WELLINGTON: Nearly two dozen sailors on an Australian military ship going to deliver aid to Tonga have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday, raising fears they could bring COVID-19 to a Pacific nation that has so far managed to avoid any outbreaks.
Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton said his government was working with Tongan authorities to keep the ship at sea and make sure there is no threat to Tonga’s 105,000 residents.
Tongan authorities have been wary that accepting international aid could usher in a bigger disaster than the huge eruption of an undersea volcano 10 days ago. The eruption triggered a tsunami that destroyed dozens of homes, and volcanic ash has tainted drinking water.
Since the pandemic began, Tonga has reported just a single case of COVID-19 and has avoided any outbreaks. It’s one of the few countries in the world currently completely virus free. About 61 percent of Tongans are fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.
Australian officials said 23 crew members were infected on the HMAS Adelaide, which left Brisbane on Friday.
“They need the aid desperately, but they don’t want the risk of COVID,” Dutton told Sky News. “We will work through all of that as quickly as we can.”
It’s the second aid shipment from Australia in which at least one crew member tested positive. A C-17 Globemaster military transport plane was earlier turned around midflight after somebody was diagnosed.
Meanwhile, a cable company official said Tonga’s main island could have its Internet service restored within two weeks, although it may take much longer to repair the connection to the smaller islands.
The single undersea fiber-optic cable which connects the Pacific nation to the outside world was severed after the eruption and tsunami.
That left most people unable to connect with loved ones abroad. For days, people couldn’t get through on their phones, by email, or through social media.
Since then, Tonga’s Digicel has been able to restore international call services to some areas by using satellite connections. Some people have been able to send emails or get limited Internet connectivity.
Samieula Fonua, who chairs the board at Tonga Cable Ltd., the state-owned company which owns the fiber-optic cable, said a repair ship had left from Papua New Guinea and was due to stop over in Samoa by Monday to pick up supplies. It should then arrive in Tonga by Feb. 1.
Fonua said the CS Reliance had a crew of about 60 aboard, including engineers, divers and medical staff. He said its equipment included a robot which could assess the cable on the seabed.
Fonua said preliminary estimates indicated the break in the cable was located about 37 kilometers offshore from the main island of Tongatapu. He said that all going well, the crew should be able to repair the cable by Feb. 8, restoring the Internet to about 80 percent of Tonga’s customers.
The cable runs from Tonga to Fiji, a distance of about 800 kilometers, and was first commissioned in 2013 at a cost of about $16 million. It was financed through grants from the World Bank Group and Asian Development Bank, and increased Tonga’s Internet capacity fivefold.
But like many small Pacific countries, Tonga relies heavily on a single cable to stay connected and has little in the way of a back-up plan. Three years ago, a cable break believed to have been caused by a ship dragging its anchor also led to weeks of disruptions.
A second, domestic fiber-optic cable that connects Tonga’s smaller islands to the main island could prove much more difficult to repair. Fonua said that cable runs near the undersea volcano which erupted and may have been severely damaged. It might need extensive repairs or even a replacement, he said.
Fonua said the focus was on fixing the main international cable, and they could deal with the domestic connections “at a later time.”
He said Tongans had been somewhat understanding of the communication disruptions caused by the disaster, which killed three people, destroyed dozens of homes and tainted water supplies with volcanic ash.
“People are calm. Coming out of a total blackout, just being able to call outside and send an email has settled them a bit,” Fonua said. “By the time they start getting more frustrated, I’m hoping we’ll have the cable connected by then.”
23 Australians on ship delivering aid to Tonga have COVID-19
https://arab.news/ckaff
23 Australians on ship delivering aid to Tonga have COVID-19
- Australian government working with Tongan authorities to keep the ship at sea
- Tonga has reported just a single case of COVID-19 and has avoided any outbreaks
Trinidad, Tobago urged to repatriate women, children from Iraq
- A number of its citizens are being held in detention for alleged involvement with Daesh
- Human Rights Watch: Innocent children have been denied proper access to education, healthcare, nutritious food
London: Human Rights Watch has urged the government of Trinidad and Tobago to repatriate a number of its citizens from Iraq being held in detention for alleged involvement with Daesh.
