THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India: Hundreds of Hindu devotees on Sunday blocked a path leading to one of the religion’s holiest temples in southern India to stop a group of women making a new attempt to reach the landmark.
Women activists have been trying to enter the Sabrimala temple complex in Kerala state since a September ruling by the Supreme Court overturned a longstanding ban on women of childbearing age from visiting the shrine.
Tensions peaked again after 11 women reached the village of Pamba at the foot of the hill with the Sabrimala shrine at the top.
Pilgrims have to walk about four hours to reach the shrine but hundreds of protesters, including women, from across India blocked the path, noisily vowing not to let the women pass.
“The women are adamant they won’t withdraw until they have seen the deity at the Sabarimala temple,” said Selvi, a leader of the women, who only uses one name.
Police held talks between the two sides in a bid to end the showdown.
“We are monitoring the situation and will follow the decision of the High court appointed monitoring committee,” Kerala state government minister for cooperation Kadakampally Surendran told journalists.
Hundreds of thousands of Hindus — men, young girls and elderly women — normally trek to the temple during the current festival season.
But Sabrimala has become a major battleground between Hindu radicals and gender activists since the Supreme Court’s landmark revocation of the ban on women between 10 and 50, which has sparked waves of protests and shutdowns across Kerala.
The Supreme Court is to hear challenges to its decision to overturn the ban on women from January 22.
Many Hindu groups and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party oppose the court ruling.
They argue that court ignores their beliefs that the deity Ayyappa was reputed to have been celibate.
Devotees clashed with police in October at Sabarimala leading to the arrests of more than 2,000 people.
“If these women were actual devotees, they would not have been so blatant in their utter disregard for the age-old traditions and customs of Sabarimala,” Sasikumar Varma from the region’s Pandalam Royal family and closely associated with the temple, told AFP.
“They just want to create trouble for genuine devotees,” he added.
Protesters block women going to flashpoint India temple
Protesters block women going to flashpoint India temple
- Women activists have been trying to enter the Sabrimala temple complex in Kerala state since a September ruling by the Supreme Court
- Sabrimala has become a major battleground between Hindu radicals and gender activists
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
