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Monday, June 15, 2009

Iran’s day of anguish

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Protester set fires and smashed store windows on Sunday in a second day of violence as groups challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election tried to keep pressure on authorities.

Anti-riot police lashed back and the regime blocked Internet sites used to rally the pro-reform campaign.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the unrest the worst in a decade in Tehran as “not important.”

He said Friday’s vote was “real and free”and insisted the results showing his landslide victory were fair and legitimate.

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Monday, September 15, 2008

Delhi mourns its dead

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Twenty year old Mohamad Ashraf left his home and family in Anantnag, Kashmir, a few years ago to escape the constant threat of violence and to eke out a decent living. Following in the footsteps of his uncles, Ashraf arrived in Delhi - a city that promised him a life of safety and dignity.

At 6.07 pm on Saturday, Ashraf saw, and heard, his dreams shattering in front of his eyes. The Gaffar Market blast claimed his maternal uncle Mohammad Qasim (25) and his other uncle Faroog (28) is battling for his life at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.

"We always felt Delhi was a haven where anyone could earn at least two square meals by working hard," he said. Along with his uncles, who had shifted to Delhi many years ago, Ashraf used to pull cycle rickshaws in the Karol Bagh area. A shell-shocked Ashraf doesn't know if he can feel safe in the Capital anymore.

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Friday, July 18, 2008

Bussiness of death runs into bad days

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The tombstone maker is carving marble name plaques for new homes. The elderly grave digger who has buried hundreds of bullet-ridden bodies is idle. And the post-mortem man in his spotless white coat now only deals with jilted lovers and jobless youth.

Times are changing: the business of death has run into bad days in Kashmir.

From the 4,510 deaths in 2001, the highest number for a year in the insurgency, militancy-related fatalities dropped to about 890 in 2007, officials say. This year, 84 people have been reported dead until mid-June.

So 20 years after the deaths began, three different men in different parts of Srinagar, with similar glazed emotionless eyes — Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo the tombmaker, Abdul Kabir Sheikh the grave digger and Mohammed Maqbool the post-mortem man — have little to do.

“Until a few years ago, there were times when I used to be working day and night, continuously. There is no doubt, the number of militancy deaths is much less and the levels of violence have gone down drastically,” said Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo, 37, a tombmaker who left his home in Anantnag town 15 years ago to make a living in Srinagar.

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