Negative Blogs

Both the insurgent group Al Shabab and the US-backed Somali government rely on children to fill their ranks, human rights officials say.

The United States this week joined other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning the growing use of children in conflict – as soldiers, bomb makers, cooks, and sex slaves – by rebel groups and governments alike.

Yet even as the US singles out Somalia as one of the world’s worst child-soldier offenders, mounting evidence suggests the US-backed Somali government is using child soldiers in its fight with the Islamist-militant Al Shabab group.

And that in turn has some experts concluding that the US assistance is paying the pittance salaries of Somali child soldiers.

At Tuesday’s Security Council debate on children and armed conflict, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said the US is “particularly concerned about the situation in Somalia,” where she said all parties to the conflict have “placed several thousand children in the line of fire.”

The US, she said, calls on the parties to the conflict to cease child recruitment and to release those children already in the fight.

But both the US-backed Somali transitional federal government and the rebels the government is battling rely on children to fill out their soldier ranks, say UN and non-governmental human rights officials. The government has a force that is up to one-quarter children, experts estimate, while children may make up as much as three-quarters of Al-Shabab’s fighters.

The Somali government, which barely hangs on in the capital of Mogadishu and has lost much of the country’s central and southern regions to the rebels, acknowledges using children in its war and has not made removing them from the fight a top priority, the New York Times said in a report from Mogadishu Monday.

Tuesday’s Security Council debate came a month after the UN special representative for children and armed conflict for the first time issued a list of the “most persistent violators” of the international convention against the use of children in conflict. That list includes the Somali transitional government, pro-government and insurgent groups in Sudan, rebel groups in Colombia and the Philippines, both the government and rebel groups in Burma, and the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) with roots in Uganda.

In her comments, Ambassador Rice singled out cases of child soldiers in addition to Somalia – including the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But she said the US especially “abhors” the LRA’s practice of “forced recruitment through abduction.”

The UN’s annual report does note some examples of progress. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said Burundi was delisted as a convention violator. Also last year, rebel groups in the Philippines, Nepal, and Sudan signed agreements to end their recruitment of child soldiers.

By Howard LaFranchiBy

Al Shabab fighters conduct a military exercise in northern Mogadishu, Somalia, on Jan. 1. The UN Security Council this week condemned Somalia and others for their use of child soldiers.

Anti-government Red Shirt protesters have ignored an ultimatum to abandon their occupation of central Bangkok, as the leaders of the demonstration promised to die rather than give in to the authorities.

Helicopters dropped leaflets warning that anyone caught inside the area faced two years in prison.

But almost two hours after the 3pm [9am UK time] deadline, several thousand people remained in the protest area, which has been sealed off and fortified with towering barricades of rubber tires and bamboo poles.

Weng Tojirakarn, a senior Red Shirt leader, said: “If you insist on brutality, we will stay here persistently, and we will tell our people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stay here, do not fight back, and let them shoot us.’”

Satit Wonghnongtaey, a minister attached to the office of the Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, said: “The operation [to disperse] will be executed as soon as possible. The authorities will do everything possible … including broadcast radio messages, police loudspeaker trucks and leaflets.”

But both sides still held out the faint possibility of a compromise, suggesting that even at the moment of greatest tension a peaceful solution was being discussed behind the scenes.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, spokesman for Mr Abhisit, said: “The Government is ready to go forward with negotiation when the situation is defused, when the protest ends, violence ends and attacks on authorities end.

“We insist they have to be sincere to make every effort to return the country to normality … This sincerity must be reflected by their action to bring back peace.”

Earlier, doctors announced the death in hospital of Major General Khattiya Sawasdiphol, a militant supporter of the Red Shirts. He was suspected by many Thais of organising a covert militia to fight off attempts to break up the demonstrations. General Khattiya was shot in the head last Thursday during an interview with an American reporter by an unidentified sniper.

