Tag Archive for: news

Eleven of the more than 100 candidates rejected following a vetting process earlier this month have had their appeals approved, the Myanmar Times said, though many Muslims who say they were unfairly disqualified remain excluded from the much-anticipated general election.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said earlier this week that the disqualifications risk “undermining the confidence of the Burmese people and the international community in these elections.”

One of the candidates who were reinstated, Khin Maung Cho, said that a statement issued by nine embassies warning against “religion being used as a tool of division and conflict during the campaign season” may have influenced the commission’s partial reversal.

The disqualifications, which were made on citizenship grounds, follow the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims after their temporary citizenship cards were revoked earlier this year.

Myanmar officially maintains that the Rohingya are interlopers from Bangladesh and refers to them as “Bengalis” despite evidence that many have roots in the country going back generations.

Foreign Minister Wanna Maung Lwin on Thursday defended the decision to strip Rohingya of their voting rights by arguing that green card holders in the U.S. are also not allowed to vote.

Myanmar’s two main parties have both failed to field any Muslim candidates, a move observers believe is an attempt to assuage Buddhist extremists. The 11 who were reinstated are independents or from smaller parties.

Since a reform process began in 2011, when the military regime installed a semi-civilian government, Myanmar has seen bouts of anti-Muslim violence accompanied by widespread hate speech led by prominent Buddhist monks.

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The attack followed two months of calm in the area and took place as Muslims marked Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice.

“We found a dreadful scene, around 15 people had been executed, four of whom were from Nigeria,” Hassan Ardo, an official from the Diffa governorate told the Tele Sahel television station.

The attackers had also torched 22 houses, a car and a mill, he said, and left four others wounded.

The station said the attack took place Thursday night and was carried out by around a dozen armed militants who had arrived on foot at the village on the banks of the Komadougou Yobe river on the border with Nigeria.

One of the victims was the village chief, the Afani private radio station reported.

In June, 38 civilians were killed — including 10 children — in a Boko Haram attack targeting two villages close to Diffa on the border with northeast Nigeria, where the terrorist group has waged a bloody uprising since 2009, leaving at least 15,000 dead and more than two million others homeless.

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According to the Health Ministry’s spokesperson Iraj Harirchi, the Saudi officials also refused to provide necessary facilities for the dispatch of an Iranian team to help aid those pilgrims who were injured in the incident.

He said the Iranian health ministry announced readiness to dispatch a medical team to Saudi Arabia immediately after the catastrophic incident to assist the Iranian pilgrims there but were denied access by the Saudi officials.

He went on to note that the Iranian medical teams who have been stationed in Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the Hajj time, are presently working in harsh conditions to render aid to the wounded Iranian pilgrims in Saudi hospitals.

He said about 91 Iranian pilgrims who have been hospitalized are generally in good conditions.

The main concern now, the official noted, is the great number of the Iranian pilgrims who have gone missing and there are still no information available about their destinies.

131 Iranian pilgrims have thus far been declared dead in Thursday Mina disaster, 85 of them are injured in Saudi hospitals and Iranian healthcare centers in Mecca, and 365 of them are sorrowfully still missing.

The relatives of the most disastrous fatal even in the history of Hajj pilgrimage are still shocked with hearts filled with deep sorrow both in Saudi Arabia in Iranian pilgrims’ camps and back home in Iran, awaiting justice to be observed for the creators of this catastrophe for the Islamic world.

Many world experts, political and religious officials believe mismanagement was the real cause for the various incidents in this year’s Hajj pilgrimage, including the fall of a huge crane, a fire disaster in a hotel, a fire which spread in the camp of the Egyptian pilgrims in Mina desert, and above all, Mina stampede.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has ordered a task force to be set up to follow up the incident.

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The selection committee declared Prophet Muhammad(AS) to represent Iran at the Oscar in a statement released on Saturday.

Set in the sixth century the movie revolves around the childhood of Prophet Muhammad (AS).

Iran’s jury committee, which is chosen by Farabi Cinema Foundation (FCF), announced the preliminary entries for the 2016 Oscar Awards after reviewing all cinematic creations screened in domestic and international movie theaters and film events.

Iran has submitted a total of seventeen films for Oscar consideration in Best Foreign Language Film category since 1977.

Asghar Farhadi’s family drama ‘A Separation’, represented Iran in two categories and picked up the Best Foreign Language Film Award in 2012.

The award for best foreign-language film is given to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.

The 88th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), will honor the best films of 2015 and will take place on February 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood in Los Angeles.

During the ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories.

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The Balkan EU member has largely been bypassed by the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflict and poverty, many of whom set off from Greece through neighbouring Macedonia and Serbia towards northern Europe.

But Bulgaria has still seen Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis cross its southeastern border from Turkey.

“We help refugees who have already arrived in our motherland, but the government must absolutely not let more refugees in,” the church — which claims 80 percent of the population as its followers — said late Friday on its website.

“This is a wave that looks like an invasion.”

It added that the problems in the refugees’ countries of origin “must be resolved by those who created them and the Bulgarian people must not pay the price by disappearing.”

About 13 percent of Bulgaria’s population are Muslims, including ethnic Turks, Bulgarians who converted to Islam during five centuries of Ottoman rule, and some Roma.

Bulgaria was accused of trying to ethnically cleanse its Muslims shortly before communism fell in 1989, when around 360,000 Muslim Bulgarians fled to Turkey. Nearly half later returned when the country embraced democracy.

Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II has sparked concern in some quarters, as many of those taking the perilous journey are Muslim.

In France, several mayors said they would only take in Christian refugees, earning them a rebuke from the government.

The issue has played into the hands of the far-right across Europe, which hopes to turn fears of an “invasion” into electoral success.

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said Friday he was “concerned” over a potential massive influx of migrants in the coming months.

“I’m scared and the Bulgarian people are scared, if only where religions are concerned. We are Christian, they are Muslim.”

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