Letter From India about Tibet
- Details
- Written by letter from northern India letter from northern India
- Published: 17 April 2008 17 April 2008
- Hits: 4762 4762
[This letter was sent to us by someone in Portland who has a good friend living in northern India . . . Editor]
For more information about Tibet, go to: www.phayul.com
Sent 4/14/08
Hi, I've stuffed tears all day on this... this horrific, sickening news. Thank you for being my outlet...and please pass on this update ASAP to anyone who will listen...and act. THANK YOU SO MUCH.
In Tibet, near the capital, Lhasa there are 3 major monasteries which used to house 1000's of monks. I don't know the exact number these days (can research...but cannot wait to share this plea for help) Since the uprising a month ago, the monasteries have been closed for leaving or entering. This means whoever was inside is held captive inside by the Chinese army. They have already begun to run out of water and food and people have already died. Some have jumped from windows, committing suicide rather than waiting to be starved to death. (The depth of horror of this last fact may be lost for readers who are not familiar with Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism...the gravity of suicide, especially for a monastic, is so severe, it is hard for us Westerners to understand what it means to Tibetans---)
20 die in Gaza clashes after fire fight at fuel crossing
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
- Published: 17 April 2008 17 April 2008
- Hits: 4134 4134
· Reuters cameraman dies in strike on press car
· Hamas defiant after Israeli supply restriction eases
At least 17 Palestinians, including a Reuters television journalist, and three Israeli soldiers were killed in heavy fighting across Gaza yesterday, the violence starting close to the Nahal Oz fuel crossing, the sole supply line for fuel into the Strip.
The Israeli military moved into Gaza after armed men were seen close to the terminal. There was heavy fighting which led to the deaths of three Israeli soldiers and at least four Hamas militants. Israeli troops, using tanks and aircraft, then struck in several areas of the Gaza Strip.
In one attack, at the Bureij refugee camp, at least eight Palestinians died. In another strike in the same area the Reuters cameraman, named as Fadal Shana, and two other Palestinian civilians, were killed.
Reuters said Shana, 23, was stepping out of a vehicle, marked "TV" and "Press", when he was killed by an explosion. Residents said the blast was an Israeli air strike. David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of the news agency, called for an investigation by the Israeli military. "All governments and organisations have a responsibility to take the utmost care to protect professionals trying to do their jobs," he said.
The Nahal Oz fuel crossing has been the scene of recent fighting: last week two Israeli workers were killed in an attack by Palestinian militants. Since then there have been a series of Israeli military strikes. Last Friday nine Palestinians were killed, including six civilians, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
Read more: 20 die in Gaza clashes after fire fight at fuel crossing
BORN TO DEMOLISH
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- Written by Jeff Halper, ICAHD Jeff Halper, ICAHD
- Published: 16 April 2008 16 April 2008
- Hits: 4248 4248
It was another of those routine tragedies that are never publicized. At eight in the morning we at ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) received a call that the Border Police, Israeli police and Jerusalem Municipality bulldozers were massing below the Palestinian village of Anata, poised to begin another day of home demolitions. We never know of demolitions ahead of time. The Israeli authorities responsible for demolishing Palestinian homes – the municipality and the Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem, the “Civil” Administration in the West Bank and the army – do not provide advanced warning to us or, indeed, to the families themselves. Tens of thousands of Palestinian families live with demolition orders on their homes, some 22,000 in East Jerusalem alone, where fully a third of Palestinian homes face demolition at any time. When we received word of preparations for a demolition that morning, however, we knew precisely which home would be targeted first: that of the Hamdan family, the elderly parents, their married son and daughter-in-law with their five children, and an unmarried son. It was a home we had rebuilt for the second time in last summer’s ICAHD work camp, when Israeli and international peace activists joined with local Palestinians to rebuild as an act of political resistance to the Occupation.
Reuters cameraman killed in Gaza
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- Written by Mark Sweney Mark Sweney
- Published: 16 April 2008 16 April 2008
- Hits: 4523 4523
Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana has been killed in Gaza in an explosion which also claimed the lives of two bystanders.
Shana, 23, was travelling in a car that had stopped and was killed in an explosion as he was getting out of it, Reuters said. A Reuters soundman, Wafa Abu Mizyed, also travelling in the vehicle escaped serious injury.
The cameraman, who had worked for the news agency in the region for more than three years, is the first Reuters journalist to be killed in Gaza.
Shana, a Palestinian, had
previously been wounded in August 2006 when an Israeli aircraft fired a
missile at the vehicle he was travelling in.
Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger called for an investigation into the incident.
"This tragic incident shows the risks journalists take every day to report the news," Schlesinger said.
"All
governments and organisations have a responsibility to take the utmost
care to protect professionals trying to do their jobs. We request an
immediate investigation into the incident by the Israeli defence
forces."
Reuters has 70 journalists covering the Israeli and Palestinian region, 15 of them in Gaza.
Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as homes are destroyed
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Far'un, The Guardian Rory McCarthy in Far'un, The Guardian
- Published: 14 April 2008 14 April 2008
- Hits: 4511 4511
Israelis defend rules that reject 94% of non-Jewish building applications
In the end it came down to a single-page letter, written in Hebrew and Arabic and hand-delivered by an Israeli army officer who knocked at the front door. The letter spelt the imminent destruction of the whitewashed three-storey home and small, tree-lined garden that Bassam Suleiman spent so long saving for and then built with his family a decade ago.
It was a final demolition order, with instructions to evacuate the house within three days.
If Suleiman was in any doubt about the Israeli military's intentions he had only to look outside his back door where large piles of rubble and broken concrete mark the remains of the seven of his neighbours' houses that were demolished in the same way last year.
Read more: Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as homes are destroyed