s plans for the latest campaign show several communities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have refused to vaccinate their children until gas, roads or teachers are provided.  

“For us, the biggest concern is the child whose family has refused [to vaccinate],” said Khan.  

In any campaign cycle thousands of children are also “missed” because they are not home, or the family is unwilling to allow the vaccination team inside if a male member of the household is not present.  

Data shows over 13 percent of children in Quetta, Baluchistan’s provincial capital, missed getting the vaccine last time. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, nearly 1.2 percent of children or more than 90,000 were missed as well.  

However, Khan said many of the missed children get vaccinated as guests in whichever community they are temporarily present.   

In Quetta too, nearly half the children who were missed at one point were eventually covered, according to data.  

Still, in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan that border Afghanistan the vaccination campaign will either be conducted later or postponed indefinitely, primarily due to security reasons.

As hundreds of thousands of polio workers and security personnel go door to door this week in areas facing a high risk of polio, Naqvi is hopeful Pakistan will get closer to eliminating the crippling disease.   

“We are using a positive way of giving the message,” Naqvi said. From posting signs that said “Caution! Your area has polio,” he said, we now say, “we can eliminate polio.”
…

Rescue teams will switch to digging by hand in an effort to extricate 41 construction workers trapped in a collapsed road tunnel in northern India for the past 16 days. 

Officials said Monday that workers will use a so-called “rat hole” mining technique to access the collapsed tunnel, digging a narrow passageway through the remaining rocks and debris to reach the men. 

“There is no other way left except the manual method and this is also the safe one through which we can reach the laborers,” former Lt. Gen Harpal Singh, who is at the site to provide technical assistance to the operation, said on Monday. “Our people are also taking care of the safety measures of those who will go inside for manual drilling. Safety is our priority.”

The tunnel, being built as part of a massive highway project in the northern state of Uttarakhand, caved in on November 12.

Efforts to reach the workers have hit repeated setbacks in the difficult Himalayan terrain, with sophisticated drilling equipment breaking down several times as it encountered rocks and boulders. 

The latest setback came on Friday when the drilling machine was damaged irreparably about 14 meters away from the tunnel.    

A team of Indian army engineers joined the rescue effort Monday, assisting other teams who had been already working on the site. They include international tunnel experts.

Work is also in progress to create an alternate escape route with workers drilling vertically from the top of the mountain toward the tunnel. 

“We have to drill around 86 meters to be done within four days, that is, by November 30th. Hopefully, there will be no further hurdles and the work will be completed on time,” Mahmood Ahmad, managing director of the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited said on Sunday.

However drilling into the mountain poses higher risks, with geologists warning that it could destabilize the hilly terrain.

Plummeting temperatures and forecasts of hail, thunderstorms and rainy weather pose another challenge to the rescue teams.  

“Everyone has been trying,” Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami said on Monday. “We hope that the work is completed at the earliest.” 

Contact has been maintained with the 41 men since they were trapped, first via radio and then with a camera that was inserted last Tuesday through a 15 centimeter pipe that is being used to send hot meals and medicines to the trapped men. Oxygen is being supplied through a separate pipe.

Doctors and psychologists are on standby to ensure their physical and mental well-being of the mostly migrant workers, who had come to work on the project from some of India’s poorest states. Mobile phones have been sent in so that they can talk to their families as well as board games such as Ludo to help them stay occupied.

“They have electricity and a two kilometer passageway along which they can walk. This will help in ensuring their well-being. Counselors are constantly in touch with them. We are giving them what they need,” Syed Ata Hussain, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority told a press conference Monday.   

Authorities have not said what caused the partial collapse of the under-construction tunnel, which is part of an ambitious but controversial $ 1.5 billion highway project to improve access to important Hindu pilgrimage sites in Uttarakhand. Reports say it happened due to a landslide. 

Several experts had opposed the “Char Dham” highway project saying that cutting of hillsides and felling of trees would disturb the geology of the Himalayas, the world’s youngest mountain chain, as well as pose a risk to communities living in the vicinity. 

“This is a region that has become increasingly prone to disasters such as landslides. So whatever we are building, we must take the fragility of the Himalayas into account,” Anjal Prakash, research director, Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business, told VOA. 