HRW said four Trinidadian women have been held by authorities in Iraq along with seven children, aged 7-15 years, for almost seven years.
It said it had been in contact with one mother, currently in Rusafa prison, who on May 2 told them in a voice recording that her two sons, aged 13 and 15 — one of whom suffers from asthma, anaemia and malnutrition — had been taken away from her.
“They took my son from me, they told me he was too big to be staying in a cell with us. They put him in a cell with about 10 boys,” she said.
“We have no education for our children. Nothing. We are going on our seventh year in prison and our children are growing up here.”
Another mother told HRW on May 4: “We are here just waiting, and time is wasting. Our children remain uneducated without any knowledge.”
Rusafa is believed to hold around 100 youths as well as their mothers, with many of the adults foreign nationals charged with or convicted of terrorism-related crimes.
Three of the four Trinidadian women are being held there, serving sentences of 20 years or more.
The fourth is being held with her two children in the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, where she has completed her sentence but cannot leave without government help.
Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at HRW, said: “Trinidad and Tobago has publicly promised that it would bring home its nationals from Iraq and Syria, but not a single Trinidadian has returned home in more than five years.
“These children, who are not responsible for any crime, should be in school in Trinidad and Tobago, not languishing in an Iraqi prison.”
The four women from Trinidad and Tobago told HRW that they are prepared to have their children repatriated even if it means they must stay in Iraq, but have had no word on a decision by the government despite communicating with the repatriation committee established by Trinidadian Prime Minister Keith Rowley in March 2023.
HRW said the Trinidadian authorities should look to repatriate the children as they have been denied proper access to education, healthcare and nutritious food.
In a statement, it said: “The Iraqi and Trinidadian authorities should weigh the children’s best interests and right to family unity and consider repatriating both the children and their mothers, so their children could regularly visit their mothers as they serve out their sentences in Trinidad and Tobago.”
Becker added: “Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister has pledged to bring the Trinidadians detained in Iraq and Syria home. He shouldn’t wait any longer.”
Dutch police end a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Amsterdam university
- Police said they had to act to stop the event and dismantle tents that been set up by protesters
- Outgoing Education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said universities are a place for dialogue and debate and he was sad to see police had to intervene
AMSTERDAM: Dutch riot police ended a pro-Palestinian demonstration at an Amsterdam university early on Tuesday, arresting some 125 people in sometimes violent clashes, authorities said.
In messages posted overnight on social media X, police said they had to act to stop the event and dismantle tents that been set up by protesters, who used violence against police at the site.
“The police’s input was necessary to restore order. We see the footage on social media. We understand that those images may appear as intense,” police said.
Local media showed demonstrators shooting fireworks at police officers but there were no immediate reports of injuries on either side.
“All is now quiet ... police stay in the vicinity of the Roeterseiland campus,” police said later on X.
Outgoing Education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said universities are a place for dialogue and debate and he was sad to see that police had to intervene.
Student protests over the war and academic ties with Israel have begun to spread across Europe but have remained much smaller in scale than those seen in the United States.
Last Friday, police in Paris entered France’s prestigious Sciences Po university and removed student activists who had occupied its buildings.
More than 100 students occupy the Ghent university, in Belgium, in both a climate and a Gaza protest that they want to prolong until Wednesday.
India election: Inside Modi and BJP’s plan to win a supermajority
- Hindu nationalist BJP party and its allies are targeting 400 of 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament
- Only once has a party crossed 400 mark, when Congress won following assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984
BARPETA/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India: As India votes in a six-week general election, Narendra Modi’s image adorns everything from packs of rice handed out to the poor to large posters in cities and towns.
His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is relying on the prime minister’s popularity as it seeks a super-majority in India’s parliament. Its message: Modi has delivered economic growth, infrastructure upgrades and India’s improved standing in the world.
But as the Hindu nationalist party and its allies target 400 of the 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament — up from 352 won in 2019 — they are also employing local tactics in some vital constituencies they hope to wrest from the opposition.
