Feb-2012-International

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

President of Maldives resigns following mutiny
Mutiny by sections of the police and the army on February 7, 2011, forced Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed to step down and hand over power to the Vice-President Mohamed Waheed Hassan.

Nasheed had been facing increasingly violent street protests and a constitutional crisis ever since he got a judge arrested on January 16, after accusing him of being ‘in the pocket’ of his predecessor Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had ruled for 30 years before Nasheed was swept to power in 2008 as the first democratically elected President of Maldives.

Mohamed Nasheed was a former political prisoner who rose from grassroots activism and journalism.

Nasheed, who was educated in Sri Lanka and Britain, came to power after building a pro-democracy movement with local and foreign support in opposition to the 30-year autocratic rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Gayoom, Asia’s longest-serving leader, ruled the holiday paradise unchallenged for three decades between 1978 and 2008 and repeatedly threw Nasheed in jail over a period of six years. Nasheed recounted once in a television interview that he spent 18 months in solitary confinement as his jailors tried to get him to confess to seeking to overthrow the State.

The media-savvy father of two daughters and holder of a degree in maritime engineering was at one point an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. He formed his Maldivian Democratic Party in exile but then returned home to a hero’s welcome, sweeping 54% of the vote in the 2008 elections.

Nasheed had said after the election that he had forgiven his jailors, the torturers and that he wanted Gayoom to grow old  in the Maldives, saying it was a test of our democracy how we treat the former dictator

Yemen vote ensures Saleh’s exit after 33 years
On February 21, 2012, Yemen ushered Ali Abdullah Saleh from power after 33 years, voting to endorse his deputy as President, with a mission to rescue the nation from poverty, chaos and the brink of civil war.

Vice-President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the sole consensus candidate, billed the vote as a way to move on after months of protests against Saleh’s rule.

Five persons were killed in violence in Yemen’s south, where a secessionist movement is active, a reminder of the challenges Hadi will face in taming a nation where half of the population of 23 million owns a gun.

The vote makes Saleh the fourth Arab autocrat in a year to be removed from power, after revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. At stake is an economy left in shambles, where 42 per cent live on less than $2 per day and runaway inflation is driving up food and fuel prices.

Voters dipped their thumbs in ink and stamped their print on a ballot paper bearing a picture of Hadi and a map of Yemen in the colours of the rainbow. A high turnout was crucial to give Hadi the legitimacy he needs to carry out changes outlined in a US-backed power transfer deal brokered by Yemen’s Gulf neighbours, including the drafting of a new constitution, restructuring of armed forces and multi-party elections.

Athens burns as Greece meets conditions for Euro 130 bn rescue deal
On February 13, 2012, the Greek government came under pressure to convince sceptical European capitals that it would stick to the terms of a multi-billion euro rescue package endorsed by lawmakers during violent protests on the streets of Athens.

Greek Parliament backed drastic cuts in wages, pensions and jobs, on February 12, as the price of a 130-billion euro bailout by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

However, running battles between police and rioters outside the Parliament drove home a sense of deepening crisis.

The EU welcomed the vote, but told Greece it had more to do to secure the funds and avoid a disorderly default that would have “devastating consequences”.

World Children Report, 2012
UNICEF’s Flagship State of the World Children Report 2012, says urbanisation is leaving billions of children in cities across the world excluded from vital services. More than 50 per cent of the world’s population today lives in urban areas. Of these, one billion are children, devoid of any semblance of decent living.

In India, 377 million live in the urban centers. Out of them, 97 million are urban poor (the lowest 25 per cent section) as per Census 2011 data. An estimated 535 million will live in towns by 2026. This would be 40 per cent of India’s population.

The differential between urban non poor and urban poor children is huge. For instance, more urban poor children below five are underweight than rural children in the same group. While 47 per cent urban poor kids are underweight, 46 per cent rural are underweight as against 33 per cent urban children.

There is a shocking, 13-point difference in the Infant Mortality Rates among urban non poor and urban poor children; 54 per cent more infants die in urban poor families.

That’s not all, 20 per cent more children are anaemic among urban poor than among the urban non poor and one in every two children among the urban poor is underweight.

Even on health services, the access of urban poor is shockingly low with one in two women managing safe deliveries and 6 in every 10 being anaemic (more than in rural areas).

Russia, China veto UN’s Syria resolution
On February 4, 2011, Russia and China joined forces in a double veto to knock down a Western-Arab U.N. Security Council resolution backing an Arab League plan for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside.
The other 13 council members voted in favour of the resolution, which would have said that the council “fully supports” the Arab League plan aimed at ending 11 months of bloodshed as Syria has sought to crush an anti-Assad uprising.

Dropping the usual diplomatic courtesies, US Ambassador Susan Rice said she was “disgusted” by the Russian and Chinese veto, adding that “any further bloodshed that flows will be on their (Russia’s and China’s) hands.”
This was the second time that permanent members Russia and China exercised a double veto on the Syria issue. In October 2011, they vetoed a European-drafted resolution condemning Syria and threatening it with possible sanctions.

Russia had complained that the draft resolution was an attempt at “regime change” in Syria, Moscow’s close ally and a key Russian weapons export destination.

NATO report rips open Pak double game in Afghanistan
Exposing the ISI’s “manipulation” of Taliban’s senior leadership and its “massive double game”, a damning NATO report says that the Pakistan government remains “intimately” involved with the Afghan-based terror group.

The report was leaked out on February 1, 2012, during the visit of Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to Kabul.

The NATO report contains accusations that Pakistan is playing a massive double game with the West as it publicly claims to seek a political solution to the Afghan conflict, while still supporting fighters who have killed thousands of international troops.

Many of the reports most serious revelations concern the scale of support to the Taliban provided by Pakistan and the influence of ISI agency.

The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, Al-Qaida and other foreign fighters and civilians.

The report says that senior Taliban leaders regularly meet with ISI officers “who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the Government of Pakistan”.