“There is a need for infrastructure but how do we plan, that is a conundrum. We need to ensure that the construction being done is environmentally benign and meets international standards for road safety. It looks to me as if some of these issues have been compromised in the present case.”
…

Bangladesh has launched a sweeping and violent crackdown on opposition parties to “eliminate competition” ahead of general elections, including arresting almost 10,000 activists, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

As well as the thousands arrested — many from the key Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) — a staggering number also face charges.

According to the BNP, about half of its five million members “face politically motivated prosecution,” HRW said.

“The arrests, they are not leaving anyone behind, from senior level to the ground level,” one activist told HRW.

Prisons are now at more than double their capacity, the rights group said.

The South Asian nation of around 170 million people holds a general election on Jan.7, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina eyeing her fourth consecutive term in power.

“Bangladesh authorities are carrying out mass arrests of political opposition in a clear attempt to quash the opposition and eliminate competition ahead of the general elections,” HRW said.

New York-based HRW, who called it a “violent autocratic crackdown,” said at least 16 people have been killed since protests escalated in October, including two police officers.

More than 5,500 people have been injured.

There was no immediate response by the government to the HRW report, but authorities say that those arrested should face justice for a range of violent crimes.

‘Extrajudicial killings’

HRW based its report on multiple witness interviews, as well as analysis of videos and police reports.

It said it had found “evidence that security forces are responsible for using excessive force, mass arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings.”

Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest garment exporters — accounting for around 85% of its $55 billion in annual exports — with many global brands purchasing clothes from its factories. 

“Diplomatic partners should make clear that the crackdown will jeopardize economic cooperation,” HRW said.

Julia Bleckner, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said credible elections could not be held under such conditions.

“A free election is impossible when the government stifles free expression and systematically incapacitates the opposition, critics, and activists through arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, harassment, and intimidation,” Bleckner said.

The BNP on Sunday said at least 16,625 members had been arrested since October.

They include most of its leadership, most notably the BNP’s de facto chief Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.

Prosecutors and lawyers said in the past two weeks at least 526 BNP officials and activists were convicted and sentenced, mostly in absentia, over what the party said were “trumped up” charges.
…

Indian rescuers began drilling vertically Sunday from the top of a mountain under which 41 workers became trapped two weeks ago while working on a highway tunnel in the Himalayas, government officials said.

The men, construction workers from some of India’s poorest states, have been stuck in the 4.5-km (3-mile) tunnel being built in Uttarakhand state since it caved in early on Nov. 12. Authorities have said they are safe, with access to light, oxygen, food, water and medicines.

But rescuing them will take much longer than previously hoped as rescuers have switched to manual drilling following damage to the drilling machine, officials said Saturday.

Rescuers had hoped to finish the drilling late Thursday but had to suspend the operation after the platform on which the machine was placed was damaged.

Work resumed Friday evening only to be suspended soon afterward as the machine ran into a new obstacle, officials said, without elaborating.

Vertical drilling started Sunday and it will take about 100 hours, the officials said.

Initially, the rescue plan involved pushing a pipe wide enough to pull the trapped men out on wheeled stretchers.

The men have been getting cooked food via a lifeline pipe that was pushed through to ensure steady supplies of essential goods.

More than a dozen doctors, including psychiatrists, are at the site, talking to the men and monitoring their health. The fact that the tunnel is closed by the debris keeps the men warm.

They have been told to do light yoga exercises and walk around in the 2-kilometer tunnel space they have been confined to, and keep talking to each other.

Deepak Patil, one of the officers in charge of the rescue mission, told Reuters authorities had sent in two mobile phones and memory cards with Hindi films and electronic games.

Priyanka Chaturvedi, a spokesperson for one of India’s opposition parties, asked Sunday for an investigation into the accident and asked the government to ensure the safety of the men.

A member of a panel of experts investigating the disaster said Friday the tunnel does not have an emergency exit and was built through a geological fault.
…

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan arrested four local employees of Germany’s main government-owned aid agency, according to the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“I can confirm that the local employees of GIZ are in custody although we have not received any official information on why they are detained,” a ministry spokesperson told the Associated Press in a statement late Saturday.

“We are taking this situation very seriously and are working through all channels available to us to ensure that our colleagues are released,” she added.

The German Agency for International Cooperation, or GIZ, is owned by the German government. It operates in around 120 countries worldwide, offering projects and services in the areas of “economic development, employment promotion, energy and the environment, and peace and security,” according to the agency’s website.

The Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, after the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from the country. Many foreign missions, including the German embassy in Kabul, closed their offices.