Opinion polls indicate Modi will win a rare third term when voting ends on June 1. But only once in Indian history has a party crossed the 400 mark — when the center-left Congress party romped to victory following the assassination of its leader Indira Gandhi in 1984.
To examine how the right-wing National Democratic Alliance (NDA) aims to achieve that feat — and the obstacles it faces — Reuters spoke to nine NDA officials, three opposition leaders and two political analysts, as well as voters in six opposition-held seats the alliance is targeting.
They identified three of the BJP’s key tactics: enlisting celebrity candidates to unseat veteran opposition lawmakers; making an assault on the opposition’s southern strongholds by appealing to minorities such as Christians; and exploiting redrawn political boundaries that bolster the Hindu electorate in some opposition-controlled areas in the north.
“A combination of strategies, organizational commitment and tactical flexibility will help make inroads in seats never held by the party ever before,” BJP President J. P. Nadda, who oversees the party’s election strategy, told Reuters in April.
Some critics have warned the BJP would use a large majority to push through a more radical agenda in a third term. While the BJP’s manifesto focuses heavily on economic growth, it has also pledged to scrap separate legal codes for religious and tribal groups in areas such as marriage and inheritance.
Many Muslims and tribal groups oppose the plan, which would require a constitutional amendment to be passed by at least two-thirds of parliament.
“Modi wants a landslide majority only to be able to end the debate and deliberation on any policy matter in the parliament,” Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge told Reuters.
Following low turnout in early voting, some BJP campaign officials have in recent days appeared less confident of securing a huge majority, though the party still expects to form the next government.
SOUTHERN STRATEGY
Modi’s party has criticized the dynastic politics that it says afflicts Congress, long dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family. But in Pathanamthitta, a seat in the southern state of Kerala, it is fielding a political scion in Anil Antony — son of a veteran Congress leader.
The constituency, home to a sizeable Christian minority, has been held by Congress since its creation in 2009.
Anil’s father, former defense minister A.K. Antony, supports the incumbent and has denounced his son, a fellow Christian, for representing the Hindu nationalist party.
But Anil has another supporter: Modi, who came to Pathanamthitta in March and praised the BJP candidate for his “fresh vision and leadership.” The prime minister has visited the five states of southern India at least 16 times since December.
Nadda, the BJP president, acknowledged that winning a supermajority would require performing well in the five southern states, which are home to about 20 percent of India’s population but have not traditionally voted for his party.
In 2019, the NDA won just 31 of 130 seats across Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, all of which are linguistically diverse and have many Muslim and Christian voters.
Jiji Joseph, general secretary of the BJP’s minority wing in Kerala, said the party has made a concerted push for the 18 percent of voters there who are Christians. The BJP did not win a single seat in Kerala at the last general election.
“The BJP launched active contact with the Church and we started interacting with clergies directly,” he said, adding that the party now has 11,000 active Christian members. “There is a change. Christians now want to believe that BJP stands for them.”
In April, Anil became the first BJP candidate in Kerala to be endorsed by Christian leaders. He told Reuters his selection indicated the party offered opportunities to members from minority groups. He declined to comment on relations with his father.
Jayant Joseph, a Keralan Christian voter, said he backed the BJP because he had read media reports about Muslim men marrying Christian women and converting them to Islam. Most moderate Hindus consider allegations of large-scale forced conversions to be a conspiracy theory.
“Kerala is a secular state,” he said. “But for it to continue to be a secular state, the Muslim population and their conversion strategy must be kept under check.”
A Modi political aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media, said the NDA expects to win about 50 seats in the south.
K. Anil Kumar, a senior leader of Kerala’s ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), said he did not believe BJP would do well in his state, which he said has a strong tradition of secularism.
“The BJP might try to side with the Christians on some issues but they are fundamentally a party of the Hindus and for the Hindus,” he said.
STAR CANDIDATES
In the Mandi constituency of the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has recruited Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut to break the Congress party’s grip on power. Congress is fielding as its candidate Vikramaditya Singh, whose mother currently represents the constituency. His father was the state’s long-time chief minister.