Red Shirts in the central stronghold in the Ratchaprasong district wept as a song was sung to honour him and at least 36 other people killed in the past five days, as armed soldiers have attempted with mixed success to create a perimeter around the Red Shirt area.

Supplies of food, water and tires for constructing barricades are still entering Ratchaprasong. A new protest base has been established to the south-east at the Bon Kai intersection beneath one of Bangkok’s elevated expressways. Young men continued to play a dangerous cat and mouse game with soldiers along the Rama IV road in front of it, throwing fireworks and petrol bombs and ducking down side alleys when the soldiers fired their rifles.

The Government has frozen 106 personal and business bank accounts of leading Red Shirts and of companies associated with Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Prime Minister whose ejection from power in a 2006 coup was the beginning of the protest movement. The Reds are demanding that Mr Abhisit, whose party was repeatedly defeated by Mr Thaksin, step down and call a general election.

The authorities have been encouraging women and children to move from the protest area to the sanctuary of a nearby Buddhist temple, but the suggestion appears to have been largely ignored. Rojanee Cheepacrarat, a 57-year old volunteer nurse at one of the medical and first aid stations in the protest area, said: “My children are worried about me, but I am not afraid.

“I smile at the soldiers – I call them my sons. They are innocent, and they are scared – it is just their officers who tell them to shoot.”

There have been reports of splits among the protest leaders, with some of them favouring a compromise to bring an end to the confrontation, but Dr Weng insisted that they were united. He also called for direct intervention by foreign governments to pressure the Government.

“Let all the civilised countries of the world know [the truth of what is happening],” he said. “We cannot walk out of here, because they will shoot us with snipers.

“People all over the world are a brotherhood. How can they let their brothers be killed by this government?”

By Richard Lloyd Parry, Bangkok

A fainting woman among the guests led to safety out of the Dusit Thani hotel in Bangkok after an explosion and shots were heard nearby.

A court in eastern China has sentenced a man to death for knifing 29 children and three teachers in an attack on a kindergarten, state media reports.

Xu Yuyuan was found guilty of attempted murder after a half-day trial at Taixing Intermediate Court in Jiangsu province, Xinhua reported.

Xu reportedly said his motive was to vent his rage against society. It was not clear whether he would appeal.

All 32 victims survived April’s attack at Taixing’s Zhongxin Kindergarten.

China has been rocked by a string of school attacks in the past two months, in which dozens have been killed or wounded.

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao has said the attacks show the country has “social tensions” which must be addressed.

The education ministry has ordered all schools to upgrade their security facilities, teach students about safety and ensure that young children were escorted home.

Some local police authorities have distributed steel pitchforks and pepper spray to security guards in schools but such measures are considered expensive and their effectiveness is unproven.

But Mr Wen told a Hong Kong television channel on Thursday that as well as boosting the security presence, China needed to “handle social problems, resolve disputes and strengthen mediation at the grassroots level”.

Discourage copycats?

On Wednesday, seven children thought to be under the age of six and two adults were hacked to death at a kindergarten near Hanzhong city in Shaanxi province. The attacker later killed himself, Xinhua reported.

In March, a man stabbed to death eight pupils at a school in Fujian province. He was executed soon afterwards.

China has in the past had a comparatively low rate of violent crime, meaning the recent violence has been all the more shocking.

There has been much speculation on the cause of the attacks, with some blaming inadequate provision for people with mental health issues.

Others have suggested the attacks are a form of revenge on society by individuals with no outlet for their anger in a political environment heavily controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

Reports in official media have generally played down any wider causes for the school attacks, portraying them as isolated incidents perpetrated by disturbed individuals.

All 32 victims survived April's attack at Taixing's Zhongxin Kindergarten.

Seventy Dutch passengers were among the 103 people killed in the Libya plane crash in which an 8-year-old boy was the sole survivor, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

Officials had previously said 58 Dutch passengers died in the accident Wednesday.

Afriqiyah Airways confirmed on its Web site late Wednesday that the other 92 passengers and 11 crew members were killed when the plane crashed while trying to land at the Tripoli International Airport.