The Taliban initially promised a more moderate approach than during their previous rule from 1996 to 2001 but gradually reimposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

Girls were banned from education beyond the sixth grade and women were barred from working, studying, traveling without a male companion, and even going to parks or bathhouses and were forced to cover up from head to toe.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in September that human rights are in a state of collapse in Afghanistan more than two years following the Taliban’s return to power and stripped back institutional protections at all levels.
…

A suicide bomber struck a Pakistani military convoy in a volatile northwestern region Sunday, wounding at least 11 soldiers.

Multiple official sources confirmed to VOA the attack occurred in Bannu, a garrison city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. They described the condition of at least three injured personnel as “critical.”

The army’s media wing did not immediately comment on the bombing.  

The anti-government Hafiz Gul Bahadur group, known to have close ties with neighboring Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Bannu and several adjoining Pakistani districts, including North Waziristan on the Afghan border, routinely experience militant attacks.

Pakistan alleges fugitive militants have intensified their violent campaign in the country from sanctuaries in Afghanistan since the Islamist Taliban reclaimed power there two years ago.

Officials say the violence has killed more than 2,300 Pakistanis, mostly security forces. The bloodshed has strained Islamabad’s relations with the de facto Afghan government in Kabul.

Most of the violence has been claimed by the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, an alliance of more than a dozen militant insurgent groups.

Pakistani officials say around 6,000 TTP members, including senior commanders, have taken refuge and operate freely out of Afghan soil to direct cross-border terrorism, charges Taliban authorities reject. 
…

Information in this report is confirmed by other sources and can be used with attribution to AP on websites and without attribution in broadcasts.  The Newscenter has no plans to match it. 

India’s LGBTQ+ Community Holds Pride March, Raises Concerns Over Country’s Restrictive Laws 

(RADIO) 

NEW DELHI (AP) — More than 2,000 people have danced, sang and cheered in a gay pride parade in India’s capital, while also raising their concerns over India’s restrictive laws. Dancing to drums and music, the participants Sunday carried rainbow flags, multicolored balloons and placards as they walked for more than two hours to the Jantar Mantar area near India’s Parliament. The annual event comes shortly after India’s top court refused to legalize same-sex marriages, which disappointed campaigners for LGBTQ+ rights in the world’s most populous country. In 2018, India’s top court struck down a colonial-era law that had made gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison and expanded constitutional rights for the gay community. 

 (WEB) 

NEW DELHI (AP) — More than 2,000 people took part in a gay pride event in New Delhi, waving rainbow flags and multicolored balloons as they celebrated sexual diversity in India but also raised concerns over the country’s restrictive laws.

Dancing to drums and music, the participants walked for more than two hours to the Jantar Mantar area near India’s Parliament. They held banners reading “Equality for all” and “Queer and proud.”

The annual event comes after India’s top court refused to legalize same-sex marriages in an October ruling that disappointed campaigners for LGBTQ+ rights in the world’s most populous country.

“It’s not about marriage. It’s about equality. Everybody should have the same right because that’s what our constitution says,” said Noor Enayat, one of the volunteers organizing this year’s event.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court’s five-judge bench heard 21 petitions that sought to legalize same-sex marriage in India.

The justices called for steps to raise awareness among the public about LGBTQ+ identity and to establish hotlines and safe houses for those in the community who are facing violence. They also urged the state to make sure same-sex couples don’t face harassment or discrimination in accessing basic needs, like opening a joint bank account, but stopped short of granting legal recognition to same-sex unions.

Legal rights for LGBTQ+ people in India have been expanding over the past decade, mostly as a result of the Supreme Court’s intervention.

In 2018, the top court struck down a colonial-era law that had made gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison and expanded constitutional rights for the gay community. The decision was seen as a historic victory for LGBTQ+ rights.

Despite this progress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government resisted the legal recognition of same-sex marriage and rejected several petitions in favor. Some religious groups, too, had opposed same-sex unions, saying they went against Indian culture.

Homosexuality has long carried a stigma in India’s traditional society, even though there has been a shift in attitudes toward same-sex couples in recent years. India now has openly gay celebrities and some high-profile Bollywood films have dealt with gay issues.

According to a Pew survey, acceptance of homosexuality in India increased by 22 percentage points to 37% between 2013 and 2019. But same-sex couples often face harassment in many Indian communities, whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian.
…