Ranaut, a political novice who calls herself a “glorious right-wing” personality, has starred in popular movies with nationalistic themes. She is known for her criticism of Bollywood executives who she said favored the relatives of famous actors for opportunities.
The actress is one of five actors running for the BJP this year, up from four in 2019.
No opinion polling on the Mandi race is publicly available.
Anjana Negia, an elementary school teacher who plans to vote for Ranaut, acknowledged that her preferred candidate had no political experience. But she said that she valued a new face and that a Modi-backed candidate would help “bring a fresh wave of development.”
Fielding celebrities and seeking the endorsement of entertainment personalities is relatively new for the BJP, which “long resisted such tactics because of its cadre-based nature” that prized grassroots efforts, said Milan Vaishnav, an expert on South Asian politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank.
Ranaut declined an interview request. Federal BJP spokesman Shahzad Poonawala said she “has been successful in exposing dynastic culture and nepotism in Bollywood and now she is doing the same in politics.”
Singh, a state minister responsible for urban development, told Reuters that his family’s experiences gave him a better understanding of politics. Charges of nepotism were “shallow,” he said.
REDISTRICTING BENEFITS
The NDA is hoping for gains in the northeastern state of Assam, where it won nine of 14 seats in 2019. Assam’s BJP chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, said in March he was confident of winning 13 seats.
The NDA’s confidence is rooted in a 2023 redistricting exercise in the state. India’s non-partisan Election Commission routinely redraws seat boundaries to reflect population changes; it is tasked with ensuring that no political party gains undue advantage from the changes.
But exercises since the last federal election in Assam and far-northern Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only majority Muslim region, diluted the Muslim vote in seats that the NDA is targeting, according to three BJP and four opposition officials.
The Election Commission declined to comment on the two exercises, citing the ongoing election.
In Assam, the NDA has high hopes for Congress-held Barpeta, which alliance candidate Phani Bhushan Choudhury said newly includes dozens of villages and some towns with large Hindu populations.
“Earlier (Barpeta) had a Muslim majority but now it is a Hindu majority,” said Choudhury. “That change has worked in my favor.”
He estimates that there are now 1.2 million Hindu voters in Barpeta, where he is campaigning on development and protecting the rights of what the NDA calls “indigenous Assamese” voters, who are mostly Hindu.
Choudhury’s Congress opponent Deep Bayan said the percentage of Hindus in Barpeta went from 30 percent to 70 percent. “Instead focusing on real issues affecting the people...(the BJP does) the politics of polarization,” he said.
Three of Jammu and Kashmir’s five seats are majority Muslim and held by the opposition. But the NDA hopes to swing one of them, Anantnag-Rajouri, after its voter rolls swelled by more than 50 percent to over 2 million, according to government data.
Many of the new voters are Hindus or from regional tribes — which benefited from new BJP policies awarding them education and employment privileges — according to regional BJP chief Ravinder Raina.
Raina said the BJP would support an NDA partner that it believed could win Anantnag-Rajouri and focus on retaining the two Hindu-majority seats it holds.
The two redistricting exercises presages a broader remapping of constituencies due after the election.
Vaishnav, of the Carnegie Endowment, said the remapping would distribute seats to the BJP-dominated north, which has much higher population growth rates, to the detriment of wealthier south India.
Indian PM Modi says he does not oppose Islam, Muslims as election campaign heats up
- Modi’s critics accuse him and his party of targeting India’s minority Muslims for electoral gains
- Allegations grew after Modi referred to Muslims recently as “infiltrators” who have “more children”
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he does not oppose Islam or Muslims and wants the community to think about their future growth as they vote in an ongoing general election that completes its third phase on Tuesday.
Modi’s critics accuse him and his party of targeting minority Muslims for electoral gains and the allegations grew after Modi referred to Muslims in a recent speech as “infiltrators” who have “more children.”
He denied discriminating against Muslims and has linked his recent comment to what he described as the opposition Congress party’s election plan to redistribute the wealth of majority Hindus among Muslims. The Congress denies making any such promise.