The child, identified as Ruben van Assouw, suffered multiple fractures in his lower limbs and underwent an operation at Al Khadra Hospital in Tripoli, a doctor at the hospital said.

He lost blood but is now much better, said the doctor, who declined to give her name.

The boy has seen a Dutch Embassy representative and is sedated and asleep, she said, adding that he will undergo multiple scans Thursday.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry, which had a representative at the hospital waiting to identify the boy, declined to confirm the child’s name.

The Afriqiyah Airways plane originated in Johannesburg, South Africa. As well as the 70 Dutch citizens killed, six South Africans died along with two Libyans, two Austrians, one German, one French, one Zimbabwean and two Britons.

Other passengers’ nationalities could not immediately be identified. The 11 crew members were all Libyan.

The plane, an Airbus A330-200, was at the end of its nearly nine-hour flight when it crashed at 6 a.m.

“We express our sincere regret and sadness on behalf of the airline. As well, we would like to express our condolences to the relatives and friends of those who had passengers on Flight 8U771 destined for Tripoli late last night, due to arrive around 6 o’clock this morning,” said Nicky Knapp, a representative of the Airports Company South Africa. She was speaking on behalf of Afriqiyah Airways.

Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament, said the child’s survival, “given this tragic event, is truly a miracle.”

At the crash site, workers with surgical masks combed through the smoldering wreckage, which spilled over a large area. A wheel lay atop a pile of bags. Two green airline seats sat upright and intact amid burned parts of the aircraft.

Officials recovered the plane’s flight data recorder, which investigators use to piece together a flight’s last minutes.

The Tripoli-based Afriqiyah (Arabic for “African”) operates flights to four continents. The planes in the fleet carry the logo 9.9.99: the date when the African Union was formed.

The plane that crashed was one of three Airbus 330-200s that the airline owns.

By the CNN

A Dutch boy is the sole survivor of a plane crash in Libya that killed more than 100 people. The plane crashed short of the runway at Tripoli airport en route to London's Gatwick airport.

A man in northwest China killed seven kindergartners and two teachers Wednesday, in the sixth school attack since March.

Beijing — A man wielding a kitchen cleaver killed seven children and two teachers at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday, in the latest of a series of attacks on schools that has sparked widespread public alarm.

Some have pointed blame at the desperate frustration building up over social injustices. Many commentators have blamed the nature of Chinese society under repressive, one-party rule.

“The fundamental problem is that our society is sick,” Zhou Xiaozheng, a retired sociology professor in Beijing, told the Monitor earlier this month. “We suffer from corrupt officials, unfair distribution of resources, and an unjust legal system. These are the sorts of things that attack a society’s immune system.”

The killer in Wednesday’s attack, Wu Huanmin, later committed suicide at home, according to a local official quoted by the official Xinhua news agency, which said that “his motive was not immediately known.”

The rampage brought the death toll from six similar assaults since March to 18; more than 80 people have been injured.

President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had both called for action to protect schoolchildren even before today’s bloodshed.

For some Americans, the attacks in China are reminiscent of the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, when a series of copycat attacks occurred. It also prompted tighter security measures in schools nationwide.

By Peter Ford

A policeman walks outside Shengshui Temple kindergarten in Nanzheng county of Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province, Wednesday. A man killed seven children and two teachers at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday in the latest of a series of attacks on schools.

China is reeling from a surge of attacks on innocent children and the country is searching for answers while beefing up security for schools.

In the most recent attack, a local farmer in Shandong province injured five pre-school children and a teacher before burning himself to death.

Two children were saved from his grip.

It was the fourth attack in a month on schools and children in China.

On Thursday, a middle-aged man armed with a knife wounded 28 children and three adults at a kindergarten in Jiangsu province, eastern China. Five children were left in a critical condition.

On Wednesday, a teacher on sick leave because of a mental illness wounded 16 children and a staff member at a primary school in Guangdong province.

