B6
s at u r D aY : M aY 3 0 , 2 0 1 5
WORLD
cesar barrioquinto EDITOR
editorial@thestandard.com.ph
Myanmar rebukes critics BANGKOK—Myanmar rebuked the UN Friday after being called on to address the cause of the exodus of Rohingya Muslims from its shores, saying it is being “singled out” for criticism at international talks. Tensions over Southeast Asia’s migrant crisis were exposed as delegates from 17 nations gathered to address the flight of thousands of desperate people on boats across the Bay of Bengal, aiming for Malaysia and Indonesia. The crisis unfurled at the start of this month after a Thai crackdown on people smuggling threw the multi-million dollar industry into disarray. It led gangmasters to abandon their victims on land and at sea, and images of stick-thin, dazed migrants trapped on boats or stumbling onto shores and out of forests shocked the world, heaping pressure on Southeast Asian nations to act. But observers say it is unclear what the one-day meeting, which is not being attended at a ministerial level, can achieve on an issue that has dogged the region for years but gone largely ignored by authorities. In his opening remarks, Volker Turk, UNHCR assistant high commissioner for protection, urged Myanmar to tackle the flow of Rohingya Muslims, who for years have been fleeing persecution in western Myanmar. To address the root causes “will require full assumption of responsibility by Myanmar to all its people,” Turk said. “Granting of citizenship is the ultimate goal.” Myanmar denies citizenship to the majority of its 1.3 million Rohingya and does not accept them as an official ethnic minority, instead calling them “Bengalis”shorthand for foreigners from neighboring Bangladesh. His comments prompted a rebuke from Myanmar’s delegate, Foreign Ministry Director-General Htin Lynn, who said “this issue of illegal migration of boat people, you cannot single out my country.” afp
‘Blue Nudes.’ The general atmosphere in “Blue Nudes” at De Re Gallery on May 28 in West Hollywood, California. afp
Cairo misses heydey of its park of romance CAIRO—It was a symbol of a more liberal Egypt where young Muslims and Christians mingled under its leafy canopies, bands played and a young Omar Sharif wooed the glamorous Faten Hamama in the classic film romance “The River of Love.” A rare oasis in a metropolis home to eight million people, Merryland park offered respite from Cairo’s dusty, trafficchoked cacophony. Families sipped lemonade on its terraces and paddle-boated on its lake. “Merryland was a vent for eastern Cairo,” said Magdy Badr alDin, whose balcony overlooks the park. But for the former civil servant and his neighbors, that storied heyday, and the more tolerant times that went with it, are just a memory and now the park is rundown, a victim of Egypt’s political upheavals. Now developers have moved
in to build a car park on part of the gardens, and many of its rare trees, imported from around the world, have been uprooted, causing consternation in the surrounding upscale Heliopolis neighborhood. Campaigners obtained a court order against the development but as arguments drag on, the park has been closed to the public and all efforts to rejuvenate its gardens remain on hold. Merryland was the brainchild of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who came to power after a military coup in 1952 that ended the monarchy and modernized the country. Nasser returned from a trip to the United States and decided that Cairo should take its place among the great cities of the world by having a park worthy of its size. The 50-acre Merryland park was inaugurated in 1963, an event Iman Farrag, a social scientist, still remembers. Her father took her there as a child.
“It was a place where people mixed,” she said. The park became a cultural mainstay in the capital, fittingly for a city that had become the cinematic and musical capital of the Arab world. Saleh Abdel Magid, a retired army general, married in the park in 1978. “I just held the ceremony in Merryland. There was a band playing, and one of the most famous belly dancers, Suhair Zaky, would dance there weekly,” he said. Young men and women, Muslims and Christians, mixed in contrast to the increased Islamic conservatism seen since the 1980s, Farrag said. “Boys and girls would hang out, and the girls didn’t wear hijabs. Alcohol was served, and it was hard to tell Muslims and Christians apart.” But Cairo’s incessant expansion squeezed Heliopolis on all sides. Tall apartment blocks now
loom overhead, and above them hangs the ever present smog. The country itself has faded in the region, no longer the cultural and political beacon it was under Nasser, while the religious and class divides he tried to dispel have grown. Many Muslim women have adopted the hijab, and many Christians have begun sporting small crucifix tattoos on their wrists. The park was built on the site of a hippodrome, where Arabian horses rumbled around a track before an excited crowd. The stands where Egyptian royalty watched the races have been preserved, a lone reminder of an age before the military took power. The racetrack itself had been part of Egypt’s cultural heritage, featuring in memorable films including “The River of Love” in 1960 one of he greatest Egyptian screen love stories starring Sharif and Hamama, his former wife, herself an icon of Arab cinema. afp
12 Australian women tried to join IS MELBOURNE―At least 12 Australian women from one city have attempted to join the Islamic State group, police said Friday, warning of a trend towards a “romanticized view” of violent jihadists. More than 100 Australians have left the country to support IS in Syria and Iraq, raising concerns about radicalization and whether they pose a security threat on return, the authorities have said. At least 30 have been killed overseas. Victoria Police assistant commissioner Tracy Linford said those attracted to IS were mostly young, isolated people
swayed by slick social media propaganda. In the case of women, they often had a romantic idea of what life would be like under Islamic State control, she said, adding that at least 12 had attempted to join from Melbourne, Victoria’s capital city. “We’ve got five [women] that we know are over there,” Linford said, adding that two more were unaccounted for, four were turned back outside Australia and one was stopped at the airport before leaving. “But we also suspect that there are probably more than 12,” she told reporters. Linford’s comments came
just days after a Sydney mother reportedly abandoned her two children and fled to Syria for a new life under Islamic State. “We think that the young women particularly get a romanticized view of what actually exists for them if they travel to the conflict zones,” she said. “There is a reach-back from people who are already in the conflict zone telling them, ‘Come over... you will be well looked after, you will have an important position in growing the caliphate, bearing jihadi children in the future, growing the Islamic State’. afp
at the Kremlin. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with former French
President Valery Giscard d’Estaing during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 28. afp