“We are not opposed to Islam and Muslims,” Modi told broadcaster Times Now in an interview aired on Monday. “The opposition is looking after its own benefit. Muslim community is intelligent... the opposition is worried that their lies have been caught.”
Modi is seeking a rare third straight term in the seven-phase election that started on April 19 and ends on June 1. Eleven states and territories will vote in the third phase on Tuesday and surveys suggest Modi will win comfortably when results are declared on June 4.
His campaign began by showcasing economic achievements of the past 10 years but changed tack after the first phase of voting and focused more on firing up his Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindu base by attacking rivals as pro-Muslim.
“I want to say to the Muslim community: introspect, think. The country’s progressing, if you feel any shortcomings in your community, what is the reason behind it? Why didn’t you get government benefits in the time when Congress was in power?“
Analysts say Modi and his Hindu nationalist party have made controversial remarks to invigorate their hard-line base as the election sees comparatively low voter turnout from previous years. Surveys say jobs and inflation are the main concerns of voters.
“Think of your children and your own future,” Modi said, referring to Muslims and the elections. “I don’t want any community to live like laborers because someone is scaring them.”
PM Modi votes as India’s marathon election heats up
- Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to win India’s election convincingly
- Indian PM has stepped up rhetoric on India’s main religious divide in bid to rally voters
AHMEDABAD, India: Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi cast his ballot Tuesday in India’s ongoing general election after giving several inflammatory campaign speeches accused of targeting minority Muslims.
Turnout so far has dropped significantly compared with the last national poll in 2019, with analysts blaming widespread expectations that Modi will easily win a third term and hotter-than-average temperatures heading into the summer.
Modi walked out of a polling booth early morning in the city of Ahmedabad while holding up a finger marked with indelible ink, flanked by security personnel and cheered by supporters.
“Voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” Modi said on social media platform X, referring to India’s lower house of parliament.
“Urging everyone to do so as well and strengthen our democracy.”
The premier’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to win the election convincingly, but since the vote began on April 19, Modi has stepped up his rhetoric on India’s main religious divide in a bid to rally voters.
He has used public speeches to refer to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” prompting condemnation from opposition politicians, who have complained to election authorities.
Modi has also accused Congress, the main party in the disparate opposition alliance competing against him, of planning to reallocate the nation’s wealth to Muslim households.
“This is the first time in a long time that he is so direct,” said Hartosh Singh Bal, executive editor at news magazine The Caravan.
“I haven’t seen him be this directly bigoted, usually he alludes to bigotry,” he added.
“The comments on wealth redistribution are targeting something from the Congress manifesto that just does not exist and that is frankly quite unfortunate.”
Modi remains widely popular a decade after coming to power, in large part due to his government’s positioning the nation’s majority faith at the center of its politics, despite India’s officially secular constitution.
In January, the prime minister presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to the deity Ram, built on the site of a centuries-old mosque razed by Hindu zealots decades earlier.
Construction of the temple fulfilled a long-standing demand of Hindu activists and was widely celebrated across India, with extensive television coverage and street parties.
Modi’s brand of Hindu-nationalist politics has in turn made India’s 220-million-plus Muslim population increasingly anxious about their future in the country.
The election commission has not sanctioned Modi for his remarks despite its code of conduct prohibiting campaigning on “communal feelings” such as religion.
India’s election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.
Much of southern Asia was hit by a heatwave last week that saw several constituencies vote in searing temperatures.
In the city of Mathura, not far from the Taj Mahal, temperatures crossed 41 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) on polling day, and election commission figures showed turnout dropping nearly nine points to 52 percent from five years earlier.
An analysis of turnout data published by The Hindu newspaper concluded it was too early to determine whether hot weather was impacting voter participation.
But India’s weather bureau has forecast more heatwave spells to come in May and the election commission formed a taskforce last month to review the impact of heat and humidity before each round of voting.
High temperatures were forecast for several locations voting on Tuesday including the states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
Years of scientific research have found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
More than 968 million people are eligible to vote in the Indian election, with the final round of polling on June 1 and results expected three days later.