The same day, another man was executed for murdering eight children last month outside an elementary school in Fujian province.

The education ministry has formed an emergency panel to tackle the violence and some local police authorities have distributed such instruments as steel pitchforks and pepper spray to security guards in schools.

‘Social revenge’

China used to take pride in its low rate of violent crimes but now has to deal with them almost every day, leading many to ask what has caused the sudden surge of apparently random attacks.

The wave of violence has been dubbed cases of “social revenge” in China.

Ji Jianlin, a professor of clinical psychology at Shanghai’s Fudan University, says the incidents share some common features.

“The attackers all have grudges against society. They all try to take revenge by attacking the young and vulnerable,” he says.

In part, it reflects the social tension caused by rampant corruption and inequality. But Prof Ji points out that there is a lack of social and psychological support in the rapidly changing society.

“In the past, China’s workers used to have social support from the unions or women’s associations. They used to provide quite adequate support. It’s now quite weak.”

This is especially true in smaller cities and towns. In a country where people used to be looked after from cradle to grave, the social change has not only left many Chinese without their traditional support mechanism but also pushed a large number of people into relative poverty.

And the income gap is widening further between the rich and poor.

This, coupled with a changed attitude towards life, has driven many to extremes in their desperate attempt to come to terms with the law of the jungle prevalent there.

On top of that, there is still a stigma in Chinese culture about people needing psychological counselling.

Family members and society as a whole tend to conceal or shun those with mental problems. This may partly lead to attackers failing to get help before they commit crimes.

There is also suspicion that widespread reports of the attacks may have encouraged copycats. Three out of the four recent attacks were carried out with knives.

Whatever the causes may be, the parents of the victims are paying a high price.

By Shirong Chen

China has been shocked by the outburst of violent crime.

Four young children are reported to have died after a former insurance salesman slashed and stabbed his way through a kindergarten in southern China, in the second such attack in as many days.

The well-regarded Caijing magazine said that four children were killed in this morning’s s attack. Officials declined to comment.

The man stabbed 28 children as well as a teacher, a security guard and a school volunteer who tried to protect the terrified four-year-olds.

Coming less than 24 hours after a mentally ill former teacher hacked at 15 pupils and a teacher in a southern China primary school, the attack has sparked nationwide outrage and heartsearching about why children have become targets.

Officials said that Xu Yuyuan, 47, broke into a classroom at the nursery school in Taixing city in southeastern Jiangsu province at about 9.40am today and attacked the children with a 20cm (9in) knife.

A photograph from the scene showed blood spattered across the school steps — presumably as the wounded were rushed to hospital.

A staff member at the Taixing No 1 People’s Hospital said that some of the wounded were being treated there. He said: “The injured have been sent here one after another. The doctors are now trying their best to save them.”

Five of the children were in critical condition in hospital in Jiangsu province, said Zhu Guiming, an official with the propaganda department in Taixing city. However, officials told state media that no deaths had been reported and the condition of the most badly hurt was stabilising.

Police have arrested Mr Xu, who was described as unemployed after having worked for a local insurance company until 2001.

Yesterday a 33-year-old man with a history of mental illness rushed into classrooms at the Leizhou primary school in southern Guangdong province, brandishing a knife about a foot long. He injured 16 children and a teacher, stabbing them in the back arms and head. None of the victims was reported to be in serious condition.

The man then made his way to a top-floor balcony, from which threatened to throw himself off, before being arrested.

Several schools across China have been the subject of similar attacks in recent yeas, provoking anger from parents and the meda.

Hours before the primary school attack, state media announced the execution of a former medical worker who stabbed to death eight children on March 23 as they waited for the gates to open for morning classes at their school in eastern Fujian province. Zheng Minsheng, 41, told the court that he carried had out the attack in a fit of rage after splitting from his girlfriend.

