Mob burns homes in fresh India ‘violence’

NEW DELHI, April 4, (Agencies): Hundreds of Indian security forces enforced a curfew on a tense district Wednesday after a mob set fire to the homes of two political figures from the country’s low-caste Dalit community.

Amid heightened communal tensions over caste rights, some 5,000 people angered by earlier Dalit protests torched the houses Tuesday of a state legislator and former lawmaker in the Karauli district of the popular tourist state of Rajasthan.

Neither was at home at the time, the district’s top administrative official told AFP.

“We have made some arrests following the arson and violence. A curfew is in place and we have also deployed 600-700 extra security personnel,” said Abhimanyu Kumar.

The incident followed violent nationwide protests by tens of thousands of Dalits on Monday which left at least nine dead.

Once dismissed as “untouchables”, Dalits make up 200 million of India’s 1.25 billion population and are at the bottom of the caste hierarchy.

They have been enraged at a Supreme Court ruling that they say weakens a law intended to protect lower caste communities.

The Court last month banned the automatic arrest of people accused of attacking or harassing Dalits and other marginalised groups.

While the court says its intention was to prevent fake cases, Dalit leaders say the community is now more vulnerable to attack.

Discrimination has become a political issue in the run-up to a national election that must be held before May 2019.

India’s ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party has accused opposition parties of orchestrating the protests.

The BJP government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has however filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn its ruling.

Modi

Lanka debates no-confidence motion:

Sri Lanka’s Parliament debated a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Wednesday, a move that threatens the unity government elected on a platform of good governance.

A vote on the motion, brought by a group led by former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, was expected later in the day. Wickremesinghe needs 113 votes in the 225-member Parliament to defeat the motion.

The main allegation involves his appointment of a Singaporean as the central bank governor who is now accused of leaking inside information to benefit his son-in-law in a treasury bond sale.

Sri Lankan police have sought Interpol assistance to arrest Arjun Mahendran, the former bank governor. His son-in-law and another official are already under arrest.

According to a presidential commission’s findings, Mahendran’s son-in-law allegedly made profits of $72 million from the dealings while the state lost about $55 million.

The no-confidence motion has threatened Sri Lanka’s unity government, formed by parties that are traditional rivals led by Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena, with parts of Sirisena’s party mulling voting against the prime minister. A victory for the motion would boost Rajapaksa’s plan to recapture power.

Opposition lawmaker Dinesh Gunawardena opened the debate, saying Wickremesinghe was responsible for the scam because he appointed a foreigner to head a sensitive institution such as the central bank, and that its impact has been felt in the country’s economy, with low investor confidence.

Government Minister Lakshman Kiriella defended Wickremesinghe, saying two inquiries into the bond scam — one by a parliamentary committee and the other by the presidential commission — found no fault with the prime minister.

Minority leader Rajavarothayam Sampanthan, who heads the largest ethnic Tamil party in Parliament, said his party will oppose the motion because it wants the president and the prime minister to implement their pledge to draft a new constitution protecting the political rights of minority Tamils after a protracted civil war that ended in 2009.

He said Rajapaksa’s supporters want to unseat the government because they don’t want the government’s pledge implemented.

“They want to first defeat the prime minister. The next target will be the president; they want the government brought down,” Sampanthan said.

“We want the government to implement the mandate given to it by the country. In these circumstances how can we support this no-confidence motion?”

Rajapaksa was defeated in the 2015 presidential election after Sirisena, who was his health minister, defected and joined Wickremesinghe in an election alliance.

After being elected president as a neutral candidate, Sirisena accepted an offer from Rajapaksa to take over his Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Since then, party rivalries have been simmering within the government.

Despite giving up party leadership to Sirisena, Rajapaksa is now leading a splinter Freedom Party group in Parliament.

Jailed Zia in poor health:

Bangladesh’s opposition party accused the government Tuesday of putting the health of their jailed leader at risk by refusing to let her personal doctors treat her inside prison.

Khaleda Zia, the 72-year-old leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party who was jailed in February for corruption, has been suffering complications from arthritis and is struggling to walk, doctors say.

A team of four government doctors from a staterun hospital in Dhaka have been treating Zia, a twotime former prime minister, in prison where she is serving her five-year sentence in isolation.

But her supporters want Zia’s personal physicians given access to her cell. The government has yet to respond to the request.

“The government is trying to break our leader’s morale and it is taking a toll on her health,” BNP spokesman Rizvi Ahmed told AFP.

Mohammad Shamsuzzaman, an orthopaedic specialist at Dhaka Medical College Hospital who visited Zia as part of the government team, said her condition was not serious but her arthritis had worsened in prison.