Across the internet, the only forum for popular discussion in China, chatrooms were filled with anger at the latest attack. One comment read: “Governments, let me ask, what crime has the next generation committed and why can criminals bring these tragedies to innocent children? I appeal to the government to save our children.” Another wrote: “Our government should pause to consider seriously just what the problem is here.”

One expert attributed the string of attacks on schoolchildren to increasing social problems. Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said that the choice of schoolchildren as victims could be a form of copycat phenomenon. This sort of violent attack often happened in clusters, he said.

“It’s like suicide, which is another type of mental health problem that can spread in a community. Normally, with these kind of violent events we hope the media won’t blow them up too much. Because that tends to make it spread.”

By Jane Macartney

A woman holding a baby stands near the gate of Zhongxin Kindergarten where a class of 4-year-olds were attacked by a knife-wielding man in Taixing, in east China's Jiangsu Province.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A bomb exploded outside a school run by a police welfare foundation in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar on Monday, killing a young boy and wounding 10 other people, police said.

Taliban and al-Qaida militants currently fighting Pakistani security forces will be suspected in the attack because of the school’s link to the police. The militants have appeared willing to inflict civilian casualties in their attacks on the state.

Insurgents based in the Afghan border region have carried hundreds of attacks over the last three years. Two blasts over the weekend in the nearby Kohat tribal region killed around 50 people, most of them refugees lining up to register for food and other aid.

The Police Public School was in session when the bomb went off, said police official Shafiullah Khan.

The school is run by a police welfare foundation, which raises money to help families of police officers.

The dead boy was aged between 5 and 7, Khan said. Ten other people were wounded, including five children.

Also Monday, suspected Taliban militants in the northwest detonated two bombs that destroyed a pair of oil tankers along a vital route used to supply NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

No one was wounded, but the fire also engulfed a flatbed truck and nearby shops in the Takhta Beg area of the Khyber tribal region, local official Iqbal Khan said.

Taliban militants and ordinary criminals frequently attack vehicles along the supply route that runs through the famed Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO say their Afghan operations have felt limited impact, but they are establishing alternate routes.

Pakistani firefighters try to extinguish a burning oil tanker after bomb explosions in Takhta Beg, an area of Pakistani Khyber tribal region along Afghan border, Monday, April 19, 2010. An official said suspected Taliban militants in northwestern Pakistan detonated two bombs that destroyed a pair of oil tankers along a vital supply route used by NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Qazi Rauf)

Hannah Clark is a 16-year-old with a shy laugh and a love of animals. She likes to go shopping with friends and dreams of a career working with children.

But Hannah Clark is no ordinary teenager and her normal life today could not have been possible without a unique, life-changing heart surgery.

In 1994 when she was eight-months-old, Hannah was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy — an inflammation of the heart muscle that impairs the heart’s ability to work properly.

Hannah’s heart was failing and she needed a transplant. But instead of taking her own heart out, doctors added a new donated heart to her own when she was just two-years-old.

The so-called “piggyback” operation allowed the donor heart to do the work while Hannah’s heart rested.

But Hannah was not in the clear yet. As with any organ transplant, Hannah’s body was likely to reject her new heart and she had to take powerful immune suppression drugs.

Those drugs allowed her body to accept the donor heart but also led to lung cancer and yet another medical battle for Hannah that lasted for years.

Nearly 11 years after receiving the extra heart, there was more bad news: The immuno-suppression drugs were no longer working. Hannah’s body was rejecting the donor heart.

Eleven people — including eight children — died in an explosion Monday morning in eastern Pakistan, a hospital official said.

Fifty to 60 people with injuries were taken to an area hospital, said Dr. Naeem Sadiq.

The blast occurred in Mian Channu, 368 kilometers (228 miles) south of the capital, Islamabad.

Police found large explosives, including two suicide jackets and five or six rockets, buried under the rubble, said Kamran Khan, district police officer.

A rescue operation was under way to pull out people from the rubble, Khan said, adding that 40 houses were destroyed.

Local media reported that the blast happened in a house used to teach religious education to young girls, but no further details were immediately available.